“Please, Lydia—”
“My name isn’t Lydia,” said the voice. “I thought you were going to tell me about Tim.”
Brenna’s breath caught. “You’re the woman who has been calling the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“What is your name?”
“Millie,” she said slowly. “Millie Davis.”
Brenna exhaled hard. “The group home owner.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been calling the hospital, not leaving your name.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m worried about Tim,” she said. “And I’m scared.”
Brenna sat down at her desk. She clutched the phone to her ear and spoke very softly. “I understand,” she said, though honestly, she didn’t understand at all.
“I know you’re not a Buffalo cop,” Millie was saying. “The nurse told me Spector. I looked the number up online. Saw your Web site. You’re a private investigator.”
“That’s right.”
“This number. It’s your direct line. The Web site said, ‘Confidential calls.’ ”
“Right . . .”
“So this call, Ms. Spector,” she said slowly. “It’s confidential.”
“Yes.”
Brenna heard her exhale—a trembling wave of breath. “Good.”
“Ms. Davis?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you scared?”
Another long, shaking sigh. Brenna half expected her to hang up. Then she said, “I don’t think Timothy set that fire.”
Brenna’s eyes widened. “Did you see anybody coming or going?”
“No. It happened after three in the morning. All of us were sleeping till the flames got big.”
“So then what makes you think someone else started it?”
“The way Tim had been acting. Very nervous. High-strung. You’d knock on his door, he’d say, ‘Go away!’ That wasn’t like Tim. He was usually very friendly, very welcoming.”
“How long had he been acting that way?”
“Just about two days,” she said.
“Did he have any visitors around that time?”
“None that I knew of—of course, I wasn’t always there. He did get a couple of phone calls from some lady earlier that week. I picked up the phone. She sounded very nice. I know it wasn’t her he was scared of.”
Brenna said, “That was Carol. Carol Wentz.”
“Oh,” said Millie. “I was thinking it may have been his ex-wife.”
“Why?”
“Because when she asked to speak to him, she said it was about Iris. I knew Iris was his little girl. He kept a picture of her in his room.”
Brenna closed her eyes for a moment. The single bed, the framed picture, the wild-haired man, sitting there alone with his haunted eyes, hoping . . . Brenna said, “Did Tim ever mention what it was that Carol told him about Iris?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Brenna said. “Thank you for calling me back, Ms. Davis.”
“Listen, Ms. Spector, there’s one more thing that might help.”
Brenna waited.
“The day the house burned down, Tim asked me something strange.”
“Yes?”
“He asked if I could put a new lock on his door.”
“Ms. Davis, are you sure he didn’t have any visitors? You didn’t see any strange cars around your house?”
“No,” she said. “Well, wait . . . Come to think of it, I did pass one car when I was coming home from the market. It was leaving our street, but they could have been visiting anybody. There were ten people living there, quite a few who got more guests than Tim.”
“What kind of car was it?” Brenna asked. “Would you know the model and make?”
“I don’t know cars,” she said. “But it was blue. And teeny tiny. Looked just like a little toy.”
After hanging up with Millie Davis, Brenna turned off her computer and went to bed with such frustration coursing through her . . . So close and yet so far. Carol had been talking to Tim O’Malley about Iris. He’d been frightened before the house burned down. He’d been hiding from someone—but who? Who was this man who worked for Roger Wright Industries, this man who had known both Lydia Neff and Lane Hutchins, this man who drove a blue car that looked like a toy?
She managed to fall into a swirling, dreamless sleep, but then at 5 A.M. she’d woken up with a start, a memory racing through her mind . . . The cool fall air is at Brenna’s back and the sun glints off Morasco’s glasses as he speaks, Chief Lane Hutchins’s BMW in the parking lot, the silver fender in the corner of her line of vision . . .
“. . . Lane hasn’t worked past five a day in his life, but he golfs with Roger Wright at 7 A.M. every morning. Around here, that’s what you call a work ethic.”
