“No, but I saw it before. They think they’re so hidden in their car. Like people don’t have eyes.” A car? Charles and Dave didn’t strike me as the PDA type.
“You’re sure it was the owners?” I asked.
“I saw him, both times, the little fairy.” Dave was the smaller of them. “Always wearing those fucking bow ties and prancing around.” Definitely Dave. “The candy probably has AIDS. I bet people get sick from it.”
What kept me in my seat was the knowledge that once I started hitting him, I’d be unable to stop. “When did you see them?” I asked.
“Last week and the week before that. It’s not right,” he said.
“But you saw nothing the night of the 11th?”
“Naw.”
“You sure?” He said nothing. “What car do you drive, Jason?”
“Why do you want to know?” he asked.
I stared and counted slowly in my head. Got to eight before he said, “A VW bug.” Not a red pickup truck. Ah, well.
“The other man you saw, with Mr. Evans. What did he look like?”
“It was his ‘business partner,’ duh.”
“So you saw Mr. Gallagher?” I pressed.
“Who else would it be?” It almost made me laugh. This guy hated gays, but he was ready to believe in their absolute fidelity. “He wore a Bruins jacket.” I’d never seen Mr. Gallagher wear sports gear. “So are they gonna leave town or what? I saw a sign saying they’d reopen today.”
“Why should that concern you?”
“We shouldn’t have gays selling kids candy!”
Mr. Rivers pushed the door open, forcing Jason further into the room. “Is there a problem?” He glared at Jason.
“No,” Jason said. He didn’t look Mr. Rivers in the eye.
“Chief Lynch?” Mr. Rivers asked.
“I’m good. Thanks for the loan of your office.”
Jason crept out the open door and Mr. Rivers shook his head. “I’m sorry. Jason isn’t . . . I gave him the job because I was short-staffed. His parents are lovely people. I don’t know how they ended up with him.”
I shook hands with the manager and headed back out into the cold. The wind tried to take my hat, with no success. So David Evans was seen canoodling with a man other than Charles Gallagher. I thought about the graffiti and what had bothered me about it. The tone of the comments was different. One was a cold death threat; the other was angry and personal. Jason, in all his hateful spite, may have cracked the case. I hunched against the cold air and walked up the street.
Sweet Dreams looked amazing. Nate and crew had brought the plans to life. The gold-stenciled name, the glass jars, and new shelving, it all looked great. Mr. Evans stood behind the counter, ringing up a customer. He wore a bow tie and a maroon sweater-vest. His gray hair was freshly cut. He looked like he’d lost weight. He did not look as though he’d been ill recently.
“Good afternoon,” I said, once he was free from customers.
“Chief Lynch, welcome. Place looks great, doesn’t it?”
“It does. Do you have a moment? I need to discuss the break-in.”
His lips pursed and his eyes swept down. “It breaks my heart to think about it.”
I suspected there was more truth in that statement than he’d intended. “I just need a few minutes.”
“Sure.” He walked to the door and flipped the sign to “Back in Ten Minutes!” Honestly, this town. If you tried that in New York, you’d be out of business in a week.
He waved me through to the back office, where the new rear door kept the winter cold outside. Boxes marked “Suckers” and “Licorice” stood alongside gift-wrap rolls. He sat at the desk. I leaned against a shelving unit. “So, about the break-in,” I said. “Who do you think is responsible?”
“Me? I’ve no idea. I just can’t fathom it.”
“It’s not nice, being made to feel different,” I said. “Hated.”
He swallowed. “You understand. I heard about your patrol car.”
“Hazard of the job,” I said. “But your store? That must have felt personal.”
“Of course,” he said. “Charles and I both felt attacked.”
“I just have one more question.”
“Yes?”
“What time did you return to the store to write ‘Leave Before We Kill You’ on the wall beside the door?”
“What do you mean?”
“Please don’t lie. I know it was you. You saw the damage to the store and tried to divert attention from the graffiti with your death threat.”
“Why would I do that?” His voice cracked like a pubescent boy’s. He winced.
