27. Theo
Theo
“So, we’re going to meet Diane tomorrow afternoon. We’re making progress, at least.” I leaned back in my chair at Bryant Park Grill, tossing back my espresso like it was a shot of Patrón. After last night’s shitshow of a dream, not to mention the ghostly piano recital, I was exhausted.
Liv sat opposite me, picking at the remains of a muffin. “Yes, at three,” she said. “Diane sounded a little wary, but not enough to blow us off. I guess she likes Ethan Polk.”
“There’s no accounting for taste,” I said, shrugging. Liv had ordered hot chocolate to go with her muffin, and as I glanced across the table at her, I had to smile. She’d gotten whipped cream on her nose, and it might’ve been the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
“Why are you looking at me that way?” she said, raising her eyebrows.
Oh, what the hell. I’d spent the whole day restraining myself from putting my hands on her; it didn’t get more innocent than this. I leaned across the table and touched her nose, wiping away the whipped cream. “Here,” I said, showing her the evidence.
Color heated her cheeks. “Oh.” She blinked in embarrassment. “Thanks.”
She ran her fingers through her lush fall of hair, the strands sparking copper, auburn, and a bunch of other shades of red I had no name for in the glow of the overhead lights.
It took all I had not to lean across the table and plunge my hands into it, which would’ve given the other diners quite a show.
I occupied myself by rearranging the sugar packets, instead.
Unlike me, Liv’s mind was actually on our quest. “That ransom demand…I can’t stop thinking about it. Do you think the mobsters killed James before he could collect?”
I caught the waitress’s eye and raised my cup, asking for another. “I do have one idea, but it’s kind of insane.” It had come to me at The Players, maybe because all of Polk’s blathering about skulls and Hamlet had put me in mind of Shakespearean tragedies.
She tilted her head, looking intrigued. “Do tell.”
“Well,” I began, “what if they went to do the handoff, but then something went south and Charles killed James? So James died, and Ella flipped out and ran away. And that’s why Charles wouldn’t talk to the media about the ransom. Because he was hiding a murder.”
Liv’s mouth fell open. “You’re joking, right?”
I crumpled my napkin into a ball, avoiding her penetrating gaze. “I mean, look at the evidence. There was a ransom, but it was never collected. This James dude turned up dead. Ella disappeared. You’d do anything to get Chloe back if something like this happened to her, right?”
“Of course. But I wouldn’t murder anyone,” she protested.
“Maybe it was an accident.”
She rolled her eyes. “So, to play out your theory… Ella was so traumatized by what she’d witnessed, she ran off and wound up outside Divine Grace, completely mute?”
“Maybe,” I said, folding my napkin into a square and watching it spring free again. “Or maybe, she ran off and got lost. Or kidnapped all over again. Or…killed.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.” Liv’s lips pressed into a thin line. “First, my grandfather’s a child thief. And now, he’s a murderer? Come on, Theo!”
“It’s just a theory.” I heaved a sigh, nodding at the waitress in thanks as she set a fresh shot of espresso down on the table.
Liv sipped her hot chocolate, worry creasing the space between her brows.
“Look…hopefully Diane will know something. If Maisie and James lived together, and James took Grandma Ella, then surely Maisie would’ve seen her, right?
I mean, where would James have been keeping her over those few days, if not at his house?
A kidnapping’s a juicy piece of gossip, just like James’s disappearance and his mob ties.
So hopefully, Maisie would’ve told someone in the family what happened, and they might’ve passed it down to Diane. ”
“That’s assuming Mystery Girl is Ella, not Lily.
” I resisted the urge to smooth the worry line away, downing my espresso instead.
“But let the murder theory go for a moment. Here’s another thing that’s bugging me.
Why didn’t Divine Grace report the appearance of Mystery Girl to Charles, the way St. Jerome’s reported the girl who died from frostbite? ”
Liv frowned. “I’ve been wondering about that, too.
Maybe because, like the matron said, they assumed she was left there on purpose by someone who couldn’t take care of her.
Or maybe because she showed up four days after Ella disappeared, and they thought there was no way a toddler could survive that long in the snow.
But if James had her at his apartment the whole time, that would explain it.
And then he came out of hiding to drop her at the orphanage anonymously for whatever reason, but then the mobsters caught up with him and killed him. ”
“Right.” I quirked an eyebrow. “Because the guy who wanted money so badly he was willing to steal a child for it had an attack of conscience, figured ‘what the hell, I don’t need the dough that badly,’ and risked his life to return the kid he stole.”
“It’s possible!”
“It is,” I agreed, tracing designs in a spill of sugar on the table. “But so is the fact that none of that ever happened…because by the time Mystery Girl arrived at the orphanage, James was long dead at Charles’s hands, and Ella was gone.”