Brenna got out of bed. First, she went to the kitchen, packed a lunch for Maya, then wrote up a note: I’ll be gone for most of the morning. Work. Love, Mom. She placed it on the counter next to the lunch, then added: I am very proud of you. Then she taped a ten-dollar bill to the paper. In case the lunch is too lame.
Next, she went to her computer, switched it on, and, in the solitude of approaching dawn, spent an hour researching both Wright Industries and Tarry Ridge.
Wonder how many holes they play. Brenna had been in the parking lot of the Tarry Ridge Country Club for a little more than fifteen minutes, continuously shifting her focus between the club entrance and Lane Hutchins’s silver BMW 360i, a cup of gas station coffee in her hand. Nick had been right about Lane Hutchins’s work ethic. It was seven-thirty now, and when she arrived, Hutchins’s car was already comfortably in its space. She checked her watch again and texted Trent so he wouldn’t wonder where she was: I think the Viv. Bistro is the Wright company car. Checking that out now in Tarry Ridge—hope to talk to Wright himself.
Thirty minutes later, just after she’d finished the last of the coffee, Hutchins appeared at the back exit with his golf bag over a shoulder, slouching his way through a conversation with the one and only Roger Wright. Brenna watched the two of them for a few moments: Wright in all his preppy, vacation-tanned perfection, the mirror image of himself eleven years ago at the Waterside Condominiums ribbon cutting—absolutely untouched by time—teeth gleaming, skin glowing, living proof of what wealth could get you, chatting with Hutchins, this bulky social climber in his mint green polo shirt and plaid golf pants—expensive clothes but also the slightest bit ill-fitting, as if they somehow objected to the body that wore them. From this distance, she couldn’t tell whether Hutchins was sweating, but if he wasn’t, she knew he was making a concerted effort not to, that he’d trained the sweat out of himself in order to achieve his goal. What could those two possibly be talking about?
As for Brenna, she was doing her best Faith Gordon-Rappaport imitation—bouncy, blown-out hair, a pink and green Ralph Lauren shirtdress and cashmere cardigan she’d bought at an Upper East Side consignment store two years ago for those very special occasions when she needed to look moneyed and content, tasteful gold earrings, oversized sunglasses, and a smile she’d been practicing all morning.
As soon as Hutchins and Wright began to move apart from each other, Brenna slapped on the smile and strode toward the two men, channeling one of those library bake sale women, waving like a lunatic. “Roger?”
Wright turned, the bright smile belied by flat eyes, Am I supposed to know you? written all over his face, albeit in tasteful calligraphy.
“I’m sure you don’t remember me.” Brenna held out her hand. “Candy Bissel. I write a column for the Sleepy Hollow Press?” She felt Hutchins’s glare on her and gave him a grin. “It’s an honor to meet you. You’re doing a wonderful job, Chief.”
His face relaxed into a politician’s smile. “Sixty percent decrease in crime in less than five years.”
“Don’t I know it! And might I say, imposing an 11 P.M. curfew on Tarry Ridge teens was a stroke of genius.”
; The smile grew broader. “I get a nice salary from this town,” he said. “I make it my business to give the taxpayers their money’s worth.”
“I don’t know where we’d all be without Lane,” Wright said.
“You’re one to talk, sir!” Brenna beamed.
“Miss Bissel, I’m sorry, but I’m finding it hard to place your face.”
Brenna laughed. “1996. Opening of the Rose Building. I covered it for the paper—I was just out of Brandeis and oh-so-enthusiastic?”
Wright exhaled. “Of course.”
“The thing is, I never forget a face, and if you don’t mind my saying, you haven’t changed a bit.”
“You’re too kind.”
Brenna turned to Hutchins. “It was a fabulous opening,” Brenna said. “African dancers, tuna tartare . . . Oh, I could go on and on. The publicist was a doll, too.” She turned to Wright. “What was her name again?”
“Claire Goodman.”
“No. No, that wasn’t it.”
“Claire’s been doing all our PR for years.”
