Unaccounted For

by Nan Willard Cappo

  “Five-year-olds have to be handled,” he agreed. “Or the neighbors call social services.”

  “That’s why I hate Gordon Pearce. Ever since he came my dad’s been obsessed with work.” She added a second story to her sugar house. “I saw you yesterday, coming back with him.”

  “I saw you, too. I thought you were mad we’d used your car.”

  “Mad! Oh, no. I was glad Daddy was getting out with someone besides Pearce for once. And then damned if Pearce didn’t come running out right then to the parking lot! Like there was some crucial news that couldn’t wait till my dad even got in the building.” She swept the sugar packets into a pile and replaced them in the holder. “Good thing I already hate the guy, right? It would be awful to find out someone you liked was a crook.”

  “That it would,” said the son of a thief.

  “But you never told me why he’d rob your house in the first place.”

  Stupid to think she might forget. It was what anyone would ask. Milo no longer thought of Ellie Farnon as above his touch—she didn’t act like she thought she was—but he was damned if he’d admit that his father had betrayed hers. True, they were hoping to find Tim had been more victim than crook—though Milo suspected Zaffer was humoring him just so they could act like detectives. But nothing said Milo had to confide so much, so soon, to this girl.

  So he lied—something he was getting good at. “No idea. That’s one of the things we need to find out.”

  She started to say something when her gaze went slightly out of focus. When she did speak he had the impression it wasn’t what she’d started to say. “You’re right to not tell my dad yet. He hates to hear anything bad about the Second Chancers. It’s like proving him wrong. To find out Pearce is back to his old tricks—it’ll hit him hard. He’s big on loyalty, my dad is.”

  That, Milo knew.

  Tony cleared her plate—it was empty, though Milo didn’t remember eating all the fries. They refused dessert, and Tony left their checks on the table.

  Ellie pulled out her wallet. “You’re going to snoop around some more, aren’t you. You and Zaffer.”

  “Probably.”

  “Can I help?”

  Two detectives were manageable; three bordered on farce. But Milo said, “Why not?”

  She gave him a conspiratorial smile and fished her phone out of her purse. “Shouldn’t I have your number, now that we’re on the same case?”

  They solemnly entered each other’s phone numbers. In the parking lot Milo stepped into the red Mustang for the second time. The shifting was decidedly jerkier with this Farnon, but he didn’t offer any tips after all. Instead he admired the determined grip of her slim hand on the gear shift knob.

  In no time she was pulling up in front of his dark house.

  “Well,” he said. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Sure. I had fun.”

  That seemed to be that, so he got out.

  The little car lurched up the street, then turned with a grind of gears on to the main road.

  It was a soft and balmy night, Milo realized, looking around his yard as though he’d never seen it before. A three-quarter moon lit the shrubbery with silver. On the trellis sweet-smelling clematis conjured up sharp, unnamable longings.

  His thumb traced the cell phone in his pocket, its cool metal skin as finely curved as an ankle bone.

  ***

  Chapter 13

  Monday, Milo got up before his alarm. He hated to waste this rare week of privacy, alone in the house without anyone needing their face washed or the TV turned down.

  He watered the garden, put out the trash, and fed the goldfish a deluded kindergarten teacher had entrusted to the twins for the summer. And all the while he pondered his next move. He not only needed to prove Pearce was the robber, he needed to know why.

  “And asking him is right out,” he told the fish. “If he’s a crook he’ll lie, and if he’s a killer I’m dead. If he’s innocent he’ll either tell Alf Farnon or have me committed, or both. So think up some other way.”

  The tank looked a little roomier this morning. “Did somebody get eaten here?” Milo counted them, though as they all looked identical this was a challenge. He wrote “goldfish” on the grocery list.

  Then he ate Cheerios and read more Slam Matous, PI. The guy was a master.

  “Steal his trash?” Zaffer asked. “All right!”

  “Ech.” Ellie wrinkled her nose. “Okay—when?”

  They were sitting on the grass outside Mario’s Lunch Truck, in the shade of a large maple tree mulched with the finest grade cedar chips—applied by Zaffer, as he pointed out.

  “Today,” Milo said.

