SUDDENLY OVERWHELMED, I BOLTED FROM THE HOUSE through the open back door. I put a hand up against the siding to support myself and threw up. Seeing Kate that way had done more than fuck with my head. My stomach was doing somersaults. When I was sure I was done, I stepped away from the house. But wooziness swept in, and I had to put my hands on my knees and hold my head down for the better part of half a minute.
This was not happening.
Except, of course, it was. There was a dead woman in my kitchen. A woman I had, at least at one point, cared about, been intimate with, shared some small part of my life with.
And now she’d been shot through the head.
I was stunned, horrified. I felt strangely cold, almost shivery, and noticed a tremor in my hands. I was so shaken, it took a few moments before I was able to focus enough to figure out what had happened. Not that it took a rocket scientist to put it together. They-or, more likely, the man known as Eric or Gary-had been here, waiting for me, but Kate had shown up instead.
Maybe the noise of the shot made him panic, think the police might turn up, so he took off, decided he could always try again later.
I stood outside, not knowing what to do. I couldn’t go back in there. I was-and there’s no sense soft-pedaling this-too goddamn scared to enter my home. I couldn’t look at Kate Wood again, see her that way.
When my cell rang, it might as well have been wired directly to my heart, it gave me such a start.
I fished the phone out of my pocket, but my hand was shaking so badly it landed on the grass. I retrieved it, flipped it open, and put it to my ear without looking to see who it was.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice so quiet I could barely hear it myself.
“Mr. Blake?”
Kip Jennings.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’m returning your call,” she said. “You have some new information for me or something?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“So, what is it?”
I’d been in shock only seconds before, but now my mind was suddenly focused. Think this through very carefully.
There had been several developments in the past few hours:
Syd had been at the hotel, and it now seemed likely everyone who worked there had been lying to me. And to the police, too. Veronica Harp and everyone else had been covering up from the beginning.
Randall Tripe was involved in some kind of human-trafficking scheme, and the fact that his blood-and Syd’s-was on her car connected them.
Andy Hertz was beating the bushes trying to get a lead on this Gary character, who’d not only tried to kill me, but might be the one who’d given Syd the lead on the hotel job.
I’d felt, up until the moment I’d discovered Kate, I was getting close, that I was getting somewhere. It was why I felt the need to finally talk, face-to-face, with Patty’s mother, Carol Swain. Maybe she’d know some small detail about her daughter, or mine, that could end up tipping things in my favor.
What I couldn’t afford was losing time answering questions from the police about how Kate Wood ended up dead in my kitchen.
“Mr. Blake?” Jennings said. “Are you there?”
I had a pretty good idea how Jennings and Marjorie would put this together.
Kate Wood is found dead in my house a very short time after I learn she’s tipped police to what she thinks is suspicious behavior on my part. I’ve told the police she’s a nut. I’m angry, can’t believe she’d point the police in my direction. Kate drops by my house, wanting to patch things up. I’m not interested in an apology. I flip out. After all, look how I reacted when Detective Marjorie suggested I’d killed my own daughter.
They wouldn’t be bringing me in for questioning. They’d be arresting me.
And no one would be looking for Syd. They’d be more than happy to find a way to conclude I’d killed her.
“Mr. Blake?” Jennings said again.
“I’ll have to get back to you,” I said, and flipped the phone shut.
WHEN THE PHONE RANG AGAIN A FEW MINUTES LATER, I checked the ID before answering.
“Yeah,” I said, starting up the Beetle and driving away from my house as quickly as that shitbox would take me.
“Hey, Tim. It’s Andy.”
“Yeah, Andy.”
“You okay? You sound weird.”
“What’s going on?”
“Okay, so, I’m at that place? And I don’t see Gary around. I asked a couple of people who might know him, but they haven’t seen him lately.”
“They know how to find him?” I hung a right, then a left, putting my neighborhood behind me.
“No. But what I thought I’d do is, I’ll hang in long enough to have a couple beers and eat some wings. What I was wondering is, would you pay me back for that?”
Paying Andy’s bill was the least of my concerns. “Sure, whatever.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll check in with you later.”
I flipped the phone shut. And then I lost it.
MY EYES STARTED BRIMMING OVER WITH TEARS to the point that I couldn’t see where I was driving. I managed to veer the Beetle over to the shoulder, put it in neutral, and yanked up on the emergency brake. Then I put both hands back on the steering wheel, squeezed as hard as I could, and made my arms go rigid, as though I could channel all the tension from my body into the car. My breathing, fast and shallow, seemed to be accelerating, like it was trying to keep pace with my heart.
“Oh God,” I was saying under my breath. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” It was turning into a mantra.
Was this what a heart attack felt like? Or was that what this actually was?
All the pressure of the last few weeks had come to a boil. A missing daughter, attempts on my life, and now, a woman murdered in my own home. There was only so much one person could endure.
I was a goddamn car salesman, for fuck’s sake. Nothing in my life had even remotely prepared me for dealing with the things that were going on around me now.
Pull it together.
I pried my fingers from the steering wheel, wiped the tears out of my eyes. The trouble was, the tears were still coming.
