Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (37 page)

“Well, that explains him going to the church,” Meltzer said. “He’s a religious guy.”

“Zoning and deeds aren’t showing any renovations or additions to the property since
he’s owned it,” I read. “The house was built in nineteen thirty. Two small closets.
No basement. No receipts yesterday. Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t using his debit
card. Same on January seventeenth. Nothing to alibi him out. He was divorced seven
years ago. And he has a ten-year-old daughter.”

Meltzer’s head shot up. We both thought of Tracy Davidson, of the baby she’d given
birth to ten years ago.

“Welcome to the dark side,” I told Meltzer.

34

“Mr. Tray, Hitchiti County Sheriff.” Meltzer raised his voice and let go of the second
round of loud cop-knocks. My headache skirted across the ridgeline over my eyes, but
the fist in my temple had relented with lunch. The silver Honda was parked in a driveway
that had been poured with cement years ago and since broken away, exposing dirt tire
trenches. The house was olive green, the kind of house a thirty-hour-a-week music
teacher’s salary could buy. Fat white oaks shaded its shingled roof.

The sheriff banged again. “Mr. Tray, please open the door. It’s important I speak
with you.”

“I’ll check the back.” I went down the wooden porch steps, rounded the corner of the
house—and slammed into Daniel Tray.

Tray staggered back. His right palm flew to his heart. “Good grief. Ms. Street!” He
was wearing snug knee-length shorts that made his hips seem wider and his legs thinner,
army green like his house. The golf shirt was cobalt. The collar curled at the tips
from the dryer.

“Doing some yard work?” I asked. He was holding a shovel.

“Are you going to accuse me of burying bodies in the backyard?” He jammed the edge
of the spade in the dirt with one swift, hard movement. He was stronger than he looked
and he was definitely more comfortable on home turf. “Because you already practically
accused
me of, let’s see, meeting my students inappropriately. Do you have any idea what even
the suggestion of that could do to me? I happen to like teaching music to kids, Ms.
Street. I don’t do it because I’m sexually attracted to children. I do it because
it’s fulfilling, okay?”

“Nice,” I said. “I can see you’ve given this some thought. We just need to clear up
a few things, Mr. Tray, and we’ll be out of your hair. I know you’d want us to do
the same if it were your daughter.”

Tray’s greenish eyes darkened and drifted over my shoulder. Meltzer joined us. “I
don’t want my neighbors to think—” Tray said.

“We parked a couple of doors down,” Meltzer told him.

“Look, I was upset when I found out about Skylar,” Tray told us. His left hand was
still on the shovel, stuck in the earth. “And I know I must have looked suspicious
to you. It was just such a shock. Skylar was a sweet kid.”

My heart hit my stomach.
Was
. She
was
a sweet kid. The condensing unit a foot away buzzed and clicked on. Hot air from
the rusty fan inside rustled our clothes and made a row of tall iris stems shimmy
against the side of the house.

“Is there somewhere we could sit and talk?” Meltzer asked. His voice was friendly,
a daddy voice, a bedtime-story voice, a voice that made you forget he was wondering
if you were a killer of girls. Tray gave another glance at the street. Meltzer pressed
a little harder. “We don’t have time to spare right now, Mr. Tray.”

Tray’s shoulders slumped. He pulled the shovel out of the dirt and leaned it against
the house. He led us around back to a small stone patio. I saw a four-foot Japanese
maple sitting in fresh dirt. A tag still hung on one branch limb. The aluminum shed
Neil had seen on satellite was open to a lawn mower and neatly stacked garden tools.
We sat down at a metal table, a bright orange umbrella overhead. I looked at the row
of woods behind the house. You can hide a lot in the woods.

“You lied about what time you left school yesterday,” I said. “Why?”

“I don’t even know for sure what time I left, okay?” Tray’s long, bony arms were propped
on the gritty tabletop. “I came straight home.”

“Did you talk to anyone or see anyone?” Meltzer was leaning back in the metal chair,
long body relaxed. “Skylar was abducted just a
little after three. We have a witness who saw you leave the school at two, but we
can’t find anyone who saw you after that.”

“I didn’t know I’d need a story.” Tray’s eyes were watering, as if he were looking
into the sun.

“You remember where you were when Melinda Cochran disappeared?” I asked.

“I was at school when I heard about Melinda.”

“But you don’t remember where you were that day? January seventeenth?”

“I was at work.”

“The attendance records show you as absent that day.”

His right hand opened and closed. Fear blazed in his eyes. “I only used two sick days
during the last school year. And if one of them was the day Melinda disappeared, I
swear to God it was just some freak coincidence—”

“Okay, so here’s what’s going to happen,” Meltzer interposed, before I could speak
again. His voice stayed even but I felt the coiled energy coming off him. “I’m going
to cuff you like a common criminal and bring you in for questioning as a person of
interest in the kidnap and murders of Tracy Davidson and Melinda Cochran, and in Skylar
Barbour’s abduction. I’m going to haul you in the back of that plainly marked vehicle
through town with all the windows down. That’s going to create a lot of buzz. We may
even tip that reporter hanging around town. And then we’re going to pick apart every
infinitesimal piece of your private life until we understand why you’re lying about
where you were yesterday at three—”

“Whoa!” Tray held up both palms. “Just whoa. Okay, listen.” His fist clenched again.
His gaze skittered away from us. He was deciding what to tell, figuring out what to
let go of, what to color. “I’ll tell you but you can’t tell anyone.”

Meltzer’s eyebrow came up. We exchanged a glance.

“Let me get this straight.” Meltzer leaned forward. “You want to cut a deal or you’ll
withhold information in a homicide investigation? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m seeing someone. Okay? She’s married.” Tray’s words came out in a panicked torrent.

