Fear the Worst

by Linwood Barclay

  I went back to the Just Inn Time, trying to figure out where the hell Syd was actually going every day when I’d believed she was heading into the hotel.

  I’d had very little sleep in the twenty-four days since I’d last seen her.

  “You know what I think we’re going to do?” Lorna said, scooping the pamphlets off the desk and shoving them into her oversized purse. “I think we should take one more look at the Nissan.”

  “Why don’t you do that?” I said. “They make a very good car.”

  I got to my feet as Lorna and Dell stood. Just then, my phone rang. I glanced at it, recognized the number on the call display, let it go to message, although this particular caller might not choose to leave yet another one.

  “Oh,” said Lorna, putting something she’d been holding in her hand onto my desk. It was a set of car keys. “When we were sitting in that Civic over there”—she pointed across the showroom—“I noticed someone had left these in the cup holder.”

  She did this every time she came. She’d get in a car, discover the keys, scoop them up and deliver them to me. I’d given up explaining to her it was a fire safety thing, that we left the keys in the showroom cars so that if there was a fire, we could get them out in a hurry, time permitting.

  “How thoughtful,” I said. “I’ll put these away someplace safe.”

  “You wouldn’t want anyone driving a car right out of the showroom, now would you?” She laughed.

  Dell looked as though he’d be happy if the huge Odyssey minivan in the center of the floor ran him over.

  “Well, we might be back,” Lorna said.

  “I’ve no doubt,” I said. I wasn’t in a hurry to deal with her again, so I said, “Just to be sure, you might want to check out the Mitsubishi dealer. And have you seen the new Saturns?”

  “No,” Lorna said, suddenly alarmed that she might have overlooked something. “That first one—what was it?”

  “Mitsubishi.”

  Dell was giving me dagger eyes. I didn’t care. Let Lorna torment some other salespeople for a while. Under normal conditions, I’d have tolerated her indecision. But I hadn’t been myself since Syd went missing.

  A few seconds after they’d left the showroom, my desk phone trilled. No reason to get excited. It was an inside line.

  I picked up. “Tim here.”

  “Got a second?”

  “Sure,” I said, and replaced the receiver.

  I walked over to the other side of the showroom, winding my way through a display that included a Civic, the Odyssey, a Pilot, and a boxy green Element with the suicide rear doors.

  I’d been summoned to the office of Laura Cantrell, sales manager. Mid-forties with the body of a twenty-five-year-old, twice married, single for four years, brown hair, white teeth, very red lips. She drove a silver S2000, the limited-production two-seater Honda sports car that we sold, maybe, a dozen of a year.

  “Hey, Tim, sit down,” she said, not getting up from behind her desk. Since she had an actual office, and not a cubicle like the lowly sales staff, I was able to close her door as she’d asked.

  I sat down without saying anything. I wasn’t much into small talk these days.

  “So how’s it going?” Laura asked.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  She nodded her head in the direction of the parking lot, where Lorna and Dell were at this moment getting into their eight-year-old Buick. “Still can’t make up their minds?”

  “No,” I said. “You know the story about the donkey standing between two bales of hay that starves because he can’t decide which one to eat first?”

  Laura wasn’t interested in fables. “We have a good product. Why can’t you close this one?”

  “They’ll be back,” I said resignedly.

  Laura leaned back in her swivel chair, folded her arms below her breasts. “So, Tim, any news?”

  I knew she was asking about Syd. “No,” I said.

  She shook her head sympathetically. “God, it must be rough.”

  “It’s hard,” I said.

  “Did I ever tell you I was a runaway myself once?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I was sixteen, and my parents were ragging on me about everything. School, my boyfriends, staying out late, you name it, they had a list. So I thought, screw it, I’m outta here, and I took off with this boy named Martin, hitched around the country, saw America, you know?”

  “Your parents must have been worried sick.”

  Laura Cantrell offered up a “who cares” shrug.

  “The point is,” she said, “I was fine. I just needed to find out who I was. Get out from under their thumb. Be my own self. Fly solo, you know? At the end of the day, that’s what matters. Independence.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Look,” she said, leaning forward now, resting her elbows on the desk. I got a whiff of perfume. Expensive, I bet. “Everyone around here is pulling for you. We really are. We can’t imagine what it’s like, going through what you’re going through. Unimaginable. We all want Cindy to come home today.”

  “Sydney,” I said.

  “But the thing is, you have to go on, right? You can’t worry about what you don’t know. Chances are, your daughter’s fine. Safe and sound. If you’re lucky, she’s taken along a boyfriend like I did. I know that might not be what you want to hear, but the fact is, if she’s got a young man with her, already she’s a hell of a lot safer. And don’t even worry about the sex thing. Girls today, they’re much savvier about that stuff. They know the score, they know everything about birth control. A hell of a lot more than we did in our day. Well, I was pretty knowledgeable, but most of them, they didn’t have a clue.”

  If I’d thought any of this was worth a comment, I might have said something.

