Fear the Worst

  “Magnum P.I. is here.”

  “What?”

  “The other day, Bob said he was sending around an investigator to help find Syd. A guy named Chilton.”

  “I know. I was spending so much time on this, getting so frustrated with those goddamn crutches and cane, Bob wanted Arnie to do some of the legwork.”

  “I need to talk to Bob about him.”

  “Hang on.”

  She put the phone down. A minute later, Bob picked up the receiver and said, “What do you want, Tim?” His contempt came through the phone like a virus.

  “He’s a security guard, Bob.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a fucking night watchman. This Chilton guy you sent over. This so-called security expert you’ve hired to help find Sydney.”

  “You know what your problem is, Tim? You’re a snob. You run people down.”

  “He’s not a licensed private investigator, Bob. He’s not some security expert. He’s a goddamn security guard.”

  “Look,” Bob said, lowering his voice so Susanne wouldn’t hear, “he was working for me, and I sold him a Corolla, and he couldn’t make all the payments. I thought I’d let him work it off.”

  “This guy couldn’t find his ass in a snowstorm, Bob.”

  “I try to do something to help, and this is the thanks I get,” he said. “Maybe this is why I’m where I am, and you’re where you are. Bad attitude.”

  I hung up.

  Arnie Chilton was waiting for me in the yard, notepad at the ready.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’ve thought up some more questions. Good ones.”

  “Terrific,” I said. “But something’s come up.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Bob needs you to go to Dunkin’s and pick him up a dozen donuts and half a dozen coffees and deliver them to the car lot.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “He’ll pay you when you get there.”

  “Did he say what kind of donuts?” Chilton asked.

  I shook my head. “He said it was up to you.”

  Chilton smiled, evidently pleased at being given the responsibility. “So I can check in with you later, ask you some more questions.”

  “Looking forward to it,” I said.

  Arnie Chilton walked down to his Corolla, got in behind the wheel. It took several tries before the engine turned over.

  As I was walking back into the house, my eye caught something shiny next to the step, down in the garden beds.

  I knelt down and brushed away the dirt. It was a cell phone. Black, slender, and off. I opened it, blew away dirt from around the keypad. Who’d lost a cell phone? It could have been any number of people, including all the cops who’d been in and out of the house the last couple of days. I tucked it into my pocket, figured I could check later.

  “Whatcha got there?” said someone from behind me.

  It was Kip Jennings.

  NINETEEN

  “EXCUSE ME?” I SAID. Jennings had caught me off guard. I hadn’t noticed her drive up the street.

  “In your pocket? What was that?”

  I pulled out the cell phone. “I found it in the dirt, by the door there,” I said.

  “It’s not your phone?”

  “No. I just said, I found it on the ground.”

  “Can I have a look at that?”

  I handed it over to her.

  “Looks pretty clean,” she said.

  “I just brushed the dirt off,” I told her. She looked up from the phone at me, then back at the phone. She hit a button to power it up and we both waited a few seconds for the little jingle to indicate it was up to speed.

  “Maybe it belongs to one of your officers,” I said.

  She started playing around with the menu. “Just checking to see what this cell’s number is… here we go.” She rattled off a number with an area code that was, up until recently, unfamiliar to me. “You know that number?”

  “I think so,” I said, and felt something like a chill run up my back.

  “Let me check something else here… missed calls. Someone made a number of calls to this phone that went unanswered. All from the same number.” And she told me what it was. “That one ring a bell?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s my cell number.”

  “This phone,” Jennings said, holding it up as though it were an artifact, “is the one that belonged to—what was her name?”

  “Yolanda Mills,” I said. “That’s the number she gave me to call her.”

  “Isn’t that something?” Kip Jennings said.

  “So it has a Seattle area code and everything?”

  “It sure does,” Jennings said.

  I was trying to sort this new discovery. “So there really was someone from Seattle, and whoever it was came back here, broke into my house?”

  “I suppose someone could have a phone bought for them out there, then have it FedExed out east,” Jennings speculated. “For all I know, you can program phones right here in Milford with area codes from anyplace in the country. It’d be something to check out.”

  “So, if there was any doubt before, there isn’t now,” I said. “The woman who lured me to Seattle was hooked up with whoever broke into my house.”

  Detective Jennings was still looking up different data on the phone’s screen. “It looks like all this phone was ever used for was to call you and take calls from you.” She dropped the phone into her purse and then asked, “Mind if I hang on to this?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Were you planning to tell me about this phone?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Were you going to tell me about it?”

  “I only just found it. Once I’d figured out what phone it was, yeah, I would have called.”

  She nodded slowly. This all had a bad feel to it.

  I said, “Has something happened? You were just here a little while ago. Why are you back?”

  “You know someone named Ian Shaw?” she asked.

  I swallowed. “I think so,” I said.

  “You think so?”

  “He works at Shaw Flowers,” I said. “For his aunt.”

  “So you do know him,” Jennings said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I know who he is.”

  “When his aunt came to work this morning—by the way, Ian lives in an apartment behind the shop. Did you know that?”

