Fear the Worst

by Linwood Barclay

  “Aren’t you adorable,” Veronica Harp said. “I had Gwen when I was only seventeen. I don’t look so bad for a grandmother, do I?”

  I had pulled myself together. “No, you don’t,” I said.

  Pregnant at seventeen.

  “Thank you for the coffee,” I said.

  Veronica Harp put the baby picture away. “I just know you’ll find her, that everything will be okay.”

  * * *

  WE ARE RENTING A PLACE ON CAPE COD, right on the beach. Sydney’s five years old. She’s been to the beach in Milford, but it can’t compare to this one that seems to go on forever. Sydney is mesmerized upon first seeing it. But she soon gets over her wonderment and is running down to the water’s edge, getting her feet wet, scurrying back to Susanne and me, giggling and shrieking.

  After a while, we think she’s had enough sun, and we suggest going back to the small beach house—not much more than a shack, really—for sandwiches. We are trudging along, the sand shifting beneath our feet, trying to keep up with Syd, pointing at her tiny footprints in the sand.

  Some kids are coming through the tall grass. One of them has a dog on a lead. Sydney crosses in front of the animal just as its snout emerges from between the grass. It’s not one of your traditionally mean-looking dogs. It’s some kind of oversized poodle with short-cropped black fur, and when it sees Sydney it suddenly bares its teeth and snarls.

  Sydney shrieks, drops her plastic pail and shovel, and starts running. The dog bolts forward to go after her, but the kid, thank God, has a tight grip on the leash. Sydney runs for the beach house, reaches up for the handle to the screen door, and disappears, the door slamming behind her.

  Susanne and I run the rest of the way, not making the kind of speed we want because the sand won’t allow us a good purchase. I’m in the door first, calling out, “Sydney! Sydney!”

  She doesn’t call back.

  We frantically search the house, finally finding her in a makeshift closet—instead of a door, there is a curtain to hide what’s stored inside. She is crouched down, her face pressed into her knees so she can’t see what’s happening around her.

  I scoop her into my arms and tell her everything is okay. Susanne squeezes into the closet and puts her arms around both of us, telling Sydney that the dog is gone, that she’s safe.

  Later, Susanne asks her why she ran into the beach house, instead of back to us.

  “I thought he might get you guys, too,” she says.

  I SAT IN THE CAR, parked out front of the adult entertainment store, XXX Delights, which had a florist shop on one side and the clock repair place on the other. The windows were opaque to protect passersby from having to see any of the merchandise. But the words painted on the glass in foot-high letters left no doubt as to what was being offered. “XXX” and “ADULT” and “EROTICA” and “MOVIES” and “TOYS.”

  Nothing from Fisher-Price, I was guessing.

  I watched men heading in and out. Clutching items in brown paper bags as they scurried back to their cars. Was there really a need for any of this these days? Couldn’t this all be had online? Did these guys have to skulk about with their collars turned up, baseball hats pulled down, cheap sunglasses hiding their eyes? For crying out loud, go home and make out with your laptops.

  I was about to go in when a heavyset, balding man strode past the florist and turned into XXX Delights.

  “Shit,” I said.

  It was Bert, who worked in the service department at Riverside Honda. Married, so far as I knew, with kids now in their twenties. I wasn’t going in while he was there. I didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing there, and I didn’t want him to have to explain what he was doing there.

  Five minutes later he emerged with his purchase, got into an old Accord, and drove off.

  I was actually grateful for the delay. I’d been steeling myself to enter the place, not because of the kind of business it was, but because I couldn’t imagine Sydney having a connection to it.

  “This is a waste of time,” I said under my breath as I got out of the car, crossed the lot, and went inside.

