Dina Santorelli (37 page)

"It's
all right," Phillip said.

"Is
it true?" Rosalia asked, her angelic, worn face fervent with anticipation. "On
the news, they say Charlotte is okay."

"Yes,
she is. I'm going to see her now."

"Ay!
Dios mío
!" Rosalia said. Her children, Rikki and Terry, appeared behind
her, along with Pedro and Ricardo; all four were drinking sodas and were
looking frantically around the room until they spotted Rosalia.

"Mama,
I told you not to leave the chair," Rikki said, but then noticed Phillip and
her demeanor softened. "Oh, I'm sorry, Governor," she said and curtsied.

"
¡Ella
está aquí!
" she told them. "
Carlota
."

"
Sí?
"
Pedro asked.

"Your
nephew is a hero, Rosalia." Phillip put his hand on her shoulder. "Where is
he?"

"What
do you mean?" she asked. "Rey?"

"They
said there was a car accident," Pedro said. "He's in the emergency room, but
they won't let us in yet."

"Sir?"
the nurse interrupted. "Right this way."

Phillip
nodded. "I have to go, Rosalia. I will be in soon to see Reynaldo." He started
toward the nurse, but on the other side of the room Katherine appeared in a
doorway escorted by Special Agent Wilcox.

The
animated buzz died down slightly at her entrance, and Katherine nodded at no
one in particular, as if to give the illusion that someone had gone out of his
or her way to greet her. She scanned the large room until she saw the tall
frame of her husband sticking out among the swarm of people.

"Katherine!"
Phillip called. "Here!"

Katherine
made her way through the crowd. She was still wobbly from the ride over when
Wilcox had filled her in on the details of what had happened, that Charlotte had been found in the hands of a woman from Long Island as well as the nephew of
her housekeeper. Katherine was about to pronounce a hearty "I knew it" when she
was told that the pair had saved Charlotte, not snatched her, and that as far
as they could tell the kindly, sweet old housekeeper was just a kindly, sweet
old housekeeper, and that the man they were looking for, the one who had
masterminded the entire kidnapping, had been identified as Don Bailino.

The
name was still ringing in her ears when Phillip reached for her hand. "Are you
okay?" he asked.

She
nodded, wanting the first words out of her mouth to be "why didn't you wait for
me?" but instead only asked, "Have you seen her?"

"No,
not yet."

"Oh,
Mrs. Grand..." Rosalia pounced on Katherine, throwing her large arms around her
with glee. "Our little girl is safe!"

"Yes,
yes," Katherine said, standing stiff while the housekeeper slobbered all over
her. Rosalia bounced around the hospital room, her joy palpable, believable,
causing smiles everywhere she turned, even among the usually grim federal
agents. Katherine could already feel the conflict building up inside from the
moment Wilcox said in his sedan, "You must be so happy to know that Charlotte is safe." And there it was, the expectation of a big, emotional reunion between
grieving mother and lost child, the coming together of the most natural pair in
the history of the world. For a woman who could turn any situation into a
public-relations event, and probably had, Katherine didn't know how to be, what
to do, and being face-to-face with the woman who made her feel most inferior as
a mother was not helping bolster her confidence. She was relieved to see Maddox
walk into the room.

"Lenny!"
she waved.

"Where
the hell is hospital security, that's what I want to know," Maddox said in a
huff. "I could barely turn into the ambulatory lot, and are those reporters
supposed to be so close to hospital grounds like that? Where's Charlotte?"

"Come,
we're going now," Phillip said.

Phillip,
Katherine, and Maddox followed the nurse away from the busyness of the main
room to a private examination suite guarded by two officers. Jamie was sitting
at the far back on a cot with Charlotte on her lap, and she was stroking her
hair as a doctor pumped up a blood pressure band around the little girl's arm. Charlotte had a bag of potato chips hanging from one hand and Miss Beatrice from the
other. When Jamie saw the governor and Mrs. Grand approach, she stood up.

"Hi,"
Jamie said, and for the first time in several days, she felt awkward holding
the little girl. "She's okay, I think... I wouldn't give her to anyone else."

Charlotte's eyes grew wide upon seeing the governor.

