Seven Minutes to Noon (22 page)

“This thing with Lauren has been a nightmare for me too. I can’t sleep much either, knowing little Ivy could be out there somewhere. But Alice dear, you are six months pregnant and living under the same roof as Lauren’s evil landlord. Frankly I don’t know how you do it, why you don’t just pack up and move
anywhere
this instant.”

Alice knew Maggie’s comments were fair — Mike himself had voiced the same idea — yet she felt a swell of defensiveness. She remembered Maggie’s words to Lauren on their last afternoon together.
If I were you, I’d get on with it and move. It isn’t worth fighting over scraps.
Maggie didn’t really comprehend the costs of Lauren’s battle, or Alice’s for that matter. Thanks to an inheritance, she had always had anything she wanted; nothing was ever hard-won.

“Actually, Mags, we’re trying to move,” Alice answered, aware of the sharp cut of her tone. “I’m trying not to get too hysterical about it, though obviously I’m not succeeding.”

“Listen,” Maggie said, pushing aside her sandwich. “I say a lot of things I don’t mean, just for a laugh, but don’t let it fool you, darling. I know what you’re going through. You and Lauren had a special friendship. Your mutual American seriousness, I suppose. But I
am
here for you now. I
love
you. You’re my very best friend and if I say anything to hurt you, a pox on me! Agreed?”

It was the straightest Maggie had ever been and there was no possible argument, nor did Alice wish for one. Maggie was right — bottom line, once you weeded through the tangles of her sharp-edged commentary, Maggie usually
was
right — it was just the two of them now.

They finished their lunches and waited together for the phone to ring, for Frannie or Giometti to call and explain Alice’s house arrest in light of everything broadcast in the morning paper. It calmed Alice immensely to have Maggie there as a comrade in her obsession, defused it somewhat, and she was grateful. Maggie made some herbal tea for Alice and strong coffee for herself, and they settled into old conversations.

“Will you and Simon get back together, do you think?” Alice asked.

Maggie’s face burst into ridicule. “He’s much better as a lover. Why ruin it with domestic bliss?”

“Does Ethan know? Is he there when you’re together?”

“Isn’t it funny? One of us hires Sylvie to watch him if we see each other in the evening. We don’t want him to get his hopes up, poor darling. He’d be at me nonstop to move back into the house.”

“Maggie.” Alice leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Do you ever wonder if you only
imagined
Simon was unfaithful to you back then? I mean, he still denies it, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does, the bastard.”

“Do you?”

Maggie hesitated, probably trying to avoid the question more than consider it.

“I have entertained the thought, yes.”

“And?”

“There was evidence.” Maggie also leaned in, bringing the women’s faces close together. “There was the button—”

“A button, Maggie!” Alice would never forget that button, a red plastic rose the likes of which Maggie had never owned. She had discussed it at length with Alice and Lauren, displaying it in the palm of her hand like the nugget of gold an ancient miner always knew he’d find if he just kept looking. The possibility Maggie would never entertain was that the button could have been brought into the house in the pocket of any of Ethan’s
friends. Alice herself was always amazed at the things she found in her children’s pockets: wads of tape, miniature wheels, broken pencils, food, money, ticket stubs for movies they had never seen. She had watched them pick things up from the street and try to slip them into pockets, always with her objection. It was when she wasn’t looking that the secret agents of miscellany made their way in.

“Yes, a button. And all those errands that took hours.” Maggie’s eyes shimmered with the effort it took to maintain her belief that her dignity — her
soul,
as she’d put it — had demanded her decision to end her marriage. “Listen, it’s no big deal if I want to have sex with him, or even if I’m in love with him. I don’t want to
live
with him. I don’t
trust
him. It would happen again, all of it, for whatever reason.”

“Right,” Alice said. “I see what you mean.”

It didn’t matter whom the button belonged to. It was what the button had stoked in Maggie’s imagination that really mattered; her jealousies and fears were what she had ultimately run from.

Sitting with Maggie, Alice began to wonder just how much her own imagination had been playing with her fears. Had Pam been wrong in her generous assurances that there
had
been a baby upstairs in Julius’s apartment, simply because Alice believed she had heard it? That if she was convinced she had a stalker, he
was
real? One thing was clear: Maggie was more comfortable than Alice with the ambiguity of her own assertions, and maybe it helped keep her this side of sanity. But Alice didn’t know if she could tolerate the indefinite twilight of not knowing the truth.