“This
she
have a name?” Meltzer asked.

“Yes,” Tray answered quietly. And I suddenly knew why he’d run to church today. His
lover was an adulterer, and he’d lied to me to cover their deception. A big deal for
a guy who gives a good chunk of his income to Christian ministries.

“Good Lord,” I muttered quietly. I’d sensed deception and rooted out an affair, not
a killer. I pinched the bridge of my nose, closed my eyes for a second, as the sheriff
took the name of Tray’s afternoon booty call. Daniel Tray wasn’t our guy.

The breeze spun the umbrella sticking through the hole in the table like a pinwheel
and brought us the smell of fermenting apples from a tree next door. I saw them on
the ground, brown and rotting, saw the yellow jackets buzzing greedily around them.

Small towns
, I thought.

35

A poster with Skylar’s face was taped to a telephone pole. The word
MISSING
over the photo. We sat there looking at it.
RAISE AWARENESS AND HELP BRING SKYLAR HOME! CANDLELIGHT PRAYER—FRIDAY 8:30 P.M.—WHISPER
PARK
. The minister’s wife came out of the hardware store where we were parked. She put
a stack of posters on the sidewalk, then taped another poster to the front door. She
saw us and waved. We waved back. She wasn’t smiling either.

“Let me talk to the florist,” I told Meltzer. “I think she’s more likely to talk about
her private life off the record.”

“Right.” He nodded. “I’ll speak to Bernadette and hit the coffee shop. Are you opposed
to more caffeine?”

“Never,” I said fervently.

I signed hello to Bernadette Hutchins, then crossed the street and walked three stores
up. The door was stenciled in white.
PACE FLORAL DESIGN. MON–SAT 9:00–5:00. CLOSED FOR LUNCH 12:00–1:00
. Below that, someone had taped another
MISSING
poster.

Inside, roses in cheap white vases and carnations stuffed into wet green foam with
baby’s breath and other greenery chilled behind glass doors. It all looked and smelled
like a funeral to me. The bell had jangled when I opened the door and she’d looked
up from a pile of long-stem roses on the counter, clippers in her right hand. She
was
brown-eyed and pretty in a simple way. Plain, my mother would have labeled her after
a
Bless her heart
or two.

“May I help you?” she asked, but I saw her lips tighten. She knew who I was and why
I was there. Tray had warned her. It had probably sounded something like:
She’s Chinese
.

“Mrs. Pace?”

She snipped a leaf off a rose stem, then cut the end at an angle and put it in a different
pile. “The driver will be back soon,” she told me, keeping her eyes and hands on her
work. I had a feeling she wasn’t very happy with her boyfriend at the moment.

“My name is Keye Street. I’m working with the sheriff’s department. I think you already
know that. And why I’m here. This won’t take but a minute,” I said.

She clipped another stem. She still wasn’t looking at me. “I’ve been seeing Dan for
over two years. I know it’s wrong. But I’ve been so unhappy—do you have to tell my
husband?” she asked quietly. “He thinks I have Jazzercise.”

Five minutes later, I walked out of the floral chill into the searing sun. Meltzer
was crossing the street with two tall plastic cups. Bernadette Hutchins was several
doors up with her posters, Skylar’s face plastered all over. “Latte, frozen. For the
city girl. How’d it go?” As Meltzer handed it to me, I saw two women staring out the
drugstore window across the street.

“They’ve been meeting for two years twice a month,” I said. “Ferrell verified the
reservation at the Marriott in the resort area.”

“That leaves one suspect on our board,” he said grimly. “He’s been in his cave since
he left us this morning. And you don’t like him for this. So where does that leave
us?”

I glanced at the coffee shop next to the drugstore. More curious eyes peering out.
“I could be wrong but I simply don’t think it’s possible for Peele
not
to be noticed. I mean, come on, he has a red Fu Manchu and arms like a weight lifter.
And as far as we can tell, Peele is a stranger to all three girls. Besides, no one
will ever know about the crimes Peele is or isn’t committing. He doesn’t want to go
back to jail. He’s not going to send me letters.”

“So why doesn’t he just alibi out of yesterday and end this?” Meltzer
answered his own question. “You think he has an alibi that he’s not using. Because
he likes stringing us along.”

“It does cost you time and resources,” I told him. “And he probably is hiding something.”

I saw a flash in the window across the street, a reflection, and turned to see what
it was. Brenda Roberts’s cameraman leaned against a lamppost twenty feet away. His
camera was pointed our way. I didn’t see the reporter. Meltzer followed my eyes. We
started walking toward his vehicle, our backs to the camera. “I’d love to bring Peele
in,” he said. “I could hold him for a while without charging him. But if he is our
man, you know he’s not going to tell us where Skylar is. And who knows if …” He stopped.

“He’d let her die,” I said, finishing his thought. “Which is another reason we can’t
rule him out. That’s exactly the kind of man we’re looking for.”

We got in the truck. Meltzer looked back at the street. “Camera’s still on us,” he
grumbled.

“Must be getting stock footage. I don’t see Roberts.”

Meltzer sighed. “They’ve got me coming out of a coffee shop. The only thing that could
make that more clichéd would be if I had a doughnut in my hand.”

“And a beer belly,” I said.

A single bell tolled on the sheriff’s phone. He tucked his cup between his legs and
pressed the phone against his left temple. “Meltzer,” he said. He listened. “How long
was he gone?” His right thumb turned the small ruby on his ring finger in tiny, uneasy
half circles. “Stand by, Major.” He put the phone against his leg. “Plainclothes unit
on Peele said he jogged by them thirteen minutes ago. Hooded sweatshirt, shorts, sweaty.
He was going
home
. Which means he slipped out and we don’t know how long he was unaccounted for.”