Bad News

by Linwood Barclay

  ‘Did you see her leave after that, notice which way she went?’

  Hector shrugged. ‘It’s not like I hung around to see where she’d go. I’m not like some sort of perv or something.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Who’d ever think such a thing?’

  I thanked Hector, moved my car so it wasn’t blocking the pumps, and found a parking spot on the main street. I walked back down to Terri’s, surveyed the display window featuring clothes and brightly colored, chunky-looking plastic toys for youngsters. A bell tinkled as I opened the door to go inside, and I browsed the tables until a woman in her mid-thirties with reddish-blonde hair approached.

  ‘May I help you?’ Her voice was soft, almost whispery.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. I’d never done much of the clothes shopping for Sarah and Paul – didn’t even do that much for myself, not without a lot of arm twisting. And my kids certainly weren’t of an age anymore where anything in this store would fit them. ‘Uh, a friend of mine, he and his wife have just had a baby, and I was thinking I should get them a little something.’

  ‘We have infant clothing at the back of the store. Did they have a girl or a boy?’

  ‘Uh, they had …’ Come on, you dumb bastard. Just pick one. ‘A boy.’

  She led me to the back of the shop. ‘I think this is the place someone recommended to me,’ I said. ‘I have a friend who shops here for her daughter, I think.’

  The woman cocked her head. She smiled playfully. ‘You don’t sound too sure. Are you not sure whether she has a daughter, or are you not sure whether it’s her daughter, or not sure that she shops here?’

  ‘Where little kids are concerned,’ I said, ‘the only thing I’m really sure about is that I don’t want any more. Our kids are pretty grown up now, and while the little years were wonderful, they’re the sort of thing you only want to do once, right?’

  Nice blathering. Nice, totally idiotic blathering.

  ‘I suppose,’ the woman said. ‘Who’s your friend, who shops here?’

  ‘Ms Snelling,’ I said, gambling that if Trixie had been in here, and if she had given her name, it might have been that one.

  The woman shook her head. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘She was here last Thursday. Probably getting something for her daughter. About five-four, dark hair, very pretty.’ I thought of Hector’s description of what she’d been wearing that day. ‘Would have probably been wearing a long leather coat, these high-heeled boots.’ I thought about showing her the picture of Trixie from the newspaper, but that would put a totally different spin on the nature of my questioning.

  ‘Oh yes, I remember her. But I didn’t get her name. She always pays cash.’

  ‘Yes, that sounds like her,’ I said. ‘Likes to keep those credit card charges down. So she comes in regularly?’

  The woman was holding up some sort of jumper thing in blue. It didn’t look big enough to hold a shih tzu. ‘The odd time, but not very often. But I don’t think it could be the same person. She doesn’t buy for her own daughter. She likes to buy presents for the Bennets’ little girl when she’s up this way visiting. I think she must be her aunt or something.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ I said. ‘I meant niece. Not daughter.’

  The woman gave me a look, like she thought something funny was going on, but I kept smiling and maintained eye contact, and she seemed to let it go.

  ‘She is just the most adorable little girl. I think her aunt spoils her,’ the woman said.

  I felt a charge going through me. ‘The Bennets, they still have that place down the road a ways?’

  ‘Well, if you call Kelton down the road a ways,’ she said. ‘How about something like this?’ She’d matched the jumper to some booties and socks and the whole outfit looked a bit fussy, to tell you the truth.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Last time I dropped in on the Bennets, must be six years or so. Don’t think I could find their place if my life depended on it.’

  ‘They’re still on County Road 9, can’t miss them,’ she said. ‘Hang on, I think I have her on my mailing list. I could check for you if you’d like.’

  I felt an adrenaline rush, but stayed calm. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

  ‘Oh, it’s no trouble.’ She dug out a book from under the register. ‘That’s right, County Road 9, just north of Kelton. Would you like their phone number?’

