Courting Disaster Part 15

Frannie scowled. "You don't need to remind me! Anyway, since your party is supposed to be perfect, what kind do you want?"

"I'd like it to be like a fairy tale," Angie answered quickly.

Frannie chortled. "You're so fussy about everything, the only fairy tale that'd work for you would be one about little elves making everything exactly the way you want it. I don't know how Mamma puts up with you."

Angie fumed. "I'm not fussy in the least! In fact, I see myself as Cinderella. After all my toils, I've found my Prince Charming."

"Barf! Yech! Blaaaah!" Frannie screeched, to Angie's complete disgust. "Let's pray Mamma doesn't come up with anything so sappy! Maybe instead she'll remember the party you wanted when you were so madly in love with that boy in middle school. He was j.a.panese and you ran around the house with a kimono and chopsticks in your hair. At least you didn't go out in public that way. It was the funniest thing I'd ever seen!"

The horrible conversation Angie had had with her mother about sushi came flowing back at her. No, it couldn't be!

Frannie howled with laughter. It had been a long time since Angie and her sister had a knockdown, drag-out fight-they'd had them all the time when they were growing up-but the old urge to pummel her sister was growing fast.

"I'd better get going," Angie said, standing. "Let's go find the car seat and other baby stuff you said I could borrow."

"We will, but first you've got to tell me all about Stan's girlfriend." Frannie refilled Angie's coffee. "Are you sure it isn't his kid?"

Since her sister was acting more civilized, Angie sat back down and filled Frannie in on all the facts as she knew them. She had to admit, they weren't much. "All I can say is that Stan seems really happy that Hannah and her baby are with him."

"Where's our baby, Lance?" Frieda Vandermeer asked. She stood at the window, looking at the noonday sun over the ocean from her Sea Cliff mansion. "They promised we'd have it by now."

"I'm sure we'll get him-or her-soon." He put his arms around his wife. He couldn't have children and felt like a monster for depriving Frieda of the one thing she wanted more than anything else. Maybe he wasn't a monster, just half a man. The part that should work was fine for s.e.x. But nothing else. Nothing important, at least not to Frieda's way of thinking.

It was strange, loving one's wife this way. So many of the guys he knew had mistresses on the side, or at least flings, one after the other. Not Lance.

He'd never even thought about wandering. Not until Frieda decided, three years ago, that she wanted a child and threw away her pills.

When nothing happened after two years they saw some doctors. That was when he found out about his low sperm count.

Low, h.e.l.l. It was practically nonexistent. He remembered the old joke where the redneck goes to a doctor and when he gets back home he struts around his wife, chest puffed out, and says "The doc tol' me I was the mos' impo'tent man he ever saw." The problem was that being the one who was so impo'tent wasn't half so funny.

Everything he'd ever wanted was either handed him on a silver platter or there for the taking. Okay, it had caused him problems now and then, but they didn't mean much. Winning Frieda had been the only thing he'd ever had to work hard at. And she was the one thing he was most afraid of losing. He didn't know if he could bear it.

Sometimes, though, his frustration was so bad he thought he should leave her. End the marriage. Find someone who appreciated him for what he was and not as the father of children they'd never have. But he loved her and couldn't go.

It was a cruel torture to them both.

If he left, the maddening part was that he knew how easy it would be for her to forget him, especially once she found a man who could give her what she wanted most.

Despite her disappointment, she swore she loved him and wanted their marriage to last no matter what. As much as he tried to believed her, he also knew that dissatisfaction with her life grew every day.

He'd thought finding a baby broker had been a gift from the G.o.ds, but now it seemed he'd been wrong.

Already he'd paid a deposit of twenty thousand dollars for the kid. Maybe it was foolish on his part, but he'd do anything for Frieda. Money was nothing compared to their marriage and her happiness.

He was going to find out where their baby was. Now. Tonight. He'd already paid for it-girl or boy, they didn't care. No one played him for a sucker and got away with it.

He'd get his child. One way or the other.

He waited, silently watching, wondering when his search would be over.

The apartment building across the street was both tall and quite large. Too large. The kind where neighbors talked to each other and the night doorman would be on the alert. He'd rather not do anything that could cause him to be trapped in there.

Instead, he would wait until she was outside. Take her and run. Everything would be settled, and he could live his life again. No-he could live it better than ever.

A movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He stood in a doorway. Small, expensive one-and two-story homes lined the block. Someone was in the next doorway over.

How could that be? No others were watching the building for the same reason as he...were they?

No! That would be absurd. He was the only one interested in the place. His nerves were getting the better of him, that's all. Too much had happened already, and yet the most important task remained undone.

