Vince tossed Baldy aside, walked out of the room and nearly ran into the maid.
“You not supposed—” she started to say.
“How long ago?” Vince asked, taking a twenty out of his wallet and handing it to her.
She slipped it into the pocket of her uniform. “Ten minute?”
“What kind of car did he have?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just a car. Brown. Dark window.”
“Did he say anything to you, say if he was heading home, anything like that?” I asked.
“He didn’t say anything to me.”
“Thanks,” Vince said to her. He tipped his head in the direction of his pickup, and we both got back in.
“Shit,” Vince said. “Shit.”
“What now?” I said. I had no idea.
Vince sat there a moment. “You need to pack?” he asked.
“Pack?”
“I think you’re going to Youngstown. You can’t get there and back in a day.”
I considered what he’d said. “If he’s checked out,” I said, “it makes sense he’s going home.”
“And even if he isn’t, looks to me like that might be the only place at the moment where you might find some answers.”
Vince reached across the car in my direction, and I recoiled for a second, thinking he was going to grab me, but he was just opening the glove box. “Jesus,” he said, “fucking relax.” He grabbed a road map, unfolded it. “Okay, let’s have a look here.” He scanned the map, looking into the upper left corner, then said, “Here it is. North of Buffalo, just north of Lewiston. Youngstown. Tiny little place. Should take us eight hours maybe.”
“Us?”
Vince attempted, briefly, to fold the map back into its original form, then shoved it, a jagged-edged paper ball, at me. “That’ll be your job. You get that back together, I might even let you do some of the driving. But don’t even think of touching the radio. That’s fucking off-limits.”
39
Looking at the map, it appeared our fastest route was to head straight north, into Massachusetts as far north as Lee, head west from there into New York State, then catch the New York Thruway up to Albany and west to Buffalo.
Our route was going to take us through Otis, which would put us within a couple of miles of the quarry where Patricia Bigge’s car had been found.
I told Vince. “You want to see?” I asked.
We’d been averaging over eighty miles per hour. Vince had a radar detector engaged. “We’re making pretty good time,” he said. “Yeah, why not?”
Even though there were no police cars marking the entrance this time, I was able to find the narrow road in. The Dodge Ram, with its greater clearance, took them a lot better than my basic sedan, and when we crested the final hill, where the woods opened up at the edge of the cliff, I thought, sitting up high in the passenger seat, that we were going to plunge over the side.
But Vince gently braked, put the truck in park, and engaged the emergency brake, which I’d never observed him do before. He got out and walked to the cliff’s edge and looked down.
“They found the car right down there,” I said, coming up alongside him and pointing.
Vince nodded, impressed. “If I was going to dump a car with a couple people inside,” he said, “I could do a lot worse than a spot like this.”
I was riding with a cobra.
No, not a cobra. A scorpion. I thought of that old American Indian folktale about the frog and scorpion, the one where the frog agrees to help the scorpion across the river if it promises not to sting him with its poisonous venom. The scorpion agrees, then halfway across, even though it means he, too, will perish, he plunges his stinger into the frog. The frog, dying, asks, “Why did you do this?” And the scorpion replies, “Because I am a scorpion, and it is my nature.”
At what point, I wondered, might Vince sting me?
If he did, I couldn’t imagine it would be like with the frog and the scorpion. Vince struck me as much more of a survivor.
Once we neared the Mass Pike, and the little bars on my phone started reappearing, I tried Cynthia again. When there was no answer on her cell, I tried home, but without any real expectation that she would be there.
She was not.
Maybe it was just as well that I couldn’t reach her. I’d rather call her when I had real news, and maybe, after we’d reached Youngstown, I’d have some.
I was about to put the phone away when it rang in my hand. I jumped.
“Hello?” I said.
“Terry.” It was Rolly.
“Hi,” I said.
“Heard anything from Cynthia?”
“I spoke to her before I left, but she didn’t tell me where she was. But she and Grace sounded okay.”
“Before you left? Where are you?”
“We’re just about to get on the Mass Turnpike, at Lee. We’re on our way to Buffalo. Actually, a bit north of there.”
“We?”
“It’s a long story, Rolly. And it seems to be getting longer and longer.”
“Where are you going?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
“Maybe on a wild-goose chase,” I said. “But there’s a chance I may have found Cynthia’s family.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“But Terry, honestly, they must be dead after all these years.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe someone survived. Maybe Clayton.”
“Clayton?”
“I don’t know. All I do know is, we’re on our way to an address where the phone’s listed under the name Clayton Sloan.”
“Terry, you shouldn’t even be attempting this. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“Maybe,” I said, then glanced over at Vince and added, “but I’m with someone who seems to know how to handle himself in tricky situations.”
Unless, of course, just being with Vince Fleming was the tricky situation.
Once we’d crossed over into New York State and had picked up our toll ticket at the booth, it wasn’t long before we were to Albany. We both needed something to eat, and to take a whiz, so we pulled off at one of those interstate service centers. I bought us some burgers and Cokes and brought them back out to the truck so we could eat and drive.