“Because you didn’t want Charles to find out about your affair? Because you figured this way you could fill out a police report and get the insurance money. Redo the store like you’ve wanted to for years.”
“No,” he whispered.
I stepped forward. “We had a child abduction to pursue and you let us process your store as if a hate crime had been committed. Would you like to talk to the Forrands? Apologize for wasting our time and resources while their son was kidnapped?”
He lowered his face to his hands. “No. Please, no. I didn’t know that would happen. How could I?” His words came in a mumbled rush. “I’m sorry, but this store is my life. Charles is my life! If he found out . . .” He looked up, tears on his cheeks. “Please, you can’t tell him. If he finds out, he’ll leave. I cheated, once before. I swore I never would again. I didn’t—”
“You need to come to the station and make a statement. Tell us who did it. And don’t lie. I’ve a pretty good idea who it is.” Utter lie.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t know Zack would go nuts when I told him we needed to break it off. I came back to the store because I’d forgotten a DVD Charles wanted to watch. The door was broken in. Glass everywhere. And that graffiti. He meant it for me.” You cocksucker. “If I make the statement, will you tell Charles?” He still wanted a way out.
“So you got some spray paint and wrote the death threat to obscure who did it.”
“I had some in my car, from an old art project. I thought if I wrote the death threat, Charles wouldn’t find out about Zachary.”
“Come by the station,” I said.
“We had a nice life,” he said wistfully. As if it was all over, just like that.
I walked out the front door. The bell jangled. Coming up the street was Charles Gallagher. He waved to me. I waved back and hurried to my car. I didn’t want to witness what happened next.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wright looked worse than I’d ever seen him. His suit was wrinkled and his bloodshot eyes watered. His body curled over as he hacked into a handkerchief. “God, you sound like Finnegan,” I said. Even Wright’s glare lacked heat.
“Kids are sick, my wife is getting sick, and now I’m sick.” He sipped from his mug and grimaced. “I know I’m bad off when coffee tastes gross.” He put the mug down. “You think the staties, if we asked . . .” If he’d put on a clown nose and began juggling, I couldn’t have been more surprised. We’d had a state detective in to help with our murder, and Wright had been a complete jackass to him. “I don’t want this kidnapper to disappear.”
“He won’t.” I had no business making this claim, but I didn’t want us calling for help every time we had something tougher than a DUI. I’d gotten the break-in cleared up. Now we just had the kidnapping and arson. Oh, and my graffiti.
“Finnegan checked the cars. There are four people on the Forrands’ list with gray, silver, or white cars. One belongs to the sister, one to their former minister.” He raised a brow.
“Eh, men of God are still men,” I said.
“Right. Then we’ve got a family friend, Camille, who Finnegan is talking to.”
“Who’s the fourth?” I asked.
“Greg Baker.” He sneezed.
“Greg Baker. Uncle Greg? The same guy who gave Cody the original Sammy raccoon?” I asked.
>
“Guess he’s next.” He coughed. “I need to go talk to him.”
“Why don’t I go check on Uncle Greg and the others? You stay here and chug cough medicine. Give me the names and addresses you need checked.”
On the road to interview “Uncle” Greg, my gloved hands gripped the steering wheel. Cold air blasted my face. “Two more days with you,” I told the car. I turned the heater off and the radio on. “Frosty the Snowman” assaulted my ears. Good god, was that children singing? I snapped the radio knob fast, and it came off, landing in the footwell. The children sang on. “Fuck!” I tried to manipulate the little metal stub, but my gloved hand wasn’t up to the task. The children chorused “thumpity thump thump”s. I tore off my right glove and used my bare hand. The volume could be lowered but not silenced.
“Silent Night” came next. Sung by children more out of tune than the last group. I sped up, reaching Chaplin right after the shepherds quaked. Chaplin was where the Forrands had lived before moving to Idyll. It was Jane Forrand’s birthplace and where she and Pete had met, at the local gas station. He’d had a blowout a mile away, and she worked the register. I learned this from Uncle Greg, who lived near the center of town, in an old Victorian painted purple.
