Read Fear the Worst: A Thriller Online
Authors: Linwood Barclay
Tags: #Thrillers, #Suspense, #Fiction
Fear the Worst: A Thriller (12 page)
He brushed the hair away again. “Whaddya want from me?”
“I want to know anything you can tell me about Sydney and what might have happened to her.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“You liked her living in your house, I’ll bet.”
“No big deal. So we lived under the same roof a few weeks. She had her life and I had mine.”
“Did you spend time together?”
“Huh?”
“Did you hang out?”
“We had meals together. Sometimes I had to tell her to move her ass so I could use the bathroom.” That seemed unlikely. Bob’s house had several.
“You didn’t think it was kind of cool? Her moving into your dad’s place?”
“You make it sound like something it wasn’t,” he said.
“Did you introduce her to your friends?”
“You don’t know anything about my friends. You don’t know anything about me.” He glared.
“You do drugs, Evan? Do any of your friends sell drugs?”
“You’re crazy. I have to get this car cleaned up.”
I asked, “Why are you stealing?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Fuck you.”
“The petty cash, Susanne’s watch that went—”
“She found that watch.”
“So I hear. You don’t want to deny the petty cash, too?”
That caught him off guard. “Does my dad know you’re talking to me?”
“Should we go get him? Then I can ask you, with him present, whether you broke into my house.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I don’t know where this is coming from, but you’re totally nuts.”
“What are you doing on the computer all the time?”
He grinned. “She’s telling you all this shit, isn’t she?”
“She?” I said.
“She’s not my mother, okay? Just because she’s my dad’s girlfriend doesn’t give her the right to spy on me, and then go blabbing to you about what she’s found out.”
“Evan, can I tell you something? Right now, I’m cutting you a whole lot of slack, because the other day, I heard you refer to my ex-wife as a bitch, and right now, all I really want to do is rip your head off. But I’ve decided to be nice, because all that matters to me is finding Sydney. And there’s something about you, I don’t know what it is, but it’s like a bad smell, and I can’t help but think that whatever’s happened to Syd may have something to do with you.”
He shook his head and tried to laugh it off. “You’re a piece of work.”
He hit the switch on the vacuum and turned away from me. I was about to grab him by the shoulder when I heard someone shout, “Tim!”
I turned. Bob Janigan was standing in the open garage doorway. He shouted my name a second time.
I strode over to him, said, “You need to find out what’s up with your boy,” and walked back to my car.
B
ACK ON THE ROAD, MY CELL RANG.
“What happened?” Susanne asked.
“Our—my house was broken into while I was in Seattle. The place was trashed, searched from top to bottom. Some cash got stolen. Maybe some other stuff, too. I don’t know. And when the police looked around, they found what I’m guessing was cocaine.”
“What?”
“I think Evan knows more than he’s saying.”
Susanne said, “Bob says if you ever go near Evan again he’ll kill you.”
“It’s my other line, Suze. I have to go.”
I
T WAS A CRIMINAL LAWYER NAMED
E
DWIN
C
HATSWORTH.
He was part of the firm I used whenever I needed legal matters dealt with. Like a failed business, but also property matters, title transfers, that kind of thing. Once, a dissatisfied customer had threatened to sue me personally, as opposed to the dealership that employed me, over a used car that turned out to be a genuine lemon.
I’d put in a call to the firm between leaving home and going to see Evan. They said it sounded like a job for Edwin, and promised he would get back to me.
I spelled it out for him the best I could.
“Just guessing,” he said, “but I’d be very surprised if they go ahead with any charges over the coke, assuming it is coke and not a Baggie full of baking soda.”
“Because?”
“Like you said. You invited the cops into your home. The place had been broken into. People other than you had an opportunity to put the drugs in your bed. A judge would toss it out before they’d finished their opening arguments.”
“You sure?”
“No. But that’s what my gut tells me. And this Detective Jennings, don’t talk to her anymore.”
“But she’s also looking for my daughter. I can’t not talk to her about that.”
Chatsworth mulled that one over. “Don’t trust her. She starts veering the conversation to what was in the house, you say nothing without me being there. There’s no way they can prove those drugs were yours.”
“They weren’t. They’re not my drugs.”
“Hey, did I ask you that?”
