He appraised her with a bold once-over. “I wanted to get a look at you.”
“Okay, you’ve looked. Now what?”
His lips stretched into a smile. “Spunk. I like that in a woman. So tell me what you know about my daughter’s latest stunt.”
It wasn’t as though she had formed a picture of him as a doting daddy, but his words and his tone grated. No wonder Annabelle had problems.
Claudia summarized her last meeting with his daughter for him, her subsequent conversation with Paige, and ended on a rerun of Pete’s latest news.
Giordano’s face remained impassive as she spoke, but the manicured fingers tapping on his knee made her wonder.
When she fell silent, he said, “You’ve been conned, Ms. Rose. You haven’t known my daughter long enough to learn her tricks. She’s got a real talent for manipulating the system.”
“Oh, I thought that was
you,
” Claudia retorted, then wished she had bitten her tongue. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she said stiffly. “I don’t know you.”
Giordano stared straight ahead so she couldn’t see his expression, but his lips were pursed and his tone was icy. “That’s right, you don’t, so keep your smart-ass opinions to yourself.”
“Fine. What I care is about Annabelle’s safety and Paige’s, too. Why did you ask me not to call the police? Don’t you think
something
needs to be done about this?”
He gave her a bored look. “You don’t think I have my own people working on it?”
I should have guessed,
she thought as the penny dropped. No wonder Jacob had been so speedy getting back to her. People like Dominic Giordano retained people like Jacob Barash as their own private police force. She wondered whether Jacob had laughed to himself as he recited Giordano’s phone number to her.
Giordano smiled unexpectedly, showing what might pass for appeal if you were looking for a job in the movies and the casting couch was the only way to go.
“Claudia,” he said, leaning toward her in a way that put him too far into her space. “Okay if I call you Claudia? Look, honey, I want to find her as much as you do—more. She’s my kid, right? You and me, we’re not enemies. We gotta work together on this. For Annabelle’s sake, okay?”
His words impressed her as hollow. She was getting a strong vibe that his concern had more to do with avoiding negative publicity than Annabelle’s welfare. She inched away from him on the seat until the armrest pressed into her back. “You think Annabelle’s to blame for whatever’s happened, don’t you?”
He brushed a piece of invisible lint from his jacket. “You know her history, am I right? I figure any minute, there’s gonna be a ransom note or a phone call. It’s a scam. Those hoodlums she hangs with—they’re in it with her. I guarantee it.”
“You seriously believe she had Paige kidnapped?”
He frowned at her like she was a dull child who needed something simple explained. “
You
figure it out.”
“If it were true, why wait so long to make a demand? And why would she call my niece in hysterics?”
“Fuck if I know, but this whole thing has Annabelle written all over it.”
Claudia didn’t want to believe him, but he was right about one thing—she had known his daughter for only a short time, and Annabelle’s record was not exactly unblemished. Yet what she did know—and what she had seen in the girl’s handwriting—made it hard for her to believe what he was suggesting.
Still, under her skin, it just didn’t feel right.
She reached for the door handle. “Good night, Mr. Giordano.”
Chapter 20
By the time Friday rolled around Claudia’s eyes felt as if she’d rubbed grit into them. A couple of nights as she lay awake she considered sleeping pills, rejecting that option in case Annabelle called her and she wasn’t able to wake up. Each time she thought that, a hateful little voice in her head would whisper
not a chance
, which kept her awake longer.
The Tuesday-evening conversation she’d had in Dominic Giordano’s limo kept coming back to her. Giordano seemed so certain of Annabelle’s involvement in whatever had happened to Paige. How could a father be so callous?
Or was he simply being realistic?
The rain started up again, painting a dank, colorless world outside her windows. The ocean was an unrelenting gray blanket. Even the tomato plants in the container garden on the porch had succumbed to so much moisture. Examining her puffy eyes in the bathroom mirror, Claudia felt as waterlogged as the poor vegetables; she couldn’t stop crying. Something about Annabelle had touched her to her core and wouldn’t let go.