From the outside, the place looked like it belonged to an eighty-year-old lady. Inside, it was another story. Greg Baker’s living room contained a large TV, a massive leather couch, and more than one gaming system. An electric guitar was propped in a corner. Movie posters hung on the walls: The Godfather, Goodfellas. The place screamed single straight man. Greg settled me on the sofa and offered me a drink. I declined. He stood, cracking his knuckles. “How can I help?” he asked.
“I’m trying to figure out who could’ve grabbed Cody. You’ve known the Forrands a long time.”
“Since before the kids were born. Me and Pete went to college together. We took jobs at the same insurance firm, though I came out here a year earlier.”
“You still work there?” I asked.
“Yup. Can you believe it? 1989. God, time flies.”
“Pete isn’t there anymore though, right? He switched jobs?”
“He took a job closer to Idyll, once they moved. The commute was a bitch.”
“Right. Plus, Cody’s illness must’ve been tough to manage. All those hospital visits.”
“Yeah.” He sat in a lounge chair, his butt perched on the edge. “Poor Pete. At first it seemed like he had this really chill kid who, like, never cried. And then it turned out it was because of the disease. Pete and Jane felt awful, like they should’ve known earlier.”
I fast-forwarded to the present. “Cody says he got into the car that took him away. Does that strike you as odd?”
“Cody does stuff without thinking through the consequences, you know?” he said.
“So you’re not surprised?” I asked.
“I am, actually. I know he got the stranger-danger talk from Pete and Jane.” He lowered his voice, though we were alone. “By the way, I hope Pete hasn’t been weird around you. He told me, about your being gay.”
He had what? Why?
“You gotta understand, Pete comes from a conservative Christian family. Very big on sin and punishment. So if he isn’t always the most tolerant, maybe try to understand why he’s that way.” Did this explain why Pete didn’t want me to interview Cody? Why his wife complained I’d “harassed” them in the hospital?
“I don’t remember seeing you during the search for Cody. Were you at work?”
“Yeah. I didn’t hear about it until that night. I wanted to help, but Pete told me to wait until the roads got better. Then Cody was found. Guess prayers work.”
“You’re a religious man?”
“Lapsed Catholic.”
“You drive a silver Impala?” I asked. He nodded. “How does it handle in the snow?”
“It does all right.”
“Do you have any idea who might’ve taken Cody?”
“No. None.”
“I imagine you don’t see as much of the Forrands since they moved.”
“Pete and I still get together for an occasional beer. Sometimes I watch the kids.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“I’m Cody’s godfather. Besides, they’re great kids.”
The doorbell’s chimes sounded. “Excuse me.” He bounded from his seat and clomped downstairs. A minute later, he returned, followed by a boy with green eyes.
“This is Nathan,” Greg said, ruffling the kid’s hair. “His mom, Lisa, lives next door. She had to run to the vet’s. I’d promised I’d babysit. Is it okay?” he asked.
“Sure, I’m almost finished,” I said.
Nathan went for the video-game controller. He sat cross-legged on the floor. “Keep the volume down, huh buddy?” Greg said. “I need to talk to this policeman.”
“Cool,” Nathan said, his eyes never turning from the screen. A giant dragon swooped across the screen. “I’m going to beat that orc today!”
“Great, buddy,” Greg said. So he had video games for the kids to play. How thoughtful.
“You babysit a lot for the neighbors?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I help out.” He watched my face. “Not often.”
“Cody sure seems into the Power Rangers,” I said.
“Oh, man, that show. I’ve watched it with him. It’s crazy bad.”
“So you know his favorite Power Ranger?” I asked.
His eyes went wide of my face. “Of course, the Green Ranger.”
Gotcha.
“Thanks for your time. If you think of anything, call the station?” I handed him a card.
“Sure. Absolutely. If there’s anything I can do, let me know. It’s just terrifying, thinking about it. I’m so glad he’s safe.”