“Don’t spill anything,” said Vince, who kept the truck pretty tidy. It didn’t look as though he’d ever killed anyone in here, or would want to, and I chose to take that as a good sign.
The New York Thruway took us through the southern edge of the Adirondacks once we got a bit west of Albany, and if my mind had not already been occupied with my current situation, I might have appreciated the scenery. Once we were past Utica, the highway flattened out, along with the countryside around it. The odd time I’d done this drive, once heading up to Toronto years ago for an educational conference, this had always been the part that seemed to drag on forever.
We made another pit stop outside Syracuse, didn’t lose much more than ten minutes.
There wasn’t a lot of conversation. We listened to the radio—Vince picked the stations, of course. Country, mostly. I looked through his CDs in a compartment between the front seats. “No Carpenters?” I said.
Traffic got bad as we neared Buffalo. It was also starting to get dark. I had to refer to the map more here, advise Vince how to bypass the city. As it turned out, I didn’t do any of the driving. Vince was a much more aggressive driver than I, and I was willing to suppress my fear if it meant that we’d get to Youngstown that much quicker.
We got past Buffalo, proceeded on to Niagara Falls, stayed on the highway without taking the time to visit one of the wonders of the world, up the Robert Moses Parkway past Lewiston, where I noticed a hospital, its big blue “H” illuminated in the night sky, not far from the highway. Not far north of Lewiston, we took the exit for Youngstown.
I hadn’t thought, before we left my house, to get an exact address off the computer under the listing for Clayton S
loan, nor had I printed off a map. I hadn’t known, at the time, that we were going to be making this trip. But Youngstown was a village, not a big city like Buffalo, and we figured it wouldn’t take that long for us to get our bearings. We came in off the Robert Moses on Lockport Street, then turned south on Main.
I spotted a bar and grill. “They’ll probably have a phone book,” I said.
“I could use a bite,” Vince said.
I was hungry, but I was also feeling pretty anxious. We were so close. “Something quick,” I said, and Vince found a place to park around the corner. We walked back, went inside, and were awash in the aromas of beer and chicken wings.
While Vince grabbed a chair at the counter and ordered some beer and wings, I found a pay phone, but no phone book. The bartender handed me the one he kept under the counter when I asked.
The listing for Clayton Sloan gave the address as 25 Niagara View Drive. Now I remembered it. Handing the book back, I asked the bartender how to get there.
“South on Main, half a mile.”
“Left or right?”
“Left. You go right, you’re in the river, pal.”
Youngstown was on the Niagara River, directly across from the Canadian town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, famous for its live theater. They held the Shaw Festival there, I remembered, named for George Bernard Shaw.
Maybe some other time.
I ripped the meat off a couple of wings and drank half a beer, but my stomach was full of butterflies. “I can’t take this any longer,” I said to Vince. “Let’s go.” He threw some bills on the counter and we were out the door.
The truck’s headlights caught the street signs, and it wasn’t any time at all before we spotted Niagara View.
Vince hung a left, trolled slowly down the street while I hunted for numbers. “Twenty-one, twenty-three,” I said. “There,” I said. “Twenty-five.”
Instead of pulling into the drive, Vince drove a hundred yards farther down the street before turning off the truck and killing the lights.
There was a car in the driveway at number 25. A silver Honda Accord, maybe five years old. No brown car.
If Jeremy Sloan was headed home, it looked as though we’d gotten here before him. Unless his car was tucked into the separate, two-car garage.
The house was a sprawling one-story, white siding, built in the sixties most likely. Well tended. A porch, two wood recliners. The place didn’t scream rich, but it said comfortable.
There was also a ramp. A wheelchair ramp, with a very slight grade, from the walkway to the porch. We walked up it, and stood at the door together.
“How you wanna play this?” Vince said.
“What do you think?”
“Close to the vest,” Vince suggested.
There were still lights on in the house, and I thought I could detect the muted sounds of a television somewhere inside, so it didn’t look as though I was going to wake anyone up. I raised my index finger to the doorbell, held it a moment.
“Showtime,” Vince said.
I rang the bell.
40
When no one came to answer the door after half a minute or so, I looked at Vince. “Try it again,” he said. He indicated the ramp. “Might take a while.”
So I rang the bell again. And then we could hear some muffled movement in the house, and a moment later the door was opening, but not wide, not right away, but haltingly. Once it was open a foot or so, I could see why. It was a woman in a wheelchair, moving back, then leaning forward to open the door a few more inches, then moving back some more, then leaning forward again to open the door wider yet.
“Yes?” she said.
“Mrs. Sloan?” I said.
I put her age at late sixties, early seventies. She was thin, but the way she moved her upper body did not suggest frailty. She gripped the wheels of her chair firmly, moved herself deftly around the open door and forward, effectively blocking our way into the house. She had a blanket folded over her lap that came down over her knees, and wore a brown sweater over a flowered blouse. Her silver hair was pinned back aggressively, not a stray hair out of place. Her strong cheekbones had a touch of rouge on them, and her piercing brown eyes were darting back and forth between her two unexpected visitors. Her features suggested that she might possibly have been, at one time, a striking woman, but there exuded from her now, perhaps from the strong set of her jaw, the way her lips pursed out, a sense of irritability, maybe even meanness.
