Should i fall, p.18
Should I Fall, page 18
At first, she hadn’t told Pablo, knowing a baby would derail the plans the two of them had to build a business that would require them working 24/7, let alone having to tell him the child she was carrying might not be his.
One small piece of good news was that three months in, when she was just starting to show and had to break the news to Pablo, he took it better than she thought he would.
It turned out he was even less inclined to be a father than she was committed to the concept of motherhood.
But having been raised in a good Catholic family, terminating the pregnancy had never entered her mind. And speaking of family, having already frayed the relationship with her father over her disapproval of his marrying a girl half his age and later running out on her own marriage, Julia had no intention of letting Leo Molinari know that a grandchild was on the way. She didn’t need to remind Frankel how overbearing and controlling the Molinari patriarch was—he’d gotten a good dose of it in the years they’d been married.
“And during all of this, you never thought to get in touch with me?” Frankel had asked. “Didn’t you think I had a right to know what was going on?”
Julia had admitted the thought had weighed heavily on her mind. But she had no idea what to tell him—especially with the birth still months away. It had been the reason she hadn’t signed the divorce papers; she hadn’t known what to do.
That was when she remembered Caitlan Hill.
She’d gone to high school with Caitlan in Little Falls, New Jersey, and for a time they’d been best friends. Members of the same cheerleader squad, double-dating the football team’s backfield, cribbing each other’s essays. But they’d drifted apart around graduation, with Caitlan having gone to Penn intent on pursuing a career in the medical field while Julia skipped college altogether, trying to break into the fashion business without much success.
Their communication had dwindled down to the yearly Christmas card from Caitlan and an occasional response from Julia. But Julia recalled the one she’d received the previous year when she was still living with Frankel, and how Caitlan had mentioned she was working for an adoption agency up in Maine, using her nurse practitioner skills to look after the infants who had been put in their care while looking for good homes to place them in.
Julia had gotten in touch with her high school friend and explained her plight, resulting in an offer for her and Pablo to go stay with Caitlan for the duration of her pregnancy, during which time Caitlan could begin the process of arranging for Julia’s baby to be adopted by a suitable family.
It hadn’t taken much convincing for Pablo to move east for those months—he’d hated working the beach bar in Hawi because there was absolutely no growth potential in the tiny town and he was looking for a change. He’d commuted back and forth, while Julia remained in Portland as her pregnancy came to term.
Then, shortly after Valentine’s Day, two things had come to fruition. On the sunny shores of the Big Island, Pablo had emerged from a poker game with the deed to the Papaya Seed, while in the middle of a Maine blizzard, Julia gave birth ten days early to a baby boy.
Pablo had rushed back to Portland just in time to see Julia with the child who might or might not be his son, right before Caitlan swaddled up the newborn and delivered him to his new home.
As Frankel disembarked the train in Elizabeth, dipping the Yankee cap even closer to shield his eyes (sunglasses at night would raise more suspicions than they would keep people from recognizing him), he remembered asking Julia whom the child had ended up with.
Julia had told Frankel that she didn’t know. She had just wanted to move on with her life with no regrets and had never asked Caitlan.
Sheila Rice had been a girl that Frankel had gone out with in high school.
“Odd time for him to be bringing up that blast from his past,” said Grant.
Rachel repressed a chuckle. She could see how her father might have been perturbed at John working his way through his dating history—first Julia, now the aforementioned Sheila.
She quickly elaborated. “There’s this place on a hill, just outside Elizabeth, with the most breathtaking view across the Hudson of the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan spread out behind it. John took me there one morning when we first got together and said it was his favorite view in the world. I said that he probably brought all the girls there and he told me the only other one had been his high school flame, Sheila Rice.”
Grant nodded, getting it. “And he wants to meet you there at nine o’clock.”
“Unless, like you say, he’s just taking a random stroll down memory lane.”
“And what do you suggest we tell Lieutenant Harris and Detective Meadows?”
“Nothing yet,” answered Rachel quickly. “You’re retired now, remember? You’re no longer under compunction to follow every letter of the law.”
“Old habits die hard, my dear.” Grant indicated the text message on Rachel’s cell. “And that right there is what Harris meant when he was going on about aiding and abetting a fugitive.”
“You know as well as I do that John didn’t kill Julia or Pablo.”
“I don’t know that for a fact, but yes, I find it hard to believe.”
“And the best chance we have of finding out exactly what’s going on with John and convincing him to turn himself in is if I go and meet him.”
“You know Lieutenant Harris has someone, possibly multiple someones, watching our every move—fully expecting John to get in touch with one of us, most likely you.”
“And expects me to lead them right to him.”
“Precisely,” said Grant.
“About that—”
The walk to what Rachel had chidingly referred to as Rice’s Ridge would have taken Frankel a few hours from the Elizabeth train station, so he ran the risk of jumping into a cab. Luckily, the Persian driver seemed more intent on the WhatsApp chat he was having than paying attention to his passenger. Frankel gave him a location near the bottom of the hill, then leaned back to ruminate on what else he was going to have to tell Rachel.