  I nodded. “I get the feeling you already know the answers to these questions.”

  The corner of her mouth curled up. “His aunt called the police today. Ian’s got quite the shiner on his cheek. Someone punched him good.”

  I said nothing.

  “Now, Ian didn’t really want to talk about it, but his aunt kind of put the fear of God into him, and he finally coughed up your name. And Mrs. Shaw remembered you coming by a couple of times asking about Sydney. And she didn’t much like the idea of you beating up her nephew.”

  “There was a misunderstanding,” I said.

  Jennings offered up a fake smile. “Damned if that isn’t what Ian said. Just a silly misunderstanding. He says he’s not interested in pressing charges. But his aunt insisted I come by and have a word with you just the same. She told me to tell you to never show your face around there again.”

  “No problem,” I said.

  “You want to tell me about this misunderstanding?”

  “If Ian’s not pressing charges, I can’t see that there’d be much point,” I said.

  Inside the house, the phone rang. “Excuse me,” I said, then ran inside and grabbed the kitchen extension. “Yeah?”

  Susanne said, “If you thought Bob was pissed before, you should see him now.”

  “About what?”

  “His detective just showed up with coffee and donuts.”

  “Bob should be grateful. Now he knows his guy can actually do something useful.”

  “Tim,” she said.

  “He’s a fucking security guard, Suze,” I said. “That’s how
much Bob cares.”

  “He does care, Tim. It’s just, he doesn’t always think things through.”

  “If he really cared, he’d have a word with Evan. There’s something about him, Suze.”

  “I don’t need this,” Susanne said. “I don’t need all these damn complications.”

  “I have to go,” I said, seeing Jennings in the doorway.

  I hung up and said to the detective, “Have you ever talked to Evan Janigan about Syd?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “He needs a good kick in the ass. But other than that—”

  “He’s a thief,” I said. “He’s stolen from Susanne.”

  “Then she should call the police,” Jennings said. “Everybody else is.”

  I WAS PUTTING BACK INTO THE CUPBOARD canned foods and cereal boxes that had survived the invasion when I heard voices by the front door.

  “Motherfucker, what happened here?”

  It was Patty Swain.

  “In the kitchen,” I called out.

  I heard a second voice, this one male, say, “It’s like a hurricane or something.” I turned to the door that led into the living room and there stood Patty and Syd’s onetime boyfriend, Jeff Bluestein.

  “Mr. Blake,” he said, nodding, then opening his arms to indicate the mess. “What happened?”

  Patty’s eyes were wide as she looked around. “I can’t believe what they did,” she said. “This is so fucked.”

  Jeff said, “Patty, enough.”

  “Someone broke in while I was in Seattle and tore the place apart,” I said.

  “Seattle?” Patty said.

  “I was out there looking for Sydney.”

  Patty, who’d already looked stunned, appeared even more surprised. “Syd’s in Seattle?” she said.

  I said, “I was tricked into thinking she was there, so I’d be out of the house long enough for someone to come in and search it from top to bottom.”

  “Oh my God,” Patty said. She wandered into the living room, then up the stairs. All along her route, Jeff and I could hear her saying, “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

  “How you doing, Jeff?” I asked.

  Jeff Bluestein was the same age as Syd. He was about my height, just under six feet, but bulkier than I am, with curly black hair and thick black eyebrows. He had a loping quality about him, as though he were dragging somebody else along behind him. He’d always struck me as a nice guy, but Syd had found him moody and unmotivated, and I don’t think their three months of going steady, or whatever it was kids called it, was ever very serious. Syd broke it off the end of last summer, but they’d remained friends. Jeff got to know Patty through Syd, and they were friends, too, but nothing more than that.

  When Jeff learned Syd was missing, he’d approached me immediately about setting up a website. He was a whiz at that sort of thing. And while that was hardly unique for someone in his age group, I was impressed, and not wanting to have to waste a minute getting the site under way, I turned him loose on it.

  I offered to pay him for his time, but he’d refused to take any money. “I just want Syd to come back,” he’d said. “That’s all the reward I want.”

  “I’m okay,” Jeff said in answer to my question about how he was doing. He sounded tired, but Jeff was never what you’d call chipper. He was a bear, just waking up from hibernation, loggy-headed, trying to figure out where he was.

  “I was going to call you,” I said. “I wanted to make sure the site’s working okay.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I was checking it this morning. Your mail’s working and everything.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You want a cold drink or anything? They didn’t throw everything out of the fridge.”

  “I’ll have a look,” he said and opened the appliance door. His body blocked out the interior light. He pulled out a can of Coke and cracked the top. “I haven’t been sleeping so good,” he said.

  “Something on your mind?” I asked him.

  “Just worried about Syd. I thought she woulda gotten in touch.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  From someplace upstairs: “Oh my God!”

  “She’s kind of over the top,” Jeff said softly, tipping his head in Patty Swain’s direction. I knew he liked hanging around with Patty, but her rough edges made him uncomfortable. I’d never heard Jeff swear, not even a “damn.”

