Seven Minutes to Noon

television: that they were crazed killers, every one. Probably a simplistic assumption.
    “Mostly they’re con artists, manipulators, rarely violent. They blend in really well.” Frannie yawned. “That’s what makes them so dangerous.”
    Alice pulled the red blanket over her knees. It was starting to get cold.
    “So this Analise,” Alice said, “passed herself off as Christina pretending to be Sylvie?”
    “Right.”
    “And Analise wanted to destroy Christina’s birth parents by making it seem like they were killing tenants?” The convolutions were making Alice’s head spin.
    “Shh!” Lizzie shook her head at Alice and shifted her eyes to the children in a silent admonishment not to scare them.
    Alice got up from the couch, slinging the red blanket over her shoulders. Mike and Simon were in the kitchen, so she went upstairs where she could finish the conversation in private.
    “We don’t think so,” Frannie said. “We’re not sure, but we think she might have come here to try to extract some money from them. You know, she would pretend to be Christina, work their heartstrings. But then her plans changed.”
    “Why?” Alice settled onto her bed in the guest room. Peter had left his Curious George doll on a pillow and Alice held its furry brown head against her chest.
    “We’re not sure,” Frannie answered. “But she never asked them for money. She took information. She wove a pretty complicated cover for what she did to Lauren.”
    “You mean her change of plans was deciding to kill Lauren? And take Ivy?” It seemed incredible. “Why?”
    “We don’t know for sure at the moment.”
    But Alice did. Suddenly it was perfectly clear. Maggie was right, again. The little bitch had been in love. She wanted her man. But he was a devoted father and would never have left his children.
    “Frannie?” Alice held Peter’s doll tight under her neck, pressing her chin down on its soft head, bolstering herself.
    “Say it, Alice.”
    “It was one of us after all.”
    Alice heard a buzzer sound in Frannie’s background and a woman saying, “I’ll get it.” She realized she knew absolutely nothing about Frannie’s life.
    “Do you know where he is?” Frannie asked calmly.
    Alice was momentarily shocked by the question. Did Frannie honestly think Alice would protect an accomplice to Lauren’s killer? Lauren’s worst betrayer?
    “You’re joking, Frannie, aren’t you?”
    “I don’t really joke much.”
    “I’ve noticed that.”
    “Listen, Alice, I’m a detective. I have to ask.”
    Alice rolled over onto her left side to accommodate one of the twins, who had started to kick under her right rib cage. “If I had the answer to that question, Frannie, I would tell you.”
    “I know you would,” Frannie said.
    Alice let it go at that. The truth was, she had no idea of what Frannie really thought of her. And it didn’t much matter. Frannie was very good at her job, smart and determined, and Alice respected her even if she hadn’t made a new friend.
    After that, minutes and hours and days slipped by. Nearly a whole week.
    Tim Barnet and Analise Krup were hotly sought by every agency of law under the sun. And Ivy too. It was assumed now that they had her with them, hiding in some remote country. But wherever they were, how had they gotten there without a trace? And how had no one spotted them and sent word? Even if they were in a country with no extradition treaty, hamstringing the FBI, someone surely would have seen them. There were many calls, many sightings, but none were accurate. Were they too plain a family to notice — American father, French mother, little boy and baby sister? A psychopathic unit expert at slipping under the radar? And what about sweet Austin — how badly had they twisted his mind?
    Alice tried not to cry now when she recalled the sight of Lauren’s wrecked body. Once the floodgates opened, she couldn’t close them and it all started again: insomnia, nausea, incessant trolling of the Internet, fruitless calls to Frannie Viola. Alice steeled herself against the memory of those wretched days in which she suffered the murder of her best friend and learned the awful truth of what could go on beneath the surface of a family’s apparently happy life.
    Six days passed with blissful uneventfulness, each calm hour a promise that the last one had been real. It was over, Alice thought; finally over. Until one afternoon — after a flash storm on the last humid day of a