T
HE BAG
I’
D PACKED FOR THE TRIP TO
S
EATTLE
was back in my car. I’d walked into the house with it but, after discovering the state my place was in, never unpacked. And now that Kip Jennings wasn’t going to let me sleep in my own house that night, I’d hung on to the bag.
I went into the mall and had a slice of pepperoni pizza in the food court. I watched all the young people walking by. Tried to catch the faces of all the teenage girls.
You never stopped looking.
Then I got back in the car and drove over to the Just Inn Time. Carter and Owen, the two men who’d been on the front desk the night I’d come in trying to find Syd, were on once again.
I walked up to the counter and said, “I’d like a room.”
SIXTEEN
A
ND THAT’S JUST WHAT IT WAS
.
A room. A generic, nondescript, plain room. A patternless blue spread covered the double bed in the center. Dull white shades covered the lamps flanking the bed. The bedroom walls were beige, much like the bathroom and the towels and the halls and everything else in this budget-minded hotel.
But that said, it was also clean and well kept. The bathroom came equipped with soap and shampoo and a hair dryer. The closet had one of those mini-safes you can program with a four-digit code, suitable for holding a passport, a video camera, and a few thousand in unmarked bills.
The hotel hadn’t yet moved to fancy flat-screen, wall-mounted TVs. And while the bulky set sitting atop the dresser seemed to be from a couple of decades ago, you could still order up movies—including ones with titles like
She’ll Be Cummin’ Round the Mountain When She Cums
—if you were so inclined.
I flipped through the channels, left Dr. Phil on in the background to exploit some miserable family stupid enough to air their dirty laundry for the entertainment pleasure of millions, and looked out the second-floor window. I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. Maybe I thought staring at the Howard Johnson restaurant and hotel off in the distance, the cars and trucks whizzing past on I-95, would somehow provide a clue as to where Syd had gone after I’d dropped her off out front of the Just Inn Time.
It didn’t.
Watching those hundreds of cars and trucks and SUVs racing by, I couldn’t help thinking that if you were in one of those vehicles, in a few short hours you could be anywhere in New England. Boston or Providence, up to Maine. Maybe Vermont or New Hampshire. You could head west and north, be up in Albany in under three hours. Or closer to home, but harder to find, in Manhattan.
And that would just be the same day you got in one of those cars. By now, weeks later, a person could be almost anywhere.
If that person was alive.
I’d been trying very hard, since the moment she’d gone missing, not to let my mind go there. As long as there was no definitive evidence that harm had come to her, I had to believe she was fine. Lost—at least to Susanne and me—but okay.
The image of that blood on Syd’s Civic, though, was a hard thing to get out of my head.
And there was an audio loop running through my head. It had been playing for weeks, always below the surface, like a hum, like background noise.
The loop was made up of questions that I kept asking over and over again.
W
here are you?
Are you okay?
What happened?
Why did you run?
What scared you?
Why won’t you get in touch?
Did you leave because I asked about the sunglasses, and then something happened that kept you from coming back?
Why can’t you just let me know you’re okay?
So around nine o’clock, a time of day when, as I’ve gotten older, I’m often ready to nod off, I wasn’t the slightest bit tired.
I went through the motions anyway. I unzipped the bag I’d taken to Seattle, and there was Milt the stuffed moose looking up at me.
“Oh shit,” I said, feeling slightly overwhelmed. I took him out and set him on one of the pillows.
I took my cell phone from my jacket and set it by the bed. I brushed my teeth, stripped down to my boxers, threw back the covers, and got into the bed. I channel-surfed for another ten minutes, then hit the light.
Stared at the ceiling for half an hour or so.
Light from Route 1—passing cars and trucks, the neon glow of the commercial strip—was flooding into the room. I thought maybe pulling together the drapes more tightly would block out the light and help me get to sleep.
I got out of the bed, padded across the industrial carpet, and grabbed one of the drapery wands. But before giving them a pull, I gazed out over this part of Milford. Traffic was thinning, except on the interstate, where it always seemed to be busy. Cars always appeared to be moving so slowly when viewed from some height.
The view of the nearby businesses from up here was actually pretty good. I could see many of the places I’d visited in the last few weeks. The Howard Johnson’s to the right, the other, small operations to the left.
