The Couple Next Door

“You’ve seen him before?” Marco asks in surprise.

She turns her head and looks at him again. “I told you.”

She had, but he hadn’t really believed her. At the time he’d just thought it was the power of suggestion.

“Where did you see him?”

“It was a long time ago,” she whispers. “He’s a friend of my father’s.”

THIRTY-THREE

Marco freezes. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She sounds strange, not like herself. Can he trust anything she says? Marco thinks rapidly. Richard and Derek Honig. The cell phone.

Was this whole thing a setup? Has Richard been controlling this nightmare from behind the scenes? Has Richard had Cora all along?

“I’m sure I’ve seen him with my father, when I was younger,” Anne says. “He knows him. Why would my father know the man who took our baby, Marco? Don’t you think that’s strange?” She sounds like she’s drifting away.

“It’s strange all right,” Marco says slowly. He remembers his suspicions when he’d used the secret cell phone and his father-in-law had answered. Was this the missing link? Honig had approached him, out of the blue. He had befriended Marco, listened to his troubles. He got Marco to trust him. He urged Marco to ask Richard for more money, and then Richard turned him down. What if they were in collusion and Richard had turned down his request for more money knowing that Honig would be there, waiting to pick up the pieces? Honig had suggested the kidnapping that same day. What if this had all been carefully orchestrated by Marco’s father-in-law? Marco feels ill. If so, he has been even more duped than he thought, and by the man he most dislikes in the world.

“Anne,” Marco says, and then the words spill out in a rush, “Derek Honig found me. He befriended me. He urged me to ask your father for more money. Then, the day your father turned me down for another loan, he showed up again, as if he knew. It was like he knew I’d be desperate. That’s when he suggested the kidnapping.” Marco feels as if he’s emerging from a bad dream, that things are finally starting to make sense. “What if your father is behind this, Anne?” He says urgently, “I think he got Honig to approach me, to set me up for the kidnapping. I’ve been played, Anne!”

“No!” Anne says stubbornly. “I can’t believe it. My father would never do that. Why would he? What possible reason could he have?”

It wounds Marco that she seems to have no difficulty believing that he could murder a man with a spade in cold blood yet can’t believe that her father would set him up. But he must remember that she’s seen that damning video. That would shatter the faith of anyone. He must tell her the rest. “Anne, the cell phone, in the duct. The one Honig and I were using.”

“What about it?”

“After you found it, I noticed that there were some missed calls—someone had called from Honig’s cell phone. So I called the number again. And . . . your father answered.”

She looks at him in disbelief.

“Anne, he was expecting it to be me on the other end of the phone. He knew I’d taken Cora. I asked him how he got the phone. He said the kidnappers had mailed it to him, with a note, like the onesie. He said the kidnappers got in touch with him because it was in the newspapers that your parents were the ones who’d paid the ransom. He said they were asking for more money for Cora, that he was going to pay it, but he made me promise not to tell you. He said he didn’t want to get your hopes up, in case it all fell apart.”

“What?” Anne’s face, dazed with suffering, now comes to life. “He’s been in touch with the kidnappers?”

Marco nods. “He said he was going to deal with them and get her back himself, because I’d fucked it all up.”

“When was this?” Anne asks breathlessly.

“Last night.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“He made me promise not to! In case things don’t work out. I’ve been trying to reach him all day, but he won’t call me back. I’ve been going out of my mind, not knowing what’s happening. I assume he hasn’t gotten her back, or we would have heard something.” But now Marco sees it differently. He’s been played by a master. “But, Anne—what if your father has known where Cora is all along?”

Anne looks like she can’t take in any more. She looks numb. Finally, her voice breaking, she asks, “But why would he do that?”

Marco knows why. “Because your parents hate me!” Marco says. “They want to destroy me, destroy our marriage, and get you and Cora back for themselves.”

Anne shakes her head. “I know they don’t like you—maybe they even hate you—but what you’re saying . . . I can’t believe it. What if he’s telling the truth? What if the kidnappers are in touch with my parents and he’s trying to get her back for us?” The hope in her voice is heartrending.

Marco says, “But you just said that your father knows Derek Honig. That can’t be a coincidence.”

There’s a long pause. Then she whispers, “Did he kill Derek Honig with the shovel?”

“Maybe,” Marco says uncertainly. “I don’t know.”

“What about Cora?” Anne whispers. “What’s happened to her?”

Marco takes her by the shoulders and looks into her eyes, which are big and frightened. “I think your father must have her. Or he knows who does.”

“What are we going to do?” Anne whispers.

“We have to think this through,” Marco says. He gets up from the sofa, too anxious to sit still. “If your father does have her, or knows where she is, we have two options. We can go directly to the police or we can confront him.”

Anne stares into space, as if her mind has become overwhelmed.

“Maybe we should talk to your father first, rather than going to the police,” Marco says uneasily. Marco doesn’t want to go to jail.

“If we go to my father,” Anne says, “I can talk to him. He’ll give Cora back to me. He’ll be sorry, I know he will. He just wants me to be happy.”

Marco stops pacing and looks at his wife, questioning her grip on reality. If it’s true that Derek Honig was a friend of her father’s, then it could well be true that her father manipulated Marco into financial desperation, into kidnapping their child. Her father might have orchestrated the deception at the exchange; he might have murdered a man in cold blood. He has caused his daughter intense pain. He doesn’t care if she’s happy. He just wants things his way.

He is utterly ruthless. For the first time, Marco realizes what an adversary he has in his father-in-law. The man is possibly a sociopath. How many times had Richard told him that to succeed in business one had to be ruthless? Maybe that was it—maybe he was trying to teach Marco a lesson about ruthlessness.

Anne says suddenly, “Maybe my father is not part of this. Maybe Derek befriended you, and manipulated you, because he knew my father and knew he has money. But my father might not know anything about it. He might not know that Derek was the kidnapper—he might have gotten the phone and the note in the mail, like he said.” She seems more lucid again.

Marco thinks about this. “It’s possible.” But he believes that Richard is running things behind the scenes. He feels it in his gut.

“We have to go over there,” Anne says. “But you can’t just barge in and accuse him. We don’t know for sure what’s going on. I can tell him that I know you took Cora and that you gave her to Derek Honig. That we need his help getting her back. If my father is involved in this, we have to give him a way out. We have to pretend he had nothing to do with it, beg him to work with the kidnappers, to figure out how to get Cora back to us.”

Marco thinks about what she’s said and nods. Anne seems more like herself again, and he’s relieved. Besides, she’s right—Richard Dries isn’t the kind of man you back into a corner. The important thing is to get Cora home again.

“And maybe my father isn’t behind it at all. Maybe he really is in touch with the kidnappers,” Anne says. She so obviously wants to believe that her father wouldn’t do this to her.