  I wasn’t sure I needed it, but took it just the same. All I wanted to do now was burst out of the store, check my map, and find County Road 9.

  ‘I’ll take this,’ I said, pointing to the jumper and booties. I figured that to back out on the sale now would start raising suspicions again.

  ‘Would you like it done up in a gift bag?’ she asked.

  I said that would be fine. I thought it would take forever, her arranging the tissue paper, scoring the string with the blunt edge of some scissors to make it go all curly, helping me pick out a card.

  It was all I could do not to run out of the store. But once I was out the door, I made a mad dash to the car.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I got out the map. If I’d had the smarts to figure out the GPS system in Trixie’s car, I could have looked up Kelton and County Road 9, but finding it on a piece of paper not only seemed simpler, but a hell of a lot faster.

  Using Trixie’s pencil, I followed the route west out of Groverton, up to Kelton, which was barely big enough to warrant a dot, then found County Road 9 heading due north from it. I turned the key, heard the engine’s powerful but understated roar – not the sort of thing I was used to behind the wheel of my hybrid Virtue – and started heading out of town.

  It was only slightly after noon, and I could have used some lunch, but I felt that I was so close to finding Trixie, and to learning what was going on, that I didn’t want to stop. But as I drove, I found I wasn’t thinking of food anyway. I was burdened with doubts that finding Trixie would actually accomplish all of the things I hoped it would.

  She’d already run away from me once. And she’d shown herself capable of taking desperate measures to make sure I didn’t come after her. But maybe this time, if we could have a conversation in a less unsettling environment – in other words, without a dead man in the room – she’d be more inclined to tell me what was going on.

  It took twenty minutes to reach Kelton, and another twelve seconds to drive through it. A general store, a gas station with pumps from the middle of the previous century, maybe a dozen houses. Motorists were supposed to slow to forty miles per hour driving through, but most, like me, held pretty close to sixty and no one seemed to mind.

  County Road 9 wound through farm country. Barns, their boards weathered gray, sat back from the highway, beyond two-story homes likely built seventy to a hundred years ago. At the end of every driveway stood a mailbox, and at some, a small building, phone booth-sized, that could have been outhouses if it weren’t for large, window-like openings. These, I realized, were for children to stand in, for shelter, while they waited for school buses on wintry mornings.

  I slowed for each mailbox, trying to read the name. Some were painted on crudely, others used those metallic-looking peel-and-stick letters you can buy from the hardware store. For a while, I had a pickup behind me, the driver wondering what I was doing, letting my foot off the gas as I approached each farm’s driveway. Finally, catching a break in the oncoming traffic, he gunned past me, giving me the finger.

  ‘Whatever,’ I said under my breath. I had other problems.

  I’d seen boxes labeled ‘Fountain’ and ‘Verczinski’ and ‘Walton’ and ‘Scrunch.’ That one gave me pause. Scrunch? I tried to imagine going through life with a name like Scrunch. Maybe that was why they lived out in the country. Fewer people to introduce yourself to.

  ‘Hi, we’re the Scrunches.’

  ‘We’re a bunch of Scrunches.’

  ‘Packing lunches for the Scrunches.’

  I was having so much fun entertaining myself that I
drove right past the mailbox marked Bennet.

  I actually spotted the name, ‘Bennet,’ in my rearview mirror. There was no name on the approaching side of the mailbox, so when I glanced into my mirror and saw what appeared to be the right letters, if in the wrong order, I hit the brakes.

  Once I had the car pulled over to the shoulder, I scoped out the Bennet house. It sat a good hundred yards back from the road, a two-story brick farmhouse with a porch across the front and down one side. The gravel drive led beyond the house to a barn out back. The land that surrounded the structures didn’t appear to be used for growing anything other than tall grass, although the lawn out front of the house was green and well tended.

