Seven Minutes to Noon

wasn’t capable of anything so horrible as what happened to Lauren. “It made sense, Mags, didn’t it? Even you defended him at the time. He had to go.”
    “I’ve been thinking about it,” Maggie said. “Simon stayed around when things got tough, and I really gave him hell.”
    “He stayed because of Ethan.”
    “Partly, yes,” Maggie said. “But he also stayed because this is his home. Tim left because he didn’t feel comfortable here. In this place. With us. Something else had changed. Don’t you see it?”
    Alice did and she didn’t. If Maggie was right, then the detectives had been doubly right in thinking from the start that one of the friends had been guilty in Lauren’s death. They had already connected Sylvie to the crime scene. Wasn’t that enough?
    If Alice had learned anything through all this, it was not to jump to conclusions. One thing she knew for surewas that people who cared about this case were burning the midnight oil. Frannie, Giometti and Dana were at the precinct right now, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the FBI. Police were swarming over the city all the way to Kennedy airport and beyond looking for Sylvie, hoping to pick up a trail that might lead to one lost baby girl.

Chapter 41
    “What time is it?” Pam looked down at her body, which even beneath the white sheet showed that she had lost about twenty pounds. “Where am I?”
    “You mean what day is it,” Ray said, looking both enervated and wildly alert.
    “No, Raymond,” Esther corrected, “she means what week is it.”
    “I see Click and Clack haven’t lost any love for each other.” Pam winked at Alice, who had just stepped into the room behind Frannie and Giometti. She had persuaded them to let her come along in the hope that seeing her might help jog Pam’s memory of the days just before her attack.
    “Look at you!” Pam reached out to touch Alice’s stomach. “Do you hate it when people do that? Maybe I have been here awhile; you look a size bigger. We had an appointment, I think—”
    “We saw the house,” Alice said, not knowing where to begin. The house was the last thing on her mind right now, after her children’s recovery, after Pam’s luminous eyes, her smile, her boisterous wakefulness, her life.
    “Strange,” Pam said somewhat wearily, but not without the verve that had made her voice so powerful on a good day. Alice felt a wave of relief, even joy. “Mom says I overslept but, to be honest, I don’t feel that rested.” She leaned back into her pillows. “Listen, people,I’ve got something I’ve got to say. Alice, you won’t like it. Have a seat.”
    Ray immediately scraped a chair across the floor to Pam’s bedside and gently guided Alice into it.
    “It might interest you two coppers too.” Pam winked, not losing a chance to dig in a proverbial elbow.
    Frannie smiled. Alice only now noticed that Frannie’s bangs had grown long in the last two weeks, touching her eyebrows, threatening her eyes. She needed a haircut, and some sleep, and probably a decent meal. When all this was over, Alice decided, she would invite Frannie over for dinner at the new house. Get to know her as a friend, fan what had sparked between them that first day on the playground when she was a local aunt out for a romp at the playground like everyone else.
    “Go ahead,” Frannie told Pam. She glanced at Giometti, who pulled his small notepad out of his shirt pocket and uncapped his pen.
    “Too much talk could tire her out,” Esther said, “after what she’s been through.”
    “We’ll stop if she gets too tired,” Frannie said, “but this may be important.”
    “You hear that, Mom? It’s important. So let me talk.” Pam cleared her voice and was about to begin when Ray interrupted.
    “You want I should take some photos?” Ray suddenly asked. “Document the conversation? I have my camera right here.”
    “You got it working?” Pam asked.
    “Honey, I got you with every visitor, every doctor, every nurse. I filled an album already!”
    “Not that tacky black and red one, I hope.”
    “Not that one. I bought something new, something you’re going to love.”
    Pam and Ray exchanged adoring glances.
    “That’s okay,” Giometti said, indicating his notepad. “This’ll be fine.”
    Ray shrugged his shoulders and positioned himselfagainst the wall at the head of Pam’s bed, one hand resting on her shoulder as she spoke. She lifted her left hand to cover his, and began.
    “Our sweet