I could clearly see the blood-red neon letters of XXX Delights, and half a dozen cars parked out front. I watched men, always alone, go into the store empty-handed, emerge a few minutes later with their evening’s entertainment packaged in plain brown paper.
A man coming around the corner of the building, where the flower shop was, caught my eye.
He walked across the lot, pointed a remote, and then the red lights of a van pulsed once. He opened the driver’s door and got in. I wasn’t certain, but it looked like the Toyota van belonging to Shaw Flowers.
Seemed kind of late for a delivery. Maybe Ian had use of the van any time he wanted. Maybe he had a hot date.
The van backed out of its spot, then nosed up to the edge of Route 1, waiting for a break in traffic.
The knock at the door nearly made me jump.
I turned away from the window, walked across the darkened room, and squinted through the peephole. Veronica Harp, the day manager.
“Hey!” I shouted through the closed door. “Give me a sec!”
I flicked one bedside table lamp, found the pants I’d draped over a chair, pulled them on hurriedly, threw on my shirt, and was still buttoning it when I opened the door.
“How are you?” I said.
She had traded in her corporate uniform for something more casual. Crisp, tailored jeans, heels, and a royal blue blouse. With her black hair and soulful eyes, you didn’t look at her and immediately think “grandmother.”
“Oh no,” she said, looking at my bare feet and the buttons I had left to do up. “I caught you at a bad time.”
“No,” I said, “it’s okay. I couldn’t sleep anyway.”
“I just popped in and Carter told me you were actually staying in the hotel,” she said. “I was so surprised.”
“I needed a room,” I said.
“Did something happen to your house? A fire?”
“Something like that,” I said. “I’m hoping I’ll be able to go back tomorrow. Get the place cleaned up.”
“That’s a terrible shame,” Veronica said, still framed in the doorway.
It seemed rude to make her stand there, so I opened the door wider for her to come inside. She took half a dozen steps in, and I let the door close behind her on its own. She glanced over at the unmade bed.
“Well, I’m delighted you chose this hotel. There are certainly nicer ones around,” she conceded.
“I guess, these days, I know this one best,” I said, and offered her a wry smile.
“I suppose you do,” she said, and smiled back.
I sidestepped back toward the window, took a quick look outside. It was more difficult to see, what with the room lights reflecting in the glass.
“Looking for something?” Veronica asked.
The van was gone.
“No, just, no, nothing,” I said.
“You know what?” Veronica said. “I’m intruding. A person should be able to check into a hotel without being pestered by the management.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said, stepping away from the window and doing up the last of my buttons. I felt a bit self-conscious about my bare feet, but thought it would be silly to pull my socks on at this point.
“So how’s that grandson of yours?” I asked.
Veronica brightened. “Oh, he’s wonderful. He’s always watching everything going on around him. I think he’s going to grow up to be an engineer or architect. He has these oversized building blocks in his crib and he’s playing with them all the time.”
“That’s great,” I said. Then, “Why did Carter tell you I was here?”
Veronica smiled. “He knows you and I’ve spoken a few times, and he knows how hard you’ve been working to find your daughter.”
“Maybe he’s tired of seeing me hanging around the parking lot,” I said.
“Well,” she said, and her voice trailed off. “No one could blame you. Anyone else in your position would be doing everything he could. So this fire? How bad was it?”
“It wasn’t a fire,” I said. “There was a break-in.”
Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh my. Did they take a lot?”
I shook my head slowly. “No. A bit of cash.”
“That’s an awful thing. You feel so violated.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Can I ask you a weird question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Would the hotel have a pair of binoculars?”
“Binoculars? What are you doing? Spying on someone?”
“No, never mind, forget it.”
“Why would you want binoculars?”
“Just passing the time, watching the cars go by. Looking at the trucks on the interstate.”
Veronica Harp’s eyebrows popped up briefly in puzzlement, but she didn’t pursue it. “Is there anything else I could get you? We don’t have room service here, but if you wanted a pizza or something I could arrange to have it delivered and we could add it to your room bill.”
“No, I’m good.”
She walked farther into the room, ran her hand across the top of the rumpled bedclothes, then asked, “Is your room okay?”
“Of course. It’s fine.”
She turned and faced me head-on, very little space between us.