Sitting in the house thinking about it was making her crazy. She grabbed her keys and hurried down to the garage.
The police had left the Sorensen Academy and with them went the media. Claudia parked on the street and walked up the driveway. Since the students had gone home for the holidays, she wasn’t sure anyone would be on site to let her in, but a maid she recognized opened the massive front door to her knock. Behind the maid, a radio played salsa music at ear-splitting volume.
“Nobody here but Senor Neil,” the maid said, raising her voice over the carnival beat as she ushered Claudia in from the rain. “Senor Bert, he go to gambling.” She carried a wet mop and there was a bucket on the parquet floor, with white industrial towels laid out, making a path to the sweeping staircase.
Waste of time in this weather,
Claudia thought, stepping inside and wiping her high-heeled boots on the mat.
With its lights off and dried pine needles littering the floor, the expired Christmas tree looked as sad as Claudia felt. The gifts that had been intended for the children at the homeless shelter were still piled around its base. Paige and Annabelle had gone missing before Christmas Day dawned, so the delivery never took place.
The maid saw her looking at the packages, the gift-wrapped baby doll that Claudia herself had dropped off on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the last time she had been here. The last time anyone had seen Annabelle.
“Still waiting hear from Senora Paige,” the maid said, her pleasant face lined with worry. “I no think she comin’ back.”
“Don’t say that!” Claudia exclaimed, not wanting to acknowledge that even this woman, whose livelihood depended on her employment at the Sorensen Academy had already given up hope.
The maid nodded, taking in her swollen eyes, and patted her arm. “Is okay. Be okay.” She indicated the presents. “Senor Dane and Senora Diana, they come today to take to shelter.”
“That’s good,” Claudia said, glad that the children would still receive the gifts, even though she resented the Sorensen twins horning in on Paige’s generosity. “I’m going up to Annabelle’s room,” she said. “I won’t be long.”
“Sure, sure, Senora. You go this way.” The maid pointed her mop at the towels, then turned away and resumed swabbing the floor to the Latin beat.
Claudia mounted the elegant staircase pursuing the nagging sensation that had urged her to drive across town on this soggy afternoon. A vibe that if she could just sit in Annabelle’s room for a few minutes she would be able to feel what the girl had been feeling before she disappeared, that she might be able to make some sense of what had happened. She knew she wouldn’t have any peace until she tried.
The stairs to the third floor were located at the opposite end of the second floor landing. Upstairs, the sound of the radio was muted by plush carpeting. She felt very alone in the shadowy hallway.
The maid had said the Sorensen twins were coming to pick up the toys. With Bert out of town and not there to stand up for her, as he had the last time she faced off with Dane Sorensen, Claudia would do her best to avoid crossing their path.
Nearing Paige’s office, she slowed her steps, startled by the aroma of cannabis.
Annabelle?
The ropy weed scent wafting into the hallway was a big
fuck you
to the yellow crime-scene tape that clung in curling plastic ribbons to one side of the lintel. Claudia hesitated, her hand on the doorknob, listening.
Only the distant sound of Tito Puente playing a mambo in the downstairs lobby reached her ears. Nothing from inside Paige’s office, just the slight stream of smoke curling under the door. Her heart was thumping double time as she turned the handle and pushed open the door.
For an instant she thought it was a ghost standing at the window. But a ghost would have been transparent. Neil Sorensen’s body was as substantial as her own. The unlighted room, the rain clouds in the sky outside, and the gray sweatshirt and pants he wore created the wraith-like effect.
His wheelchair stood empty across the room.
“Hello, Claudia,” he said, turning toward her, a piece of folded black satin pressed to his cheek. His long face was pallid, the almost bloodless lips stretched into a sardonic smile. “I’m not psychic; I saw your reflection in the glass.”
“You can walk,” Claudia said, feeling stupid at the shock of seeing him on his feet. As she came farther into the room, she could see that he was leaning on a cane.
“Been working at it for months,” he said. “I wanted Paige to see me the way I was when we first met.”
“Wanted?” Past tense, as if he didn’t expect to show Paige the results of his efforts.