  “Suits me. I don’t work tonight,” Zaffer said.

  Milo almost hoped Ellie would be busy. Was it wise to involve Farnon’s daughter in something that could be dangerous? “Did you find out where he lives?”

  She shrugged in apology. “He’s only got a PO box listed in what I saw. His paycheck is direct deposit, but Betty looked at me funny when I asked to see those files. I’m really just there to answer phones—I’m not an ‘HR professional,’ she said. Last time I bring her a sandwich.”

  “Criminals use PO boxes to keep their address unknown, and to hide assets,” Milo said. Zaffer nodded. Didn’t everyone know that? “We’ll do surveillance. We’ll trail him to his house, wait till he’s not watching, then take his trash.”

  “Uh—it’s not that I don’t think sorting through garbage in 100 degree heat isn’t a terrific idea, but couldn’t we find an easier way?” Zaffer asked, wolfing down his sub. “I could swear Slam talks about sites that can turn up someone’s property, including their house.”

  “They’re not free. If the trash doesn’t work, we can try the commercial sites—on your credit card. I’ll pay you back.” One of Tim Shoemaker’s legacies was his wife’s paranoia about credit cards. Gloria had agreed to co-sign an application for Milo, on condition she got to review his monthly statements. An outrageous violation of privacy, he told her. She’d said, “So?”

  “What a cheapskate you are,” Zaffer said. “Look at you, eating peanut butter. I bet it’s the store brand.”

  “Peanut butter is healthier than beef,” Ellie told Zaffer. “No saturated fat. You’re a runner, you should know these things.”

  “See?” Milo kicked his friend. “I’m in training, fat boy.”

  “I can beat you with a calzone in both hands. Ellie, you know what we called him at school? Shoe the Glue. We had to send out scouts to tell him when the race was over.”

  They bickered amicably, showing off, and Ellie laughed at them. At length Zaffer stood up. “Gotta repaint the lines in the south parking lot. Where do we meet?”

  “Your truck,” Milo decided. Pearce might know Milo’s car but he’d never met Zaffer. “Five o’clock sharp. We’ll watch for him across the street.”

  “This is so cool,” Ellie said fervently. “I’m so glad I didn’t go to Spain.”

  Employees were streaming out the front doors when Ellie decided she’d better move her car, in case her father wondered why it was still at work when she was not. In Zaffer’s truck, Milo and Zaffer followed her to the 7-Eleven across the road, where she parked the Mustang behind the store. When she reappeared she was carrying a bag. Milo got out to let her sit in the middle.

  “Snacks?” Zaffer asked hopefully.

  “Disguises.” The 7-Eleven had yielded baseball caps for Milo and Zaffer, sunglasses and a floppy sun hat for her.

  “Good idea.” Milo patted the Slam Matous book on his lap while keeping his eye on the Wolverine lot. It had emptied enough so that Pearce’s dark-blue Lincoln Town Car was easy to see. “We can fool security cameras.”

  Ellie beamed and luckily did not ask where they might encounter security cameras, as Milo had no idea.

  “No snacks?” Zaffer asked. Ellie dipped into the bag again and produced beef jerky sticks and packs of cheese crackers. Milo’s mouth was full when his cell ph
one rang.

  He swallowed. “How’s it going, Mom?”

  He heard how it was going for the next five minutes. Lake temperature, algae report, Joey’s 3 a.m. earache, Gloria and Grace’s team win at gin rummy. Milo watched the Wolverine entrance and wondered if Ellie knew her leg was touching his.

  “Did Ellie Farnon catch up with you last night?” his mother asked.

  Milo pressed the phone tighter against his ear. “Yep.”

  “What a considerate girl! Jenny’s been playing with those dolls all day. Ellie said they were her old toys but I happen to know that Barbie Top Model just came out last year. And that Ultra Stomp Rocket for Joey was still in the package.” As though her next sentence followed logically, she said, “Just remember—no girls in the house while we’re away.”

  “Hmm.” Milo glanced at Ellie, intently scanning radio stations.

  His mother was expert at conducting both sides of a conversation. “I think she likes you. She seemed awfully interested in where you boys were.”

  “Really?”

