Fear the Worst: A Thriller (11 page)
Read Fear the Worst: A Thriller Online
Authors: Linwood Barclay
Tags: #Thrillers, #Suspense, #Fiction
“How could you tell?” I said, surveying the wreckage. “I really haven’t had a chance to go through the place and check.”
“Your computer missing?”
“No, it’s still up there.”
“Your daughter’s laptop?”
I recalled seeing it, nodded.
“Laptop’s pretty easy to walk off with,” Jennings said.
“Yes.”
“How about silverware?”
I had noticed it earlier, dumped from a buffet drawer onto the living room carpet. “It’s here. Would kids even steal silverware?”
“How about iPods, little things like that that are easy to pocket?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have one. Syd does, but it’s in my car. But they didn’t take the small TV here.” I pointed to the set hanging from the kitchen cabinet. Someone would have needed a screwdriver to free it from its bracket.
“They didn’t break it, either,” Kip Jennings said. “You keep any cash in the house?”
“Not a lot,” I said. “Some, in this drawer over here. Just a few bills, fives and tens, for things like pizza, charities, stuff like that.”
“Have a look,” she said.
I opened it. The cash was normally tucked between the edge of the cutlery tray and the side of the drawer.
“It’s gone,” I said.
“Other than the cash, anything jump out at you as being missing?”
“Not really. What are you getting at?”
“You think maybe it was kids, and maybe it was. But you see any spray paint on the walls? Any TVs kicked in? Doesn’t look like anyone’s defecated on your rug.”
“A silver lining to everything,” I said.
“It’s the kind of thing kids will do.”
“So you don’t think it was kids,” I said.
“I’ll tell you this much. I don’t think anybody came in here to steal stuff at random. They were looking for something. They were looking for it pretty hard, too.”
“Looking for what?” I asked.
“You tell me,” Jennings said.
“You think I know and I’m not telling you?”
“No. At least, not necessarily. But you know better than I what you might have hidden in this house.”
“I don’t have anything hidden,” I said.
“Maybe it wasn’t you who hid it,” she said.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying your daughter’s missing and we don’t know why. She said she was working at that hotel, but no one there’s even heard of her. That tells me your daughter wasn’t exactly being honest with you about everything. So maybe she was hiding something in this house—or at least somebody thought she might have been—that she didn’t share with you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Kip put her hands on her hips and studied me. “This is a pretty thorough search. In all the years I’ve been with the police, I’ve seen very few places torn apart like this. I’ve never even seen cops tear apart a place like this. This took a while. Looks like they weren’t too worried about you walking in the door unexpectedly. Looks like they knew they had time.”
Our eyes met.
“Who knew you were going to Seattle?” she asked.
Whom had I told? Who knew? Kate. My boss, Laura Cantrell. My colleague in the showroom, Andy Hertz. Susanne, of course, and no doubt Bob and Evan. And anyone else any of these people might have told.
I was missing the obvious, of course.
Yolanda Mills, whoever she was, knew I was off to Seattle. She’d practically invited me there.
“Maybe I was set up,” I said.
“Come again?” Jennings asked.
“I was set up. The woman who called me, who said she’d seen my daughter. She knew I wasn’t going to be home.”
“Refresh my memory.”
I told her about Yolanda Mills, how I couldn’t find her in Seattle, how the cops out there believed she’d called me from a disposable cell phone.
“Seattle’s about as far away as someone could send you and still be in the country,” Jennings said. “Once you were on your way to the airport, they knew they had at least a couple of days to go through your house.”
“But she had a picture of her,” I said. “She sent it to me. It was a picture of Syd. I’m as sure of that as I can be.”
“Can I see it?”
“Computer,” I said.
I led us into the study, stepping over tossed books and dumped shoe boxes spilling out receipts. While the computer tower and monitor had been shoved about, they were reasonably intact. I fired it up, opened the email program, and found the message and attached photo from Yolanda Mills. I opened it for Detective Jennings to see.
“It’s not the greatest picture in the world,” she said. “The way her hair is falling, you can’t see much of her face.”
“You see this?” I said, pointing to the coral, fringed scarf that Syd had tied about her neck. “I know that scarf. Syd has one just like it. You put that scarf with that hair, and that bit of nose you can see there, and that’s her. I’d bet my life on it.”