“I feel that you’re such a sad man,” she said.
“I’m kind of going through a rough patch,” I said.
“I can see it in your eyes. Even before your daughter disappeared, were you sad?”
I wanted to change the subject. “Are you… What does your husband do?”
“He passed away two years ago,” she said, and pointed to her chest. “Heart.”
“He must have been young for a heart attack.”
“He was twenty years older,” she said. “I miss him very much.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said.
“If you didn’t know I had a grandchild, would you have guessed it?”
“No,” I said, honestly. “Not in a million years.”
She leaned in, tilted her head up. Before she could kiss me, I turned my head slightly and rested it on her shoulder, held her lightly for several seconds before gently moving her away and creating some distance between us.
“Veronica…”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You think it would be wrong, with your daughter…”
“I…”
“I know about sadness. I do. My life has been one sadness after another. But if you wait for all of them to be over before you allow yourself any pleasure, you’ll never have any.”
Part of me would have been happy to forget my problems. To put them aside, however briefly, for some human contact, sex without strings. But nothing about this felt right.
When I didn’t say anything, she understood we were done. She went to the bedside table and wrote a number on a pad bearing the hotel logo. She tore off the sheet and handed it to me.
“If you want to talk, or need anything, you call me. Anytime.”
“Thank you,” I said, and held the door for her as she slipped into the hall.
I leaned my back against the door for a second, let out a breath, then killed the lights and returned to the window.
There was something about Ian I couldn’t get out of my head. Something was off about the guy.
I wanted to know more about him. And for now, that meant watching the flower shop from my perch up in this hotel room.
But Ian had just left in the van. He could be gone for hours. What was I going to do? Just sit here all night and stare out the window?
I grabbed the remote, turned the TV to CNN for background noise. I heard Anderson Cooper’s voice, but didn’t listen to anything he had to say.
There was one cushy chair in the room—the one I’d used to hang my clothes on—and I dragged it over by the window so I could sit comfortably while I conducted my amateur surveillance. I leaned my head up against the glass, frosted it with my breath. I turned the TV so the screen didn’t reflect in the window.
This was dumb. What the hell was I doing, staring out the window, waiting for some flower delivery guy to return to his apartment? Maybe I was doing it because I couldn’t think of anything.
I got up, grabbed a pillow, sending Milt on a tumble, and put it between my head and the glass. As awkward as I must have looked, I was actually pretty comfortable.
So comfortable that I drifted off to sleep.
I woke myself up with my own snoring, the TV still blaring. I lifted my head away from the window and the pillow fell to the floor.
I was groggy and disoriented. For several seconds I didn’t know where I was. But quickly things started to make sense. The clock radio by the bed read 12:04.
I’m at the Just Inn Time. I’m staying here because my house has been trashed
.
It was all coming back to me.
And I was watching the florist shop
.
I blinked a couple of times and looked out the window. There were fewer cars on the road now. Only a couple of pickups were at the porn shop, which was still open.
The Toyota van was back. How long it had been there, I had no idea. But clearly Ian was back home and tucked in his—
Hang on.
Someone was coming around the back of the van and up the passenger side. The van must have just returned, and Ian had just gotten out the driver’s door.
He opened the passenger door, but no one stepped out. He leaned in, like he was undoing the seat belt for someone. But he stayed in that position for several seconds, like he was trying to get hold of something.
Then Ian eased slowly back out of the van, very carefully. He was carrying something large and cumbersome. It looked as though he had something slung over his shoulder, like a sack.
He backed up far enough to clear the door, slammed it shut. A streetlight was casting a soft glow in his direction. There was just enough light to see that Ian was carrying someone over his shoulder. Someone smaller than himself.
Someone with long, possibly blonde hair.
A girl.
And she wasn’t moving a muscle.
SEVENTEEN
I
STARTED RUNNING FOR THE DOOR IN MY BARE FEET
, stopped, grabbed my shoes, figuring I could slip them on and lace them up in the elevator.
“Phone,” I said, jerking myself to a stop a second time in as many seconds. I bolted over to the bedside table, reached for the phone, and ended up knocking it down between the bed and the table.
There wasn’t time to look for it.