Brenna blinked a few times. “No, it was Linda or something like that. Very pretty woman . . . Wait . . . Lydia!”
Again with the flat eyes.
Brenna cleared her throat. “Anyway, sorry to bug you, but—”
“That’s quite all right.”
“Seriously, it’s kismet I ran into you guys because I literally just . . . well, not just . . . but yesterday, in the library parking lot, I saw one of your employees I met at the Rose opening, and for the life of me, I could not remember his name.” She turned to Hutchins. “That ever happen to you? You have a whole conversation with someone and you know them, but you can’t remember their name to save your own soul?”
“Nope.” He gave her a wink and pointed to his forehead. “Steel trap.”
Brenna sighed. “That’s why those taxpayers give you the big bucks,” she said. “Faces I don’t forget. Names, not so much.”
“What did this employee look like?” Wright asked.
“About your height, maybe a little bit taller. Dark hair—a little gray now. Broad shoulders. Good-looking. A mole right here.” She pointed to her cheek. “Oh! And he drives a Subaru Vivio. One of those little K-cars they used to make in the nineties? Cute!”
Brenna took a look at Wright. The smile was gone.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“You had a conversation with him.”
“Yes . . .”
“You met him at the Rose Building opening?”
“Yes.”
Wright cast a look at Hutchins. He wasn’t smiling anymore, either.
“I don’t know of anyone in my employ who fits that description,” Wright said. His voice was cold.
“But—”
“Mr. Wright doesn’t know all 180 of the people working for him.”
“He only had thirty-eight employees thirteen years ago,” Brenna said. They both stared at her. Brenna cringed. “I mean . . . uh . . . more or less.”
“Who are you?” Hutchins said. “Why are you here?”
Brenna cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.” She walked back to her car, with their ice-stares on her back, her cell phone buzzing SOS in Morse code from the inside of her purse—the vibration she’d chosen for text messages, and ridiculously appropriate, given the way she was feeling right now, but still . . . Why that reaction? The guy with the mole drives a company car. How can he be anything other than a known Wright employee?
Once she exited the parking lot—hoping the whole time Hutchins wasn’t taking down her license plate yet knowing he was, of course—Brenna finally checked her cell phone screen. The message was from Trent. Re: Wright Company car. Just found out registration changed in 1999 to ADAM MEADE. Call me.
“Now he tells me,” Brenna whispered. “Now he freakin’ tells me.”
“Adam Meade is not a dude you want to think about this close to Halloween,” Trent said, just after Brenna called him.
Brenna sighed. “That’s a great movie tagline. How about a few specifics?”
Trent rattled off everything he’d learned about Meade. The son of Vietnam war hero (and posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor recipient) Forrest Meade, Adam Meade had graduated from high school in Jacksonville, Florida, and spent many lost years before getting a job as an orderly at the VA Medical Center in the Bronx. Described in three complaints filed by patients as “emotionally abusive,” Meade still managed to find employment as a security guard at Wright Industries from 1996 to 1999. His tenure with Wright ended, when, according to Trent, “He got his psycho ass fired.”
“Why?” Brenna said.
“Well . . . on paper, it was a layoff,” he said. “A reorganization of the security team.”
“What wasn’t on paper?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay,” she said. “So, how do you get ‘fired’ from ‘layoff,’ and ‘psycho ass’ from ‘reorganization of the security team’?”
“Wright Industries is hardly laying anybody off now, let alone in the friggin’ late nineties,” Trent said. “And as far as that security reorganization goes, do you know the total amount of guards that were, uh, laid off that year?”
“Let me guess,” said Brenna. “One.”
“Yep.”
“Very perceptive, Trent,” she said. “I’m impressed.”
“My biggest strength is still my bod,” he said. “But I’m learning.”
“So the big question is, who has Meade been working for for the past ten years?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I’m thinking maybe he must hire himself out—private security, maybe? I can tell you that he’s tried to join the army four, five times, both before and after he got fired by Wright. But he never made it.”
“Why?”
“Psych test. Flunked the thing every time.”
