I called, “Can I put him in his playpen?”
“No. He hates that,” she yelled as she went out the backdoor. The screaming in the yard was taken up by a second child apparently vying for equal time. As if in response, Quentin’s mouth came open in a cry so deep-seated he made no sound at first. He curled his body inward while he gathered his strength. Without warning, he flung himself outward like a diver in the midst of a back flip. He might have torn himself entirely out of my grasp if I hadn’t grabbed him and swung him up from the floor. I said, “Wheel” as though the two of us were really having fun. The look on his face suggested otherwise.
I tried jiggling him as she had, but that only made matters worse. Now I was not only a monster, but a Monster Baby Jiggler, intent on shaking him to death. I walked around in a circle, saying, “There, there, there.” The child was not soothed. Finally, in desperation, I lowered him into the playpen, forcing his stiff legs to bend until he was fully seated. I handed him two alphabet blocks and part of a half-eaten soda cracker. The howling ceased at once. He put the cracker in his mouth and banged the letter P against the plastic padding under him. I stood up, patting myself on the chest while I moved into the kitchen to see what was happening.
Blanche was just banging through the backdoor with four-year-old Josh on her hip, his legs hanging way past her knees. I could see a lump on his forehead the size of an egg and copious blood on his upper lip. One-handed, she dampened a kitchen towel, opened the freezer, and took out some ice cubes, which she wrapped in the towel and pressed against his head. She carried him into the family room and sank into a chair. The minute she sat down, he worked his way through a flap in her tunic and began to nurse. Taken aback, I averted my eyes. I thought kids his age had been twelve-stepped out of that.
She indicated a nearby chair, paying him not the slightest attention as he suckled her right breast.
I glanced down at the chair and removed a half-consumed peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich before I settled on the edge. Josh’s medical emergency apparently entitled all of the children to escape the chill and dark outside. The next thing I knew, a cartoon show blasted from the TV set. Heather and Amanda sat cross-legged on the floor, and Josh joined them moments later holding the towel-wrapped ice cubes to his head.
I tried to concentrate on what Blanche was saying, but all I could think about was that even at my age, a tubal ligation probably wasn’t out of the question.
Chapter 8
I glanced at my watch, a gesture that wasn’t lost on her.
“I know you’re in a hurry so I’ll get to the point. Has Mother filled you in on Crystal’s past?”
“I know she was a stripper before she married your dad.”
“I’m not talking about that. Did she mentioned Crystal’s fourteen-year-old daughter was born out of wedlock?”
I waited, wondering at the relevance. I leaned forward, not from avid interest, but because the whistles, bangs, and manic music from the television set were loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss. I watched Blanche’s lips move, putting the sentences together belatedly like the subtitles on a foreign film.
“I’m not even sure Crystal knows who the father is. Then she married Lloyd somebody and had another child by him. That boy died when he was eighteen months old, an accidental drowning-this was four or five years ago.”
I squinted. “And you think this is somehow connected to your father’s disappearance?”
She seemed startled. “Well, no, but you said you wanted all the facts. I wanted to fill in the picture so you could see what you’re up against.”
“Meaning what?” A commercial came on, the sound ratcheted up a notch so the little children who lived across the street wouldn’t miss the pitch for a vitamin-rich cereal that was supposed to look and taste like licorice.
Blanche was saying, “Doesn’t Crystal’s behavior strike you as odd?”
I was largely lip-reading by now and her comment had gone completely over my head. “Blanche, could we turn down the sound on the television set?”
“Sorry.” She reached for the remote control and muted the sound. The silence was heaven. The children continued to sit on the floor, arranged in front of the set as though gathered around a campfire. Frantic images danced across the screen in colors so vivid they left an afterimage if I glanced away.
Blanche returned to her commentary. “I don’t know about you, but Crystal doesn’t seem at all distraught about what’s happened. She’s cool as can be, which seems inappropriate to me.”
“It has been nine weeks. I don’t think anyone can be distraught for that long. Defenses kick in. You manage to adjust or you go insane.”
“I just think it’s interesting that Crystal’s never made a public appeal for information about Daddy. She’s never offered a reward. She’s never sent out any flyers. No psychics have been consulted. . . .”
That caught me up short. “You think a psychic would help?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” she said. “My friend Nancy’s uncanny. She has this amazing, quite incredible gift.”
“She’s a psychic? Is that why she’s offering to consult with me on the phone?”
“Of course. When I lost my diamond ring, she was able to pinpoint the exact location.”
“How’d she do that? I’m really curious.”
“It’s hard to describe. She said she smelled something sweet. She saw glimpses of white, maybe something nautical. She did two separate . . . readings, for lack of a better word . . . and the images were the same. Then I realized the last time I remembered seeing the ring, I’d taken it off to wash my hands at the bathroom sink. I’d already searched that area half a dozen times. As it turned out, I’d set the ring in the soap dish and it was embedded on the underside of the soap, which is exactly what she smelled.”
I said, “What was the white part? Was that the bathroom sink?”
“Not in that bathroom. The sink is hunter green in there, but the soap was white.”
“Got it. What was the nautical part?”
Blanche’s tone was defensive. “Not everything’s literal. Some of the images she sees are metaphorical. . . you know, associative.”
“Nautical . . . faucet water,” I suggested gamely.
“The point is, Nancy’s offered to consult with Crystal, but she refuses to cooperate.”
“Maybe she doesn’t believe in psychics.”
“But Nancy’s fabulous. I swear.”
“How much does she charge?”
“Oh, she doesn’t want money. Ordinarily, she does, but this is strictly out of friendship with me.”
“Why does Crystal have to be involved? Can’t Nancy do a reading and simply tell you what she sees?”
“She has to have access to the house so she can pick up on Daddy’s vibes, his psychic energy. I took her over to his office and let her sit in his chair. She keeps getting this picture of him approaching a house and going through the front door. Then nothing. This has to be Crystal’s beach property because she visualizes sand.”
“Could be the desert.”
Blanche blinked. “Well, I suppose it could.”
“Anyway, go on. Sorry to interrupt.”
“But that’s it. She sees a door and then blank. Without Crystal’s help, she can only go so far. We think he left the office and drove out to the beach house as usual, only something went terribly wrong. Of course, Crystal denies this. She claims he never arrived, but we only have her word for it.”
“So you think she knows where he is and she’s covering?”
“Well, yes,” she said, as though surprised I’d ask. “Nancy can feel his presence. She gets the strong impression he’s been hurt. He’s definitely surrounded by darkness. She says he’s trying to reach us, but something’s holding him back.”
“He’s alive?”
“She’s sure he’s alive. She’s very clear about that. However, she says there are some very negative forces at work. She says he’s distressed because he doesn’t know where he is. He’s encompassed by this oppressive spiritual consciousness. She can feel his confusion, but that’s as much as she gets. Nancy says Crystal’s very connected to Daddy’s plight. In fact, she probably caused it.”
“How?”
“Well, she could have knocked him out and driven him away somewhere.”
“And done what with his car? I don’t mean to argue. I’m genuinely puzzled.”
“There could have been two of ’em. She could have hired someone. How do I know? I’m just telling you . . . nothing would suit her better than to have him out of the way.”
“Why? I mean, just for the sake of argument, let’s say she had him kidnapped and he’s being held against his will. What’s her motive? Can’t be money. There hasn’t been a ransom note and no contact from anyone offering to make a deal.”