  The place was brilliantly lit with hundreds of overhead fluorescent tubes, making it easy to see the covers of the hundreds of DVDs displayed on racks throughout the store. A quick glance indicated that no niche market, no remotely obscure predilection, had been ignored. In addition to movies and magazines, the store carried a wide assortment of paraphernalia, from fur-lined handcuffs to life-size—if not entirely lifelike—female dolls. They were slightly more realistic than the blow-up variety, but still not take-home-to-meet-the-folks quality. Only a few steps from the entrance, surveying the empire from a raised platform like a pharmacist at the back of a drugstore, was the proprietor, an overweight woman with stringy hair reading a tattered paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged.

  I stopped in front of her, looked up, cleared my throat, and said, “Excuse me.”

  She laid the book down and said, “Yeah.”

  “I wonder if you could help me,” I said.

  “Sure,” she said. When I didn’t speak up right away, she said, “Go ahead, tell me what you’re looking for, I’ve heard everything and I don’t give a shit.”

  I handed her a picture of Sydney. “You ever seen this girl?”

  She took the photo, glanced at it, handed it back. “If you know her name, I can put it into the computer and see what movies she’s been in.”

  “Not in a movie. Have you ever seen her here, in this store, or even in the area? Going back about three weeks?”

  “We don’t have a lot of girl customers,” she said flatly.

  “I know, I’m probably wasting my time—”

  “And mine,” she said, her hand on the book.

  “But if you wouldn’t mind taking another look.”

  She sighed, lifted her hand off the book, and took the picture a second time. “So who is she?”

  “Sydney Blake,” I said. “She’s my daughter.”

  “And you think she might have been hanging around here?”

  “No,” I said. “But if I only look in the places where I think she might have been, I might not ever find her.”

  She studied the picture for two seconds and handed it back. “Sorry.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She looked exasperated. “You need help with anything else?”

  “No,” I said. “Thanks anyway.” I let her get back to Ayn Rand.

  As I stepped out, a thin, white-haired woman was locking up the flower shop. A young man, mid-twenties, was obediently standing by her, like a dog waiting to be told what to do. The woman looked my way briefly but turned her head before we could make eye contact. You didn’t want to be making eye contact with men coming out of XXX Delights.

  “So we’ll see you in the morning,” the woman said to the man.

  “Yup,” he said.

  I’d talked to this woman before, shown her Syd’s picture, maybe a week ago. She’d actually taken the time to study the photo, and seemed genuinely sorry when she wasn’t able to help me.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She didn’t turn my way, although I was sure she heard me. “Hello,” I said again. “We spoke last week?” I didn’t have to struggle hard for a name. The sign in the window said Shaw Flowers. I said, “Mrs. Shaw?”

  I took a couple of steps toward her and she turned warily. But when she saw in my hand the photo the woman in the porn shop had returned to me, she seemed to relax.

  “Oh, I remember you,” Mrs. Shaw said.

  I nodded my head toward the store I’d just come from. “Still asking around.”

  “Oh my,” she said. “You didn’t find your daughter there, did you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, that’s good,” Mrs. Shaw said.

  Like finding Syd there would be worse than never finding her at all.

  “Hi,” I said to the young man standing next to her.

  At first, I’d put him in his mid-twentie
s, but now I wasn’t sure. There was a boyishness about him, his skin soft and milky white, his short black hair cut perfectly, as though he’d just jumped out of a barber’s chair. He had the kind of looks that would make people think, even when he was in his forties, that he’d just finished school. He was slim, and stood a full head taller than Mrs. Shaw, and his eyes always seemed to be moving.

  “Ian, say hello,” she said, like she was talking to a six-year-old.

  “Hello,” he said.

  I nodded. “You work here?” I asked him. “Because I don’t remember you when I was here the last time.”

  He nodded.

  “Ian’s out on deliveries all day,” Mrs. Shaw said, pointing to a blue Toyota Sienna minivan parked near my CR-V. Shaw Flowers was stenciled on the rear door windows. “Remember my telling you?” she said to Ian. “About the man who came by looking for his daughter?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember. You didn’t tell me.”

