Fear the Worst

  Patty was quiet for a moment, sitting there, feet in the tub. I felt the weight of her body leaning into mine. When I was done with her wound, I lacked the energy to get up, so I sat on the floor, my body held up by the vanity.

  “You’ve always been really decent to me,” Patty said.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” I said.

  “Because I’m not like Sydney,” she said. “I’m not a good girl.”

  “Patty.”

  “I’m a bad girl. I do all the bad things.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You do bad things. But it doesn’t make you a bad kid.”

  “We’re back to the bad-choices thing,” she said, mockingly.

  “If you’re trying to convince me not to like you, it’s not going to work,” I said. “I think you’re a special person, Patty. You’re an original. But you haven’t got a lot longer to get your act together. You keep getting into shit like whatever that was tonight, and you’re going to run yourself off the rails permanently.”

  She thought about that. “I know you look down on me.” I started to say something, but she held up a wobbly hand. “But you don’t do it in a way that makes me feel like I’m worthless.”

  “You’re not worthless, Patty.”

  “I feel that way sometimes.” Without looking at me, she said, “What if Sydney doesn’t come back?”

  “I can’t let myself think about that, Patty,” I said. “Starting tomorrow, I’m going to spend all my time trying to find her.”

  “What about your job?” she asked.

  “I can always sell cars. I don’t know how much time I have to find Syd.”

  Patty reached down to the floor for one of the damp, bloody towels, and used it to dry her feet before she swung them out of the tub.

  “You need to call your mom and let her know where you are, that you’re okay,” I said.

  A small smile crossed Patty’s face. “You think everybody’s family is like yours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think all families care.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that.

  “I know what it’s like for Sydney,” Patty said. “She acts like it’s a big pain in the ass, you guys calling her when she’s late, her checking in to let you know where she is, you looking out for her and all that shit. Sometimes, mostly when she’s with me, she acts like that stuff embarrasses her, but I think she just acts that way because she doesn’t want me to feel bad because nobody’s waiting up for me, wondering where I am, dragging me out of dumbass parties like that one I went to tonight, because no one gives a shit, you know?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “My dad, one time—this was before I was six and he took off? He almost killed me.”

  Maybe, when you’re already carrying a heavy burden, there’s always room for a little more. “What did he do?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t usually his thing to take me to daycare, right? But this one day, my mom, she had this really early morning meeting to go to, so my dad had to drop me off, only he forgot, you know? I guess I was three, and I’m in the back, and I guess I fell asleep, and instead of going to daycare to drop me off, he just kept driving to work, and it was really hot out.”

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “So he went into work and it was like eighty degrees out but like a fucking million degrees in the car, and I guess when I woke up I was all dehydrated and shit, and my super-terrific dad didn’t remember I was out there until about two hours later. So he runs out and gets me out and runs me into the building and I’m totally like almost passed out and he gets me some water and makes me drink it and this is the thing, right, the first thing he says to me, and I can still remember this, even though I was three years old, he says to me, ‘Let’s not tell your mother about this.’”

  I was slowly shaking my head.

  “But she found out anyway, because just before my dad runs out, some lady saw me in the car and she wasn’t strong enough to smash in the window so she’d called the fire department. So everybody found out, my mom too, and that was the beginning of the end of their so-called marriage.”

  “That’s an awful story,” I said.

  “You know why I think he did it?” she asked.

  I sighed. “It happens,” I said. “You just get into this kind of trance, you do the things you always do in the morning, and dropping you off was something different. He was on autopilot. I’m sure he never meant to do it.”

  “Okay, maybe he didn’t mean to do it,” Patty said. “I mean, it wasn’t like he got up that morning and decided, hey, I think I’ll kill my little girl today. I know he didn’t actually do that. It was more like a subconscious thing. At this really dark level in his brain, he didn’t care what happened to me, because the son of a bitch isn’t even my real father.”

  I didn’t have it in me to take this child’s pain away. Even if I’d had the energy to want to deal with it, she’d never be able to unload all of it. Right now, I didn’t want to know about her mother’s extramarital affairs, or whether she was adopted, or any of that stuff. The simple truth was, if I let my head touch the bath mat, I’d fall asleep right here on the bathroom floor.

  “Did you ever cheat on Mrs. B.?” she asked.

  “That’s kind of personal,” I said.

  Her face cracked. “So you did. I thought you were different. I thought you were, like, all upstanding and shit like that.”

  “The answer is no,” I said. “I was always faithful to Mrs. B.—Susanne—while we were together.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “No,” I said. “I am not shittin’ you.”

  I struggled to get up off the floor. “Patty,” I said, “I have to get some sleep. And you need to get to bed. Take Syd’s room. In the morning I still want you to call your mother.”

  “You hear my cell phone ringing?” she asked. “You hear anybody wondering where I am?”

  “No,” I said.

  As I moved to leave the bathroom, Patty said to me, “I have this really great idea.”

