"We remained on okay terms, but I had to cut her off as much as I could. She"s not stable," Leo said, then amended that. "She"s f.u.c.king crazy, and when she sets her sights on something, she doesn"t let go." He told the cops about some of Jennifer"s antics over the past few years. "I"ve come this close to calling the cops on her a few times, but usually if I ignore her for long enough, she backs off."
"But we haven"t heard from her for a long time," Chelsea said. "Not since she moved to Philadelphia."
"Actually, she"s been calling my cell over the last few weeks."
"What?"
"I"m sorry, Chels. I didn"t want to upset you with it, with everything that was going on, but she"s been calling persistently. Mostly I ignored her. But when I got your call, Jennifer was the first person who came to mind."
The detective nodded. "It"s good to trust your instincts."
"As soon as my flight landed, I called her and . . . here"s the big tip-off: I could hear a baby crying in the background."
Chelsea gasped. "Was it Annie?"
"I think it was. Jennifer stole our baby."
Chelsea pressed a fist to her mouth. "She"s just crazy enough to do something like that."
"Maybe Ms. Green has a baby of her own?" Sgt. Balfour suggested.
Leo shook his head. "She would have told me. That was Annabelle crying. I know her voice."
"Your ex-wife is a good lead." The detective"s fingers were flying over her iPhone. "Jennifer Green, right? We"ll check her out right away."
"I"m going with you," Leo said.
Grace looked at the sergeant. "Not a good idea."
"Mr. Green . . . can I call you Leo?" Balfour asked. "The investigation will move faster if you let the detectives do their job. I"ll be here, coordinating the scene. You want to be here, for when your daughter is returned to you."
When your daughter is returned to you . . .
Leo would remain glued to the threshold if it meant seeing Annabelle one second sooner.
"We"ll keep you apprised of important developments," Grace said. "Do you have contact information for Jennifer Green?"
Leo gave the detective her cell number, but he didn"t know where she was living now. "She returned to her old job in sales for Sparklet, a phone company."
Santos nodded. "We"ll find her." She tucked the iPhone into a wide pocket of her jacket. "I"d like to talk with you more, Leo, but in the interest of time, I"m going to track down your ex-wife right away."
"Good. Thank you."
As the two cops left, Leo and Chelsea stared at the side door.
"I hope it was Jennifer," Chelsea said. "She would do something like this to get your attention, but she wouldn"t hurt Annabelle, would she? I mean, she"s not that crazy."
Leo didn"t answer, various possibilities weighed heavily on his shoulders. He didn"t think Jennifer would hurt a child, but she had fooled him before. Yes, she had fooled everyone.
Chapter 26.
Jennifer Green wasn"t so easy to find.
"Where the h.e.l.l are you living now?"
Grace sat in the back of the police van, the command center for the search, and tapped away at the keyboard, trying to get an address for the woman who"d recently moved back to Westchester.
In Grace"s experience, the fastest way to find a person was through the Department of Motor Vehicles. She had served warrants to guys who had evaded the law for years, but finally gave themselves up by providing the DMV with a current address. A man could forgo voting in an election or getting a birthday card from his mother, but a driver"s license was essential. Grace was convinced that it was part of the definition when you looked up manhood in the dictionary.
But Jennifer Green"s New York State license was still current. She probably hadn"t switched it over when she moved to Philly. The address, an apartment in Larchmont, was old. The computer told her someone else was currently residing there.
She did find out that Jennifer Green had no prior arrests. No children.
But Chris was on his way, and she had promised him a "hot lead." They could drop in on Ms. Green at Sparklet, her place of employment, but of course she wouldn"t have the baby there.
The directory for Sparklet, Inc., listed Arturo Testani as human resource manager. Grace couldn"t demand any information from them without a warrant, but maybe they would work with her. It was worth a call.
"Mr. Testani"s office," answered a chipper male voice.
Grace determined that the boss wasn"t in, but his a.s.sistant Robert was "happy to help." Maybe that was better. She played the detective card, hoping that Robert would be impressed.
He was.
"I"m investigating a case, and we"re trying to get in touch with one of your employees. A Ms. Jennifer Green?"
"Shall I transfer you to her line?" Robert asked.
"Actually, I"m looking for her home address. I know you"re not in the habit of giving out personal information on employees, but, well, this is a police investigation, and I was hoping that your company could help me."
"Mmm. I"m not sure." Robert paused. "May I get your name again?"
She spelled it out, then waited while he "checked on something."
"Here we go, detective." He gave her an address in Pelham, just west of New Roch.e.l.le. "I hope that helps with your investigation."
"I"m sure it will." Grace was already mapping out the route on her iPhone. "You"re a gem, Robert. Thanks."
As soon as Grace closed the door of the unmarked unit, Chris Panteleoni turned to her with a childish grin. "Okay, what"s my surprise?"
"Whatever happened to, "Good morning, Grace? How"d the night shift go?" "
They had developed an easy banter in the three years they"d worked together in Missing Persons. Chris was single and ten years younger than Grace, and sometimes she thought of him as a kid brother.
"I know how the shift went," he said. "You caught a case, and now we"re going to work it twenty-four seven until we find this kid. So what"s up?"
"Turn left at the light. I"ve got it all mapped out." She flashed the screen at him. "We"re going to Pelham to check out Leo Green"s ex-wife."
"Ex-wife? And the domestic revenge plot thickens." Chris kept his eyes on the road.
"It might pan out." She told him about the ex-wife"s notorious stalking habits. How she"d moved back to town recently. How Leo Green had heard a baby crying in the background when he called her on the phone today.
