I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [28]
But she did answer it.
It was Zan Moreland. “Tiffany, can you possibly help me?” she had pleaded. “Matthew’s new nanny was supposed to start this morning and just phoned that she can’t be here until tomorrow. I’ve got a terribly important appointment. It’s with a potential client, and she’s not the kind of person who would care about my babysitting problems. Would you be an angel and take Matthew out to the park for a couple of hours? I just fed him and it’s his naptime. I promise you he’ll probably sleep the whole time.”
I used to mind Matthew once in a while when the nanny had an evening off and I loved that little guy, Tiffany thought. But that day I told Zan that I thought I was getting sick, but she was so insistent that I finally gave in. And ruined my life in the process.
But on Wednesday morning, as she glanced at the morning paper over a glass of orange juice, Tiffany had two reactions. Explosive anger that Zan Moreland had manipulated her, and unbelievable relief that she would no longer be the victim of Matthew’s disappearance. I told the cops that I had taken some antihistamines and felt kind of groggy and that I didn’t really want to babysit, she thought. But if they come back to talk to me again, I’m going to rub it into them that Zan Moreland knew I was feeling tired. When I picked up Matthew, she offered me a Pepsi. She said it would make me feel better, that the sugar in it was beneficial when a cold was coming on.
Looking back, Tiffany thought, I wonder if Zan may have put something in that soda to make me really sleepy? And Matthew never even stirred while he was in the stroller. That’s why I didn’t bother him to put the strap on … He was out like a light.
Tiffany reread every word of the story and studied the photos carefully. That’s the dress Zan was wearing, she thought, but the shoes aren’t the same. By mistake, Zan had bought two pairs that were alike and had another pair that was almost the same. All of them were high-heeled beige step-in sandals. The only difference between the two styles was that one crossover strap was narrower than the other. She gave me one of the identical pairs with the narrower strap. We were both wearing them that morning. I still have them.
I’m not going to tell that to anyone. If the cops knew they may want my sandals and by God I earned them!
Three hours later, when she checked the messages on her cell phone after her history class, Tiffany saw that one of them was from that Detective Collins who had questioned her over and over again when Matthew disappeared. He wanted to talk with her again.
Tiffany’s narrow mouth hardened into a slit. Her normally pert features suddenly lost their attractive, youthful expression. She pressed the button to return Billy Collins’s call.
I want to talk to you, too, Detective Collins, she thought.
And this time I’ll be the one to make you squirm!
20
Glory was putting that gooey stuff on his hair again. Matthew hated it. It made his scalp feel burned and some of it almost got in his eye. Glory rubbed hard to catch it, but the washcloth went in his eye and it hurt. But he knew that if he said he didn’t want her to put the stuff in his hair, she would only say, “I’m sorry, Matty. I don’t want to do it, but I have to.”
Today he didn’t say one single word. He knew Glory was really mad at him. This morning, when the doorbell rang, he had run into the closet and closed the door. He didn’t mind this closet at all because it was bigger than some of the other ones, and it had a light big enough that he could see everything. But then he remembered he had left his favorite