Linwood Barclay - A Tap on the Window

“His work?”

“No, mine. Rhonda McIntyre?”

I didn’t know the name.

“Hot little thing, I admit. And about forty pounds lighter. But what she had on me in the youth department I could more than make up for in experience. Bert thinks I never knew about her, but I could tell. The way she looked at him when he came into the store, or if they ran into each other on the street. It was back in the summer. He still believes I think he was only seeing me. Anyway, Rhonda doesn’t work for us anymore.”

“Did you fire her?”

“She quit all of a sudden, couple of months back. I think she actually left town, got a job somewhere else, broke it off with another guy — a cop, as it turned out, who she was finding kind of freaky, and who didn’t know she was seeing Bert on the side. Or on her back.” Annette chuckled. “Just as well she quit. I’d have had to find a way to cut her loose, dropped some hints to Kent that she was taking an extra cut off the top with cash deals, fudging some receipts, something. But in the end, I didn’t have to. It’s bad enough, knowing this thing I’ve got going with Bert has an expiration date, but while I’m still in the ‘best before’ days, I want him to myself. You think there’s something wrong, wanting a bit of excitement in your life?”

“I guess it depends what kind. Maybe you should try white-water rafting.”

“It’s just that my life these days... it’s just life , you know? Today’s going to be like yesterday and tomorrow’s going to be exactly like today. But with Bert, even if it’s just for a while, I can have a few days that aren’t like all the others. You have to admit he’s a handsome man. I mean, you can say that and it doesn’t mean you’re gay or anything.”

“He’s a handsome man,” I said.

“He’s got the looks to be a lot more than a small-town mayor. He could be a governor or a senator or anything like that if he decided that’s what he wanted.”

“It’s not what he wants?”

“He’s not ambitious that way,” Annette said. “He just wants to make a difference wherever he happens to be at the time. He cares about being a good mayor, about doing what’s right. That’s why he’s in this fight with Perry, who, I just want to say, is not that bad a guy. I think he does right by this town, and I’m not just saying that because he’s Donna’s brother, you know? Maybe he goes a little overboard now and then, I’ll grant you that. But Jesus, you don’t really think he has Bert’s house bugged, do you? I mean, that would be — that’d be bad.”

I shrugged.

“How’d you get looking for Claire in the first place?”

I told her, briefly, about the night before.

“God, kids,” she said. “You can never predict what they’re going to do.” She appeared to be thinking. “This thing with Hanna — that’s just so awful. You think maybe Claire ran off because she knows who did it?”

“Claire took off before it happened, so no.” I pointed. “We’re almost to my street.”

“I know.” Half a minute later, she brought the car to a stop at the end of our driveway.

“How are you and Kent doing?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Annette said.

“This thing you have going with Sanders — you don’t have to be a genius to figure out it means you and Kent are going through a rough patch.”

“It doesn’t have to mean that,” she said.

“So things between you are perfect?” I asked.

“No couple on this planet has a perfect relationship,” she said. “Do you?”

When I hesitated, Annette jumped in. “God, I’m sorry. With what you’ve been through, I don’t know how I could have said that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Listen, sometime I’d like to go up on the roof again.”

“Oh, Cal.”

“I just... I’m still wrestling with this, Annette. I keep playing it in my head, how it happened.”

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll mention it to Kent. If you don’t hear from him, if he doesn’t call you, then you’ll know he’s not okay with it.”

I was betting I’d never hear from him.

“Thanks for the ride. Oh, and would you say hi to Roman for me?”

She cocked her head to one side. “Sure. Why?”

“We kind of ran into each other earlier tonight. Tell him I’m thinking about him.”

Donna’s car wasn’t in the driveway, so I figured she must have put it in the garage, which she didn’t do very often. I let myself into the house as quietly as I could and went to the kitchen, thinking I’d have a glass of water, then realized I’d gone through another evening without any dinner. I opened the cupboard and took out some saltines and peanut butter. Not exactly fine dining, but a few smeared crackers would keep my stomach from growling through the night.

Stealthily, I put the dirty knife and glass into the dishwasher and crept up the stairs. I tiptoed through the bedroom, but I stepped on something hard and there was a sudden cracking noise. Not all that loud, but loud enough, I feared, to wake Donna. When I didn’t hear her stir, I knelt down and patted the carpet until I found what I’d stepped on. One of her pencils. I’d snapped it in two. I picked up the pieces, noticed that the small can of spray fixative had hit the floor, too, and scooped that up, then slipped into the bathroom.

I waited until I had the door closed before turning on the light, put the broken pencil pieces in the trash basket, the spray can on the counter, and disrobed. Stripped to my boxers, I brushed my teeth, then killed the light before opening the door.

It hit me then that Donna usually left the bathroom light on for me.

My eyes were taking a while to adjust to the dark, so I made my way to the bed by instinct, pulled back the covers on my side, and slipped between the sheets.

I knew the moment I was in the bed that something was off. I blinked hurriedly until my eyes were accustomed to the absence of light — as though that might somehow help — then sat up and looked at the other side of the bed.

Donna was not there.

The porch light helps her as she slides the key into the front door and turns the dead bolt. She’s surprised, when she opens the door, to see her son standing there in the front hall, having seen him only a few hours earlier.

“You scared me half to death,” she says.

“You’re not usually out this late.”

“What’s going on?”

“Things are working out,” he says. “I had to tell you. I didn’t want to wait till morning.”

“You’ve found them?”

“No, but I may have found a way to find them.”

She throws her purse on the closest chair. “Please don’t get my hopes up.”

He tells her what he’s done. He has been, she must admit, a busy boy. “That’s a lot of running around,” she says. While she remains skeptical, he does seem to have thought this through.

She likes one of his ideas in particular. “That’s a good plan, to use the detective,” she says. “I saw him earlier.”

“We put him to work for us, except he doesn’t even know it,” he says.

“It could work.”

“I feel like it’s coming together.”

“Don’t get carried away,” she snaps. “We’re a long way from being able to put this behind us. If the boy took the book, when you find him, you have to get it back. I should have cottoned to the fact that he’d given it away sooner. Usually when he fills a notebook, he asks for a new one, and I get him one. But he didn’t ask this time because it was too soon. He’d probably only filled half of it. He figured I’d get suspicious.”