It’s about Syd. You have to get it together for Syd. Have your little meltdown, then suck it up and move on. Because if you’re not out there trying to find her, who the hell else do you think’s going to do it?
I wiped my eyes some more, dried my hands on my shirt. My breathing was still rapid, so I concentrated on slowing it down. I took deeper breaths, tried to hold them a second, let them out slowly.
“You can do this,” I said under my breath. “You can do this.”
Gradually, my breathing started to return to, if not normal, something approaching that. The pounding in my chest eased off.
“Syd,” I said. “Syd.”
I put the car in gear, took my foot off the brake, and got back on the road.
MINUTES LATER, I PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY of what I believed to be Patty Swain’s mother’s house. It was in one of Milford’s older neighborhoods, west and inland from the harbor, where the homes have a beach house feel about them even if they aren’t right on the Sound.
There was no car in the driveway, so I wasn’t surprised when no one answered my knock. I thought about leaving a note inside the screen door, with my name and number, but just as I was slipping one of my business cards out of my wallet, a rusted mid-nineties Ford Taurus pulled in next to my Beetle.
I stood on the doorstep and watched a fortyish woman get out. She grabbed a couple of bags of groceries and a purse from the passenger seat, dragging everything with one hand, her keys in the other, teetering on high-heeled sandals. “Can I help you?” she called out. She had on oversized sunglasses and pulled them off as she approached.
“Are you Patty’s mom?” I asked.
“Yes, why-” She stopped in mid-sentence when it seemed that she had a good look at me. I’d never met this woman before, but I felt she recognized me. Or maybe she was looking at my bandaged nose and bruised cheek.
“I’m Tim Blake,” I said.
“I’ll bet that hurts,” she said.
“You should see the other guy,” I said. “Actually, he looks fine.”
I came off the step and offered to take her bags. She let me. She was probably a knockout, once. She still had an impressive figure, but her legs, exposed in her white shorts, were bony, the skin weathered from too much time in the sun. Her cheeks were pale, her blonde hair dry and stringy. I could see Patty in her face: the strong cheekbones, the dark eyes.
I could hear bottles jangling against each other in one of the bags I’d taken from her.
She still hadn’t said anything, so I continued. “Patty’s good friends with my daughter Sydney. You probably know all about her being missing. And now, I understand Patty hasn’t been seen in a couple of days.” I sensed that my voice was shaking slightly, maybe not enough for this woman to notice, but it was there. “I’m sorry, I don’t recall your first name.”
“It’s Carol,” she said. “Um, I thought, at first, maybe you were from the police, until I got a good look at you.”
I took that to mean that, even in plain clothes, I didn’t look like a cop, but asked, “We’ve never met, have we?”
“No, we haven’t,” she said. “Listen, why don’t you come in.”
She got her key into the door and scurried ahead of me into the house, picking up several empty bottles in the front room and taking her bags into the kitchen. “I haven’t had a chance to clean up in the last couple of days,” she said. It looked more like the last couple of years. “What with all that’s been going on.”
“Have you heard from Patty?” I asked. “Has there been any sign of her?”
“Huh?” she said from the kitchen, where I could hear bottles being tossed into a recycling container. “No.” She came back into the living room. “I guess you’ve heard all about that?”
“Patty and Syd being friends, yeah, the police have talked to me about it,” I said.
“I didn’t even know, until Patty didn’t come home, and the police told me they were friends, that they even knew each other,” Carol Swain said.
“You’re kidding,” I said. “They’ve been friends over a year now. Patty didn’t talk about her?”
“Patty doesn’t talk to me about what she does or who she sees, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t talk to any of her friends about me,” Carol said. “At least if she does, she doesn’t have anything good to say.”
“You and Patty aren’t close,” I said.
“Not exactly the Gilmore Girls, I’ll tell you that,” she said and laughed. “Can I get you a beer or anything?”
“No, thanks,” I said. I almost reconsidered. Maybe a drink was what I needed. My nerves could use some calming. But I also wanted a clear head. “Patty didn’t tell you one of her friends was missing?”
“She said something about it, yeah,” Carol said. “But I don’t remember her saying her name, exactly. I hope you won’t think me a terrible host if I pour myself something?”
“Go ahead,” I said. I had a feeling that anything Patty might have told her mother would not necessarily have registered.
Carol Swain went back into the kitchen, opened and closed the fridge, and returned with a Sam Adams in her hand. It didn’t take long for beads of sweat to form on the bottle.
“So Patty’s been hanging around with your daughter for how long?” she asked.
I had to focus. “Over a year,” I said after thinking a second or two.
She was shaking her head puzzledly over this. “Son of a bitch.”
“Why should that be a surprise?” I asked.
“Hmm? No reason. That girl of mine… she’s a pistol, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said. “She is. A pistol. Pretty independent-minded.”
“Gets that from her father,” Carol said. “The fucker.”
“I take it he’s not in the picture,” I said.
“He pops in now and then, but not long enough to make an impression, thank Christ. Not since Patty was a little one. It’s kind of amazing, her hooking up with your kid. A year, you say?”
“Yeah.” The word came out short and clipped.
