Seven Minutes to Noon

the black market?
    It seemed far too complicated to Alice. She didn’t truly believe Sylvie could have lived among them for so long and undertaken such a dramatic series of crimes. A simplicity was lacking in the convergence of all the stories. Even after all Erin Brinkley’s analyses, Alice wasn’t fully convinced.
    A phone conversation with Frannie later that evening confirmed Alice’s skepticism. “Brinkley’s a drama queen,” Frannie said. “Sometimes she comes up with a good angle, but I’m telling you, other times we laugh at her around here.”
    “Have you met her, Frannie?”
    “A few times. She’s about twenty-four years old, shares a desk at the Times with another cub reporter. You know the drill. She’s trying to fight her way up the ladder. Probably figures if she wins a Pulitzer Prize, they’ll give her her own desk.”
    It made sense, the young, undisciplined reporter slipping guesswork into observation, keeping just this side of fact.
    “There’s always a story behind the story,” Frannie said.
    “Tell me the rest.” Alice shifted on the couch, trying to get comfortable. Frannie’s hesitancy on the other end of the line told her she wasn’t sure how much she should say. Maybe she was sitting at her desk in the PDU, surrounded by male colleagues who would accuse her of gossiping. “Are you at work right now?”
    “Actually I’m home,” Frannie said.
    “Good, then you can talk to me, Frannie. I’ve been part of this from the beginning. I was supposed to be the next set of initials on a pillow. It’s part of my life story and I need to know.”
    On the floor in front of her, Nell, Peter and Ethan were building a city out of shoe boxes, blocks and Lego. Lizzie was on the floor with them, constructing her own corner of their empire. Alice vaguely watched them, her mind tuned to Frannie’s voice.
    “All right,” Frannie said. “But I might give it to youout of order. I’ve never had much trouble sleeping, but after the last few days I know exactly how you feel with your insomnia.”
    “Crazy,” Alice said. “Myopic. Right?”
    “Well, I’m not hearing things—” Frannie chuckled.
    “Good try.” Alice said. “I’m not one bit fazed. Go on.”
    “First of all, that ZL on the pillow? It panned out to nothing. No one with those initials came up missing.”
    “So there wasn’t any other missing pregnant woman?” Alice asked.
    “And there’s still nothing on Christine Craddock. Zip. So as far as we’re concerned, she’s not part of this picture. All the stuffing in the pillows, except for Lauren’s hair, was standard pillow foam.”
    “You were checking DNA for other hair strands in the peony pillow,” Alice said, wondering if traces of Ivy’s hair had turned up with Lauren’s.
    “We found Sylvie’s hair, but that’s no big surprise at this point; her prints were all over the crime scene.”
    “You mean Christina,” Alice said. “I read the paper, remember?”
    “It’s a bad habit, Alice.” Frannie paused. “So you know Christina Dreux was the baby Judy gave up for adoption.”
    “Was Erin Brinkley right, then?” Alice asked. “She did come back for some kind of twisted revenge?”
    “That’s what Brinkley wants all of New York to think because it makes such a good story, right?”
    “It’s kind of confusing, I think,” Alice answered, watching the children run their little trucks along a road through their city.
    “It’s confusing,” Frannie said, “because it’s wrong.”
    Lizzie caught Peter’s hand just before it knocked into the base of a tall tower.
    “Christina Dreux was never here. Analise Krup was. She’s a German girl who grew up in Paris. Her mother was a translator; it was just the two of them. Analise met Christina in nursing school and they became goodfriends. Christina decided to find out who her birth parents were and her father helped her. He’s a diplomat, so he has access to all that information. Her parents respected her desire to know, and she found out, but decided not to act on it.”
    “But Analise did, right?” Alice asked.
    “Right.”
    Nell stepped into the city and knocked down an entire neighborhood. Peter and Lizzie shrieked, No! but it was too late. Ethan immediately scrambled to rebuild.
    “Her mother put us in touch with her therapist,” Frannie said. “He said Analise is a classic psychopath. Do you know anything about psychopaths, Alice?”
    “No, not really.” Only what she had learned on