"Da
Da Da Da," she said, dropping the potato chips onto the floor and reaching out
her arms, Miss Beatrice dangling by a single strand of yarn from between two of
Charlotte's grubby fingers.

"My
girl..." Phillip swooped down and swung Charlotte in the air and then brought
her down into a giant hug. She felt wonderful in his arms, like a radiating
ball of love. "Look at you." He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. "You
look so big. Doesn't she, Katherine?"

And
filthy
, Katherine thought, nodding. A
half-hearted sense of relief settled upon her, seeing her daughter once again
in her husband's arms and knowing that Charlotte was, indeed, safe and
seemingly unharmed, but Katherine still felt as if she were atop a rocky precipice.
One false step...

Sensing
her ambivalence, Phillip took Katherine's hand, placed it over the little
girl's hand and cupped his on top, reminding her of a huddled football team
strategizing before a big play.

"It's
going to be okay," he whispered, taking Charlotte's hand and slapping it
lightly against Katherine's cheek. "Ma Ma Ma Ma," he said, making Charlotte laugh.

"Phillip,
stop," Katherine said quietly, embarrassed. "Not here."

"Mo
Mo Mo," Charlotte said, bringing the fingertips of her hands together.

Phillip
leaned in so that Charlotte could tap Katherine's cheeks and then wrapped his
arms around his wife as the others in the examination room smiled.

"Hello,
I'm Leonard Maddox, Governor Grand's press secretary." Maddox said, walking
over to Jamie and breaking the silence.

"Jamie
Carter." Jamie shook his hand.

"Jamie
Carter, you saved my daughter's life," Phillip said.

"I
don't know. I'm starting to think she saved mine."

Looking
at the little girl happy in the governor's hands, Jamie felt a pang of
bereavement. She wondered how Charlotte would remember her one day, if at all:
Jamie had gone from being a protector in an awful circumstance to being a
reminder of it now that it was over, and while she felt sad at the prospect of
never seeing Charlotte again, she could understand if that was what the
governor decided was best for his daughter. Bailino had been right: loyalty
wasn't as clearly defined as she once thought.

The
doctor stepped forward. "Governor, my name is Doctor Tucker."

"Yes,
doctor, how is she?" Phillip extended his hand.

"Well,
I did a preliminary exam of Charlotte, and, frankly, she seems fine. It's quite
remarkable, actually, after all she's been through. A little dehydrated and
undernourished, but other than that, I'd say she's perfectly healthy."

"That's
wonderful news!" Phillip said, lifting Charlotte into the air and eliciting a
string of tired giggles from the little girl. "We can take her home then?"

"You
sure can."

"What
about Ms. Carter?" Katherine asked.

"Yes,
I'm okay. Thank you." Jamie touched the bruises on her face. "They look worse
than they are."

"The
man who... had Charlotte..." Phillip started.

Jamie
shook her head. "I don't know what happened to him. He's gone." She tried not
to think about that and just revel in the happiness of the moment, a reunited
family, a safe place, but there was something hidden in the governor's gaze
that brought to the surface what she had spent the last few hours trying to
suppress—the prospect of a future where Don Bailino could jump out from any
corner.

"Have
you spoken to the police?"

Jamie
had. She told them everything she knew. She thought about what Joey had asked
her, if she could keep quiet, and decided that she couldn't. "They want me to
come down to the station for more questioning and, well, because they're
worried about my safety... You know, since they can't seem to find him, Don
Bailino."

Katherine
flinched again at the mention of his name, when Special Agent Wilcox came into
the room.

"Any
news, Agent Wilcox?" Phillip asked.

"We
sent agents to his house, Don Bailino, the log cabin. He wasn't there, which
really wasn't a surprise." Wilcox shook his head. "But we found the body of
Detective Mark Nurberg at the side of the house, in front of his car. He had
been shot in the forehead."

Small
gasps filled the room as the governor bowed his head, his thoughts turning to
the boyish face of the detective. He wished he could take back the hostility he
had felt, and inadvertently showed, toward Nurberg, who had only been trying to
do his job when it was Phillip himself who had been the one with something to
hide.

"Why
would he be there?" Katherine asked.