I threw open the door and ran down the hall and hit the down button between the two elevators. I glanced up, saw they were both down in the lobby. Quickly, I slipped my shoes over sockless feet, hopping on one foot, then the other, then, almost as quickly, did up the laces.
Neither of the elevators had budged from the lobby.
I realized I’d hit the button—the kind that doesn’t actually depress but senses your finger there—so quickly, it hadn’t registered.
“Fuck it,” I said and ran to the end of the hall for the stairs. I took them two steps at a time, leaping down them like I was in some new sort of Olympic event. I came through the fire door on the first floor so hard it flew back and hit the wall. I sprinted down the hall and shouted to Carter as I passed him at the front desk: “Call the police!”
The motion-sensitive doors leading out of the hotel weren’t fast enough for me and I almost crashed through them. I hit the brakes just in time, then slipped through the opening the moment it was wide enough.
I realized then I didn’t have my keys, but even if I had I don’t know that I would have taken the time to get into my car and start it up. I was running flat out now and I didn’t want anything slowing me down.
I crossed Route 1 on an angle, only having to slow to let a taxi get by. There wasn’t much traffic at this hour. The small plaza with XXX Delights, Shaw Flowers, and a couple of other businesses was about a hundred yards ahead. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, and even as I ran I tried to remember the last time I’d run like this. I prayed I didn’t have a heart attack before I reached Ian’s apartment.
It’s Syd
, I told myself.
It’s her. He’s got her. He’s had her all along
.
But what the hell was he doing with her in the van? Moving her from one location to another? Actually, maybe that made some sense. He could hardly keep someone hidden in an apartment right behind the shop. Mrs. Shaw would hear something, notice something, wouldn’t she?
I’d reached the van and ran right past it.
It was dark around the back of the shop, but there was a single door with a light over it and a small curtained window to the side. There were lights on in the apartment.
I didn’t bother to knock.
I tried the door, but it was locked. I put my shoulder into it, tried to force it open, but it held.
From inside, a man, his voice filled with panic, shouted, “Who is it?”
“Open up!” I shouted. “Open the door!”
Again, he shouted, “Who is it!”
“Open the goddamn door!”
“I’m not opening the door till you tell me who it is!”
I reared back, lifted my leg, and hit the door with the heel of my shoe with all I had. The door gave way a couple of inches, held now only by a chain.
In the crack, I could see Ian standing in what appeared to be a small kitchen, dressed only in red boxers, his skin pale and freckly.
He was screaming.
I gave the door another kick and the chain ripped off. I came through the door and shouted at Ian, “Where is she?”
“Get out of here!” he shouted. “Get the fuck out of here!”
The kitchen area was part of a larger room that included a couch and a TV with a DVD player and a game console. It wasn’t much of a place, but for a young guy living alone, it was amazingly neat and tidy. No dirty dishes in the sink, no empty beer cans or pizza containers. A small collection of video game magazines was stacked perfectly on the coffee table.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“What?”
“Where is she?” I was shouting at the top of my lungs.
“Get out!” Ian shouted.
There were two doors on the far side of the room. I shoved Ian out of the way and went to the first one, flung it open, expecting a bedroom or closet or bathroom. But it was an entrance into the back of the florist shop.
I turned to the other door, and as I was putting my hand on the knob Ian pounced on me from behind like a cat. He wrapped his hands around my head, digging his fingers into my eyes and cheeks.
He was slight, which gave him the edge when it came to speed and nimbleness. I tried to get my fingers under his and pry him off, but he was hanging on. So I propelled myself backwards and into the wall, crushing the wind out of Ian. He let go and fell to the floor. He was up again in an instant, but this time I was ready for him. I put my fist into his face, catching him below his left eye.
That knocked him back a second time, giving me enough time to throw open the door and enter what turned out to be the bedroom.
It wasn’t much larger than a walk-in closet. A small dresser along one wall, a narrow door that must have been a closet, and a second door at the other end that was open and showed a sink and toilet.
There was just enough room for a single bed.
There was a person under the covers, and judging by the shape it definitely looked to be a young woman. Not moving. Drugged, I thought.
Or worse.
The covers were pulled high enough to hide everything but a few locks of blonde hair. Despite all the ruckus, she still hadn’t moved.
Oh dear God…
“Syd,” I said. “Syd?”
