Seven Minutes to Noon
Read Seven Minutes to Noon Online
Authors: Katia Lief
“Mesmerizing.” —Lisa Gardner
“Nail-biting suspense.” —Richard Montanari
“Brilliant.” —
Suspense Magazine
“Exhilarating.” —The Mystery Gazette
“Taut, clean storytelling.” —
Publishers Weekly
“Suspense at a high level.” —Midwest Book Review
“Readers will want to read more of this talented writer’s work.” —
New York Journal of Books
You Are Next
Next Time You See Me
Here She Lies
One Cold Night
Five Days in Summer
The Rise and Fall of Rocky Love
Love, Sex & the Wrong Bride
Soul Catcher
MINUTES
TO NOON
Originally published as
Seven Minutes to Noon
by Katia Lief, in 2005, by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Katia Spiegelman Lief, 2011 All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-9834990-1-5
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval sys- tem, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punish- able by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
For Oliver, Eli and Karenna
...again and always
Matthew Bialer, my agent, and Claire Zion, my editor, both worked hard to help steer this novel in the right direction; I offer them my sincere appreciation for all their patience and effort. Thanks also to P.O. Paul Grudzinski of Brooklyn’s Seventy-sixth Precinct for taking the time to talk with me and show me around the Detectives Unit. To my intrepid early-draft reader, Gail Barrnett: Thanks, Mom, for your time, enthusiasm and sensitive feedback. Last but not least, my deepest gratitude goes to Oliver Lief for, well, everything.
PROLOGUE
Jen followed her mother to school, earning a
come on
or
hurry up
when she fell too far behind. The early morning air was thick and warm on her summer-tan arms, and Jen wanted to swim, not study; she wanted to play with her friends.
Halfway along the Carroll Street Bridge, she stopped and looked up at the vast blue Brooklyn sky, streaked with cottony wisps: a rabbit, a ship, a baby. She ran her hand along the bridge’s iron railing. Someone had painted it blue. Jen liked it. She leaned over and looked down into the Gowanus Canal.
“Let’s get moving!” her mother called.
Jen had loved looking for creatures in the canal ever since kindergarten, when she’d learned how a fixed pump had brought the dead water to life. Her teacher had told them all about it. Up until the 1960s the pump had kept the water moving in the man-made canal and all kinds of living things had grown in it. Then the pump broke, and no one fixed it, and the water sat still and festered. By the time Jen’s class had come to study it, it was a kind of electric green color, a dead river running between Jen’s neighborhood and her school. Some people said the canal was worse than dead, that it was poisonous, and if you fell into it you would get sick and maybe even die. Jen had pictured herself tumbling over the railing and for one brief moment flying, then evaporating the instant she touched the water.
Her teacher had told them that a businessman on Court Street had a dream about the canal and it was this: it could be another Venice, Italy. Instead of factories on its banks, there could be restaurants and parks, and there could be boats on the water. “Gondolas on the Gowanus,” Jen’s teacher had said, and the class didn’t understand what it meant but it sounded so funny they all laughed. But first the canal would have to be brought back to life. So finally, after all those years, the businessman talked to someone who got someone else to fix the pump. Jen’s teacher had said that by the end of first grade, they should be able to see life again in the Gowanus Canal.
Now she was starting second grade, and it had happened; it was true. Since last year the color of the water had improved; it was pale green and partly transparent. She looked and looked and looked for something alive. And then she saw it: a turtle the size of her hand, skimming the top of the water.
“Mom!”
“Hurry up. We don’t have time for this!”
“I saw a turtle!”
Jen knew she had to move along but couldn’t resist one more look. And then she saw something else, and this time, it was magical. She saw a fairy, a woman with a peaceful face covered by the murky water, eyes wide open. The face slowly rotated upward toward the sky, as if looking, then rotated slowly away, and was gone.
“Mom!”
“Jen!” Her mother turned around and planted her hands on her hips.
“I’m coming!” Jen ran. “But Mom, I saw a fairy in the canal! She had long hair and it was flying all around her. Like this.” Jen spun around so her own hair would puff and float.
Her mother’s breath hissed out like steam. She looked at her watch. “Do you realize what time it is, young lady?”
Jen skipped across the bridge. She would tell her
mother again when she was ready to listen, maybe at cuddle time, right before sleep. She would tell her mother she had seen a lady, a fairy, and it was magical and it was real.
Alice Halpern waited on a bench in Carroll Park in the sticky heat of early September. She drained the last of her iced decaf from a waxed-paper cup that buckled in her grip. Lauren was late. Her cup, sealed with a plastic top, had formed a skin of tiny droplets. The ice had probably melted by now. She would be disappointed; she liked her drinks icy cold.
The sun shifted and Alice felt its rays burn into her skin, still milky white from months of pampering with sunblock. A redhead, she knew better than to go out without her wide-brimmed hat, which she had left hanging on the coat stand as she hustled to get the kids out the door to school this morning. She moved down the bench into a remaining patch of shade and glanced again at her watch; it was now ten to three.
In a few minutes, the neat brick school building across the street from the park would open its doors and spill the little ones back into the world in a rowdy convocation. Alice took a long, deep breath, savoring the relative calm of these last minutes before the riptide of motherhood dragged her forward until night. She wondered now if she should have stayed in the air-conditioned store, unpacking the latest shipment of autumn shoes. She should have confirmed with Lauren before heading out early into the scalding afternoon. The heat felt like a woolen blanket cinched around her, dark and suffocating. Six months into her third pregnancy — with twins, double the trouble,
double the fun — she could already feel the babies pressing against her lungs.
She tried to remember what Lauren had said yesterday about her plans for today: morning errands, then her Pregnant Pause Pilates class at noon in Park Slope. Lauren loved the class and had been urging Alice to join, but she felt she didn’t have the time; between work at Blue Shoes and obligations at home, she couldn’t squeeze in one more thing. But Lauren was devoted to her Pilates class and always went. Still, she was more than eight months pregnant with her second child and the heat wave may have dissuaded her.