Familiar Friend

by Cristina Sumners

  “It’s just that when we say blithely, ‘Take a bus back here,’ neither of us really knows what we’re talking about. It might involve eighty-seven changes, and you were on a transatlantic jet all day yesterday. Aren’t you the least bit tired?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything, but since you mention it, I am beginning to feel it a bit.”

  “Go with Tom, then.”

  “Gladly.”

  “Have a little nap, and call me when you wake up.”

  “Will do.”

  After a brief stop back at Budget Rent a Car to put Kathryn on the papers as an additional driver, they went their separate ways.

  Kathryn had never driven from Newark to New York City and she wasn’t looking forward to it. She managed to find a classical music channel on the radio, and she prayed for calm. By some miracle she made all the right turns, took all the right exits. Once in Manhattan she breathed a prayer of thanks. The city streets might be a bit of a headache, but if you missed a turn all you had to do was go around the block; you didn’t have to go twenty miles before you could correct your mistake. She managed to find the lab without too much difficulty, rang the night bell, met Sid’s friend (who accepted her gold card with complaisance), and explained carefully to him what was required. Then, back out on the street, she considered public transportation for approximately two and a half seconds before she chickened out and hailed a cab.

  Tom and Kit, meanwhile, were managing to converse amicably.

  Kit said, “I had time to put in a quick phone call to Datchworth before I left, to tell Crumper I was coming. I thought he might want to send you his regards. I was right. He does.”

  Tom grinned. “Send him mine.”

  “He also wants to know if you’re doing anything about that matter you discussed last summer when you were lying in hospital nursing that concussion.”

  “Tell him I said to get off my back.”

  Kit laughed. “You and Crumper have some scheme going?”

  “Crumper has some scheme going.”

  “Am I allowed to know what it is?”

  “No.”

  Kit, the perfect gentleman, changed the subject.

  Crumper, the butler at Datchworth Castle, had tried in vain to convince a skeptical Tom that he would stand a fighting chance with Kathryn if he would get a college degree.

  Soon afterwards, Tom made a remark to which he got no reply, and glancing over at his passenger, saw that he was fast asleep. He wasn’t sorry. This way he would be spared about an hour’s conversation. Damn Kit Mallowan. He was nice, he was pleasant, he was charming. And that was the whole problem. Tom didn’t want him to be all those things. Tom wanted to be able to dislike him. Since he knew that this attitude was entirely unworthy of a Christian and a decent guy, he had the grace to be ashamed of it, so he decided to think about something else. That wasn’t difficult.

  Who the hell was Joel Norton of T.N.K. Public Relations and what on God’s green earth did he want with Louise? What kind of scam was this? It certainly wasn’t a straightforward kidnapping; no ransom had been demanded. It wasn’t an elopement, either. Let alone the fact that Louise had lost all sense of her own sexuality years ago, and now presented herself in such a fashion that no sane man could possibly look at her with desire, Tom had seen the photo on the driver’s license. Norton was, as far as he was able to judge, a reasonably good-looking man. No, Norton wasn’t eloping with Louise. What was he doing with her? And why?

  The firm, T.N.K. Public Relations, had looked perfectly respectable. Of course, he’d only seen two of the employees, a receptionist and a secretary. They were the foundation of his impression of the firm’s respectability. Mr. Taylor, Mr. Norton, and Mr. K., whatever the K stood for, might be crooks, for all he knew, and the women who worked for them might not know it. After all, “public relations” was a vague kind of thing, wasn’t it? You could use it for a front for almost anything.

  For the first time since Louise had disappeared, Tom began to seriously worry about her. He knew she hadn’t been bound and gagged and dragged away; Dorabella Mason said she had walked out of the house and gotten into that car. But obviously somebody had persuaded her to do it. She had been told some sort of tale. She had been duped. And now she was in the hands of a man who, in the words of that clever young woman at the car rental agency, was up to no good. So far that man hadn’t made a move, but the move would come sometime.