“How could Lydia Neff get involved with a guy like that?”
“Really?” Trent said. “When she was hot? Or, uh . . . more recently?”
Brenna sighed. “I gotta go, Trent.”
Brenna ended the call as she hit the stoplight on the corner of Main and Muriel Court, Lydia Neff on her mind—or rather, Nelson Wentz’s description of Lydia Neff twelve years ago, just after the Bistro had pulled out of her driveway . . . She told me to forget I saw the car. Forget I was ever there. Tonight never happened. I left pretty quickly—Iris was sleeping upstairs and I didn’t want to wake her . . . Then, she thought of the question she’d asked Trent—How could Lydia Neff get involved with a guy like that?
Brenna knew the answer, of course she did. She’d known it when she’d asked, and it was an easy one. When it came to love, people were crazy. People were self-destructive and self-punishing and irrational and sad. They didn’t look for what was good for them, but for qualities they wanted, needed for whatever sick, shoot-yourself-in-the-head reasons. They looked for those qualities again and again because they were adults and it was their absolute right to look for those qualities, to ruin the lives that were theirs to ruin . . . No, that wasn’t the question at all. The question Brenna had really wanted to ask was this: How could Lydia Neff let a guy like that near her daughter?
Brenna’s cell phone vibrated in her lap. She looked at the screen. Morasco. “Hey, listen. I have a name for you on the Bistro owner, and you’re right. He isn’t a cop.”
“Who is he?” Morasco’s voice was very quiet.
“Adam Meade,” Brenna said. “He used to work for Roger Wright Industries.”
Morasco was silent.
“Hello? Nick? Are you still—”
“How did you get the Neff police report, Brenna?”
“I told you. Nelson Wentz—”
“Not the new one. The old one. The one with page 22. How did you get that?”
“Errol Ludlow got it for me. Why?”
Morasco took a breath. “I never saw that page.”
“But you were in charge of the case.”
“I never knew that interview had been done. Chief Griffin interrogated this John Doe guy—this guy who had been talking to Lydia Neff on the phone—without ever telling me.”
Brenna pulled over to the side of the road, turned the car off. “I think John Doe was Meade,” she said. “He was a security guard for Wright Industries. He was fired—or laid off—after Iris’s disappearance, and he seemed to have been involved with Lydia.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Actually, it is pretty damn believable,” Brenna said. “One of Wright’s employees is questioned by the police in a child’s disappearance because there’s late night phone calls from him to and from the kid’s house . . . he’s going to want to keep that quiet. God, wait a minute . . .” She took a breath. “It would explain why they didn’t want you pursuing that lead. The little girl you interviewed. She described Meade’s car perfectly . . .”
“Brenna, I don’t want you working this case anymore. It isn’t safe.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, but even as she said it, the image clicked into her brain yet again—Meade at her car window ten years ago, Hutchins at his side. “When Hutchins was a uniform, he was working the Iris Neff case,” she said.
“Yes.”
“He was working under you.”
“Yes.”
“What job did you assign him?” she asked, though the answer was obvious, her skin bristling with that knowledge, even before Morasco told her himself.
“He was going over Lydia Neff’s phone records.”
Why was Hutchins allied so closely with Adam Meade? Why had the chief called him “sir” in the interview? What type of sway did he hold—a former security guard? Whatever the answer, he did hold sway, and the best Brenna could do would be to do as Morasco said, get out of this now, leave it to him—a police officer himself—to get to the bottom of this.
But what about the girl who had called Nelson? What if Iris was out there somewhere, alive and needing help? Brenna gripped the steering wheel. Carol tried to help. Tim O’Malley tried to help. Klavel, too . . .
Past Muriel Court was the entrance to the 287 South, and that’s where she needed to go—cross Muriel Court, take the entrance, leave Tarry Ridge. Leave with a woman dead in the trunk of her car and something missing from the back of Iris’s framed drawing, leave with Lydia Neff invisible and Adam Meade everywhere. Leave without knowing.
And She Was Page 24