Alice’s cell phone began to simultaneously vibrate and ring. She fumbled it open and caught the call just before it reverted to voice mail.

“Alice, it’s Frannie. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. It’s been crazy. We’ve got some time now. Where can we find you?”

Giometti was driving the blue sedan when they pulled up in front of the President Street house. They hadn’t wanted to talk inside, once they heard Maggie was over, and insisted on picking up Alice. They would take her to her children’s school for their three o’clock pickup. Frannie reached back from the passenger’s seat and popped open the back door for Alice. She slid awkwardly in — her growing bulk was making it hard to move gracefully — and the car glided into Smith Street traffic.

Alice could see Giometti’s calm, steady eyes suspended in the rearview mirror. They shifted briefly to her, then back to the road. Frannie twisted around and began the conversation Alice had been waiting for.

“So you’ve read the papers,” Frannie said wearily; it was only midafternoon and already it had been a long day.

“Yes.”

“So you know.”

“Is it him?” Alice shifted forward, closer to Frannie. “The man who’s been stalking me? Am I supposed to be next?”

Frannie seemed to hesitate before answering. “We can’t be sure.”

“Haven’t you found him yet? You’ve had enough time! Is it Andre Capa?”

Neither Frannie nor Giometti responded to Alice’s outburst and she almost regretted it, but not really. She was afraid. They were keeping something from her.

They traveled the length of Smith Street in silence, turning up Atlantic Avenue and heading toward the ocean, which now swelled into view; Alice was always surprised by any reminder that they lived on an island.

“He’s been arrested,” Frannie finally said.

“Arrested for what?” Alice asked. “Murder? Stalking? Bad manners?
What
?”

“Alice, please, calm down.” Frannie’s tone had lost any pretense of patience. “There’s a lot going on here. I’m telling you what you need to know.”

“Which is?”

“To answer your question, yes, Andre Capa
was
following you. We’ve run him through forensics in every possible way, and right now we’re waiting for the results. If it’s him, Alice, we’re hoping he’ll lead us to the crime scene.”

“If it is him,” Alice asked, “are you thinking he might have Ivy?”

“We don’t know.”

“What about Julius Pollack? The crying I heard?”

The car sped along Hicks Street now, all the way to Hamilton Avenue. They veered left under the shadowy highway overpass.

“We’re waiting on a warrant, search and seizure, home and office. We can’t do anything until we get it.”

“Why is it taking so long, Frannie? Do you think this Capa might somehow be involved with Metro? Could
he
be Julius’s partner?”

“I’m telling you,” Frannie said, “we don’t know yet.”

Giometti drove the car along the leafy shade of Clinton Street, past multimillion-dollar brownstones, into the heart of Carroll Gardens.

“What this means for you, Alice, is that you don’t have to be so afraid.” Frannie found her old, warm smile. “Okay? We figured it would help you to have this
information. But please don’t spread it around. We don’t want any attention on this, not until we can figure it out.”

Alice nodded. They pulled up to the school, where parents and babysitters were clustering around the entrance.

“The main thing is for you to know we arrested your stalker. We know his name. We know where he lives. We don’t know why he was following you, but we’ve got him. You’re
safe,
Alice.”

Alice wondered where Frannie got the confidence for the assertion of her safety. Frannie reached over to pop open the back door so Alice could exit onto the sidewalk, back into her life. Peter was just then coming down the stairs with his lunch box trailing from his hand. When he saw her, his face blossomed in smile.

A careful scan of the Saturday morning newspaper and also the Internet convinced Alice that the detectives had succeeded in keeping the information of Andre Capa’s arrest secret.

“I’m surprised that reporter, Brinkley, didn’t find out about Capa.” Alice folded the newspaper and turned to Mike, who was stooping to wipe syrup off Peter’s face with a damp paper towel. “She found out everything else.”

“She found out what we’ve read about,” Mike said. “There could be other stuff we don’t know.”