Jennings leaned in close to the screen and studied the scarf. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.
I sat there at the computer, checked to see whether anyone else had been in touch in the last two days. There had been hardly any hits on the website for Syd, and my emails were all junk.
Jennings appeared in the doorway, something bright and colorful wadded up in her hand. She held up a scarf.
“The color caught my eye when I was looking in your daughter’s room earlier,” she said. “It was dumped out onto the floor with everything else.”
I stood, reached for the scarf, and held it as though it might dissolve in my fingers.
“Is that the scarf?” she asked.
I nodded very slowly. “That’s the scarf.”
“So if your daughter was supposedly wearing this scarf in Seattle a few days ago, what’s it doing here in your house?”
That was a really good question.
I didn’t have much time to ponder it. A minute later, one of the uniformed cops poked his head into the study and said to Jennings, “I think we found what they were looking for.”
FIFTEEN
“W
HAT
?” I
SAID
.
The cop said nothing. He led Jennings to my bedroom and I followed. One of the pillows had been stripped of its case and was slit open. A clear plastic freezer bag that was filled with a white powdery substance lay on the bedspread.
“I noticed a funny bump under the pillowcase,” he said.
Detective Jennings pinched the corner of the bag between thumb and forefinger, lifted it up for an inspection.
“Lordy, Lordy, what do we have here?” she said.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Detective Jennings said, eyeing me, the cop in uniform studying me as well. “What do you think it is?”
“I think it might be cocaine.”
“If that turns out to be right, what do you think it’s doing in your pillow?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Want to hazard a guess?”
Slowly, I shook my head. “No.” I thought a moment. “Yes.”
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Someone put it there,” I said.
The cop made a small snorting noise.
“I’d have to agree with you there,” Jennings said.
“I slept on that bed two nights ago. There was nothing in that pillow then. Someone put it there while I was away.”
“So what are you saying?” Jennings said. “That there were two different break-ins while you were away? That someone came in here and hid this what-may-prove-to-be cocaine in your pillow, and then someone else broke in trying to find it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “To be honest, as strange as this is, I’m a little more concerned about how my daughter’s scarf can be here if she had her picture taken wearing it in Seattle.”
“One thing at a time,” Jennings said. She set the clear bag on the bed. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that someone snuck in while you were away and hid this in your pillow. Wouldn’t that be pretty stupid? First time you get into bed, you put your head on the pillow, you notice it’s there.”
“I agree, that’d be pretty dumb,” I said. “About as dumb as my inviting you into my home to find it. And if this house really was broken into twice, once to hide those drugs, and then a second time by somebody else trying to find them, then how the hell did they overlook them? It took your officer here ten minutes to stumble onto them. I mean, look around. This house has been turned fucking upside down. And that pillow’s just sitting there full of drugs. Does that make any sense at all?”
Jennings said nothing. She was standing there, one hand held thoughtfully over her mouth and chin. She was trying to work it out.
“Unless whoever put those drugs there did it after the house was torn apart,” she said. “A place that’s already been searched is a great place to hide something.”
“Even if that’s what happened,” I said, “my pillow is still a stupid place to hide anything. I’d find it.”
She turned her head and looked at me. “Unless you’re the one who put it there.”
“For Christ’s sake,” I said.
“Do you have a lawyer, Mr. Blake?” Detective Jennings asked.
“I don’t need a lawyer,” I said.
“I think maybe you do.”
“What I need is for you to believe me. What I need is for you to help me figure out what’s going on. What I need is for you to help me find my daughter.”
That stopped her for a moment. “Your daughter,” she said. “She certainly wouldn’t have to break through a basement window to get in.”
“What are you getting at?”
“She could get in here anytime she wants. She has a key.”
“What? You think Sydney was here? You think my daughter’s been back? That she’d come back, and not let us know she’s okay? That she’d hide cocaine in my pillow?”
Kip Jennings closed the distance between us. And even though she was considerably shorter, she managed to get right in my face. “Now let’s talk about that scarf.”
“I can’t explain it.”
“Take a shot at it,” she said. “That scarf, the one she’s wearing in a picture supposedly taken in Seattle, is here, in this house.”