  He had wanted Louise. A batty, middle-aged woman. Suddenly it was appallingly clear to Tom why someone would want Louise. She was the wife of a cop. Worse. She was his wife. Was this going to turn out to be some kind of vengeance from somebody he’d put away? He hadn’t put away Joel Norton, obviously, but had somebody hired Norton to do the dirty work?

  Tom pressed the accelerator a quarter-inch closer to the floor.

  Kit came back to life as they slowed coming into the suburbs of Harton and apologized for drifting off; Tom explained what he’d figured out as Kit slept. As they pulled up to the curb in front of the Harton Inn, Kit already had the door open and was unfolding his chair at lightning speed. “Look, I’ll go have a brief kip and when I wake up in about two hours I shall expect a full report. Of course you’ll have called Kathryn, won’t you?” He swung himself expertly into the chair, waved cheerfully at Tom, slammed the car door, and rolled himself up the walk.

  Tom headed rapidly off toward the address of Joel Norton.

  Norton lived in an affluent neighborhood but not an old one. As Tom drove hurriedly through it looking for the right house, he had time for a few quick impressions. It had rather a naked look about it compared to Mason Blaine’s street, he thought. Most of the houses were different takes on fake Colonial with circular driveways, twelve-foot trees that had been bought from nurseries, and lawns that had very obviously been planted in square feet of turf no more than two years previously. Tom realized that his own street looked more honestly homey than this one did, and wasn’t sure he would switch if somebody offered him the chance. For all its obvious wealth, this place looked so—what was the word? He’d heard somebody at church use it. Ersatz. That was it.

  There was the number. Tom pulled into the drive, got out of his car, went up the front steps, and rang the bell in a fever of impatience. Nobody answered. He rang again. And again. And again. He knocked loudly on the door until his knuckles hurt. No response. There were narrow windows on either side of the door. He peered through one of them, but saw no movement within. He swore.

  He went back down the steps, walked across the carefully manicured grass, and looked into a window at what turned out to be the dining room. There was nobody in it. He continued around the corner of the house, looking in windows as he went, until he had circumnavigated the entire house without spying any sign of life. He felt like screaming with frustration.

  He walked across the grass to the neighbors’ house and rang the bell. Here he was more successful.

  The door was answered by a woman whose hairdresser should have told her that it is a mistake to keep one’s hair black when one’s skin has lost its youth. She looked at Tom sharply, recognizing in an instant that his clothes did not belong in her circle.

  “May I help you?” she said in not very friendly tones.

  “I’m looking for Joel Norton. Do you know where I can find him?”

  “The Nortons are away for the weekend,” she said repressively. “You should try tomorrow morning.”

  “Not tonight?”

  “No, tomorrow morning.” And she actually shut the door in his face. Tom was now quite positive that he would not trade his comfortable little house for one in this neighborhood. In fact, he was rather surprised the woman had told him when the Nortons were expected home. Maybe it had just been the quickest way to get rid of him. Resisting a childish urge to shoot the finger at the closed door in front of him, he abandoned the premises of the black-haired woman and went back to his car.

  He sat behind the wheel for a moment in thought, then switched
on the ignition and drove to the station. Suspended or not, he had a major piece of evidence and a report to make.

  At the station he went into his office (nobody made a move to stop him) and called Nick Silverman at home. He told him about the scarf and Loreen Sanchez and Joel Norton and said he wanted a search warrant for Norton’s house. He knew that Silverman wouldn’t have any choice but to agree with him.

  He did. He even managed to congratulate Tom on finding a lead in Louise’s disappearance. He allowed as how, under the circumstances, Tom might be allowed to return to duty. He, Nick, would make some calls; Tom could consider himself reinstated. Tom courteously thanked him, then asked guilelessly if Link Massey or Crystal Montoya had confessed yet; Silverman said they hadn’t, but he was still working on them. Tom hung up and set out on the uphill task of finding a judge on a Sunday.

  It took him two hours. It was fully dark when he returned to the Nortons’ charmless neocolonial neighborhood with two squad cars and several officers, among them one who didn’t need keys to open locks.