Caitlan Hill.
Julia had been less than thrilled when Frankel said he was going to get in touch with her. She’d been hesitant to give him Caitlan’s number, but had finally done so when Frankel reminded her he had NYPD resources and other ways of chasing her down.
But Caitlan had proved to be less forthcoming than Julia. Hearing her voice on the phone, Frankel was reminded of the few times he’d met her, early in his marriage to Julia. He recalled her being tall, blond, and slightly hardened, an overall attitude that seemed on a perfect track for med school, and that had somehow gotten switched to adoptive services and infant care.
Caitlan did express surprise at hearing from Frankel, having figured Julia had no intentions of telling him about the child. But when it came to revealing where Julia’s baby had been placed, she told him that she was under no obligation to do so. That would be something left up to Julia, who had chosen not to be in any contact whatsoever with the child once she’d resumed her life in Hawaii.
Not being the sort to drop a pursuit, especially when it was something so personal to him, Frankel was ready to continue pushing the ball uphill when something even more surprising happened.
Julia had appeared on his doorstep in Murray Hill.
She’d seemed even more exasperated and desperate than she’d been a few days earlier in Hawaii, and they went to a diner near Union Square where she told him there were two reasons for her arrival in New York.
The first problem was the increasing financial pressure being brought to bear on Pablo. Unwilling to discuss the particulars, all Julia had told Frankel was that she was starting to fear for the physical safety of Pablo and herself. She’d decided to do what she’d swore she would never do: see her father and ask him to bail them out.
When Frankel asked if there were anything he could do, Julia brought up the second reason.
Couldn’t he just let this thing about the baby go, sign the divorce papers, marry Rachel, and live happily ever after?
For some reason that Frankel still couldn’t comprehend—whether it was the impending wedding, what he was already keeping from Rachel, or more likely the possibility of him having a child he had never known about, he’d snapped.
Right there, fortunately in an empty diner on a Sunday night, Frankel had lashed out at Julia. It wasn’t bad enough that she’d run out on their marriage without warning, but she’d gone and had a child that very easily could have been his and totally neglected to tell him—and now that he finally knew about it, she was saying he should just simply forget about it? After trying to sneak it past him by having her lawyer slip an addendum into the divorce papers?
Julia had begun sobbing, then ran out of the diner. Frankel had to chase her three blocks before he’d caught up with her.
By that time, he had sufficiently calmed down and said all he wanted to know was the truth. Once they got all the facts, he and Julia could make an informed decision about how to move forward with their lives.
And he could finally tell Rachel everything.
Julia had said she would call Caitlan and get her to provide them with a name.
When he’d asked where she was staying, Julia said she had no idea. She’d used practically her last dime to pay for the plane ticket. And given the fact that she hadn’t seen or talked to her father in close to three years and was about to ask him for money, she was dubious about spending the night in the house she grew up in.
Frankel had made a spur of the moment offer he had no idea would come back to haunt him.
He’d given Julia the key to his apartment and told her she could camp out there, seeing as how he spent most nights at Rachel’s.
Frankel apologized for his blowup in the diner and wished Julia good luck in dealing with Leo.
An hour later, he got a text from Julia.
She’d gotten in touch with Caitlan and she’d provided a name and a city.
Joseph Darren Talbot. Lowell, Maine.
That had been the last he’d ever heard from Julia Molinari.
Less than a day later, she was dead in his apartment.
And by the time Frankel had crawled into bed beside Rachel late that evening, he didn’t know what the hell to tell her.
Rachel and her father had gone round and round about the merits of her meeting John. She insisted he was innocent and deserved to be heard. Grant said he was acting like a guilty man and should turn himself in before things reached a violent end. Rachel repeated her claim: that it was the former Scotland Yard commander talking, not John’s prospective father-in-law in the real world.
Grant couldn’t remember when he’d won an argument with his daughter. This time wasn’t any different.
“So how do you expect to get to this New Jersey hill without the cops following you there?” asked her father.
“I figured you could help me with that.”
“I was afraid that would be your answer.”
Shortly after the sun set, Grant and Rachel headed out of her apartment and got into an Uber.
Earlier in the day, Grant had mentioned to Rachel that he was long overdue in paying a visit to Leo Molinari at his New Jersey home, having intended to do so ever since he’d been dismissed by Julia’s brother in the electronics store before they’d headed to Hawaii.
Rachel pointed out that since she was already headed across the river to the Garden State, it might be a good time for Grant to unexpectedly drop in on Julia’s father, armed with everything they’d learned in the islands, especially now with the possibility that there was a grandchild in the picture.
Rachel began conversing with the driver and asked if he’d be interested in tripling his fare across the GW Bridge. The man was gung ho about the chance to turn a slow night into a payday and asked what she had in mind.
Twenty minutes later, on a turnout leading to the West Side Highway, their Uber driver pulled up directly beside a Toyota driven by a colleague of his.