I searched her for any hints of Cynthia, but found none.
“Yes, I’m Mrs. Sloan,” she said.
“I’m sorry to disturb you so late,” I said. “Mrs. Clayton Sloan?”
“Yes. I’m Enid Sloan,” she said. “You’re right. It’s very late. What do you want?” There was an edge in her voice suggesting whatever it was, we could not count on her to be obliging.
She held her head up, thrust her chin forward, not just because we towered over her, but as a show of strength. She was trying to tell us she was a tough old broad, not to be messed with. I was surprised she wasn’t more fearful of two men showing up at her door late at night. The fact was, she was still an old lady in a wheelchair, and we were two able-bodied men.
I did a quick visual sweep of the living room. Knockoff colonial furniture, Ethan Allen Lite, lots of space between the pieces to allow for the wheelchair. Faded drapes and sheers, a few vases with fake flowers. The carpet, a thick broadloom that must have cost a bundle when it was installed, looked worn and stained in places, the pile worn down by the wheelchair.
There was a TV on in another room on the first floor, and there was a comforting smell coming to us from farther inside the house. I sniffed the air. “Baking?” I said.
“Carrot cake,” she snapped. “For my son. He’s coming home.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s who we’ve come by to see. Jeremy?”
“What do you want with Jeremy?”
Just what did we want with Jeremy? At least, what did we want to say we wanted with Jeremy?
While I hesitated, trying to come up with something, Vince took the lead: “Where’s Jeremy right now, Mrs. Sloan?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m afraid we’re the ones asking the questions, ma’am,” he said. He’d adopted an authoritarian tone, but he seemed to be making an effort not to sound menacing. I wondered if he was trying to give Enid Sloan the impression he was some kind of cop.
“Who are you people?”
“Maybe,” I said, “if we could talk to your husband. Could we speak with Clayton?”
“He’s not here,” Enid Sloan said. “He’s in the hospital.”
That took me by surprise. “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. Would that be the hospital we saw driving up here?”
“If you came up by way of Lewiston,” she said. “He’s been there several weeks. I have to take a taxi to see him. Every day, there and back.” It was important, I guessed, that we know the sacrifices she’d been making on her husband’s behalf.
“Your son can’t take you?” Vince asked. “He’s been gone that long?”
“He’s had things to do.” She inched her chair forward, as if she could push us off the porch.
“I hope it’s nothing serious,” I said. “With your husband.”
“My husband is dying,” Enid Sloan said. “Got cancer all through him. It’s only a matter of time now.” She hesitated, looked at me. “You the one who phoned here? Asking for Jeremy?”
“Uh, yes,” I said. “I’ve been needing to get in touch with him.”
“You said he told you he was going to Connecticut,” she said accusingly.
“I believe that’s what he said,” I told her.
“He never told you that. I asked him. He said he didn’t tell anybody where he was going. So how do you know about that?”
“I think we should continue this discussion inside,” Vince said, moving forward.
Enid Sloan held on to her wheels. “I don’t think so.”
&n
bsp; “Well, I do,” Vince said, and put both hands on the arms of the chair and forced it back. Enid’s grip was no match for Vince’s force.
“Hey,” I said to him, reaching out to touch his arm. I hadn’t planned for us to get rough with an old lady in a wheelchair.
“Don’t worry,” Vince said, trying to make his voice sound reassuring. “It’s just cold out on the porch, and I don’t want Mrs. Sloan here to catch her death.”
I didn’t care much for his choice of words.
“You stop that,” Enid Sloan said, swatting at Vince’s hands and arms.
He pushed her inside, and I didn’t see that I had much choice but to follow. I closed the front door behind me.
“I don’t see any easy way to pussyfoot around this,” Vince said. “You might as well just ask your questions.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Enid spat at us.
I was taken aback. “Mrs. Sloan,” I said, “my name is Terry Archer. My wife’s name is Cynthia. Cynthia Bigge.”
She stared at me, her mouth half open. She was speechless.
“I take it that name means something to you,” I said. “My wife’s, that is. Maybe mine, too, but my wife’s name, that seems to have made an impression.”
She still said nothing.
“I have a question for you,” I said. “And it might sound a bit crazy, but I’ll have to ask you to be a bit patient here if my questions sound ridiculous.”
Still silent.
“Anyway, here goes,” I said. “Are you Cynthia’s mother? Are you Patricia Bigge?”
And she laughed scornfully. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Then why the laugh?” I said. “You seem to know these names I’m mentioning.”
“Leave my house. Nothing you’re saying makes any sense to me.”
I glanced at Vince, who was stone-faced. I said to him, “Did you ever see Cyn’s mother? Other than that one time, going out to the car that night?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Could this be her?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes, focused on her. “I don’t know. Unlikely, I think.”