The Amalfi woman lived up there....

He felt the stranger's eyes turn his way. He'd been noticed!

Nonchalantly, he turned his collar up, head down, and pulled his car keys from his pocket as if he'd only been hesitating in the doorway to find them. Then, his back to the watcher, he got into his Saturn.

As he drove away from the parking s.p.a.ce he glanced in the rearview mirror...and nearly ran into a telephone pole.

Chapter 17.

Angie was glad when her public TV stint ended. Tonight's three hours of reruns of two chubby British women slathering b.u.t.ter and cream over everything they ate made her a little woozy. Besides that, although two of the evening's four restaurateurs were old friends, not one of them knew of her party. Where in the world had Serefina chosen? It was making her crazy.

Paavo drove her to and from the station, but he didn't spend the night because he had to be in court early the next day to testify. From the time he picked her up, however, he'd acted strangely, and even searched her apartment as if he expected some bogeyman to jump out of the closet. He wouldn't tell her why.

He did tell her that they found Peter Leong's cab parked near a BART station. Whoever took it apparently wore gloves, because the fingerprint tests yielded nothing. So far, they'd reached a dead end. Angie wondered if Paavo was concerned about the fake taxi driver as he checked through her apartment. He said no, but he was obviously worried about something.

When they returned later that evening, he made another sweep through all the rooms. As he left, he told her to lock the door and not open it to any stranger, man or woman, because there'd been some burglaries in the area.

If that had happened, she was sure she'd have heard. As much as she pressed, he wouldn't give her any more information. She put the deadbolt on the door.

Angie finished her last crossword, solved the anagram-NEVER SAY DIE-and was about to shut her bedside lamp when she heard a knock.

She froze, then quietly tiptoed to the door and looked through the peephole.

Stan! And he hadn't given his usual "shave-and-a-haircut" knock, which meant something was desperately wrong. She pulled open the door. He looked like he hadn't slept in days. His clothes were spotted and unironed-he usually used a dry cleaners for everything, even his casual shirts-and he had Kaitlyn in the Snugli around his neck.

"It's Hannah," he said, his eyes hollow. "She went for a walk this afternoon and never came back. I don't know what to do. I'm sick with worry."

Angie couldn't remember ever before hearing Stan talk about being worried about another person, and he usually only got sick from eating too much of other people's cooking. "Okay. Don't panic," she said, on the verge of panicking herself. "I'll be right over."

She was already troubled by Paavo's search of her apartment and the attack on her cabdriver, and now this. They couldn't be connected, could they?

Quickly she dressed, and when she left, she locked the door behind her even though she was only going across the hall. She hated feeling so paranoid.

In Stan's once-meticulous apartment, with the stacks of folded diapers, half-eaten TV dinner trays, unread newspapers, and pieces of the stroller Angie had bought all over the floor, it took a while to find the phone. Once they did, they called hospitals and Central Station, the police precinct for their area. When Hannah wasn't found, they also called the neighboring Northern, Southern and Mission stations.

Stan suggested they use both Hannah Dzanic and Hannah Jones in their inquiries, but nothing turned up under either name.

"Do you think we should try to locate the people at the Athina?" Angie asked, ticking names off on her fingers. "There are the Leers, Tyler Marsh, Michael Zeno, Eleni Pappas, and her crazy daughter Olympia. Maybe she's with one of them."

"I don't think we should let them know she was here or that she's missing," Stan said. "She didn't want them to know she had the baby. I think she was afraid of them-all of them, not just Tyler. Now I'm wondering if she didn't have good reason."

Angie shuddered. "A couple was looking for her when I was at the Athina. The husband was kind of creepy. Their name was...Vandermeer? Yes, that's it. Did she ever mention them?"

He shook his head. "Never."

"What about a girlfriend or a relative?"

He quickly told her Hannah's foster home background. "The only person she ever mentioned liking was some homeless guy, Sh.e.l.ly Farms. She also has a social worker-Dianne Randle, I think her name is. Hannah hoped for welfare money to help her get back on her feet. She said she'd never return to the Athina."

"Sh.e.l.ly Farms was murdered," Angie said, her eyes suddenly big and round. "Paavo's working on the case and they haven't found the killer yet."

Stan's stricken expression matched Angie's. "I read about it in the newspaper. So that's why his name sounded familiar when she said it. My G.o.d-there couldn't be a connection, could there? I mean, she said Sh.e.l.ly Farms was a friend, but nothing more." He turned so pale Angie was afraid he'd pa.s.s out.