Grant, who had ducked down in the back seat, creaked open the door on his side, then slid out of the car and stayed low to the ground as he stepped through the already open door of the Toyota.
Within seconds, both cars hopped onto the highway, spreading lanes apart.
Rachel peered over her shoulder to see a car swerve across the highway to follow the Toyota. She smiled, knowing that not only had her father been correct in their movements being watched, her instinct was right—that when they pulled off the switch, the cops would end up tailing the one that her father made a break for.
Half an hour later, the Uber driver deposited Rachel in front of an all-night Hertz outlet. She paid the driver the agreed-upon charge and went inside. Moments later, she drove off in the most nondescript Ford Taurus she could find.
Three turns later, she was back on the Turnpike headed for Exit 13, which would land her in Elizabeth.
Frankel didn’t remember such a vertical climb to the hill in Elizabeth. But he’d never navigated it on foot before—he was usually in his unmarked car with Rachel.
He tried to ignore the strain on his lungs by concentrating on the rest of what he needed to confess.
He’d known he was in deep trouble the moment he’d heard the story break about Julia’s body being found in his apartment.
The secret trip to Hawaii to see her. The argument they’d had in the diner the night before she was killed. And it was only a matter of time until the cops learned about the child that Julia had given up without telling Frankel anything about it, suddenly giving him one hell of a motive to kill her.
Even though Frankel knew he was innocent, someone else was aware of those facts as well and clearly using them to frame him.
It was why he’d spent the time since his release trying to locate either Caitlan Hill or Margaret Talbot.
He’d failed on both counts.
Frankel had tracked down the adoption agency that Caitlan worked for, the Bradford Clinic in Portland, Maine, only to find out she was on a sabbatical with no firm timetable marking her return.
Efforts to reach Margaret Talbot had proved even more fruitless. Zigzagging his way undetected up to Maine, he’d learned that Margaret had fled Lowell in grief upon the passing of the young boy she’d adopted, all of four months old.
Frankel had been devastated standing over the grave of the child that very well could have been his. And what Pablo Suarez was doing dead in the same cemetery was a complete mystery.
Frankel knew the frame around him was tightening. The cops already had him on the hook for Julia. Now, he had the blood of the man that she’d left him for on his hands.
By the time he reached the top of the hill, he was hyperventilating.
Was it the climb or panic taking over? He suspected it was a bit of both.
He was still trying to catch his breath a few minutes later when a car pulled up beside him.
The window rolled down and Rachel looked out at him.
Frankel drummed up his best smile.
“You could have at least gotten here a little earlier to save me the walk up the hill,” he told her.
“You could’ve told me that you and Julia had a child together.”
Frankel started to say the baby might not be his.
But he wasn’t an idiot.
He did the smart thing and let her decide what happened next.
Chapter 22
“It’s like Hollywood, East Coast style.”
Grant listened as the Uber driver pointed out where stars like Chris Rock, P. Diddy and Mary J. Blige lived. Apparently, Stevie Wonder used to have a place around one corner, as had Wesley Snipes before he ran afoul of the taxman.
Not that you could see much—partly because it was dark, but mostly because each of the places were spread out in the distance behind massive gates.
Leo Molinari wasn’t a household name. But he’d made a fortune peddling small electronics. Enough so he could reside in a compound of his own beside the elite in the small town of Alpine, New Jersey.
The Uber driver pulled up in front of stone gates and Grant dug into his wallet and gave the man a sizable cash tip, and then asked if he’d wait to take him back to the city.
“Fine by me, man,” the driver said. “That way I don’t have to deadhead back into Manhattan.”
Grant got out of the car. As he approached a post with a bell and speaker, he glanced behind him. The road was empty, but he was fairly certain that someone was back there watching him with their lights off, having followed him from the city.
He rang the bell and waited a half minute before a young woman’s voice came over the speaker. “Yes?”
He used his former title, figuring the words commander and Scotland Yard would get him through the door, and said he wished to speak to Leo Molinari. There was a bit of a hesitation, as he could tell he was being checked out by whatever cameras were hidden nearby. He must have passed the eye test; a sixty-something man in a suit didn’t pose much of a threat, as consequently there was a buzz. The gates opened and Grant proceeded up the long driveway.
Strategic lighting illuminated impressive landscaping and the Tudor mansion in the middle of it. Grant thought about his tea garden in Maida Vale, realizing a couple dozen would have fit on the property—and that was just in the front yard.
It took a couple of minutes to reach the front door. By the time he got there, it had swung open and the woman who’d answered the bell was waiting for him.
“Mrs. Molinari?”
“Sophia. Please, Commander.”
“Austin. I’m not here in any official capacity,” Grant said with a smile, making sure to get that clarification out of the way as soon as possible.
Sophia nodded, and despite the toddler clinging to her hip and the bulging belly of a woman fairly far along in her pregnancy, she managed to gracefully usher Grant inside the front door.