  I backed up, turned into the drive, noticed one of those mini-shelters for bused children. Made of chipboard, it looked unfinished, but new, as though waiting for its first winter. As I rolled past it, gravel made crunching noises under the wide tires of the GF300. As I got closer to the house, I noticed the ass end of an old minivan parked out back. I pulled in next to it, got out, and when I happened to glance into the van, noticed a child’s booster seat attached to the second row of seats.

  I admired the flowers in the garden, which looked as though it had just been weeded, mounted the two steps up to the porch, walked past some white wicker furniture, and knocked on the front screen door. Leaned up against the house, next to the door, were a garden rake and a small shovel, fresh dirt still clinging to it. Inside the house, I heard movement, and then the main door, beyond the screen, opened.

  At first I thought Trixie had done something with her hair.

  It was blonde now, instead of black, with some streaks of gray in it. She was wearing jeans, with a denim shirt tucked in, the sleeves rolled up. A wisp of hair hung over her forehead and across one eye, and when she used the back of her wrist to move it away, I could see that I had made a mistake.

  This was not Trixie. But her face, the shape of her nose, something about the chin, it almost could have been. But this woman was older. Not by much. Three or four years, maybe, but no more. She was lean, and her forearms, where the sleeves had been rolled up, were ropy and muscular.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman said.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I—’

  And I realized I had no cover story worked out. Maybe if I just told the truth.

  ‘Are you Mrs Bennet?’ I asked, pointing to the mailbox out front.

  I guess, what with her name out there by the road and all, she couldn’t see much point in denying it. ‘Yes,’ she said, hesitantly.

  ‘Mrs Bennet, I’m looking for someone,’ I said, my voice full of apology. ‘I don’t know whether I have the right place, but, uh, I’m looking for a woman by the name of Trixie Snelling.’

  Mrs Bennet’s eyes seemed to widen, then go back to normal, all in a thousandth of a second.

  ‘I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name,’ Mrs Bennet said.

  ‘Well, that’s possible,’ I said. ‘I might have the name wrong. I don’t even know that that is her name. It might actually be Candace something. You see, I know her as Trixie, we used to be neighbors, she’s a friend of mine, and—’

  ‘Mister,’ Mrs Bennet said, starting to close the door, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m afraid if you have any more questions, you’ll have to talk to my husband.’

  I nodded agreeably. ‘That would be fine. Could I speak to him please?’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s not here right now. You’d have to come back another time.’

  From somewhere down the highway, the sound of an approaching truck.

  ‘Mrs Bennet, please, I’m sorry, I haven’t even told you my name. I’m Zack—’

  ‘I don’t care who you are. You’ll have to leave and come back another time. I can’t help you. There’s no one else here, there’s no woman by that name, and I don’t know who would have told you such a thing.’

  The truck noise was growing louder, and I turned away from Mrs Bennet long enough to see what it was. A school bus. A big, yellow, black-striped school bus. It slowed as it approached the end of the Bennets’ driveway.

  But it was only just after lunch. Too early for children to be coming home from school. No, wait, not for a kindergarten student. A child who went to school just in the morning, half a day, would be coming home right about now.

  ‘You have to leave,’ Mrs Bennet said. She had grown increasingly anxious, like she wanted me gone before I had a chance to see who was going to get off the bus.

  But the bus was already stopped, its flashing red lights on. The door opened. A small girl, about five years old, dressed in blue jumper and red tights, her head a mess of tiny blonde curls, a pink backpack dragging at her side, hopped down from the bottom step and landed on the gravel. She turned and waved goodbye to the driver, who waited until he was sure the girl was walking toward her home, and not making some impulsive dash across the highway, before he levered the door shut, threw the bus into first, and drove away.

  The girl didn’t head straight to the house, but dawdled. Something had caught her eye in the tall grass beyond the drive, and she was stepping into it, reaching down for something, missing it, reaching again.

  Mrs Bennet, who’d been about to close the door on me a moment earlier, now opened it, pushed open the screen, and stepped out onto the porch. ‘Katie!’ she called. ‘You get here now!’