  “Anyway,” Laura said, “what I’m working up to, Tim, is you’re going to come in this month at the bottom of the board. I mean, unless there’s some sort of miracle in the last week of the month. It’s already the…” She glanced at the wall calendar that showed a Honda Pilot driving over a mound of dirt. “It’s July 23. That’s too late to pull one out of the hat. You haven’t sold a car yet this month. You know how it works around here. At the end of the day, it’s all about selling cars. Two months at the bottom of the board and you’re out.”

  “I know how it works,” I said. She’d only said “at the end of the day” twice in this conversation. Most chats, regardless of duration, she managed to get it in three times.

  “And believe me, we’re taking into account your situation. I think, honestly, it would take three months at the bottom of the board before you’d be cut loose. I want to be fair here.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “The thing is, Tim, you’re taking up a desk. And if you can’t sell cars from it, I have to put someone in there who can. If you were sitting where I am, you’d be saying the same thing.”

  “I’ve been here five years,” I said. Ever since my bankruptcy, I thought, but didn’t say aloud. “I’ve been one of the top—if not the top—salesman for all of them.”

  “And don’t think we don’t know that,” she said. “So listen, I’m glad we had this chat, you take care, good luck with your daughter, and why don’t you give that couple a call, tell them we can throw in a set of mudguards or something? Pinstriping, hell, you know how this works. At the end of the day, if they think they’re getting something for nothing, they’re happy.”

  Bingo.

  TWO

  I DIDN’T TURN OFF ONTO BRIDGEPORT AVENUE on the way back from work. I usually got off Route 1 there, went half a mile up to Clark, hung a left and drove over the narrow bridge that spans the commuter tracks, hung a left onto Hill, where I’d lived the last five years after Susanne and I sold our mini-mansion, paid off what debts we could with the proceeds, and got much smaller places of our own.

  But I kept going up the road until I had reached the Just Inn Time on the right, turned into the lot, and parked. I s
at in the car a moment, not sure whether to get out, knowing that I would. Why should today be any different from every other day since Syd vanished?

  I got out of my CR-V. I got to drive this little crossover vehicle for free, but if and when Laura canned me I’d be on my own for wheels. Even though it was after six, it was still pretty hot out. You could see waves of humidity coming off the pavement just before Route 1 went under 95 a little farther to the east.

  I stood in the lot and scanned as far as I could see in all directions. The HoJo’s was up the street, and beyond that the ramp coming down from the interstate. An old movie theater complex a stone’s throw to the west. Hadn’t we taken Sydney there to see Toy Story 2 when she was seven or eight? For a birthday party? I recalled trying to corral a pack of kids into one row, the whole kittens-in-a-basket thing. The hotel was just down from where the road forked, Route 1 to the north, Cherry Street angling off to the southwest. Across Cherry, the King’s Highway Cemetery.

  There were a couple dozen other businesses that, if I couldn’t actually see from standing in the lot here, I could see the signs for them. A video store, a clock repair shop, a fish-and-chips takeout place, a florist, a Christian bookstore, a butcher’s, a hair salon, a children’s clothing store, an adult book and DVD shop.

  They were all within walking distance of the hotel. If Syd had left the car parked here every day, she could have gotten to any of these businesses in just a few minutes.

  I’d been in to almost all of them at some point since she’d gone missing, showing her picture, asking if anyone had seen her. But stores had different staff working in them depending on the day and time, so it made sense to make the rounds more than once.

  Of course, Syd didn’t have to be working secretly at any of those places. Someone else with a car could have been meeting her every day in this lot, taking her God knows where from nine to five.

  But if she had been working at one of these businesses within eyeshot of the hotel, why didn’t she want me or her mother to know? Why would we care if she worked at a clock repair place, or a butcher’s, or a—

  An adult book and video shop.

  My first time along that business strip, it was the one store I hadn’t been in. No way, I told myself. No matter what Syd was doing, no matter what she might be keeping from us, there was no way she’d been working there.

  Not a chance.

  I was actually shaking my head back and forth, muttering the words “No way” under my breath as I leaned up against my car, when I heard someone say, “Mr. Blake?”

  I glanced to my left. There was a woman standing there. Blue jacket and matching skirt, sensible shoes, a Just Inn Time badge pinned to her lapel. She had some years on me, but not many. Mid-forties, I guessed, with black hair and dark brown eyes. Her corporate uniform wasn’t sufficiently dowdy to hide what was still an impressive figure.

  “Veronica,” I said. Veronica Harp, the manager I’d spoken to on the phone the night Sydney disappeared, and seen a number of times since. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Mr. Blake.” She paused, knowing that politeness called for her to ask the same, but she knew what my answer would be. “And you?”

  I shrugged.

  “You must get sick of seeing me around here.”

  She smiled awkwardly, not wanting to agree. “I understand.”

  “I’m going to have to go back to all those places,” I said, thinking out loud. Veronica didn’t say anything. “I keep thinking she must have been going to a place she could see from here.”

  “I suppose,” she said. She stood there another moment, and I could tell from her body language she was struggling with whether to say something else, or go back into the hotel and leave me be. Then, “Would you like a coffee?”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Really. Why don’t you come in? It’s cooler.”