I shook my head. “Maybe Syd was out there and came back.”
“Just how well do you know your daughter, Mr. Blake?”
“Very well. We’re very close. I love her.” I paused. “How well do you know yours?”
She ignored that. “Do you know all of Sydney’s friends? When she goes out late at night, do you always know where she is? Do you know who she talks to on the Internet? Do you know if she’s ever tried drugs? Do you know whether she’s sexually active? Do you know the answer to any of those questions with any certainty?”
“No parent would,” I said.
“No parent would,” she repeated, nodding. “So when I ask you how well you know your daughter, I’m not a
sking you how close you are to her or how much you love her. I’m asking whether it’s possible she could be involved in things, involved with people, you might not approve of.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you think Sydney could have been involved in drugs?”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Your daughter’s missing. Her car was abandoned. And there was blood on it. You need to start waking up to the fact that something’s going on.”
“You think I’m not—”
“You need to wake up to the fact that it’s possible, just possible, that Sydney may have been mixed up in some nasty things. She may have been hanging out with some nasty people. She told you she was working at that hotel. If she was lying to you about that, what else was she lying about?”
I walked out of the room.
“Get out,” I said to a cop standing at the bottom of the stairs as I headed for the kitchen.
“What?”
“Get out,” I said. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Talbott,” Kip Jennings told the cop from behind me. “Mr. Blake, you can’t order these officers out of here. Your house is a crime scene.”
“I have to start cleaning up, put this place in order,” I snapped at her.
“No, not yet,” she said. “You won’t be doing anything around here until I say so. And you’re going to have to make arrangements to sleep someplace else tonight.”
“You’re not kicking me out of my own house,” I said, turning and pointing a finger at her.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. This house is a crime scene, and that includes your bedroom. Especially now.”
I shook my head in frustration. “I thought you were trying to help me.”
“I’m trying to figure out what happened, Mr. Blake. I hope that ends up helping you. Because my gut’s been telling me, up to now, that you’ve been playing straight with me, that you’ve been telling me what you know, that you haven’t been holding out on me. But things are a bit cloudy now. That’s why I think it would be in your interest to talk to a lawyer.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of charging me with drug possession or something?”
She looked me right in the eye. “I’m giving you good advice here, and I think you should take it.”
I held her gaze.
She continued, “Has it crossed your mind, if you really were conned into going to Seattle so someone could go through your house, that it was your daughter who sent you out there?”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “The woman I spoke to on the phone was not my daughter.”
Jennings shrugged. “She wouldn’t have to be working alone.”
Of all the things Jennings had suggested or intimated, this struck me as the most ridiculous.
But instead of reacting angrily, I held up my hands in a defensive, let’s-cool-this-down gesture, because there was something else on my mind I needed to discuss with her.
“Regardless of what you may think of me, or what you may think is going on here, there’s something else you need to be aware of,” I said.
“Okay,” she said.
“It’s about my ex-wife. Someone’s watching her house.”
Jennings’s brow furrowed. “Go on.”
“Susanne’s noticed someone parked down the street a few times. She says you can see a little light, like he’s smoking.” I paused, a thought just occurring to me. “It’s not the police, is it?”
“Not that I’m aware of. She got a plate number?”
“No,” I said.
“Tell her, next time, get it,” Jennings said. “And I’ll see whether we can have someone take a run by there every once in a while.”
I muttered a thank-you, turned, and my eye caught the open kitchen drawer that had, until recently, held some cash.
And a name came to mind. Evan. We needed to have a word.
* * *
O
N THE WAY TO BOB’S MOTORS
, I got held up where they were merging two lanes down to one for roadwork. Feeling briefly charitable, I let a Toyota Sienna that was trying to get into my lane go ahead. Through tinted glass I saw the driver’s hand wave thank you.
As the Sienna straightened itself out in front of me, I noticed it was the delivery truck for Shaw Flowers, the florist shop next to XXX Delights. I was guessing it was Ian, the young man who’d been with Mrs. Shaw the other day when she was closing up the place, behind the wheel.
I thought maybe I should give him another chance to look at Syd’s picture.
Ian put his right turn signal on. I did the same.
