Fear the Worst: A Thriller (4 page)

TWO

I
DIDN’T TURN OFF ONTO
B
RIDGEPORT
A
VENUE
on the way back from work. I usually got off Route 1 there, went half a mile up to Clark, hung a left and drove over the narrow bridge that spans the commuter tracks, hung a left onto Hill, where I’d lived the last five years after Susanne and I sold our mini-mansion, paid off what debts we could with the proceeds, and got much smaller places of our own.

But I kept going up the road until I had reached the Just Inn Time on the right, turned into the lot, and parked. I sat in the car a moment, not sure whether to get out, knowing that I would. Why should today be any different from every other day since Syd vanished?

I got out of my CR-V. I got to drive this little crossover vehicle for free, but if and when Laura canned me I’d be on my own for wheels. Even though it was after six, it was still pretty hot out. You could see waves of humidity coming off the pavement just before Route 1 went under 95 a little farther to the east.

I stood in the lot and scanned as far as I could see in all directions. The HoJo’s was up the street, and beyond that the ramp coming down from the interstate. An old movie theater complex a stone’s throw to the west. Hadn’t we taken Sydney there to see
Toy Story 2
when she was seven or eight? For a birthday party? I recalled trying to corral a pack of kids into one row, the whole kittens-in-a-basket thing. The hotel was just down from where the road forked, Route 1 to the north, Cherry Street angling off to the southwest. Across Cherry, the King’s Highway Cemetery.

There were a couple dozen other businesses that, if I couldn’t actually see from standing in the lot here, I could see the signs for them. A video store, a clock repair shop, a fish-and-chips takeout place, a florist, a Christian bookstore, a butcher’s, a hair salon, a children’s clothing store, an adult book and DVD shop.

They were all within walking distance of the hotel. If Syd had left the car parked here every day, she could have gotten to any of these businesses in just a few minutes.

I’d been in to almost all of them at some point since she’d gone missing, showing her picture, asking if anyone had seen her. But stores had different staff working in them depending on the day and time, so it made sense to make the rounds more than once.

Of course, Syd didn’t have to be working secretly at any of those places. Someone else with a car could have been meeting her every day in this lot, taking her God knows where from nine to five.

But if she had been working at one of these businesses within eyeshot of the hotel, why didn’t she want me or her mother to know? Why would we care if she worked at a clock repair place, or a butcher’s, or a—

An adult book and video shop.

My first time along that business strip, it was the one store I hadn’t been in. No way, I told myself. No matter what Syd was doing, no matter what she might be keeping from us, there was no way she’d been working there.

Not a chance.

I was actually shaking my head back and forth, muttering the words “No way” under my breath as I leaned up against my car, when I heard someone say, “Mr. Blake?”

I glanced to my left. There was a woman standing there. Blue jacket and matching skirt, sensible shoes, a Just Inn Time badge pinned to her lapel. She had some years on me, but not many. Mid-forties, I guessed, with black hair and dark brown eyes. Her corporate uniform wasn’t sufficiently dowdy to hide what was still an impressive figure.

“Veronica,” I said. Veronica Harp, the manager I’d spoken to on the phone the night Sydney disappeared, and seen a number of times since. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Blake.” She paused, knowing that politeness called for her to ask the same, but she knew what my answer would be. “And you?”

I shrugged.

“You must get sick of seeing me around here.”

She smiled awkwardly, not wanting to agree. “I understand.”

“I’m going to have to go back to all those places,” I said, thinking out loud. Veronica didn’t say anything. “I keep thinking she must have been going to a place she could see from here.”

“I suppose,” she said. She stood there another moment, and I could tell from her body language she was struggling with whether to say something else, or go back into the hotel and leave me be. Then, “Would you like a coffee?”

“That’s okay.”

“Really. Why don’t you come in? It’s cooler.”

I walked with her across the lot toward the hotel. There wasn’t much in the way of landscaping. The grass was brown, an anthill spilled out, volcano-like, between two concrete walkway slabs, and the shrubs needed trimming. I glanced up, saw the security cameras mounted at regular intervals, and made a disapproving snort under my breath. The glass front doors parted automatically as we approached.

