I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [50]
“Then what?”
“You go back to Middletown. You wait until about nine or ten o’clock that night, then drop Matthew off in a department store or mall. After that, you’re on a plane to California, or Texas, or wherever you like, to start your new life. I know you’re worried about your father. You can tell him you were on a mission for the CIA.”
“Not more than ten days.” Now her voice was tentative, almost convinced. Then she added, “But how will I get the rest of the cash?”
You’ll never have that problem, he thought. “I’ll have the money packaged and mailed to you anywhere you want.”
“But how can I trust that the package will arrive or that, if it does, that it won’t be stuffed with old newspapers?”
You can’t trust me, he thought. Reaching for the straight-up double scotch that he had promised himself he wouldn’t touch until after he spoke to her, he said, “Gloria, if that ever happened, and it won’t, you can go back to plan B. Get a lawyer, tell him your story, get him to arrange a book deal, and then go to the cops. In the meantime, Matthew has been found, nice and healthy, and the only thing he knows is that Glory took care of him.”
“I read him a lot of books. He’s smarter than a lot of kids his age.”
I’m sure you were a real Mother Teresa, he thought. “Gloria, this will be over soon and you’ll be rich.”
“All right. I’m sorry I got so upset before. It’s just that this woman who lives near here showed up with some stupid muffins this morning. I know she was just sniffing around to see what kind of person I am.”
“You didn’t tell me about her earlier,” he said quietly. “Did she see Matthew?”
“No, but she saw his toy truck and told me she was such a great babysitter if I ever needed one. I told her my sister had helped me move in and that it was her little boy’s truck.”
“That sounds all right to me.”
“The real estate agent is this woman’s big friend. I had told the real estate agent that I was coming in by myself at night. She’s another nosy one. I know she drove by early the morning after I got here.”
He felt himself begin to perspire. For want of a horse the rider is lost… Incongruous that he should remember that old saying right now. His mind explored the possible scenarios. The nosy blueberry muffin lady checking with her real estate friend. He didn’t want to think about that.
Time was running out.
It was hard to keep the reassuring note in his voice. “Gloria, you’re borrowing trouble. Just start counting down the days.”
“You bet I will. And not just for my sake. This little kid doesn’t want to stay hidden anymore. He wants to go look for his mother.”
34
kevin Wilson arrived at his mother’s apartment at seven P.M., just as the evening news on Channel 2 was ending. He had rung the bell twice, then let himself in with his own key. It was an arrangement that was long in place. “That way if I’m on the phone or still dressing, I don’t have to run to the door,” was the way his mother put it.
But when he walked in, diminutive, white-haired, seventy-one-year-old Catherine “Cate” Kelly Wilson was neither in her bedroom nor on the phone. She was glued to the television set and did not even look up as he entered the living room.
The three-room apartment he had bought for her was on Fifty-seventh Street, near First Avenue, a location which offered a crosstown bus stop on the corner, a movie theatre within walking distance, and, most important to her, St. John the Evangelist Church only one block away.
The unwillingness with which his mother had vacated the old neighborhood three years ago when it had become financially possible for him to buy her this new apartment still amused Kevin. Now, she loved it.
He went over to her chair and kissed her forehead.
“Hello, dear. Sit down a minute,” she said, switching the channels without looking up at him. “Headline News is coming on now and there’s something I want to see.”
Kevin was hungry and had been looking forward to going immediately to Neary’s Pub. It was