  “I thought so. And so did Jenny. Now Milo, your father would back me up on this—no girls in the—”

  “Whoa, that truck almost hit me! Gotta go, Mom. Love you too.” He disconnected, then on second thought, turned it off. “So, has he come out?” he asked briskly.

  Ellie was examining herself in the rearview mirror. “Nope. Do these glasses make me look glamorous, or like an old lady with cataracts?”

  Milo hid his relieved sigh. She hadn’t heard.

  “There he is,” Zaffer said.

  Gordon Pearce was striding out the main doors, a white handkerchief visible at his breast pocket. He walked quickly, almost furtively, his head bent forward as though scanning the air for a signal only crooks could hear. Custom-made suits or not, Milo could just see him as the lookout for a prison escape.

  Zaffer put the truck into gear. “Here we go, boys and girls.”

  The Town Car pulled up to the Miller Road gate directly across the road from them. Ellie ducked out of sight, her floppy hat brushing Milo’s chest. Milo pulled down his cap.

  “We keep two cars behind him. Now stay focused.” Zaffer tried to sound grim. But his excitement came through loud and clear, and Milo stifled a smile. Ben Zaffer, PI.

  They followed Pearce out of Valeene and east for almost half an hour. Just before Dundee, he turned north on US 23.

  “He’s got a long commute,” Ellie said.

  “Yeah, well, his car has air conditioning,” Milo grumbled.

  “Maybe he’s not going home,” Zaffer said, ignoring this comment. “He could be going to Ann Arbor, or even Detroit.”

  But at the Milan exit Pearce put on his blinker. Keeping a circumspect distance behind, they followed him east through the little town, then north again. The streets turned to two-lane roads, and then to country lanes. There wasn’t enough traffic to keep any cars between them; Zaffer was forced to drop far back. Now they were deep in a leafy residential area of large houses set back from the road, separated by stretches of trees and split rail fences. Large houses with plenty of…

  “Trash!” Ellie squeaked. Milo had already spotted it. Trash collection must be the next day, as many of the houses had their grass clippings and garbage cans stacked neatly by the road. Slam Matous was dead-on—this would be a piece of cake.

  Without warning, Pearce turned in to a long winding driveway of one of the few houses without any cans. They had to drive slowly past. Ellie and Milo craned around to watch the Town Car stop outside the three-car garage of a sprawling stone house.

  “Nice place,” Ellie said.

  “Too nice,” Milo said darkly.

  Zaffer swore, as though Pearce’s failure to live in a more densely settled neighborhood was yet another crime. He drove at a crawl along the unpaved road, but they didn’t come to a cross street for almost a mile.

  “Go right,” Milo said. “Those houses backed onto woods. Maybe we can walk in from behind.”

  Sure enough, they found a small nature preserve tucked behind Pearce’s road. A sign invited them to hike the marked trails, while another sign with a big circle over a squirrel forbade them to feed the animals. Or catch them, it wasn’t clear. The tiny parking lot was deserted at this, the dinner hour. Three trails led off into the woods.

  “Which way?” Ellie asked.

  Zaffer held up his right hand for silence, the better to study his torturously complex watch. “Gotta acquire the satellites.”

  “Just look at the sun,” Milo snapped. The sweat soaking his dress shirt had dampened his sense of adventure. “We were driving north, we turned east, so we want to go south to hit Pearce’s backyard. We should take”—he pointed toward a trail—“Hickory.”

  Zaffer deliberately studied his wrist a few more seconds. He glanced up at the cloudless blue sky, pursed his lips and said decisively, “Hickory.”

  Ellie giggled.

  It was 6:30 now, still hot, but in the shade of the tall trees it was cool and quiet. Their footsteps made little sound on the paths. The trees gave them the illusion of being miles from civilization, but then the path would bend and Milo could glimpse houses and backyard sheds through the leaves. There wasn’t room for three to walk abreast and he fell back, watching Ellie swing along easily in the flip-flops she wore everywhere. Today’s pair sported little navy blue and white polka-dotted bows.

  Zaffer stopped. “That’s his car.”