  I walked with her across the lot toward the hotel. There wasn’t much in the way of landscaping. The grass was brown, an anthill spilled out, volcano-like, between two concrete walkway slabs, and the shrubs needed trimming. I glanced up, saw the security cameras mounted at regular intervals, and made a disapproving snort under my breath. The glass front doors parted automatically as we approached.

  She led me to the dining area just off from the lobby. Not a restaurant, exactly, but a self-serve station where the hotel put things out for breakfast. Single-serving cereal containers, fruit, muffins and donuts, coffee and juice. That was the deal here. Stay for the night, help yourself to breakfast in the morning. If you could stuff enough muffins into your pocket, you were good for lunch.

  A petite woman in black slacks and a white blouse was wiping down the counter, restocking a basket with cream containers. I couldn’t pinpoint her ethnicity, but she looked Thai or Vietnamese. Late twenties, early thirties.

  I smiled and said hello as I reached for a takeout coffee cup. She shifted politely out of my way.

  “Cantana,” Veronica said to her.

  Cantana nodded.

  “I think the cereals will need restocking before breakfast,” Veronica said. Cantana replenished the baskets from under the counter, where there were hundreds of individual cereal servings in peel-top containers.

  I filled my takeout cup, handed an empty one to Veronica. She sat down at a table and held out her hand to the vacant chair across from her.

  “Just tell me if I asked you this already,” she said, “but you did ask at the Howard Johnson’s?”

  “Not just at the desk,” I said. “I showed her picture to the cleaning staff, too.”

  Veronica shook her head. “Aren’t the police doing anything?”

  “As far as they’re concerned, she’s just another runaway. There’s no actual evidence of any… you know. There’s nothing to suggest anything has actually happened to her.”

  Veronica frowned. “Yeah, but if they don’t know where she is, how can they—”

  “I know,” I said.

  Veronica sipped her coffee, then asked, “You don’t have other family to help you look? I never see you here with anyone.”

  “My wife—my ex-wife—has been working the phones. She hurt herself a while back, she can’t walk without crutches—”

  “What happened?”

  “An accident; she was doing that thing where you’re hooked up to a kite behind a boat.”

  “Oh, I would never do that.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s ’cause you’re smart. But she’s doing what she can, even so. Making calls, looking on the Net. She’s torn up about this just like I am.” And that was the truth.

  “How long have you been divorced?”

  “Five years,” I said. “Since Syd was twelve.”

  “Is your ex-wife remarried?”

  “She has a boyfriend.” I paused. “You know those commercials for Bob’s Motors? That guy yelling at the camera?”

  “Oh my, that’s him? That’s her boyfriend?”

  I nodded.

  “I always hit the mute when that comes on,” she said. That made me smile. First time in a while. “You don’t like him,” she said.

  “I’d like to mute him in person,” I said.

  Veronica hesitated, then asked, “So you haven’t remarried or anything?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t see someone like you being single forever.”

  I’d been seeing a woman occasionally before Syd disappeared. But even if my life hadn’t been turned upside down in the last few weeks, that relationship’s days had been numbered. Spectacular in the sack can trump needy and loony for a week or two, but after that, the head starts to take over and decides enough is enough.

  “You think it’s possible,” I said, “my daughter was meeting someone here? Not working here formally, but, I don’t know, doing something off the books? Because I think she was getting paid in cash.”

  I’d taken one of my many pics of Syd from my pocket, put it on the table, just to look at her.

  “I’m going to b
e honest with you here,” Veronica said.

  “Yes?”

  “Sometimes,” and she lowered her voice slightly, “we don’t do everything on the up-and-up here.”

  I leaned in slightly. “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is, a lot of times, we pay the help under the table. Not everything, of course. But here and there, saves us a bit with the taxman, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  “But what I’m saying is, even if your daughter’d been here, getting paid in cash—and that could end up biting us in the ass, pardon my French—I’d tell you, because no parent should go through that, not knowing what’s happened to his child.”

  I nodded, looked down at Syd’s face.

  “She’s very beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “She has beautiful hair. She looks a little bit… Norwegian?”

  “From her mother’s side,” I said. My mind wandered. “Too bad your cameras don’t work. If Syd had ever met someone in your lot…”

  Veronica hung her head, embarrassed. “I know. What can I say. We have the cameras mounted so people will think there’s surveillance, but they’re not hooked up to anything. Maybe, if we were part of a larger chain…”

  I nodded, picked up Syd’s picture and slipped it back into my jacket.

  “May I show you a picture?” Veronica asked.

  I said, “Of course.”

  She went into her purse and pulled out a computer printout snapshot of a boy, no more than six months old, wearing a Thomas the Tank Engine shirt.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Lars.”

  “That’s different. What made you choose that?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “My daughter did. It’s her husband’s father’s name.” She gave me a second to let it sink in. “This is my grandson.”

  I was momentarily speechless. “I’m sorry, I thought—”