"Sh.e.l.ly Farms hung out at Fisherman's Wharf," Angie said. "And died not too far from the Athina, according to the papers."

"The problem, whatever it is, is centered at that restaurant," Stan said. "Can you watch Kaitlyn while I borrow your car? Maybe Hannah's there."

"You aren't going to go knocking on the door of a place that might be dangerous, are you?" Angie asked, horrified.

"Of course not. If there's lights and activity, I'll call the police and have them knock."

Angie had ridden with Stan once. There was a reason he didn't have a car-his driving veered between near-stuporous paranoia and doubling for Evel Knievel. And the thought of watching Kaitlyn had her recoiling. Her ears still rang from holding the baby while Stan fixed her a bottle.

"I'll go with you. Two can search better than one."

"You'd do that?" he asked.

"Oh, yes." Angie bundled the baby in warm blankets and a knit bonnet. While Stan put together her diaper bag and bottles, Angie told him about the strange things that had happened to her on the cab rides. They decided there was no way those occurrences were related to Hannah's disappearance. Yet she couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't wishful thinking.

A little after two A.M., Angie turned onto Jefferson Street. She found parking directly across from the narrow side road that led to the Athina, giving them a clear view of the restaurant and the wharf beyond. She'd never found a parking s.p.a.ce so close to it before. Now she knew: Want to park near a restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf? Get there before dawn.

The night was chilly. She approached the restaurant. About three steps behind her, trying to keep up, was Stan with Kaitlyn content in the Snugli against his stomach and a huge diaper bag filled with formula, changing paraphernalia, extra clothes, and blankets over his shoulder and hanging down his back.

All the restaurant's lights were out.

Angie stopped, but Stan continued up to the front door and knocked loudly.

"What are you doing?" she cried in a distraught whisper. "You said you wouldn't do that!"

"I said I wouldn't do it if the lights were on, but they aren't," he whispered back. "Maybe Hannah's hiding in there."

"Hiding! What if someone else answers? You're crazy!"

"I'll say you left your wallet somewhere and I'm helping you search for it."

"At three A.M.? With a baby?" She was beside herself.

"You couldn't sleep."

She shivered in the cold night air. "Well, at least that part's true."

When no one answered, he and Angie tried to get inside. The doors and windows were locked tight. Stan tried sliding a credit card like they do in movies, but all he got was a bent American Express.

They returned to Angie's car and waited.

One feeding and two diaper changes later, they saw a boat approach. They left the car and crept toward the wharf, staying close to the buildings. As soon as they had a clear view of the docks, they ducked behind a pile of wood that looked like it'd been lying there since some building was demolished around the time of the big earthquake-the one in 1906, not 1989. Stan brought the diaper bag with him, and as soon as Kaitlyn began to squawk, took out a bottle and stuck it in her mouth. Angie had to admit he'd turned into quite a good little nurse.

From their vantage point, they could see the boat slow down to almost nothing, carried by currents. The engine revved as it was thrown into reverse and then slowly backed toward the dock closest to the Athina. A man stood on the stern and looped a rope over a mooring as they pa.s.sed it. The boat glided gently back to the ladder that led up to the wharf.

"Maybe it's their daily catch of fish," Stan suggested.

"Isn't this the time of day most fishermen go out to fish?" Angie asked.

"I'm the wrong person to ask, Angie."

Angie and Stan watched, expecting to see someone come out with some fish.

Instead, a tall man with curly black hair climbed up the ladder from the boat to the wharf, carrying a strange object.

"Isn't he the cook?" Angie asked.

"That's right-Michael Zeno." Stan squinted, trying to see if anyone else was approaching. "Hannah told me a little about him. Him and one of the waitresses, an older woman named Eleni, are the only things Greek about the place. He was the original owner, but nearly went bankrupt. Eugene Leer bought him out, and kept him on as the cook. I saw him watching Hannah once when I was in the restaurant. The way he looked at her, I think he's in love with her himself."

"He seems a little old for her; in his forties, I'd say. But he is a good-looking man."

"He is?" Stan did a double-take. "I'll never understand women."

How many times had Angie heard that before?

"What in the world is he carrying?" Stan asked.

"It looks like a baby cradle." Angie rubbed her eyes. "Could he be getting it for Kaitlyn? Could Hannah be with him after all?"

"She went to Zeno, then." Stan sounded completely dejected. "She's gone to him."

"Wait!" Angie pointed. Eugene Leer also got off the boat, following Zeno with a similar cradle-type case. "Maybe they aren't cradles at all, but something else."

"What else?" Stan asked.