  “Of course I did. Oh, you never listen.” She smiled at me, rolled her eyes, and said, “He’s always off somewhere else even when he’s there. Or he’s got those little wires in his ears.”

  Ian looked down and away.

  “You should show Ian her picture,” Mrs. Shaw said. “He lives right here. He’s taken the apartment behind the store.”

  A man went into the porn shop and Mrs. Shaw scowled. “We were here long before them,” she said to me quietly. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to move my shop. We tried a petition before to get rid of them, and it looks like we’re going to have to do it again.”

  I handed the picture to Ian. “Her name’s Sydney.”

  He took the shot, barely glanced at it, handed it back, and shook his head. “I don’t know her,” he said.

  “But have you ever seen her around?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. Then, abruptly, he gave Mrs. Shaw a light hug and an air kiss and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Then he walked around the corner of the building and disappeared.

  THERE WAS SOMEONE WAITING FOR ME when I pulled into the driveway.

  Susanne and Bob were sitting in his black Hummer. Both front doors opened when I pulled up. As I was putting my car in park and unbuckling my seat belt, Susanne was coming up around the back. Last time I’d seen her she’d been on crutches, and now she was using a cane, grasped firmly in her right hand. She wasn’t moving a whole lot faster, but she did manage to plant herself by my door as I got out.

  I wondered whether I should get ready to defend myself. The first time I saw Susanne after Syd had vanished, she and Bob had driven over from Stratford and she’d strode up to me on her crutches and balanced herself long enough to slap me across the face, shouting, “It’s all your fault! You were supposed to be looking after her!”

  And I took it, because it was an opinion I shared.

  Not much had changed since then, at least from my point of view. I still felt responsible. Still felt it was my fault Syd had slipped away from me, on my watch. There had to have been signals I’d missed. Surely, if I’d been paying better attention, things never would have gotten to this point.

  Even though I still felt that way, I wasn’t in the mood today for an attack. So as I got out of the car, I braced myself.

  But she wasn’t raising a hand to me. She had both arms extended, cane dangling, and there were tears running down her cheeks. She fell into me, slipped her arms around me as Bob watched.

  “What is it, Suze?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Something’s happened,” she said.

  THREE

  “WHAT?” I ASKED HER. “What’s happened?”

  Bob Janigan stepped forward, caught my eye, and said, “It’s nothing really. I told her not to—”

  I held up a hand. I wasn’t interested in what Bob had to say, at least not yet. “What’s happened?” I asked Susanne again. “You’ve heard from Syd? Has she gotten in touch? Is she okay?”

  Susanne pulled away from me and shook her head. This is it, I told myself. Susanne’s heard something. She’s heard something bad.

  “No,” she said. “I haven’t heard anything.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “We’re being watched,” she said. I glanced at Bob, who shook his head back and forth in small increments.

  “Who’s watching you? Where? When did this happen?”

  “A few times,” she said. “They’re in a van. Watching the house.”

  I looked at Bob again. “Your house or Susanne’s house?”

  “Mine,” he said, clearing his throat. Susanne’s house was sitting empty, and I knew she was on the verge of putting it on the market, waiting to see how things worked out with Bob. The three of us checked the house regularly, on the chance Syd might be hiding out there, but there was no evidence she’d as much as popped in.

  Bob said, “Suze thinks some guy’s been keeping an eye on the place.”

  Even in the midst of all that we were dealing with, it rankled that Bob used the same diminutive for Susanne I always had. Would it kill him to call her Sue, or Susie? But I tried to stay focused.

  “What guy?” I asked. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Susanne said. “I couldn’t get a look at him. It was night, and the windows were tinted. Why would someone be watching us?”

  “Have you seen him?” I asked Bob.

  He let out a long sigh. He’s a tall guy, better-looking in person than in his commercials, where he goes for an “everyman” kind of look in khakis and short sleeves and slicked-back hair. But in person, he’s all designer. Little polo players stitched to his shirts, perfectly creased slacks, expensive loafers without socks. If it were a little cooler, he’d have a sweater tied around his neck, yuppie-style.