  I stopped. For a second, I wondered whether she’d suddenly had an insight into where I might find Syd.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why don’t I just live here? While you’re out during the day finding Sydney, I can watch the place, make sure nobody breaks in again and fucks around with things, take phone calls, keep an eye on the website, have something ready for you to eat when you get home.”

  Her eyes had brightened. She had a hopeful smile on her face.

  “I can’t do that, Patty,” I said. “It’s a kind offer, but I have to say no. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “What’s the big deal? You afraid people’ll think if I’m living here you’re doing me?”

  As much as I liked Patty, she was wearing me out. I’d done all I could for her tonight.

  “I’ve already got one daughter to worry about,” I said. “I don’t need two.”

  She held my gaze for several seconds. The words seemed to have opened a new wound in her, bigger than the one in her knee.

  “Okay, then,” she said frostily. She grabbed her shoes and brushed past me on her way to Sydney’s bedroom. “I didn’t mean like it had to be forever.”

  “Patty,” I said to her, firmly but not unkindly, “in the morning, I’m happy to give you a lift wherever you need it, but you have to leave.”

  And she did. Before I got up.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I SLEPT TILL HALF PAST SEVEN. Before heading into the en-suite off my bedroom, I went down the hall and looked in Sydney’s bedroom. The door was wide open. The bed was empty, and made. I wasn’t even sure Patty had slept there.

  After telling her she’d have to leave in the morning, I’d gone into my own bedroom and closed the door. I’d fallen asleep almost instantly. It was possible, I now realized, that she had left then.

  I went down to the kitchen to look for any signs of her, but there were none. The only glass in the sink was the one I
had used to take some Tylenol the night before.

  “Okay, then,” I said quietly to myself. I went to the front door, found it unlocked. Patty would have had to unlock it to leave, and without a key, had no way to send the bolt home when she stepped outside.

  Before hitting the shower, I checked the computer to see whether anyone had tried to get in touch with me about Syd. And of course, every time I sat down to the computer, what I was most hoping to find was a note from Syd herself.

  This morning, as was most often the case, there was nothing.

  But the phone did ring just before eight.

  “Hey,” Susanne said. “I was sitting here, wishing the phone would ring with good news.”

  “I wish I had some,” I said. I filled her in on a couple of things. That I’d quit my job until I’d found Syd. That blood belonging to Syd, and some hood who had been found dead in Bridgeport, was on Syd’s car. That someone who’d been involved in the break-in at my house had come by the dealership looking for Syd, and had tried to kill me.

  “What?” Susanne said. “And I’m hearing about all this now?”

  I thought I had plenty of excuses. Exhausted. Traumatized. Overwhelmed. But I didn’t think any of them would fly.

  I said, “I’m sorry. If I’d had good news, I’d have called.”

  “This man who tried to kill you, who was looking for Syd,” Susanne said. “Who was he? Are the police looking for him? If they question him, won’t they know why Syd’s missing?”

  “They’re working on it,” I said. “They have to find him first. He used a fake license when he took the car for a test drive.”

  “Oh,” she said, the air coming out of her balloon.

  “Any news on your front?” I asked.

  Susanne seemed to be pulling herself together on the other end of the line. All my news, particularly the attempt on my life, had left her shell-shocked. Finally, “Bob’s going all Spanish Inquisition on Evan.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “He owes more money than he’s saying. He managed to get from one of his friends, he won’t say who, a fake credit card to play some of his gambling on the computer.”

  “A fake card?”

  “It’s the data from someone else’s card, but on a new card. He used it for a couple of days, until the person whose card it was found out about some fishy charges and canceled it. Then Evan went back to using his. He even snuck Bob’s card out of his wallet a couple of times and used that.”

  “Maybe Bob will find out something that links Evan’s problems to Sydney. Maybe he owes someone money and they told him they’d hurt her if he didn’t pay up. I’m just grasping at straws here, Suze.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “About Bob,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Look,” I said, finding it difficult to come up with the words, “tell him… tell him I’m sorry about how I handled things with Evan.”

  “Okay.”

  “He has to know we’ve all been going through a lot.”

  “Sure,” Susanne said.

  “And I think… I think maybe he’s good for you.”

  “Pardon?”

  “When you fell… there was something… I think he really loves you, Suze.”

  Susanne didn’t say anything. I had a feeling she was finding it hard to say anything for a moment.

  “And another thing,” I said. “I need to talk to Bob about a car.”

  “What car?”

  “Laura’s taking mine. I need wheels.”

  “You need a car, from Bob?” Susanne said. “He’s going to just love this.”

  I REPLACED THE RECEIVER and was about to turn away from the phone when something from the night before came back to me. I dialed Kate Wood. I tried her cell, figuring she might already be on her way to work.

  “Hello,” she said. It sounded as though she was driving. A radio broadcasting traffic reports in the background got turned down.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s Tim.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You drove by last night.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I need to explain what you saw,” I said.

  “I didn’t see anything,” she said.

  “That was Syd’s friend Patty,” I said.

  “I see,” Kate said. “So you’ve decided you like them a lot younger. I guess that’s why you haven’t called.”