  Tom didn’t know what he expected to find. He did not expect to find Louise, either wandering around or trussed up in the attic. He had the oddest notion that Louise was in Philadelphia. That secretary had said Norton’s clients had wanted to see Philadelphia, so that’s where the limo had taken them, and Tom thought the secretary was honest. She was simply repeating what Norton had told her, and he might well have told her where the limo had actually gone because that could be verified.

  The searchers spread out all over the house. Tom wandered aimlessly into the living room, which was full of furniture that was beautiful without being intimidating. It was upholstered in blue and yellow and Tom found it quite pleasant. Norton might be a bastard, but Mrs. Norton obviously had taste. Or maybe they just had a good decorator. Just as that thought was passing through Tom’s mind, his eye fell on a photograph in a large silver frame sitting on the mantle over the fireplace. He went over to look at it. There was Norton, smiling widely, with his arm around a woman his own age who could only be his wife.

  Tom’s jaw dropped.

  Impossible. Insane.

  It was Suzy Norton. Norton, for God’s sake! Suzy! Suzy Norton was on the vestry at St. Margaret’s! He knew she was married but he’d never met her husband because he never came to church. It happened like that sometimes, you had women whose husbands never darkened the door.

  Suzy Norton’s husband had kidnapped Louise. The world had gone nuts. Tom walked over to a blue and yellow plaid sofa and sat heavily down on it. Crazy. It made no sense at all.

  It still didn’t make any sense an hour later when the search team was finished, having found nothing that did not belong in an ordinary, upper-middle-class home. The search team went away and Tom, as he had promised, put in a call to Kathryn.

  “Well, we didn’t find anything you’d call suspicious. No signs of criminal activity, anything like that. It was just an ordinary house with ordinary stuff in it. Except for one thing.”

  “What was that?”

  “A photograph of Norton and his wife in the living room.”

  “What was so special about that?”

  “You’d recognize his wife.”

  “Would I?”

  “Her name is Suzy.”

  “You’re shitting me!”

  “No.”

  “Tom! Our villain is Suzy Norton’s husband?”

  “Yep. I had the same reaction you’re having.”

  There was a short silence. “Kathryn?”

  “My mind has seized up. I’m struggling to find speech.”

  “Well, that’s a historical first.”

  She blew a raspberry at him through the phone and he laughed.

  “There’s nothing we can do now,” he told her, “until they get back, which according to the neighbor is tomorrow morning. Though of course we’ll have the house watched to see if they show up sometime during the night.”

  “Oh, Tom, the suspense must be killing you! To be so close to knowing and have to wait.”

  She had hit it exactly. That’s what was eating him. Now that he knew who had taken Louise, now that he had some hunch where she might be, stashed away in all probability alive and well in order to be used in some plot against him, the thing driving him wild was not concern for his wife, but curiosity. He wanted to know who was behind it all, what they had against him, and what their plan for vengeance was. Thwarting that plan was no longer a problem; after all, he would have not only Norton but Norton’s wife. Norton would hand over Louise in a second.

  It was at once both gratifying and painful to have Kathryn understand him so well. “I imagine I’ll survive,” he said. “By the way, it occurs to me I haven’t even thanked you for finding that scarf. If it wasn’t for you and Kit, I’d have never found Joel Norton. Tell him I said thanks. And you guys have a nice time tonight.”

  “Thanks, Tom. I’ll tell him.”

  She turned to Kit, who was sitting next to her on the sofa, fortifying himself after his nap with a strong cup of tea. “Tom thanks us for finding the scarf, and wishes us a pleasant evening.”

  “That’s kind of him. I have every intention of having an extremely pleasant evening. Every bit as pleasant as my last evening.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Tom was up at 5:30 on Monday morning, not because he expected anything to happen so early but because dawn rising had become habitual since the murder of Mason Blaine.

  He had a terrible headache, almost as if he’d drunk himself stupid the night before, which he hadn’t. For a while he couldn’t figure out why this should be, then finally decided it was an emotional hangover. How he had gotten through church on Sunday, and coffee hour afterward, God only knew.