“You okay?” she asked.
“It’s been a… Yeah, I’m okay.”
She looked at me skeptically, then put our conversation back on track. Her eyes rolled up slightly into her head, like she was counting off months, circling dates on a calendar mentally. “So how exactly did they meet?”
“In summer school,” I said. “A math class.”
“Summer school?” Carol said, shaking her head. “Math?”
I nodded.
“Patty’s always been pretty good at math,” she said.
“Syd’s not bad at math, either, but if they don’t do the homework, they don’t get the marks,” I said.
“Ain’t that the truth. So you’re telling me they hit it off?”
“Yes,” I said.
She nodded, thinking about it. “I guess that does kinda make sense,” she said. I had no idea what she meant by that. “That girl, I swear.”
“I like Patty,” I said. “She’s a good kid.”
“Clearly you need more than a year to get to know her,” Carol Swain said. “The time and energy I’ve put into that child, and what does she do? Cause me nothing but grief, that’s what.” She sighed. “The cops came to see me today. Jennings? She said she’d been talking to you. She told me you were the last one to see Patty.”
“It seems that way,” I admitted.
“She tell you where she was running off to?” she asked, taking a pull on the beer.
“No. If I knew that, I’d have told the police. I’d tell you.”
“It’s not like she hasn’t run off before. A day here, maybe two. But when she didn’t show for work, that seemed strange. She doesn’t give a flying fuck about a lot of things, but she always turned up for work, even if she didn’t manage to get there on time, even if she’d gotten hammered the night before. Where I work, if you’re late, they dock you. Even if you’ve got a good excuse. Like if you’re sick, or hung-over, or something.”
“Patty hasn’t called you.”
“Nope.”
“Are you worried?”
“Aren’t you? About your daughter?”
“Yes. Very.”
“There you go. You and I don’t look like we’d have much in common, but there’s something right there.” She took another drink. “Maybe we have more in common than you think.”
“Maybe,” I said, not really thinking about it. “I wanted to talk to you because I thought if you had some idea what might have happened to Patty, it might be the same thing that’s happened to Sydney.”
“I can tell you this much,” she said, flopping down onto the couch. “I’ll bet it’s something bad.”
I set aside some discarded newspapers and took a chair opposite her. “What do you mean?”
“My girl, sometimes she doesn’t always do the smartest things.”
“What do you mean?” I asked again.
“Anything the other kids are into, Patty’s into it a year sooner. All I ever wanted was the best for her. I wanted her so badly to begin with. She was my little gift from God, you know? I didn’t think I’d ever even have a baby, and then when my prayers were finally answered, I went and screwed it all up.”
“Screwed it up how?” I said.
“Maybe, if Ronald had hung in-”
“Ronald?”
“My husband,” she said. “If he’d hung in to be a father to her, maybe that would have made some difference. You know how hard it is to raise a child alone?”
Susanne and I had been working independently the last five years, but we were still able to count on each other where Syd was concerned.
“It’s hard enough for two,” I said. “It’s a heavy load for one.”
“And trying to make a living, and run a house.” She made a grand gesture with her arms, as though keeping this place running efficiently were on a par with maintaining a Hilton. Then she set her beer down on the coffee table, but it caught the edge, and hit the floor. Carol was like lightning, righting the bottle before she’d lost much of it.
“Shit,” she said.
I sat and looked at her.
She leaned back against the couch, caught me staring, and misinterpreted. “I’m not much now,” she said. “But I had my day.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking how much you look like Patty.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Although I have to say, she seems to favor her father some, too.”
“Do you have any idea where the girls might be?” I asked.
Carol shook her head. “I told the police everything I could think of. I wish the hell I knew. I’m hoping maybe she just met some guy, she’s run off with him for a week or something, and she’ll come on back. Knocked up, probably, but at least she’ll be back.”
“Is that what you think’s happened?”
She put the beer down and studied me. “I don’t know.” She kept looking at me, examining my features.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re a good-looking man,” she said. “Even with your nose all broke.”
I couldn’t think of any way to respond to that. So I said nothing.
“What, you can’t say thanks?” she said.
“It just seems an odd thing to say,” I said, honestly.
“You probably think I’m coming on to you or something,” she said.
“I don’t know what to think,” I said. I felt numb.
She snorted. “That’s rich. Believe me, I’m not. I was just noticing, that’s all. It’s the first time I’ve really gotten a good look at you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I came into where you worked once to see you. This would be a good ten years ago.” I was selling cars at a Toyota dealership back then. “You were one of the top salesmen, right?”
I had no idea where this was going. “So we have met? You said a moment ago that we hadn’t, but-did I sell you a car? I’m usually pretty good with faces, but I’m sorry, I don’t remember you.”
“No no, you didn’t sell me a car. I came into the showroom, saw you at your desk, and once I had a look at you, I decided to get out before I changed my mind and went over and talked to you. I guess I lost my nerve.”
“Mrs. Swain, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t expect you would,” she said. “I didn’t want to make any trouble for you at the time. But boy, you know, I really just wanted to say hello, that’s all. I just wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me for what?”
“For being Patty’s father,” she said.