"What"s the profile again?"
"Most of them are female, overweight, and either married or living with a partner." Leo scratched the stubble on his chin. "Who do we know that fits that profile? Just about every female friend of ours."
"Isn"t it weird that they"re overweight? Every woman I know thinks she"s overweight, but some of them just say that because they"re not model skinny. Emma and I have the baby weight. Sasha"s in good shape, but she"s always complaining that her booty"s way too big. How about Jennifer?"
"I haven"t seen her for at least a year."
"That"s the safe answer."
"Louise Pickler could stand to lose a few."
"Really. Is that a beer belly or has she been expecting for the past few years?"
Leo rubbed his eyes and let out a groan. "It"s funny but it"s not."
"I know." Chelsea tugged the zipper of her hoodie up and down. "Emma and I read an article about one of the baby s.n.a.t.c.hers. She was so delusional, she wore a pillow to make everyone believe she was pregnant. She convinced her boyfriend that s.e.x could hurt the baby, so they started sleeping in separate rooms. She even had him drive her to the gynecologist every week. They said she would walk in the entrance, go out the back, and take a cab home. These women jump through hoops to stage a ruse."
"And who do we know that could be faking a pregnancy?"
"The only pregnant woman I know is Emma."
Funny how that came right out. Emma wasn"t delusional, but she did have the perfect setup. She and Jake could take the baby to Chicago and no one would ever know it wasn"t theirs.
But Emma would never steal my baby. Even when I begged her to take it, she declined.
"A few months ago, it seemed like you were around pregnant women all the time," Leo said.
"That"s true. The women in my prenatal swim cla.s.s. All those women at the doctor"s office. The new moms in the maternity ward . . ." Had one of those women been faking it? "What if someone used the cla.s.s to find someone like me? To target me and my baby?"
"What a frightening and brilliant theory." Leo closed the laptop and moved to the couch. "We need to talk to Detective Santos about it." He squeezed in behind her and slipped his arms around her.
Chelsea rested against him, loving the support of his solid chest, his strong embrace. Often over the past few months she had longed for a quiet moment to cuddle with Leo this way; now it seemed like a hollow consolation prize.
"I"m sorry," he said. "I"ve been mad at you for not remembering. For letting someone come in here and take her. But I know that"s not how it happened. I know it"s not your fault."
"You have a right to be upset with me. I"m mad at myself. I keep wondering how I could have slept through it all. I mean, since Annie was born, I"ve been in a constant state of exhaustion, but I never failed to wake up when she was crying."
"That"s true. You never slept through a feeding."
"Except for the times you gave her a bottle."
"That"s different. You still woke up. You knew what was going on."
"Maybe I was drugged. I want to believe that there was something in those m.u.f.fins."
"When will Detective Santos have the lab results back?" he asked.
"It can take a week, but she put a rush on it. Not that it matters. It won"t get Annie back to us."
"But it will tell us more about the type of criminal mind we"re dealing with."
Once again she concentrated on the details of last night, trying to sort through them as if they were trinkets in a cluttered drawer. Emma"s phone call. The m.u.f.fins. The overwhelming weariness. The decision to stay downstairs. The same coins of memory glimmered, taunting her against a backdrop of velvet darkness.
"I"m sorry, Chels." His chin nuzzled one ear. "I should have been here."
"You had the convention. You"re trying to be the breadwinner and take care of Annie and me. It"s a lot, Leo. I know that. Do you know my sister calls you St. Leo?"
"A smart girl, that Emma." Leo eased away for a moment to reach for the remote and turn on the television. "It"s time for the eleven o"clock news. Let"s see how they"re covering our story."
He switched from one major network to the other, trying to catch each newscast"s coverage of Annabelle"s abduction.
Chelsea felt like she was watching someone else"s life unfold. Had it been only this morning that she"d woken up in the predawn stillness and found the house empty?
The reporter introduced their story, and there was the photo of her daughter under the caption: Kidnapped! "They got the pictures on," she observed. The sight of that gummy grin let down her milk, and she shifted in Leo"s arms, pulling the front of her hoodie away from her body.
"Annabee." Leo didn"t take his eyes off the screen.
It was odd to be in the center of the storm and watch the winds blowing around you from a distant lens. When the report ended, she went upstairs to pump. As she showered in the downstairs bathroom, she remembered that the plumber was supposed to fix the valve tomorrow.
Tomorrow was miles away.
She slipped on her last clean nightgown and her robe, though sleep didn"t seem like an option tonight.
Leo was still at the computer. "I talked to Grace Santos."
"Any news?" she asked as she labeled the breast milk and tucked it into the fridge.
"Nothing on her end. I told her your idea about maybe being targeted by someone you met in one of those pregnancy groups. She says it"s worth exploring."
"I wonder if the YMCA still has a list of people registered for past cla.s.ses." She went over to him. "Are you hacking into the Y"s computers?" He had said he was going to clear up his e-mail, but when she looked over his shoulder, he was Googling a name from a list.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking out our pediatrician and neighbors."
"What do you think you"ll find?"
"I don"t know. Maybe one of them had a weird, overweight cousin who has promised a baby to her husband."
She leaned over him, ma.s.saging his shoulders.
"The pediatrician"s office is a good idea, but there are so many receptionists there, I can"t get them straight." The image of a soft, doughy woman came to mind. Not in the pediatrician"s office, but in Dr. Volmer"s office. "There"s a woman in the ob-gyn"s office who made a huge fuss over Annabelle. Val something. I"ll have to find out her last name."
Just then the doorbell rang.
Leo straightened with a jolt and went to the door. Chelsea belted her robe and held her breath. It had to be news about Annie.