  “She was hurt,” I said, recalling that Patty, limping because of her injured knee, had her arm around me for support as I took her into the house. “She hurt herself at some party down on the beach that got a bit out of hand, called me, and asked me to pick her up.”

  “Of course she did,” Kate said.

  “Anyway, I got her knee bandaged, and offered to let her stay in Syd’s room, but I think she must have taken off right after I went to bed.”

  “Kind of funny, don’t you think?” Kate said.

  “What? What’s funny?”

  “That you’d actually go to the trouble to call and tell me this. You don’t call me any other time, but this you want to phone me about.”

  “Kate, I just thought you should know.”

  “I’ll just bet you do. You know, things are really starting to come together where you’re concerned, Tim.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kate.”

  “I’m not stupid, Tim. I can figure things out.”

  “Okay, Kate, whatever you say. I thought an explanation was in order, but clearly you’ve got some other scenario going on in your head and I don’t imagine there’s much I can do to change it, so you have a great day.”

  I hung up.

  I put on a pot of coffee and made myself a fried egg sandwich, leaving the yolk runny. I was scanning the headlines of the New Haven Register that had been tossed onto the front step that morning when the doorbell rang. I set down the paper and went to the front door, still in my bare feet, and opened it.

  It was Arnie Chilton. When he saw my nose, he did a double take.

  “What happened to you?”

  “And good morning to you, too,” I said.

  “Seriously, what happened? Did Bob do that? I know he thinks you’re a dick.”

  “No,” I said. “I had a run-in with someone else.”

  “Oh,” he said, then, as if remembering why he’d come knocking in the first place, said, “Bob’s right, you know. You really are a dick.”

  “And here I thought you weren’t good at finding things out,” I said.

  “That was a shitty thing to do, making me do a coffee-and-donut run,” he said. He didn’t look angry so much as hurt. I actually felt a twinge of guilt.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I think I was trying to stick it to Bob more than you.”

  “You used me as an instrument of ridicule,” he said.

  I stared at him with some wonder. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I did,” I said. I opened the door a bit wider. “You want some coffee?”

  “Okay,” he said, and followed me into the kitchen.

  Arnie took it black. I poured him a cup and set it on the kitchen table. I sat back down and took another bite of my sandwich.

  “You eaten?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, blowing on the coffee. “You think that just because I was a security guard, I’m an idiot.”

  “No,” I said. “Just underqualified.” He looked up from his coffee. “No offense.”

  Arnie looked like he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what, so he went back to his coffee.

  “You just come by to tell me I’m a dick?” I asked.

  “That was just the first item on the list,” he said. “But I also want to ask you some questions.”

  “So you’re actually still on this,” I said.

  “I’m going to stay on this until I work off what I owe Bob,” he said.

  “Bob hasn’t called you off?” I’d wondered if Bob might have fired Arnie as a way of sticking it to me. But, assuming Arnie
had even a remote chance of finding anything out about Syd, that would be punishing Susanne, too. And I didn’t think, anymore, that Bob had that in him.

  “No,” he said, surprised. “I’m an honorable person, you know. Someone asks me to do something, I do it.”

  I popped the last of the egg sandwich into my mouth. “Okay.”

  “So you know Sydney had this boyfriend? This kid named Jeff?”

  “I know. He dropped by yesterday.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “About Jeff?”

  “Yeah.”

  I shrugged. “Not that much. Knows computers, helped me set up the website. Kind of quiet. Has a bit of a confidence problem.”

  “You know he got in some shit, right?”

  Suddenly he had my attention. “What sort of shit?”

  Arnie Chilton looked pleased with himself. “Jeff had this part-time job over in Bridgeport waiting tables at a Dalrymple’s.” It was a moderately priced family restaurant, like an Applebee’s. “So they caught him doing this thing with customer credit cards. They’d give him their card, and before he swiped it through the restaurant’s cash register, he ran it through this thing called a wedge.”

  “A wedge?” I said.

  “Small thing, not much bigger than a pack of smokes. You swipe a card through it and it stores all the data.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Later, you download all the data out of the wedge and transfer it to the magnetic strips of new, fake cards.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I said, thinking back to a conversation I’d had only moments earlier.

  “So, anyway, this Jeff character, he was doing this, the manager spotted him, fired him on the spot.”

  “When was this?”

  “Shit, months ago,” Arnie said. “Might have been last summer.”

  “And he wasn’t charged?”

  “The manager was going to charge him, but first he thought, he didn’t need the bad publicity, right? People find out your place has been ripping off customers’ credit card data, they stay away. Plus, Jeff, he was just a kid, right, and then his dad—who works at one of the radio stations Dalrymple’s buys time on—came to see the manager and said his son was never going to do anything like this again, that he was going to scare the living shit out of him, and that if the restaurant pressed charges it could ruin the kid for life, that whole song-and-dance thing, you know? Plus, he’d see that the restaurant got a whole bunch of free spots during the drive-home show.”