The joint Claudia smelled in the hallway lay atop the soil in a Chinese evergreen plant. Neil picked it up and took a toke, then lowered himself to the sofa, unfolding the lace-trimmed chemise in his hand and smoothing it across his knees. There was something spooky about the way he stroked it as if it were a living thing.
“What do
you
think?” Neil asked in a low voice, looking up at her.
What
did
she think? A series of images flitted through her mind—he could walk; Paige had said he was jealous of Cruz. He had that cane.
“Where’s Paige, Neil? Where’s Annabelle?”
He just sat there staring at her with empty eyes, stroking that piece of black satin. He had nothing to give her. Shaken, Claudia turned around and left.
The crime-scene tape across the door to Annabelle’s room was intact. Claudia peeled away one side and opened the door. After what she had just witnessed in Paige’s office, she didn’t think anything could shock her. The room was as she’d seen it last, except for smudges of fingerprint dust on several surfaces, and the laptop computer had been removed from the study desk.
Closing the door behind her, she sat down on Annabelle’s bed and shut her eyes. She took several deep breaths, intending to relax her body and empty her mind, to absorb the energy of the room. Maybe on some level she would be able to connect with Annabelle.
But Neil’s weirdness and deception about his ability to walk kept intruding and she found herself unable to focus her thoughts. After ten minutes, she gave up trying.
Where are they? Where are they?
The question kept circling in an endless loop in her head with no answers. Frustrated, she looked around the room and her eyes fell on the red notebook where Annabelle kept her graphotherapy exercises.
Claudia reached for it and began thumbing through the pages. The two of them hadn’t been working together for long—only a few weeks—but positive changes were already evident in Annabelle’s handwriting. The exercises she’d been doing to music were simple but effective—some formations looked like rows of brackets lying on their sides and were intended to level out the stormy right side of the brain. Other calming forms looked like propellers.
After doing each page of exercises, Annabelle would write a page of affirmations:
I release any feelings of anger and blame. I know I can create any reality I want.
She had chosen these affirmations for herself after studying a long list Claudia offered her. Now she was gone and . . .
The sounds of voices in the hallway. Claudia jumped up, recognizing the voice of Diana Sorensen, the very last person she wanted to run into. Diana was coming her way.
Without stopping to think, Claudia ducked into the adjoining bathroom and pulled the door almost shut behind her. She stepped into the old-fashioned tub and closed the curtain around her just as Diana entered Annabelle’s room, her tone sharpening. “Somebody’s been in this room.”
A man’s voice spoke, tantalizingly familiar, but not enough for Claudia to identify.
“Fuck the cops and their tape. Just get the stuff and let me out of here.”
“You’re in an awfully big hurry, aren’t you?” Diana sounded almost coy, which was strikingly out of character for the distaff Sorensen twin. “You never used to be in such a hurry.”
The man responded roughly. “Jesus Christ, Diana, give it a rest. I’m trying to figure a way to get us out of this mess and you’re—”
“It might be a mess, but at least I don’t have Paige to contend with now.”
“Thanks to my daughter. Now shut up and get the shit together.”
“I don’t like you raising your voice at me.”
“I’m gonna do more than raise my voice if you don’t shut up,”
“Stop it, Dom.”
Claudia heard what sounded like a slap and then Diana was crying. “Don’t, Dominic! Don’t!” Another slap, and she was crying harder. “I never thought you would treat me this way.”
“Why don’t you listen to me, you stupid cunt?” Dominic Giordano shouted. “I don’t need you in my face, putting pressure on me. Get off my fucking back.”
Claudia held her breath, terrified that one of them would come into the bathroom. Peeping around the edge of the shower curtain she could see a sliver of the room through the hinge side of the door. Enough to show Diana lying across Annabelle’s bed on her back, Giordano standing over her with a raised fist.
Oh shit,
Claudia thought.
What do I do now?
Giordano spared her of having to come up with an answer. Making a loud sound of disgust, he strode out of the room, leaving Diana blubbering.