Fear the Worst

by Linwood Barclay

  “What are you getting at?”

  “She could get in here anytime she wants. She has a key.”

  “What? You think Sydney was here? You think my daughter’s been back? That she’d come back, and not let us know she’s okay? That she’d hide cocaine in my pillow?”

  Kip Jennings closed the distance between us. And even though she was considerably shorter, she managed to get right in my face. “Now let’s talk about that scarf.”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “Take a shot at it,” she said. “That scarf, the one she’s wearing in a picture supposedly taken in Seattle, is here, in this house.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe Syd was out there and came back.”

  “Just how well do you know your daughter, Mr. Blake?”

  “Very well. We’re very close. I love her.” I paused. “How well do you know yours?”

  She ignored that. “Do you know all of Sydney’s friends? When she goes out late at night, do you always know where she is? Do you know who she talks to on the Internet? Do you know if she’s ever tried drugs? Do you know whether she’s sexually active? Do you know the answer to any of those questions with any certainty?”

  “No parent would,” I said.

  “No parent would,” she repeated, nodding. “So when I ask you how well you know your daughter, I’m not asking you how close you are to her or how much you love her. I’m asking whether it’s possible she could be involved in things, involved with people, you might not approve of.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Do you think Sydney could have been involved in drugs?”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Your daughter’s missing. Her car was abandoned. And there was blood on it. You need to start waking up to the fact that something’s going on.”

  “You think I’m not—”

  “You need to wake up to the fact that it’s possible, just possible, that Sydney may have been mixed up in some nasty things. She may have been hanging out with some nasty people. She told you she was working at that hotel. If she was lying to you about that, what else was she lying about?”

  I walked out of the room.

  “Get out,” I said to a cop standing at the bottom of the stairs as I headed for the kitchen.

  “What?”

  “Get out,” I said. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Talbott,” Kip Jennings told the cop from behind me. “Mr. Blake, you can’t order these officers out of here. Your house is a crime scene.”

  “I have to start cleaning up, put this place in order,” I snapped at her.

  “No, not yet,” she said. “You won’t be doing anything around here until I say so. And you’re going to have to make arrangements to sleep someplace else tonight.”

  “You’re not kicking me out of my own house,” I said, turning and pointing a finger at her.

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing. This house is a crime scene, and that includes your bedroom. Especially now.”

  I shook my head in frustration. “I thought you were trying to help me.”

  “I’m trying to figure out what happened, Mr. Blake. I hope that ends up helping you. Because my gut’s been telling me, up to now, that you’ve been playing straight with me, that you’ve been telling me what you know, that you haven’t been holding out on me. But things are a bit cloudy now. That’s why I think it would be in your interest to talk to a lawyer.”

  “You’re not seriously thinking of charging me with drug possession or something?”

  She looked me right in the eye. “I’m giving you good advice here, and I think you should take it.”

  I held her gaze.

  She continued, “Has it crossed your mind, if you really were conned into going to Seattle so someone could go through your house, that it was your daughter who sent you out there?”

  “That’s crazy,” I said. “The woman I spoke to on the phone was not my daughter.”

  Jennings shrugged. “She wouldn’t have to be working alone.”

  Of all the things Jennings had suggested or intimated, this struck me as the most ridiculous.

  But instead of reacting angrily, I held up my hands in a defensive, let’s-cool-this-down gesture, because there was something else on my mind I needed to discuss with her.

  “Regardless of what you may think of me, or what you may think is going on here, there’s something else you need to be aware of,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “It’s about my ex-wife. Someone’s watching her house.”

  Jennings’s brow furrowed. “Go on.”

  “Susanne’s noticed someone parked down the street a few times. She says you can see a little light, like he’s smoking.” I paused, a thought just occurring to me. “It’s not the police, is it?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. She got a plate number?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Tell her, next time, get it,” Jennings said. “And I’ll see whether we can have someone take a run by there every once in a while.”

  I muttered a thank-you, turned, and my eye caught the open kitchen drawer that had, until recently, held some cash.

  And a name came to mind. Evan. We needed to have a word.

  * * *

  ON THE WAY TO BOB’S MOTORS, I got held up where they were merging two lanes down to one for roadwork. Feeling briefly charitable, I let a Toyota Sienna that was trying to get into my lane go ahead. Through tinted glass I saw the driver’s hand wave thank you.

  As the Sienna straightened itself out in front of me, I noticed it was the delivery truck for Shaw Flowers, the florist shop next to XXX Delights. I was guessing it was Ian, the young man who’d been with Mrs. Shaw the other day when she was closing up the place, behind the wheel.

  I thought maybe I should give him another chance to look at Syd’s picture.

  Ian put his right turn signal on. I did the same.

  I followed him into an old residential area with trees so mature they formed a canopy over the street. As he came to a stop in front of a two-story colonial, I drove on past and turned into a driveway half a dozen houses up.

  Ian got out, white wires running down from his ears and into his shirt pocket. I was guessing he had a mini iPod like Syd’s. He went around the passenger side of the van, slid open the door to get a large bouquet of flowers, and walked it up to the house.