I sat on the edge of the bed and was about to pull down the covers when I sensed Ian coming through the door. I turned and pointed and fixed my eyes on him with such fury that he stopped.
“You make one move and I swear I’ll fucking kill you,” I said, barely able to get the words out I was panting so hard. Sweat was dripping off my brow, my shirt was plastered to me.
I pulled the covers back down to the girl’s shoulders. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Her skin looked rubbery, had an odd sheen to it.
“What the fuck?”
This girl was not Syd.
This girl was not a girl.
She was a doll.
EIGHTEEN
I
TURNED AROUND AND LOOKED AT
I
AN
, who stood in the doorway staring at me, his face flushed from our grappling and, I suspected, embarrassment.
“Just get out of here,” he said quietly. There was a bruise coming up on his cheek.
“I thought… I thought she… I thought it was my daughter.”
Ian just stared at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “When I saw you…”
“You were spying on me?”
“I saw you carry something in from your van.”
I put my hand around the doll’s arm, raised it up to get a sense of its weight. No wonder it was so easy for Ian to carry it in here. It couldn’t have weighed much more than ten or twenty pounds. The inside of the arm felt like pillow stuffing.
I got off the bed and moved past Ian into the main room.
“You bought that next door?” I said.
Ian nodded. His nearly naked body seemed to have caved in on itself. Instead of seeming menacing, he now bordered on pitiful. “Please don’t tell my aunt,” he said.
I lowered my head, shook it regretfully. “Yeah, sure. I’m sorry.” Then I remembered the command I’d shouted out to Carter as I’d run out of the Just Inn Time. We could probably expect to see the police here any moment.
I said to Ian, “You keep… it… here?”
Ian shook his head. “My aunt’s in here all the time, cleaning up, making me things to eat. I got a storage unit in Bridgeport where my family’s stuff is. I keep her there and bring her over sometimes, then take her back before my aunt gets here in the morning. Sometimes, we just go for a drive, maybe park down by the harbor for a while and listen to the radio and stuff.”
I didn’t want to think about the stuff.
I ran my hand through my hair. Now I understood why Ian had been so odd when I’d spoken to him before. It was because he was, well, odd.
“Listen, Ian,” I said. “The police are probably going to be here any minute.”
“Oh shit no. That can’t happen.”
I felt a bit the same way. Ian, once he recovered from the inevitable mortification, would have every right to charge me with breaking into his apartment. He could have me charged with assault. I was a regular home invader.
“I don’t want the police here,” he said. “It’s not just… her.”
“What?”
“I’ve got weed here, too.”
“Okay, look, I’m just going to go,” I said. “When the cops show up, I’ll tell them I thought I saw my daughter hitchhiking or something.”
Ian, despite all I’d done, managed to mutter, “Thanks.”
I left without saying anything else. I was expecting to see police cars screaming into the lot out front of the florist shop and XXX Delights, but there was nothing going on. I jogged back to the Just Inn Time, spotting along the way one police car driving up Route 1 at a regular rate of speed. It drove past the Howard Johnson’s and kept on going.
When I walked back into the lobby of my hotel, Carter came out from behind the desk and said, “What’s h
appened, Mr. Blake?”
“Did you call the police?”
“Not yet,” he said. “You ran out of here and didn’t say where you were going or what you’d seen. What was I supposed to tell the cops?”
Ordinarily, I’d have been pissed, but not this time. “No harm done. It was my mistake,” I said and went back up to my room.
O
N MY WAY OUT IN THE MORNING
, I grabbed a complimentary stale blueberry muffin and coffee from the lobby. There was no sign of Carter or Veronica, but Cantana, the young Thai-looking woman I’d met here the other morning, was working the breakfast nook. She handed me a takeout coffee cup.
“You can tell just by looking at me that I need coffee,” I said, trying for Mr. Amiable. Instead of returning the smile, she nodded politely, looked away, and went back to work.
I threw my bag into the back seat of the CR-V, put my coffee in the cup holder, and took a bite of muffin, crumbs raining down into my lap. Before turning the ignition, I let my head fall back onto the headrest and let out a long sigh. I’d had little sleep since my raid on Ian’s apartment. I felt like a damn fool. And worse, I was no closer to finding Syd.