"Really? That would be a first for me. I"ve heard of scorned significant others stealing cars. Jewelry. Lottery tickets. Even drugs. But a kid? Especially when it"s not even your own."
"The point is, the p.i.s.sed-off person wants the most painful revenge possible."
"True. But it"s a lot of work to deal with a baby once you steal it."
"Agreed."
"The ex would make an interesting perp, but what"s the mother like? For infants, a home abduction is rare, and when it does happen a lot of times it"s the mother gone crazy that takes out her kids."
"Chelsea Maynard doesn"t remember many details from last night. She could be faking, but I have a feeling she"s legit. You saw my report on those m.u.f.fins that went to the lab. She seemed groggy this morning. Dazed. I know that postpartum depression can do that to a woman, too, but as the morning went on she came out of it."
"Another postpartum depression defense?" He rolled his eyes.
"I oughtta smack you. PPD is for real."
"That would be hara.s.sment," he said.
"You need to get enlightened. Read a book. Or at least check it out on Web MD."
"I"m just saying, it can be really bad. There was that tragedy back in Port Jervis a few years ago. The mother drove a van into the Hudson River. Killed herself and her three kids."
"That was tragic, but I don"t think Chelsea Maynard killed her baby-and it"s not just because I"m a soft touch."
"But you can"t rule her out as a suspect yet. Unless you found some evidence you forgot to mention."
"I haven"t ruled her out." But Grace felt sorry for Chelsea. Aside from the early morning babbling, the woman made sense. She seemed depressed but stable. Grace"s instincts told her that Maynard didn"t kill her baby, but instincts did not hold up in court.
"I"ve got a little something for you," Chris said. "Something popped from all the names you"ve been sending my way all morning."
"Something came up in a background check?"
He nodded. "A real blast from the past, too. Charges against the neighbor, Louise Pickler. A case so old, it"s not even in the database."
Intrigue made the hairs at the back of her neck tingle. "What kind of charges?"
"From family court. Turns out Pickler has a history of child abuse. I had to go way back, thirty-some years to when she lost custody of her two kids to the husband. This after the kids showed signs of physical abuse."
"And that was back in the day when the courts rarely separated kids from their mother."
"You met her, right? Did you get a sense of that? A woman who"d use her hands?"
Grace thought about the woman with the thick makeup and the yappy dog. "Self-absorbed, yes, but she"s all about taking care of her dog. There"s something dysfunctional about her. And she claims to have no love for baby Annabelle. The baby"s screaming bothered her before she went south last November, and she made that complaint this week."
"Could it be she s.n.a.t.c.hed the kid to shut it up?"
Grace frowned. "As in, kill the baby? Not likely, but possible."
"Or maybe the annoyance is all a show. Maybe she"s trying to replace the family she lost thirty years ago."
"And she"s got Annabelle holed up in her house next door?" Grace said, thinking out loud. "We need to get inside that woman"s house."
"I"m on it. We"re working on a search warrant, but right now the evidence pointing to Pickler is flimsy."
"Can we get it to Judge Provost?" He was usually pretty liberal.
"He"s away on vacation. They"re trying Costantini."
Grace groaned. "She"s a tough nut. What else you got?"
"I went over the reports from the team canva.s.sing the neighborhood. The other neighbors seem to like the Greens, or at least what they know of them. An older man who lives alone said that Chelsea and Leo have made great improvements to their house. That stretch of mini hedges out front was a barren ma.s.s of mud and weeds until they moved there. There"s a family with three kids-Rosanne and Rick Brunner. A firefighter and a stay-at-home mom who"s very active in the schools. She"s heard the Green baby outside, too. Heard her crying from her stroller. She said her heart goes out to the young mother; her kids were colicky, too. And there"s a family with five kids that"s kind of interesting-name is Jarvis. Apparently, two of the kids aren"t supposed to be in this country. Their father has custody back in Brazil. Mom"s remarried and she s.n.a.t.c.hed the kids, brought them here."
Grace winced. "A baby s.n.a.t.c.her in the neighborhood. We"ll be talking to her. Although the custody issue with Brazil, that sounds like more of an immigration issue."
"But you never know who your neighbors are."
"That"s the thing. These days, so many people don"t even know their neighbors," Grace said. "When I was a kid, we knew everyone on the block. All the kids played stickball together."
"Yeah, yeah. Back in the Bronx in the good old days."
"Yeah, I"m so old. Slow the horse down. This is the street."
Jennifer Green"s new address was a condominium in a complex called Fresh Ponds, though the small fountain circulating green water in the front courtyard wasn"t looking so fresh. Housing complexes like this were common; two-story garden apartments had been converted to condos during one of the mad housing crazes in the metro area.
Jennifer lived in a downstairs unit, and as Grace and Chris approached, they noticed an infant stroller sitting under the porch awning.
"Well, would you look at that." Chris gave it a slight push. "She"s got wheels for the kid. That"s planning ahead."
Grace pushed the doorbell for the second time, holding her detective shield up to the peephole. "It could belong to the upstairs tenant."
Just then an infant"s wail tore from the apartment.
Chris tapped the stroller handle. "I"d say the owner of this vehicle lives downstairs."
When no one came to the door, Grace cleared her throat. "Ms. Green? h.e.l.lo? Ms. Green, I"m Grace Santos and this is Detective Panteleoni. We"re police, with Westchester County." Since they were dealing with a woman, they had decided that Grace would do most of the talking. The dynamic was less intimidating.
A moment later the door opened just a few inches, chain on, and a pale, round face appeared in the crack. "Is there a problem, officers?"
"Ms. Green? We"re wondering if we might have a word with you."
The hazel eyes came close to the opening. "Show me your badges again?"