  I backed out of the drive and pulled up across the street. I waited by the van while Ian rang the bell. A woman answered, took the flowers, and then Ian was walking briskly back down the walk.

  He looked startled when he saw me standing by his vehicle.

  “Ian?” I said.

  He still had the wires running to his ears and yanked them out. “What?”

  “It’s Ian, right?”

  “Yeah. Can I help you?”

  “We met the other day, at the shop, when Mrs. Shaw was closing up. I showed you a picture of my daughter.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, moving past me to the driver’s door.

  “I wonder if you’d mind taking another look,” I said, taking a photo from my jacket and following him.

  “I already told you,” he said. “I don’t know her.”

  “It’ll only take a second,” I said. He had the door open, but I put my hand on it and eased it shut. He didn’t fight me.

  “Sure, I guess,” he said.

  I gave him the photo. This time, he studied it a good five seconds before handing it back. His eyes seemed to dance around the whole time, like he was never really focusing on Syd’s face.

  “Nope,” he said.

  I nodded, took my hand off the van door. “Well, I appreciate you taking another look.”

  “No problem.”

  “Mrs. Shaw said you live behind the shop?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “There’s an apartment back there?”

  “Kinda. Nothing big. Big enough for me.”


  “That’s handy, living right where you work,” I said. “You all by yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You worked long for Mrs. Shaw?”

  “Couple of years. She’s my aunt. That’s why she lets me stay there, since my mom died. Some reason why you’re asking me all these questions?”

  “No,” I said. “No reason.”

  “Because I’ve got other deliveries.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Don’t let me hold you up.”

  Ian got in, closed the door, buckled his seat belt, and hit the gas hard as he sped off down the street.

  Sometimes, I’ll get a customer who, once he’s made an offer on a car, starts to panic. He’s not worried the offer will be rejected; he’s scared to death it’ll be accepted. He’ll have the car of his dreams, but now he has to find a way to pay for it. Between the time he signs the offer and learns whether the sales manager will accept it, he fidgets, he licks his lips, he looks for water because his mouth is dry. He’s gotten in over his head and doesn’t know how to get out.

  Ian had that look.

  * * *

  “EVAN?” SUSANNE SAID. “What did you want with Evan?”

  I’d just walked into the sales office at Bob’s Motors. Bob was out on the lot somewhere, no doubt trying to persuade someone looking for an econobox that what they really needed was an SUV that could go over boulders. I hadn’t seen Evan out there.

  “I just want to ask him a couple of questions about Syd,” I said.

  “Believe me,” said Susanne, sitting behind her desk, “I’ve asked him.”

  “Maybe he needs to be asked again.”

  “You look rattled. Has something happened since you got back from Seattle?”

  She had a right to know what had happened, but I didn’t want to get into it with her now.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Is he around?”

  “He’s out back, in the garage, shining up a car, prepping it for delivery.”

  I left the office without saying anything. I made it around to the back of the building, where Bob’s Motors had a secondary building, about the size of a double-car garage. Bob’s was strictly a sales operation. Once you bought a car from him, it was up to you to find a place to have it serviced. But he did need a place to do minor repairs, and get cars cleaned up before their new owners came to pick them up.

  Evan had been put to work on a three-year-old Dodge Charger. He had all four doors open and didn’t hear me approach because he was leaning in, going at the rear carpets with a Shop-Vac.

  “Evan!” I said.

  When he didn’t respond, I flipped the switch on the top of the vacuum canister.

  “Huh?” he said, whirling around. He didn’t look happy when he saw it was me. “Turn that back on,” he said.

  “I want to talk to you,” I said.

  “My dad says this car has to be ready in an hour.”

  “You want to waste time arguing, or just help me out so I can get out of your hair as fast as possible?”

  “What do you want?” He brushed some hair away from his eyes, but it fell back immediately.

  “My place got broken into,” I said.

  “That’s too bad,” he said.

  “They tore it apart,” I said.

  He brushed the hair away again. “Whaddya want from me?”

  “I want to know anything you can tell me about Sydney and what might have happened to her.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You liked her living in your house, I’ll bet.”

  “No big deal. So we lived under the same roof a few weeks. She had her life and I had mine.”

  “Did you spend time together?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you hang out?”

  “We had meals together. Sometimes I had to tell her to move her ass so I could use the bathroom.” That seemed unlikely. Bob’s house had several.

  “You didn’t think it was kind of cool? Her moving into your dad’s place?”

  “You make it sound like something it wasn’t,” he said.

  “Did you introduce her to your friends?”

  “You don’t know anything about my friends. You don’t know anything about me.” He glared.

  “You do drugs, Evan? Do any of your friends sell drugs?”

  “You’re crazy. I have to get this car cleaned up.”

  I asked, “Why are you stealing?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “The petty cash, Susanne’s watch that went—”

  “She found that watch.”

  “So I hear. You don’t want to deny the petty cash, too?”