She led me to the dining area just off from the lobby. Not a restaurant, exactly, but a self-serve station where the hotel put things out for breakfast. Single-serving cereal containers, fruit, muffins and donuts, coffee and juice. That was the deal here. Stay for the night, help yourself to breakfast in the morning. If you could stuff enough muffins into your pocket, you were good for lunch.

A petite woman in black slacks and a white blouse was wiping down the counter, restocking a basket with cream containers. I couldn’t pinpoint her ethnicity, but she looked Thai or Vietnamese. Late twenties, early thirties.

I smiled and said hello as I reached for a takeout coffee cup. She shifted politely out of my way.

“Cantana,” Veronica said to her.

Cantana nodded.

“I think the cereals will need restocking before breakfast,” Veronica said. Cantana replenished the baskets from under the counter, where there were hundreds of individual cereal servings in peel-top containers.

I filled my takeout cup, handed an empty one to Veronica. She sat down at a table and held out her hand to the vacant chair across from her.

“Just tell me if I asked you this already,” she said, “but you did ask at the Howard Johnson’s?”

“Not just at the desk,” I said. “I showed her picture to the cleaning staff, too.”

Veronica shook her head. “Aren’t the police doing anything?”

“As far as they’re concerned, she’s just another runaway. There’s no actual evidence of any… you know. There’s nothing to suggest anything has actually happened to her.”

Veronica frowned. “Yeah, but if they don’t know where she is, how can they—”

“I know,” I said.

Veronica sipped her coffee, then asked, “You don’t have other family to help you look? I never see you here with anyone.”

“My wife—my ex-wife—has been working the phones. She hurt herself a while back, she can’t walk without crutches—”

“What happened?”

“An accident; she was doing that thing where you’re hooked up to a kite behind a boat.”

“Oh, I would never do that.”

“Yeah, well, that’s ’cause you’re smart. But she’s doing what she can, even so. Making calls, looking on the Net. She’s torn up about this just like I am.” And that was the truth.

“How long have you been divorced?”

“Five years,” I said. “Since Syd was twelve.”

“Is your ex-wife remarried?”

“She has a boyfriend.” I paused. “You know those commercials for Bob’s Motors? That guy yelling at the camera?”

“Oh my, that’s him? That’s her boyfriend?”

I nodded.

“I always hit the mute when that comes on,” she said. That made me smile. First time in a while. “You don’t like him,” she said.

“I’d like to mute him in person,” I said.

Veronica hesitated, then asked, “So you haven’t remarried or anything?”

“No.”

“I can’t see someone like you being single forever.”

I’d been seeing a woman occasionally before Syd disappeared. But even if my life hadn’t been turned upside down in the last few weeks, that relationship’s days had been numbered. Spectacular in the sack can trump needy and loony for a week or two, but after that, the head starts to take over and decides enough is enough.

“You think it’s possible,” I said, “my daughter was meeting someone here? Not working here formally, but, I don’t know, doing something off the books? Because I think she was getting paid in cash.”

I’d taken one of my many pics of Syd from my pocket, put it on the table, just to look at her.

“I’m going to be honest with you here,” Veronica said.

“Yes?”

“Sometimes,” and she lowered her voice slightly, “we don’t do everything on the up-and-up here.”

I leaned in slightly. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, a lot of times, we pay the help under the table. Not everything, of course. But here and there, saves us a bit with the taxman, you know?”

“Sure.”

“But what I’m saying is, even if your daughter’d been here, getting paid in cash—and that could end up biting us in the ass, pardon my French—I’d tell you, because no parent should go through that, not knowing what’s happened to his child.”

I nodded, looked down at Syd’s face.

“She’s very beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“She has beautiful hair. She looks a little bit… Norwegian?”