I followed him into an old residential area with trees so mature they formed a canopy over the street. As he came to a stop in front of a two-story colonial, I drove on past and turned into a driveway half a dozen houses up.
Ian got out, white wires running down from his ears and into his shirt pocket. I was guessing he had a mini iPod like Syd’s. He went around the passenger side of the van, slid open the door to get a large bouquet of flowers, and walked it up to the house.
I backed out of the drive and pulled up across the street. I waited by the van while Ian rang the bell. A woman answered, took the flowers, and then Ian was walking briskly back down the walk.
He looked startled when he saw me standing by his vehicle.
“Ian?” I said.
He still had the wires running to his ears and yanked them out. “What?”
“It’s Ian, right?”
“Yeah. Can I help you?”
“We met the other day, at the shop, when Mrs. Shaw was closing up. I showed you a picture of my daughter.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, moving past me to the driver’s door.
“I wonder if you’d mind taking another look,” I said, taking a photo from my jacket and following him.
“I already told you,” he said. “I don’t know her.”
“It’ll only take a second,” I said. He had the door open, but I put my hand on it and eased it shut. He didn’t fight me.
“Sure, I guess,” he said.
I gave him the photo. This time, he studied it a good five seconds before handing it back. His eyes seemed to dance around the whole time, like he was never really focusing on Syd’s face.
“Nope,” he said.
I nodded, took my hand off the van door. “Well, I appreciate you taking another look.”
“No problem.”
“Mrs. Shaw said you live behind the shop?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“There’s an apartment back there?”
“Kinda. Nothing big. Big enough for me.”
“That’s handy, living right where you work,” I said. “You all by yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“You worked long for Mrs. Shaw?”
“Couple of years. She’s my aunt. That’s why she lets me stay there, since my mom died. Some reason why you’re asking me all these questions?”
“No,” I said. “No reason.”
“Because I’ve got other deliveries.”
“Sure,” I said. “Don’t let me hold you up.”
Ian got in, closed the door, buckled his seat belt, and hit the gas hard as he sped off down the street.
Sometimes, I’ll get a customer who, once he’s made an offer on a car, starts to panic. He’s not worried the offer will be rejected; he’s scared to death it’ll be accepted. He’ll have the car of his dreams, but now he has to find a way to pay for it. Between the time he signs the offer and learns whether the sales manager will accept it, he fidgets, he licks his lips, he looks for water because his mouth is dry. He’s gotten in over his head and doesn’t know how to get out.
Ian had that look.
* * *
“E
VAN
?” S
USANNE SAID.
“What did you want with Evan?”
I’d just walked into the sales office at Bob’s Motors. Bob was out on the lot somewhere, no doubt trying to persuade someone looking for an econobox that what they really needed was an SUV that could go over boulders. I hadn’t seen Evan out there.
“I just want to ask him a couple of questions about Syd,” I said.
“Believe me,” said Susanne, sitting behind her desk, “I’ve asked him.”
“Maybe he needs to be asked again.”
“You look rattled. Has something happened since you got back from Seattle?”
She had a right to know what had happened, but I didn’t want to get into it with her now.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Is he around?”
“He’s out back, in the garage, shining up a car, prepping it for delivery.”
I left the office without saying anything. I made it around to the back of the building, where Bob’s Motors had a secondary building, about the size of a
double-car garage. Bob’s was strictly a sales operation. Once you bought a car from him, it was up to you to find a place to have it serviced. But he did need a place to do minor repairs, and get cars cleaned up before their new owners came to pick them up.
Evan had been put to work on a three-year-old Dodge Charger. He had all four doors open and didn’t hear me approach because he was leaning in, going at the rear carpets with a Shop-Vac.
“Evan!” I said.
When he didn’t respond, I flipped the switch on the top of the vacuum canister.
“Huh?” he said, whirling around. He didn’t look happy when he saw it was me. “Turn that back on,” he said.
“I want to talk to you,” I said.
“My dad says this car has to be ready in an hour.”
“You want to waste time arguing, or just help me out so I can get out of your hair as fast as possible?”
“What do you want?” He brushed some hair away from his eyes, but it fell back immediately.
“My place got broken into,” I said.
“That’s too bad,” he said.
“They tore it apart,” I said.