  Katie looked up momentarily, then whatever she’d been trying to catch was trying to make a break for it, and she pounced again. ‘Gas hopper!’ she shouted.

  Mrs Bennet was off the porch now, running up the drive. Katie, alarmed to see Mrs Bennet moving toward her so urgently, must have figured she’d done something wrong, because she stopped going after the grasshopper and stood stock still, awaiting whatever it was Mrs Bennet had in store for her.

  But it was protection, not punishment, that was on the woman’s mind. She scooped Katie up into her arms, turned and ran back towards the house. As she mounted the porch steps, I opened the screen door so she could run straight inside with the child. Although I only had a glimpse of Katie, there was something about her too that was familiar. She certainly looked as though she could be Mrs Bennet’s daughter. But then, Mrs Bennet looked a lot like Trixie Snelling.

  From inside, I heard Mrs Bennet say, ‘There’s soup and a sandwich all ready for you in the kitchen. You go in there and you stay there till I come in.’

  ‘What kind of soup is it?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Tomato.’

  ‘What kind of samich?’

  ‘Tuna.’

  ‘Is there cut-up celery in it?’

  ‘No, no celery. I made it just the way you like it.’

  ‘Is Mommy here for lunch?’

  Now my eyes went wide for a thousandth of a second.

  ‘You just go in there and eat, okay? I’ll be in in a minute.’

  This time, rather than talking to me through the screen, Mrs Bennet stepped out onto the porch. ‘You’re going to have to go, mister,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong house.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘That girl, Katie.’ I weighed my words carefully. ‘Is she Trixie’s daughter?’

  Mrs Bennet sighed, shook her head in tiny jerks of exasperation. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, mister.’

  ‘I need to talk to Trixie,’ I said. ‘Even if I have her name wrong, I’m sure you know who I mean.’

  ‘I don’t. I have no idea.’

  ‘It’s urgent. Look, I was there when they found the body in her basement. The police are looking for her. I’ve been suspended from work, my wife’s ready to leave me, and I think Trixie at least owes me some sort of explanation about what she’s dragged me into. What if you just gave her a message?’

  ‘A message.’

  ‘Look, I could write something down, you give it to her.’ I reached into my pocket for a small notebook and pen.

  That’s when I took my eyes off Mrs Bennet.

&nb
sp; When I glanced back up, she had the small shovel in her hand, and she was swinging it, like a baseball bat, for the side of my head.

  ‘Hey, wh—’ I shouted, putting an arm up to keep the blade from crashing into my skull.

  The wooden handle connected with the bone in my forearm, and the pain shot through me like lightning.

  ‘Shit!’ I shouted.

  But she was coming at me again, taking another swing, and she had this wild, determined look in her eye that told me she meant business. I jumped back and the shovel whipped past me so quickly I could hear its blade cutting through the air.

  When I jumped back, I lost my footing, and fell backwards. My head slammed into a post at the end of a porch railing.

  That’s when the lights went out.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The first thing I became aware of was the voices. A conversation between a man and a woman. It had to be a dream, I thought. It was the sort of conversation one might expect to hear in a nightmare.

  ‘What are we going to do with him?’ That was the woman.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the man said. ‘But you did the right thing.’

  ‘It was when he looked at Katie. I got so scared.’

  There was a damp earthy smell. Could you smell things in a dream? Probably. At the very least, you could imagine you were smelling something in a dream. But it was more than earth or dirt. Was it hay? Had I smelled enough hay in my life to know for sure?

  I tried to wake myself up, to blink my eyes open. But the world remained dark; I couldn’t get my lids to move. There was something sticky over them.

  ‘I can’t believe you dragged him back into the barn yourself,’ the man said.

  ‘I guess I was just going on adrenaline,’ she said. Okay, I thought. I know that voice. I’d heard it recently. Just before going to sleep.

  No. Not sleep. That was the voice I’d heard just before I’d hit my head on the post. Mrs Bennet. That’s who it was.