  “She’s her own person, that’s for sure,” I said.

  Jeff stood there looking around the kitchen, not mesmerized by the mess, but off somewhere in his thoughts.

  “Why do you think Sydney didn’t like me?” he asked. His choice of tense threw me off for a second, but then I realized he was referring specifically to that period when she’d just broken up with him.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “I know Syd likes you.”

  “But she must have told you something about why she didn’t want to go out with me anymore.”

  I forced a smile. “There’s clearly a lot Syd hasn’t shared with me. Not just about her relationship with you.”

  Jeff shrugged. “I mean, she likes me as a friend, I guess. Lots of girls like me as a friend. Patty likes me as a friend. But that starts to feel a bit pitiful after a while.”

  “You’re a good guy, Jeff,” I said. “It can take a long time for the right person to come along.”

  He looked at me and I could tell he didn’t believe me, but he was too polite to argue. “Sure, I guess.” He guzzled down most of the Coke in one gulp.

  “I really hope Sydney comes back soon,” Jeff said, his eyes heavy.

  I waited a moment, then said, “Jeff, all this mess, someone breaking into this house, it all has something to do with Sydney. She’s in some kind of trouble.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So I’m asking you, I’m asking you as her father, to tell me if there was anything going on that might have made her run off. Maybe something you’ve thought you should tell me but haven’t so far.”

  “I just don’t know,” he said. “Like I said, we’re just sort of friends now. Maybe, before, she would have told me.”

  If she hadn’t dumped me, he seemed to be saying, maybe I’d be able to help you now.

  “If you think of anything…” I said, not bothering to finish.

  “I got to take off,” Jeff said. “I just wanted to come by and see how it was going. Can you tell Patty I had to beat it?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  About a minute after he left, Patty came back down to the kitchen. “Where’s Jeff?” she asked. “He go back to the circus?”

  “What?”

  “You know. The tranquilized bears they train to ride the little bicycles?”

  “That’s mean, Patty,” I said.

  “I say it to his face,” she said. “He’s cool with it. He knows I’m kidding.”

  “It’s still mean.”

  She was all innocent. “He’s a big boy. You should hear the stuff he says about us. About the girls.”

  “What sort of stuff?”

  “Like we’re all a bunch of skanky sluts. But he’s just joking around, too. And he’s wound up kind of tight, too, you know? Like, you say ‘shit’ or ‘fuck’ around him and he gets all weird, like he’s a goddamn minister or something.”

  “Why would he call Syd a skanky slut?”

  “Oh, so you’re not surprised he’d call me that.”

  I wouldn’t be baited. “Patty, you push the envelope. It’s your thing. I’d never call you a skanky slut, but a girl who walks into a house and the first thing out of her mouth is ‘motherfucker’ shouldn’t be shocked by what people might think.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Go on.”

  “But Sydney, so far as I know, didn’t do anything to cultivate that kind of an image.”

  “Cultivate,” Patty said. “Yeah.”

  “So why would Jeff say that about her?”

  Patty actually gave it some thought. “I think, maybe, because she dum
ped him, Jeff was thinking, okay, if I run her down, then maybe she was never worthy of me in the first place.”

  I nodded. “That’s pretty good.”

  Patty noticed some canned goods still on the counter and started putting them away in the cupboard. She followed me around the house for the next couple of hours, helping me tidy, asking me where things went, taking bags of garbage to the side of the house and jamming them into the cans. We worked side by side, and although sometimes we were tripping over each other’s feet and bumping shoulders, we got a rhythm going. Patty’d hold a trash bag open, I’d dump stuff into it. I’d get the vacuum out, she’d move a chair out of the way.

  She threw herself into it, working up a sweat, a stubborn strand of streaked hair repeatedly falling forward into her eyes. She tried blowing it away, and when that didn’t work, tucked it behind her ear until it came free a few seconds later.

  We were standing in the kitchen, having a drink of water.

  “That thing you said, about DVD players in vans being a sign of the end of civilization?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You might be onto something.”

  She smiled. An honest, genuine smile. It reminded me a little of Sydney’s. I fought not to let the thought ruin this moment Patty and I were sharing.

  She said, seemingly out of nowhere, but maybe not, “My dad was a complete asshole.”

  I didn’t ask.

  I CALLED LAURA CANTRELL and brought her up to date. No Syd, trashed house. Laura said that was too bad. Once she was done with that outpouring of sympathy, she was about to ask when I was coming back to work. I headed her off at the pass and told her I’d be in for the afternoon sales shift, which began at three.

  In some ways it made no sense going back to work. The mystery surrounding Syd’s disappearance had deepened. I felt I should be out searching for her, but I didn’t know where to turn anymore. I felt overwhelmed and powerless.

  I couldn’t just hang around the house. With Patty’s help, I’d made a lot of progress getting the place back in order. I couldn’t sit there waiting for the phone to ring or an email to land. People knew how to reach me at the dealership.

  I left the house around two-thirty. I plugged Syd’s iPod into the outlet in the CR-V as I drove along the Post Road to work.