"I
don't know," Wilcox said. "There were two other men found at the scene as well.
Also killed. Based on Ms. Carter's story, we've been able to identify them as
Tony Seti and Benjamin Bracco."

"But
I don't understand. I had just spoken to..." Phillip remembered the phone call
to Nurberg, the silence on the other end. His heart sank.

"Sir?"
Wilcox said.

"When
Reynaldo called me, I called Detective Nurberg to ask him what to do, where I
should have Reynaldo take Charlotte."

"You
called him before me?" Wilcox asked. "Nurberg had been taken off the case."

"I
know, I know... I guess I wasn't thinking clearly. And I thought we had a bad
connection, and I gave him the location of Reynaldo's car."

"Do
you think Nurberg could have been working with... Don Bailino?" Katherine
asked. It was the first time she had uttered his name; it felt sour on her
tongue. "And perhaps they had a falling out?"

Phillip
again thought about the earnestness of Nurberg's face in the Drawing Room when
he had questioned Phillip about his little trip to Taryn's Diner. He found it
hard to believe that Nurberg had been involved.

"We
just don't know yet," Wilcox said.

"Bailino
left every day," Jamie said. "But I can't say for sure who he was meeting
with."

"His
nephew—or whoever he is—Joey Santelli, Gino Cataldi's grandson, is here at the
hospital." Wilcox said. "He's being guarded on the off chance Bailino tries to
visit him."

"What
happened to him?" Jamie asked. During the police officers' questioning, she had
faltered somewhat when they had asked about Joey, not knowing exactly how to
explain his involvement. Children, of course, couldn't help the families they
were born into, but did that excuse his complicity? And while she knew that it
was, at least in part, because of Joey that she had made it out of the river
alive, was that enough for her to keep quiet?

"He
was found by the river, a few miles down from the log cabin by some vacationers
who got stuck out in the water when the rainstorm started. The doctors said he
was in bad shape when he got here, but he's in stable condition now."

Det.
Grohl of the Albany Police came into the room. There was a sadness in his eyes
that hadn't been there when he had questioned Jamie earlier that morning; she
imagined it was a result of hearing the news about the detective in his
department. "Excuse me, Governor, Mrs. Grand, I need to take Ms. Carter to the
station for additional questioning."

"Like
hell you are," Katherine said, stepping in front of Jamie. Her voice, in the
somber room, came across as an irritated meow, as if she were an idle cat who
just had a shoe thrown at her. If Jamie had detected any sadness in the
detective, it quickly dissipated. "Mrs. Grand, it's procedure."

"Don't
you think she's been through enough?" She turned to Jamie. "Where is your
family, dear?"

"I've
been trying to reach my brother Edward but..."

Jamie
stopped talking at the sight of Bob, who walked into the examination room
escorted by an officer. He wore plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt, with an
overcoat wrapped around him, as if he had just woken up. "Bob?"

"Jamie,
what's going on?" Bob looked around the room, his eyes landing on Phillip and
Charlotte Grand. "Governor?"

"Mr.
Scott," Phillip said, surprised. "This is a bit of an odd coincidence meeting
you for the first time and then seeing you again the same day."

"This
is my wife." Bob pointed to Jamie.

"You're
kidding," Maddox said.

"Ex-wife,"
Jamie corrected.

"Well,
your ex-wife helped save the governor's daughter," Maddox said.

"Serious?"
Bob wondered how he'd pegged the wrong Carter as the knight in shining armor.
"How did...?"

"What
are you doing here, Bob?" Jamie asked. She felt as if she had aged six years
since the last time she had seen him, which was only four days before.

"The
police called my cell phone and told me you were here. I guess I'm still listed
as your husband."

"No,
I mean, what are you doing in Albany?"

Bob
had been asking himself the very same thing all night. "It's a long story," he
said. "Where's Edward?"

"What
do you mean?"

"Isn't
he here? He told me he was driving to Albany."

"When
was this?" Agent Wilcox asked.

"Um,
Wednesday night was the last time I spoke with him," Bob said. "Why?"

"He's
not picking up his cell." Jamie said. "Maybe he went home?"

"We
contacted Edward's home address," Wilcox said, "and spoke to a woman named
Tricia."