I turned the key and hit the button on Syd’s music shuffler. There was an old Spice Girls tune—Syd was too young to have paid much attention to them their first time around, but got interested when they reunited for a tour a year or two ago—and another Beatles tune, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road,” from the White Album. What father didn’t want one of his daughter’s favorite songs to be about people having a fuck in the passing lane?
That was followed by—and I was guessing here on some of these—songs by Lily Allen, Metric, Lauryn Hill. Then some familiar chords kicked in and I thought, yes, a band I know and love: Chicago. Too bad the song had to be “If You Leave Me Now.”
I hadn’t cracked the lid on the coffee by the time I’d pulled up to the curb in front of my house a few minutes before eight, but there were muffin crumbs all over my lap and down on the floor mats of the CR-V.
There was a police car in the driveway, and parked out front of the house next door, what looked to be Kip Jennings’s car. There was no one in the driver’s seat, but there was someone sitting on the passenger side.
I took my coffee and as I came up even to the car I saw that there was a young girl sitting there. Twelve, thirteen years old. There was a backpack on the floor by her feet. On her lap was an open textbook. She glanced through the open driver’s-side window at me.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re Cassie.”
She didn’t say anything.
I stood well away from the window. “Doing some last-minute studying?”
“My mom’s a cop and she’s coming back any minute,” she said.
“I’ll leave you be,” I said and turned for my house. Kip Jennings was coming down the driveway.
“Morning,” I said. “You’ve trained your daughter well.”
“What?”
“The whole talking-to-strangers thing. I backed right off.”
“I have to get her to school. I was dropping by here on the way. We’re done with your house. You can have it back.”
“Great.”
“It’s still a mess.”
“I figured.”
“There are companies you can call to help with the cleanup. I can get you a list.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You’re not going to be charged,” she said. “The cocaine.”
“Nice to know.”
“And it
was
coke,” she said. “But cut with so much lactose you’d be one pissed-off junkie if you paid very much for it.”
“It wasn’t mine.”
She regarded me thoughtfully, then said, “Doesn’t much matter one way or another. The D.A. would never have gotten a conviction.”
“I think it’s important that you know I’m innocent.”
“I’ll bet you do,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I think you’re probably telling the truth.”
Probably.
“Because,” she said, “I believe we were meant to find it.”
“Meant?”
From her car: “Mom! I’m gonna be late!”
“Hold your horses!” Jennings shouted. “Yeah. Meant to find it, meant to think it was yours.”
I remembered Edwin Chatsworth advising me not to talk to this woman, but said, “They tore the place apart like they were looking for something. They knew the moment I came home I’d call the police. Then the police would find the cocaine.”
Detective Jennings nodded back. “Yeah. And then we put the heat on you.”
I looked at her. “Why would someone do that?”
“What a coincidence. I was going to ask you that.”
“Mom!”
Jennings sighed. “She’s just like her father.”
I had thought Jennings was a single mom. “He a police officer, too?” I asked.
Something in Jennings’s face twitched, even though she tried hard not to show it. “No,” she said. “He’s an engineer. And he’s working somewhere in Alaska, and if we’re lucky, he won’t ever be coming back.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t.
“Divorced, three years,” she said. She puffed herself up a bit. “And Cassie and I, we’re good.”
“She’s tough,” I said. “That comes across pretty quick.”
“Mr. Blake,” she said, “you need to think why someone would go to all the trouble to get you out of town and then see if they could get you framed for drug possession.”
I looked up the street at nothing in particular.
“And you need to keep thinking about the question I asked you before. Just how well did you know what your daughter was up to?”
I said, “The bloodstains on Syd’s car… have you found out anything yet?”
“You’ll be the second to know,” she said, then got into her car and drove her daughter to school.
I
DECIDED TO TACKLE THE CLEANUP
a room at a time.
First, of course, I went upstairs to check for any phone or email messages, even a fax. There was nothing. It occurred to me that with all of today’s technologies, there were now more ways than ever to know with absolute certainty that no one wanted to get in touch with me.
Then I went back down to the kitchen. It made sense to put this room in order first. I found some garbage bags under the sink and dumped in food that could not be saved. Items from the refrigerator that had been tossed about and gone bad, spilled cereal that covered the floor.
I’d been going at it for about an hour when I heard someone shouting over the drone of the vacuum cleaner.