  It had been the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  And then he’d had to show up at her house in the afternoon as if nothing had happened, and watch all those students doing the Witherspoon imitation and try to concentrate on the case. Well, actually, once it had started he hadn’t had any difficulty concentrating. Thank God for that. At least his brain still worked.

  But then as soon as it was over he had to watch her crying, and of course it was Kit who got to comfort her, not him. It had been kind of her to volunteer to go to Newark with him, but it was so awkward. It was better the way they worked it, better that he went alone.

  And now, how was he ever going to face her again? How were they going to go on being friends? That was his greatest terror, that their friendship had been destroyed, that she would never feel comfortable with him again. He had spent the entire remainder of Sunday night in an agony of apprehension about that. Come to think of it, no wonder he had a headache.

  But tomorrow, in the immortal words of Scarlett O’Hara, is another day, and headache or no, Monday brought him other things to think about. Joel Norton was supposed to return to Harton on Monday morning. And the lab in New York City (bribed, had he but known it, with a semiastronomical sum) had promised their report for that morning as well. Tom could not have slept past 5:30 if he’d tried, and he didn’t try. He took four aspirin, got dressed, went downstairs, and made some coffee.

  At 6:00 he made the first call to the unmarked car parked two doors down from the Nortons’ house. Not that he expected anything; he just couldn’t wait. Needless to say, they had nothing to report. He made himself a substantial breakfast, fetched the paper from the front yard, and tried to concentrate on the front page while he worked his way through his eggs and bacon and toast. Random thoughts about Joel Norton and the lab report kept him from concentrating. Worse, much worse, there were sudden moments when his stomach felt a hollow pain when he remembered Sunday morning. He plodded through the sports section without taking in more than a tenth of it. Finally it was 7:30 and he gave himself permission to do the dishes and leave the house. He drove over to the Nortons’ and joined the team in the unmarked car. At least they could all sit and be impatient together.

  It was shortly after 9:00 when a late-model Li
ncoln came down the street and pulled into the Nortons’ driveway. The garage door opened to reveal a red LeBaron convertible. The Lincoln pulled in beside it and the garage door closed.

  “O.K.,” said Tom. “Lucy, Fred. This guy is mine. We have no reason to believe he’s armed, and he’s with his wife, who goes to my church. I’m gonna go pay a nice social call.”

  Tom went up to the front door and rang the bell. After a couple of minutes the door was opened by Suzy Norton, slightly travel-weary and very surprised to see him.

  “Tom! Hello! Uh, won’t you come in? Is this vestry business? I’m sorry, I’m a bit out of it, we just got back from Boston, we were visiting my daughter, she’s at Harvard…” She stopped talking without actually reaching a period, and looked at him uncertainly.

  By this time Tom was standing in the front hall. “Actually, Suzy, I’m here to see your husband.”

  “My husband? I didn’t even know that you knew Joel.”

  “I don’t. But I’d like to. Why don’t you introduce us?”

  “I can’t. Not right now. I left him at the airport. We caught the shuttle back from Boston to Newark, you see. He went to rent a limo to go pick up some clients in Philadelphia, and I drove the car back home.”

  “Tell me about these clients in Philadelphia.”

  “Tom, I don’t understand. Is something wrong? Is Joel in trouble?”

  “Don’t worry. Suzy, it’ll all be fine,” he lied. “Just tell me everything you know about the clients in Philadelphia.”

  “Joel just said they flew in from the West Coast—oh, last week sometime, and they’re a big contract so the firm wants to pamper them so they rented them a limo and said, ‘Your wish is our command,’ so to speak, and they wanted to see Philly, so the limo took them there and they checked into a hotel and they’ve been sightseeing and now they’re ready to come to Trenton to do business so Joel is going to go pick them up. That’s all I know.”

  Tom considered a moment and then pulled out his cell phone. He punched the number for directory assistance and asked for the Avis office at Newark Airport. When he got that number, he keyed it in and asked for Loreen Sanchez.