Linwood Barclay - A Tap on the Window

“Who’s ‘they’? The same ones Claire was trying to lose?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’d Hanna say then?”

“She didn’t say anything. The call just ended. And I never got to know where she’d been dropped off.”

I knew.

“Sean and I have to go out,” I told the Skillings.

“What for?” his mother said as we all got to our feet.

“We’re going to see if we can find Hanna, aren’t we, Sean?” I said to him.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know about this,” his father said.

“I very much appreciate your son’s cooperation, and yours,” I said. “In consideration of that, I’m inclined to let that other matter slide.”

The parents contemplated my words. Sheila spoke first. “You help this man any way you can, Sean.”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “You do that.”

As their son and I moved toward the door, Sheila said, “Don’t be too late, now.” Like we were heading out to catch a movie.

Once outside, I said, “I’m parked around the corner.” We walked the short distance in silence. I hit the remote to unlock the doors and the two of us got into the Honda.

“Where are we going?” he asked as he reached over his shoulder for the seat belt.

“I was the one who gave Claire a ride last night,” I said. “When you didn’t show up at Patchett’s.”

“I figured that, but why would she have called you ?”

“She didn’t. I was in the right place at the right time.” Or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you looked at it. “I was driving by, stopped at the light. Claire’d been standing there, waiting for you, and when you called and said you couldn’t make it, she tapped on my window to ask for a ride. I was going to say no, but she recognized me, said she knew Scott. So I said okay.”

“If I hadn’t got pulled over,” Sean said, “I’d have been there. Stupid cop was jerking me around for no reason.”

I keyed the ignition, turned around, gave it some gas. “Yeah. So let me guess how it went. You gave Claire a lift to Patchett’s. Then you picked Hanna up and took her to Iggy’s so she could wait for Claire.”

“Yeah. We figured no one would follow me after I dropped Claire off. They’d hang back at Patchett’s.”

“Okay. Then, after you dropped Hanna off, you were to go back and get Claire, drive her to Iggy’s. They do the switch, and Hanna, wearing that wig, gets in your car looking like Claire. How’m I doing?”

“Good,” he said, looking straight ahead.

“Hanna had me fooled for about one minute, but I guess that was okay, because I wasn’t the one she had to trick. So here’s what I’m wondering, Sean.”

He glanced over.

“Who’s following Claire that she’d go to that much trouble to get away from him? And who picked her up after Hanna took her place?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

“Really, man, I don’t know what the fuck it’s all about.” His dad wasn’t here now to slap him upside the head, and I wasn’t going to do it. I was tempted, but not over his foul language.

“You just agreed to help out without knowing a thing?”

“Claire didn’t talk to me about it. She and I, we haven’t been getting along as well as we used to since she dumped my friend—”

He cut himself off.

“Your friend?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got a friend she used to go out with, but then she started seeing this other guy.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“This friend the same one who clunked me in the head?”

Sean shot me a cautious look. “He didn’t mean to hurt you or anything. He thought you were coming after me. He was just trying to protect me.”

“Okay,” I said. “You want me to go back, ask your parents who, out of your friends, recently got dumped by Claire Sanders? How long do you think it’ll take me to get a name?”

Sean looked ready to surrender. “You gonna have him charged?”

“No,” I said.

“You gonna throw him in a trunk or anything?”

I glanced over at Sean, then back to the road. “No. I won’t do that.”

“His name’s Roman.”

“Roman?” I said. “Roman Ravelson? Whose parents own the furniture place?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t he a bit old for Claire?” I knew he was twenty-one.

“Whatever,” he said. “She broke it off, anyway. But now she knows how it feels, so maybe she’ll get back with him, although I kind of doubt it.”

“What, did someone dump her?” I asked.

“She started going out with this other guy, Dennis — I don’t know where he’s from exactly, but not from here; he was just here for a summer job — and she was all super in love with him, but then I guess he just wanted out, and went back to wherever he came from. Claire was, like, all devastated, and you ask me, it kind of looked good on her.”

I’d heard the name earlier tonight. “Is Dennis the black guy you mentioned?”

“Huh?”

“When you told your parents about being pulled over, you said the cops pull over people your age, out-of-towners, or people like Dennis who’s not as white as everyone else around here.”

“Oh yeah. He’s black.” He shrugged. “This is still kind of a white-bread town, you know. I’m not sayin’ that’s a bad thing — it’s just some people around here kind of freak out when they see a black guy.”

Sean wasn’t wrong about that.

“So even though you’re pissed with Claire, you agreed to help her with this thing last night.”

“Hanna asked me, so I did it. She said Claire was being stalked or something and she needed to get away.”

“Who’d she need to get away from? Roman?”

“I don’t know. I mean, okay, Roman has wanted to talk to Claire about why she dumped him. A guy deserves some kind of explanation, right? She wouldn’t answer the phone if it was him, and she stopped texting with him because he kind of crossed a line there.”

“How’d he cross a line by texting with her?”

“Oh man, I can’t talk about this. Forget I said that.”

“Sean.”

“Okay, you know you can send more than words in a text, right? You can send pictures?”

“I know.”

“So, after Claire broke up with Roman, he texted her a picture of what she was going to be missing.”

I was pretty sure I was getting his drift. “You telling me he texted a photo of his dick to her?”

Sean shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“And not at half-mast, I’m guessing,” I said.

“Look, it’s no big deal. Everybody does it. Sends hot pictures of themselves to each other. But Claire kinda didn’t like that after they’d broke up.”

“Did Dennis know Roman sent her those kinds of pics?”

“I don’t think so. He’d have probably tried to kill him if he had.” He waved his hands like he was trying to clear the air. “But, look, I don’t think it was Roman that Claire was trying to ditch. I mean, Hanna wouldn’t have asked me to help out if it was my own friend that was involved. That wouldn’t be right.”

“So you have no idea who might have been following her.”

He licked his lips. “I swear, I don’t know the details. Hanna said Claire wouldn’t even tell her what exactly was going on.”

“Could it have been the police?”

“Like I said, I don’t know. These are all things you should ask Hanna. I was just supposed to drive, okay?”

“What about Claire’s father?”

“What about him?”

“Could he be the one she was trying to give the slip to?”

Sean didn’t answer right away. “Where are we going, anyway?”