  That caught him off guard. “Does my dad know you’re talking to me?”

  “Should we go get him? Then I can ask you, with him present, whether you broke into my house.”

  “Why the fuck would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “I don’t know where this is coming from, but you’re totally nuts.”

  “What are you doing on the computer all the time?”

  He grinned. “She’s telling you all this shit, isn’t she?”

  “She?” I said.

  “She’s not my mother, okay? Just because she’s my dad’s girlfriend doesn’t give her the right to spy on me, and then go blabbing to you about what she’s found out.”

  “Evan, can I tell you something? Right now, I’m cutting you a whole lot of slack, because the other day, I heard you refer to my ex-wife as a bitch, and right now, all I really want to do is rip your head off. But I’ve decided to be nice, because all that matters to me is finding Sydney. And there’s something about you, I don’t know what it is, but it’s like a bad smell, and I can’t help but think that whatever’s happened to Syd may have something to do with you.”

  He shook his head and tried to laugh it off. “You’re a piece of work.”

  He hit the switch on the vacuum and turned away from me. I was about to grab him by the shoulder when I heard someone shout, “Tim!”

  I turned. Bob Janigan was standing in the open garage doorway. He shouted my name a second time.

  I strode over to him, said, “You need to find out what’s up with your boy,” and walked back to my car.

  BACK ON THE ROAD, MY CELL RANG.

  “What happened?” Susanne asked.

  “Our—my house was broken into while I was in Seattle. The place was trashed, searched from top to bottom. Some cash got stolen. Maybe some other stuff, too. I don’t know. And when the police looked around, they found what I’m guessing was cocaine.”

  “What?”

  “I think Evan knows more than he’s saying.”

  Susanne said, “Bob says if you ever go near Evan again he’ll kill you.”

  “It’s my other line, Suze. I have to go.”

  IT WAS A CRIMINAL LAWYER NAMED EDWIN CHATSWORTH. He was part of the firm I used whenever I needed legal matters dealt with. Like a failed business, but also property matters, title transfers, that kind of thing. Once, a dissatisfied customer had threatened to sue me personally, as opposed to the dealership that employed me, over a used car that turned out to be a genuine lemon.

  I’d put in a call to the firm between leaving home and going to see Evan. They said it sounded like a job for Edwin, and promised he would get back to me.

  I spelled it out for him the best I could.

  “Just guessing,” he said, “but I’d be very surprised if they go ahead with any charges over the coke, assuming it is coke and not a Baggie full of baking soda.”

  “Because?”

  “Like you said. You invited the cops into your home. The place had been broken into. People other than you had an opportunity to put the drugs in your bed. A judge would toss it out before they’d finished their opening arguments.”

  “You sure?”

  “No. But that’s what my gut tells me. And this Detective Jennings, do
n’t talk to her anymore.”

  “But she’s also looking for my daughter. I can’t not talk to her about that.”

  Chatsworth mulled that one over. “Don’t trust her. She starts veering the conversation to what was in the house, you say nothing without me being there. There’s no way they can prove those drugs were yours.”

  “They weren’t. They’re not my drugs.”

  “Hey, did I ask you that?”

  THE BAG I’D PACKED FOR THE TRIP TO SEATTLE was back in my car. I’d walked into the house with it but, after discovering the state my place was in, never unpacked. And now that Kip Jennings wasn’t going to let me sleep in my own house that night, I’d hung on to the bag.

  I went into the mall and had a slice of pepperoni pizza in the food court. I watched all the young people walking by. Tried to catch the faces of all the teenage girls.

  You never stopped looking.

  Then I got back in the car and drove over to the Just Inn Time. Carter and Owen, the two men who’d been on the front desk the night I’d come in trying to find Syd, were on once again.

  I walked up to the counter and said, “I’d like a room.”

  SIXTEEN

  AND THAT’S JUST WHAT IT WAS.

  A room. A generic, nondescript, plain room. A patternless blue spread covered the double bed in the center. Dull white shades covered the lamps flanking the bed. The bedroom walls were beige, much like the bathroom and the towels and the halls and everything else in this budget-minded hotel.

  But that said, it was also clean and well kept. The bathroom came equipped with soap and shampoo and a hair dryer. The closet had one of those mini-safes you can program with a four-digit code, suitable for holding a passport, a video camera, and a few thousand in unmarked bills.

  The hotel hadn’t yet moved to fancy flat-screen, wall-mounted TVs. And while the bulky set sitting atop the dresser seemed to be from a couple of decades ago, you could still order up movies—including ones with titles like She’ll Be Cummin’ Round the Mountain When She Cums—if you were so inclined.

  I flipped through the channels, left Dr. Phil on in the background to exploit some miserable family stupid enough to air their dirty laundry for the entertainment pleasure of millions, and looked out the second-floor window. I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. Maybe I thought staring at the Howard Johnson restaurant and hotel off in the distance, the cars and trucks whizzing past on I-95, would somehow provide a clue as to where Syd had gone after I’d dropped her off out front of the Just Inn Time.