It was their babysitter, Eleni Zika. She blinked in the porch light, her eyes as round and shiny as quarters.
"Oh . . . the appointment." Chelsea swallowed hard. "You got my text, right? About canceling this afternoon?"
"I did. I need to talk to you." Standing there, without the dark kohl under her eyes, without feathers hanging from her hair, without a ring through her nose, Eleni looked her age-just a teenage girl.
"Come in." Leo held the door for her.
Eleni stepped over the threshold, her black-polished fingers quivering. "I saw the news report online. I recognized your house in the picture. And then . . . then I got a call from this detective who said they needed me to come in for fingerprinting."
Was that why she was shaking? Because she thought she was a suspect?
"It"s not what you think," Chelsea said. "They want to have your fingerprints on file to eliminate them, that"s all. We know you were here this week; of course your fingerprints will be on things."
"It"s not that." Eleni"s hand trembled as she swiped at the tears that streaked down her cheeks. "I mean, I"m sorry about Annabelle. I"m really sorry. But I didn"t know. I didn"t think he would do anything. I really didn"t believe it."
Leo looked down at her, tilting his head. "What are you talking about?"
"My boyfriend, Krispy. I heard him talking about how much he could make selling babies on the black market. I think he took Annabelle."
Chapter 30.
Grace drove over to the house as soon as she got the call. "You go," Chris told her. "I"ll keep plugging away here." She had e-mailed him the remainder of her list, and headed out.
It was late, but then she was planning to work through the night, or at least until she"d run checks on all the names on her list. She had already hooked up Matt to stay with the La.r.s.ens for the second night in a row. A double bonus, as far as he was concerned.
"You behave, okay?" she"d warned him. "No staying up late. It"s a school night."
"I"m aware," he said, sounding far more mature than his twelve years. Until, in the next breath, he told Ethan La.r.s.en that he"d just made a "bonehead move" on the computer game they were immersed in.
"And turn that off when Mrs. La.r.s.en tells you to," Grace added.
"Mama-dish, you know I will."
He was a good boy, her Matt, but twelve going on thirteen was that age when things began to change for a kid. Adolescence was a tough time. Sometimes angelic children fell away to drugs or booze or violent rebellion. She"d seen a lot of that, tracking down teenage runaways. Grace didn"t want to lose her son that way.
Sitting in Chelsea and Leo"s living room, waiting while their babysitter composed herself, Grace wondered if Eleni Zika"s parents felt connected to their daughter. Did they worry that her black fingernails and piercings and dark makeup were a sign of a deep unrest inside? Or were they confident that the goth look was a phase she would work through?
"Take a deep breath," Grace said gently. "I always forget to breathe when I"m crying."
The girl pressed a ball of tissues to her eyes and nodded.
Seated beside the girl on the sofa, Chelsea wound and unwound the belt of her robe around her fingers. Leo leaned against the rolltop desk, though he had the look of a tiger ready to pounce. Grace was glad they had called her when the girl showed up at their door.
"So give me the whole story, okay?" Grace cajoled the girl. "This is about your boyfriend?"
"His name is Krispy."
"Krispy? That"s an unusual name."
"That"s what everyone calls him. His real name is Armand Krispalian. He"s Armenian."
"How old is Krispy?"
"Eighteen."
"And how long have you two been seeing each other?"
"Six months, off and on. He"s a nice guy. He always makes me laugh. That"s why, when he first started talking about selling the baby, I figured it was a joke."
"He talked about selling Annabelle Green?"
"Like I said, it was a joke. He was here with me one night when Annabelle was crying, and he said he didn"t understand why anyone would want to adopt a screaming baby. He said there was big money in it, though. That a baby like Annabelle could bring in thousands of dollars."
Tension sizzled in the air, but Grace continued. "And did he ever suggest that you help him with this? Did he have a plan?"
"Not that I knew of. But he acted like it would be fun if we were a team. I could find the babies through my babysitting jobs, and he would get them sold. He said we"d make a great team. But after a while I got sick of the joke, and I guess I just tuned him out. But now . . . Annabelle is gone, and . . . when I heard about it, I thought of him. One day I heard him talking with one of his friends. He said it was about a business deal, and he kept asking how much he could make, what his cut would be . . . stuff like that."
"And you thought that was okay?" Leo Green was on his feet, wiping his palms on his jeans. "To make money on kidnapping a baby?"
"I"m sorry." Eleni stared down at her knees.
Grace held a hand up, willing Leo to calm down. "Have you spoken with him today?"
"I texted him, but he didn"t answer. Krispy doesn"t always get back to me right away."
"We"ll find him." Grace got Krispy"s address and phone number from Eleni. He didn"t live far from here.
"But how did he get into our house without breaking in?" Chelsea asked. "That part doesn"t make sense to me."
"He knows the house," Eleni said. "He"s spent enough time around here to know what windows are left unlocked, stuff like that. I know this is going to sound really bad, but he"s been arrested before. Graffiti and drinking in the park, small stuff like that."
"And you let this guy in our house?" Leo lashed out. "You let him near our baby?"
"I never thought he"d do something like this!" Eleni faced Grace, pleading her case. "He"s not a bad guy."
"Sometimes good people make bad choices," Grace said.
Leo slid on his jacket. "You said Wembley Street, right?"
Grace blinked. "You"re not thinking of going there now."
"I"ve got to find this guy."
"My partner and I will do that, and I think most people are more likely to open their door to the police at this time of night than some p.i.s.sed-off stranger." She rose and touched Leo"s shoulder. "I promise you, we"ll get right on it."