“Hello?”
The front door was open. Standing there was a slight man in a suit that had to be five sizes too big for him. You could slip three fingers between his neck and his buttoned shirt collar. His stringy black tie was askew, and it seemed awfully early in the day to look this unkempt. His concave chest made him look as though he was caving in on himself. He was the guy who got sand kicked in his face on the back page of my comic books when I was a kid.
“I rang but you couldn’t hear me,” he said.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Are you Tim Blake?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Arnold Chilton,” he said. “I think Bob Janigan mentioned me to you?”
Huh?
Then I remembered. The detective, or security expert, whatever. The one Bob said might be able to help us track down Sydney. I was surprised, knowing how pissed Bob was with me at the moment, that he’d still decided to go ahead with this.
“Bob got in touch with me a few days ago,” he said, “but I’ve kind of been swamped getting my mom moved into a nursing home.”
“Oh,” I said. I extended a hand and he took it.
Arnold Chilton whistled as he took in the mess. I hadn’t started on the living room yet. “That must have been some party,” he said.
“It wasn’t a party,” I said. “Someone broke in and tore up the place.”
“Wow,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You got some time for some questions?” he asked.
“Why don’t we go outside?” I suggested. “There’s really nowhere to sit down in here yet.”
“Okeydoke,” Chilton said. We walked out onto the front lawn, turned, and looked back at the house.
“This is good of Bob to bring you into this,” I said. “He and I, we don’t always see eye to eye on everything.”
“He said something like that.”
“I’ll just bet he did,” I said. “The police are investigating Syd’s disappearance, of course, but having someone else on this, that’s great. I’ve been doing everything I can to find her—I even went on a wild-goose chase to Seattle this week—but haven’t made much headway. You know her car was found?”
“Didn’t know that,” Chilton said.
I thought the mention of the Seattle trip and the discovery of Syd’s car would have sparked further questions.
“Have you spoken to Detective Jennings?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Kip Jennings,” I said. “The police detective?”
“I think Bob did mention her, or his wife Susanne did.”
“Susanne is not his wife,” I said. “We used to be married, but she hasn’t married Bob. Yet.”
“That’s
right! I knew that.”
“Did they tell you about Detective Jennings? Did they give you her number? Because you’re going to want to talk to her.”
“I’m pretty sure they mentioned her. I just don’t think I wrote it down.”
“I have her number,” I offered.
“Good,” he said, nodding agreeably.
“So, are you, what, a friend of Bob’s?” I asked. “Or have you done work for him before?”
“Yeah, I’ve done some stuff for him in the past,” Chilton said.
I wondered why my ex-wife’s boyfriend might have used the services of a private detective. And whatever reason it might have been, did Arnold Chilton actually produce any results? He wasn’t inspiring me with confidence.
“So, let’s get down to cases,” he said. “Tell me about the day your daughter disappeared.”
I told the story for the hundredth time. Chilton scribbled into a tattered notebook that had been jammed into a jacket pocket.
“What about friends?” he asked. “You got some names of her friends?”
“Patty Swain,” I said. “And there was a guy she used to go out with a few times, Jeff Bluestein. He helped me set up the website.” That reminded me. I had meant to ask him, when he’d popped by the dealership with Patty, to double-check that emails sent to the site were actually getting there. Not fully understanding how all that stuff worked, I was paranoid about things going wrong.
“How do you spell that?” Chilton asked.
I started to spell Bluestein, but he held up his hand. “The first name,” he said.
I blinked.
“J-e-f-f,”
I said.
“Okay,” he said, making his notes. “Sometimes people spell it with a
G
, don’t they?”
“That’s true,” I said.
“But not
G-e-f-f
. It would be
G-e-O-f-f.”
“Yes,” I said. Did I need to tell him it was Syd with a
y
and not an
i
?
“Now,” he said, “did you notice anything weird with Sydney before she took off?”
“No,” I said. I only hoped he was right, that Sydney “took off.” “We had a small argument at breakfast. About some new sunglasses she had.”
“What was that about?”
I didn’t want to get into it with him. I didn’t want to believe it had anything to do with why Syd left, and it wasn’t any of Arnold Chilton’s business anyway. “It wasn’t a big deal,” I said.