“Right.” Of course, Alice thought, there would be. The police always held things back, crucial facts like Ivy’s gender and name. Maybe there was more. “But at least the detectives told us,” Alice added, “so we don’t have to worry anymore.”

“Go brush your teeth, and tell Nell too.” Mike shooed Peter toward the stairs. “We’re leaving in five minutes.”

“We don’t need to worry anymore, Mike, right?”

“Are you asking me, or telling me?” His smile was slightly mischievous, bubbling with some nascent humor he wasn’t yet ready to let loose. He
was
feeling less worried, she realized with relief.

“A little of both, I guess.”

“We better boogie if we’re going to make it on time,” Mike reminded Alice, who was the only one still not
dressed for their ten o’clock appointment with Judy Gersten to see the Third Place house.

She got ready as quickly as she could, though she was beginning to notice that with each passing day it was harder to move around. As the twins grew, her physical capacities seemed to shrink; going through the simplest routines could feel like walking through water.

She joined the family out front, where Nell and Peter were enduring the wait by decorating the stoop with chalk drawings.

“Oh, Julius is going to
love
that,” Alice said.

Mike grinned. “More color, kids!”

They began to energetically fill in hollow outlines: a pirate ship, a miniscule Captain Hook, crazed bolts of lightning.

“We really have to get going,” Alice said, earning a pair of raised eyebrows from Mike.

“Well, excuse us for keeping you!”

“Yeah, Mom, excuse us!” Nell had her hands splayed on her hips, sassing Alice with squinted eyes.

“Excuse us, Mommy,” Peter said, missing the sarcasm altogether, reaching up to Alice for a hug.

Judy Gersten was standing in front of the rose-covered fence when they came down Clinton Street and turned the corner. She was a prim woman in her middle fifties, Alice guessed, with neat iron-gray hair cut at an even length at her jaw. She wore a navy skirt that fell to just below her knees, with a crisp white blouse and a blue blazer that nearly, but didn’t, match her skirt. She clutched a large canvas shoulder bag tightly to her middle. When Alice got up close, she was surprised by Judy’s extra touch of bright blue mascara on an otherwise plain face.

“You must be Judy.” Alice offered a hand to shake and Judy lightly squeezed it. Their eyes locked for a moment, acknowledging the innate discomfiture of their appointment, resulting as it did from the attack on Pam. “This is my husband, Mike, and our kids—”

Just as she tried to introduce them, Nell and Peter ran
past the cascading roses, up the path and onto the front stoop. Sated by pancakes and television, they were ready for some action. Peter sat down in front of the door and revved his fire truck along the stone step.

“I spoke with Pam’s husband this morning,” Alice told Judy. “He said she can’t have visitors yet, except for family. Have you seen her?” Knowing Pam had worked with Judy for many years, Alice wondered if she fell close enough into the family category to have been permitted a visit.

“Yes, this morning.”

“How is she?”

“Same, I’d say.” Judy pinched her lips into a truncated smile clearly meant to end the conversation. Alice wondered whether the refusal to share details had any significance, if the visit had caused her some pain, or if the woman was simply a poor conversationalist.

“By the way,” Alice asked Judy as they started up the stoop together, “did Pam ever get a call back from someone in the Buildings Department?”

“Didn’t you ask me that once before?”

“Did I?”

The same pinched smile, revealing nothing.

“Yes, I’m sure you did.” Judy frowned in thought. “No, she didn’t get any messages from Buildings, not that I know of.”

Just as they reached the top of the stoop, Peter began to vigorously drive his fire truck up the gleaming oak door, running it back and forth, oscillating his voice in mimicry of a siren on high alert.

“Hey hey hey, Peter!” Mike said. “Not on the front door.”

“Daddy said to stop!” Nell tried to wrench the truck out of Peter’s hands, but he resisted.

Mike pried the children apart. “One more problem with the fire truck, Petie,” Mike said, “and I’ll have to put it in my pocket for the whole day. Okay?”

Peter became still, clutching the truck tightly in his hand, and nodded.

Judy rang the buzzer and waited a minute to make sure no one was home before opening the door with her own key. She was very still, Alice noticed, hardly any movements for each action, a tight perfection in every choice. She stood aside for the family to file in after her.