  “I’ve seen a van,” he admitted. “But it was halfway down the block. It’s been there two, maybe three times over the last couple of weeks. I think there’s usually been someone in it, but it’s kind of hard to tell.”

  “What kind of van?” I asked.

  “Chrysler, probably,” he said. “An older one.”

  I wondered if it could be cops. You normally expected to see them in a Crown Vic or an Impala, but cops working undercover could easily be in a van.

  “You think it was watching the house?” I asked him. A van parked halfway down the block didn’t have to mean anything.

  “You have to understand,” Bob said, “we’ve all been under a lot of stress lately. This thing with Sydney, it’s taking its toll.”

  This thing with Sydney. He made it sound like we were having a stretch of bad weather. Hope this thing with Sydney passes soon so we can put the top down on the car.

  “I’m sure it’s been very hard on you,” I said to him.

  He gave me a look. “Don’t start, Tim. I’m trying to help here. And all I’m saying is, everybody’s radar’s on high alert. Every time a girl goes by, we’re looking to see if it’s Sydney. We hear a car pull into the driveway, we rush to see if it’s her being brought home by the police. So Suze—both of us—we’re looking at the world different, you know what I’m saying? So we see a car parked on the street, we just wonder what’s going on.”

  “He was smoking,” Susanne said, her voice sounding very tired. “It was like a little orange dot behind the steering wheel every time he took a drag on the cigarette.”

  “Did you call the police?” I asked.

  “And say what?” said Bob, even though he wasn’t the one I was asking. “ ‘Officer, there’s a van parked perfectly legally down the street. Could you check it out?’”

  “I wonder if it has to do with Sydney,” Susanne said, taking a tissue out of the sleeve of her pullover top and dabbing at her eyes.

  “First of all,” I said, “you don’t know that it has anything to do with Sydney or you or anyone at all. Bob might actually be right about this. We’re all under a terrible strain. You look like you haven’t slept for weeks—”

  “Thanks a l
ot,” she said.

  I tried to backtrack. “Neither of us has been getting the sleep we need. You get so tired you lose perspective, you start misinterpreting things people say to you, misconstruing their meaning.”

  “That’s right,” Bob said to Susanne.

  “I just want you to take me seriously about this,” Susanne said to me.

  “I am,” I said.

  “I didn’t belittle your concerns, years ago,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You remember,” she said. “When you thought someone was going around asking questions about you?”

  I hadn’t thought about that in a very long time. It had to have been ten, twelve years ago. The feeling that someone was looking into my background. A couple of people I knew said they’d had a call from someone, said I’d given them as a reference. What did they know about me? Was I reliable? As though I’d been applying for an apartment or a new job, except I wasn’t applying for either of those things.

  And then it stopped, and I never heard another thing.

  “I remember,” I said. “And I’m not belittling your concerns. If you think someone’s watching the house, I believe you.”

  “That’s not all,” she said. “Things have been disappearing. Bob bought me a Longines watch, and I don’t know what happened to it. I’m sure—”

  Bob said, “Honey, you just misplaced it, I’m sure.”

  “And what about the money?” she asked him. “That cash? It was nearly a hundred dollars.” She looked at me. “In my purse.”

  “Has there been a break-in?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But something’s going on.”

  The back door on the Hummer’s driver’s side opened. I hadn’t realized anyone else was in the car. Evan—Bob had been married twice before, and if I’d ever known which wife he made this kid with I’d since forgotten—slithered out of the back seat like a piece of boneless chicken.

  “Could you like turn on the car so I could put the AC on?” he asked. He had a handful of scratch-and-win lottery tickets—what Sydney and I call “scratch-and-lose” tickets—with panels already rubbed off. He had a penny pinched between the thumb and index finger of his other hand. “It’s roasting in there.”