  They picked their way to the edge of the preserve, leaving a thin screen of trees between them and Pearce’s smooth, well-watered lawn. Milo thought how much his dad would have liked being able to walk out his back door and shoot a squirrel. Though they probably frowned on hunting in here.

  Pearce’s car stood in the driveway. “He’s still here,” Zaffer said.

  Milo shared his relief. Too late he realized they should have posted a lookout with a cell phone on the street. What if Pearce had put his car in the garage, making them think he had gone out? They could have been stealing his trash while he watched from the window.

  The lawn began feet from where they stood and ended in a flagstone patio twenty-five yards away. Tucked between the patio and the garage was a little fenced-off enclosure for trash, but Milo could not tell if the cans he could glimpse through the latticed screen were empty or full. As they watched, a door onto the patio opened and Pearce came out. He now wore jeans and an open-necked white shirt.

  “His hair!” Ellie whispered. Pearce’s sleek hair was tousled so that one black lock fell forward, hiding the distinctive widow’s peak. That, and the casual clothes, altered him remarkably; Milo wouldn’t have known him on the street.

  Pearce pushed buttons on a white box on the outside garage wall. The center door rose to reveal another vehicle, black, though Milo couldn’t make out the model. Pearce vanished into the garage and came out with a lawn sprinkler, which he attached to a garden hose and set in the middle of the back yard. He turned on the water, and through tall, graceful sweeps of water they watched him go back into the garage.

  A moment later a late-model Jeep backed out. Pearce pressed a button on his visor and the garage door came down.

  The driveway sloped sharply down to the road. They couldn’t see which way he turned.

  “Must have a hot date,” Milo said.

  Ellie said with satisfaction, “Couldn’t be better. There’s his trash. Let’s go.”

  Milo grabbed her arm. “Hang on. What if he notices it’s gone? He’ll put the cans out tonight or tomorrow morning. They’ll feel light.”

  “We could go get more trash from a store’s Dumpster,” Zaffer suggested.

  “Or we could just take theirs.” Ellie pointed. On the side of the house next to Pearce’s stood three trash cans, their lids only partially closed over the bulging contents, with two more bags on the ground.

  “Good thinking,” Zaffer said, and Ellie tried to look modest.

  Milo volunteered. He walked out of the woods and across Pearce’s gr
ass trying to look as though he always strolled through people’s backyards in his work clothes. At the neighbor’s house he heard rock music playing from somewhere inside. He picked up the two bags on the ground—one was leaking—then stepped over the line of stunted shrubs separating the yards. Timing the sprinkler spray, he opened the neat latticed-wood gate to the trash can area and swapped his bags for two similar one, also white, luckily. He slammed the lid back on the can and then heard it—a car engine, close. In the driveway. Through the gaps in the lattice he saw the Jeep.

  Pearce was back.

  The engine shut off. A car door opened and closed.

  Milo froze. Maybe Pearce had just forgotten his wallet and would leave right away. But no. Here he came, straight toward Milo. He must have seen the neighbors’ trash cans and remembered he hadn’t set out his own.

  Milo was crouched inside the fenced-off pen in Pearce’s yard, holding the guy’s trash in his hands. There was no possible explanation. And no escape. His mind raced. He could punch Pearce out and run like hell. Plead some psychiatric disorder if he was recognized. Pearce reached for the gate handle. Milo started to set down the bags, when someone screamed.

  A girl’s scream, shrill and terrified and nearby. After a shocked instant Milo realized it was Ellie, creating a distraction. The real-sounded panic in that scream—surely she was being attacked by a rapist with a knife—alarmed him even as he admired her nerve.

  It stopped Gordon Pearce dead. He looked back at the woods behind him, clearly the source of the scream. He walked slowly, then more quickly, toward the trees at the far end of the yard.

  Milo didn’t dawdle. He grabbed the trash bags, slipped out of the pen and latched the door behind him, then ran around the corner of the house. He’d never done cross country carrying garbage before but maybe he should have, because it felt like his best time ever as he dashed down the steep front lawn and across the empty road, bags bumping him with every stride. There was an even larger house on that side of the road, with an equally long and winding drive. He threw himself down behind their weathered split-rail fence that held dense, thorny bushes back from the road.