“From her mother’s side,” I said. My mind wandered. “Too bad your cameras don’t work. If Syd had ever met someone in your lot…”

Veronica hung her head, embarrassed. “I know. What can I say. We have the cameras mounted so people will think there’s surveillance, but they’re not hooked up to anything. Maybe, if we were part of a larger chain…”

I nodded, picked up Syd’s picture and slipped it back into my jacket.

“May I show
you
a picture?” Veronica asked.

I said, “Of course.”

She went into her purse and pulled out a computer printout snapshot of a boy, no more than six months old, wearing a Thomas the Tank Engine shirt.

“What’s his name?”

“Lars.”

“That’s different. What made you choose that?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “My daughter did. It’s her husband’s father’s name.” She gave me a second to let it sink in. “This is my grandson.”

I was momentarily speechless. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

“Aren’t you adorable,” Veronica Harp said. “I had Gwen when I was only seventeen. I don’t look so bad for a grandmother, do I?”

I had pulled myself together. “No, you don’t,” I said.

Pregnant at seventeen
.

“Thank you for the coffee,” I said.

Veronica Harp put the baby picture away. “I just know you’ll find her, that everything will be okay.”

*   *   *

W
E ARE RENTING A PLACE ON
C
APE
C
OD
, right on the beach. Sydney’s five years old. She’s been to the beach in Milford, but it can’t compare to this one that seems to go on forever. Sydney is mesmerized upon first seeing it. But she soon gets over her wonderment and is running down to the water’s edge, getting her feet wet, scurrying back to Susanne and me, giggling and shrieking
.

After a while, we think she’s had enough sun, and we suggest going back to the small beach house—not much more than a shack, really—for sandwiches. We are trudging along, the sand shifting beneath our feet, trying to keep up with Syd, pointing at her tiny footprints in the sand
.

Some kids are coming through the tall grass. One of them has a dog on a lead. Sydney crosses in front of the animal just as its snout emerges from between the grass. It’s not one of your traditionally mean-looking dogs. It’s some kind of oversized poodle with short-cropped black fur, and when it sees Sydney it suddenly bares its teeth and snarls
.

Sydney shrieks, drops her plastic pail and shovel, and starts running. The dog bolts forward to go after her, but the kid, thank God, has a tight grip on the leash. Sydney runs for the beach house, reaches up for the handle to the screen door, and disappears, the door slamming behind her
.

Susanne and I run the rest of the way, not making the kind of speed we want because the sand won’t allow us a good purchase. I’m in the door first, calling out, “Sydney! Sydney!”

She doesn’t call back
.

We frantically search the house, finally finding her in a makeshift closet—instead of a door, there is a curtain to hide what’s stored inside. She is crouched down, her face pressed into her knees so she can’t see what’s happening around her
.

I scoop her into my arms and tell her everything is okay. Susanne squeezes into the closet and puts her arms around both of us, telling Sydney that the dog is gone, that she’s safe
.

Later, Susanne asks her why she ran into the beach house, instead of back to us
.

“I thought he might get you guys, too,” she says
.

I
SAT IN THE CAR
, parked out front of the adult entertainment store, XXX Delights, which had a florist shop on one side and the clock repair place on the other. The windows were opaque to protect passersby from having to see any of the merchandise. But the words painted on the glass in foot-high letters left no doubt as to what was being offered. “XXX” and “ADULT” and “EROTICA” and “MOVIES” and “TOYS.”

Nothing from Fisher-Price, I was guessing.

I watched men heading in and out. Clutching items in brown paper bags as they scurried back to their cars. Was there really a need for any of this these days? Couldn’t this all be had online? Did these guys have to skulk about with their collars turned up, baseball hats pulled down, cheap sunglasses hiding their eyes? For crying out loud, go home and make out with your laptops.

I was about to go in when a heavyset, balding man strode past the florist and turned into XXX Delights.

“Shit,” I said.

It was Bert, who worked in the service department at Riverside Honda. Married, so far as I knew, with kids now in their twenties. I wasn’t going in while he was there. I didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing there, and I didn’t want him to have to explain what he was doing there.