Nathan pushed buttons on the controller. Explosions sounded. “Take that!”
“Aren’t you fierce?” Greg told him. “Hey, Nathan, you want some cocoa?” He clicked the door closed behind me. My hands tingled. Cocoa.
I regretted the loaner’s lack of police radio. I wanted someone to check Greg’s background, now. I’d have to wait until I got back. Maybe I should look into buying a mobile phone.
The next person on my list was Jane Forrand’s younger sister, Jessica, who still lived in Chaplin, on a poorly paved road with a horse barn out back. Jessica had a scattering of freckles that seemed out of place in winter. She led me to a living room with a worn quilt on the sofa and a blazing fire. “Cold out there,” she said.
When I asked how many people lived in Chaplin, she laughed. “A little over two thousand. Everybody knows everybody’s business. Jane hated it. She couldn’t wait to move to New York.”
“New York?”
“She wanted to be an actress. Figured if she could get a lead on a soap opera, she’d be set for life. She was in all our school plays. Got all the leads. She was so pretty and outgoing.”
I wouldn’t have described Jane Forrand as pretty.
“This is Jane, her senior year in high school. Prom queen.” She handed me a photograph she’d fetched from a side table. In it, a younger Jane had a tiara in her blond hair. She wore a billowing turquoise gown. “Jane won all the queens: prom, May, and homecoming. Everybody thought she’d go to New York after college, but then she met Pete and,” she shrugged, “things changed.”
“She finished college?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Theater major at Quinnipiac College. She met Pete when she was a junior. He was already out of college. They got married after she graduated. He worked for a big insurance company. She got pregnant with Anna. They bought a house, on Cypress Boulevard. Beautiful place.”
“So they lived in town?”
“Yes. They moved two years ago, when things got difficult.”
“Difficult.”
She scrunched her nose as if something smelled bad. “It was Cody, all his bruises. People noticed. He hadn’t been diagnosed yet. It was nonsense, of course, but it took a toll. Then Pete lost his jo
b.”
“Layoffs?” I asked.
“I think so. So they sold the house and moved to be closer to his new job.” Interesting. Greg hadn’t said Pete had lost his job. Someone was wrong, or lying.
“Who accused them of child abuse?” I asked.
She bit her lip, like Jane. They could’ve been twins in that moment. “Their neighbor, Mrs. Kimble, started the rumors. She’s a retired teacher. She thought Cody got injured too often.”
“Does she still live in town?”
“Yes, at 15 Cypress Boulevard, next door to their old house.”
“About the kidnapping . . .”
“Jane says you think it’s someone who knows them, who knows Cody.”
“It looks that way. Can you think of anyone who’d do that?”
“No. Unless it was one of those people who likes to have sex with kids.” She knotted her hands together. “Wasn’t there one in your town? Jane said—”
“It wasn’t him.”
“We had a girl go missing here, in Chaplin. Vicky Fitzgerald. Five years ago. She was taken by a pedophile. Found in the woods. Everyone turned out to search for her. It was awful.” This was the case Mr. Forrand had mentioned, the one that had soured him on the police, and sparked that argument with his wife.
“How well do you know Greg Baker?” I asked.
“Greg? He and Pete go way back. They met in college out in Colorado.”
“He’s still single?”
She picked at the sleeve of her sweater. “Greg’s a big kid. I can’t imagine him settling down. He’s got a, what do they call it? Peter Pan complex. He’ll never grow up. Why do you want to know about Greg? You don’t think he had anything to do with Cody, do you? Greg loves Cody. He’s his godfather.”
“I’m just asking questions. Trying to piece together who knows what. That’s all.”
She harrumphed at me. “You’d do better to look at that plumber Jane hired.”
“She told you about him?”
“Yesterday. She’s been trying to remember his name. It’s driving her bonkers.”
“Thanks. If you think of anything, please, give me a call.”
“I will. I promised to come down soon to babysit so Jane can go shopping. She wants to make this Christmas special, after everything Cody has been through.”
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