Linwood Barclay - A Tap on the Window

I took that comment a couple of ways. Maybe this was turning into the best drawing of Scott she’d ever done. Or, if that was the case, this was the sketch that would allow her to move forward. To the next step, whatever that step might actually be.

I backed off. “Okay,” I said.

Once the toast had popped, I slathered jam on one slice and peanut butter on the other. I washed it down with the coffee.

“Something that’s always troubled me,” Donna said, letting the half sentence just hang there.

“What?” I asked.

“We loved him,” she said. “We loved him unreservedly.”

“Of course we did.”

“But I don’t know if... I don’t know if he was lovable,” she said softly. “To others. He didn’t have a lot of friends.”

“Donna.”

“He was always... you know what he was like. He had a bit of the tattletale in him.”

“I know,” I said, and forced a smile. “Maybe he was just trying to pull people up to his standards.”

Her face fell. “What standards were those?” She shook her head. “He destroyed himself.”

I looked at her across the table from me, unsure what to say or what to do. Two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes you just run out of gas.

“I need to go,” I said.

I opened the garage, even though my car was already in the driveway. I fished out the still-active GPS device from under the front seat and walked it into the garage, setting it on a shelf where I kept gardening equipment. Whoever was minding this thing, from whatever location, if they could detect that small a movement, they’d figure I’d just moved the Honda into the garage.

While I left the GPS behind, I didn’t set off without my Glock. For the drive, I put it in the glove box.

When I got to the other side of Buffalo, the sun was coming up, nearly blinding me as I drove due east. I flipped the visor down and slipped on my shades to keep from squinting. One of those interstate highway service centers served as a pit stop for me. Got back in the car with another coffee and a blueberry muffin.

Once I’d passed the last of the exits for Rochester, I kept my eye out for the sign for Interchange 41, Waterloo-Clyde. I got off, paid the toll, then went south on 414, taking me past the Seneca Meadows Wetlands Preserve. I stayed on 414 as it bore east into Seneca Falls, then followed it south of town, past the Finger Lakes Regional Airport. When I hit Canoga Street I took it east to 89 through farmland. Finally, I found my way down a narrow road to the shore of Cayuga Lake and North Parker Road.

Cayuga was one of the north-south Finger Lakes, a popular place for people across New York State to buy summer properties. Some of the cottages appeared to date back decades, while others weren’t cottages at all, but proper homes, no doubt built to replace cabins that were no longer worth fixing up.

I traveled slowly down the lane. In a lot of the driveways, there were no cars at all. The summer season was over. Some of the cottages had been boarded up and wouldn’t be opened until spring.

I drove to the end of the road without seeing the Volvo wagon. I turned around, made the trip back just as slowly, in case I’d missed something. The road was littered with leaves, but there were still quite a few clinging to the trees. I got back to where I’d turned onto North Parker, again without seeing the car.

It was possible Claire and Dennis had been here but had now moved to another location. I sat there in the car, the engine idling, wondering if I’d wasted my time coming out here. I decided to do one more drive to the end and back.

It was on the way down, passing one of the cottages where there appeared to be little life, and no car parked outside, that I noticed the smoke.

A thin gray wisp of it, drifting up from the chimney.

I stopped the car, backed up thirty yards, and turned in. The driveway amounted to two ruts with grass growing in the center. I could hear the blades brushing along the underside of the car as I drove down between the trees. The cottage was a simple rectangular box, one story, painted dark brown. Beyond it was a separate building at the edge of the water that looked like a place to store a boat, but the big doors on this side suggested a car could just as easily fit inside.

I parked, killed the engine, opened the glove box and took out my Glock. Once I was out of the car, I slipped it into the holster on my belt and pulled my jacket over it.

The cottage was still. I didn’t think my car had made a lot of noise coming in, and it was possible that whoever was inside was still sleeping. I decided to walk down to the outbuilding first.

There were two windows set high on the door, and I peered inside.

The Volvo was there. Tucked in the way it was, with the door closed, they weren’t going to be making any fast getaways. A few steps away from the garage was a wooden dock and, tied to it, an aluminum boat — a fourteen-footer, I guessed, with a small Evinrude outboard motor bolted to the transom.

I walked over to the cottage, stepped up onto a deck that faced the lake and rapped my knuckles on one of the sliding glass doors. There were no curtains drawn across them, so I made my hand into a visor and peered inside. Looked like one big room that was a kitchen and living area with a large television, an older, non-flat screen that looked like it weighed five hundred pounds. There were three doors facing onto the room, probably two bedrooms and a bathroom. What looked like one of the bedroom doors was open. There were dirty dishes in the sink, a pizza box on the dining table.

At one end of the main room sat a small stack of firewood, about a foot away from a wood-burning stove from which a black pipe snaked its way up and out through the roof.

I rapped again, a little louder this time, then heard a rustling in the leaves behind me. I whirled around in time to see a young black man, dressed only in blue boxers and a pair of sneakers, leap up the three steps to the deck and charge me.

I’d been caught off guard the night before, but this time I was ready. He came at me with his right fist, but before he could connect I had my left arm up to block the blow and simultaneously drove forward with my right, catching him just below the ribs. I pulled the punch some before it connected. I didn’t want to hurt him that bad.

He doubled over and stumbled back a couple of steps, but he wasn’t done with me. He raised his head and got ready to attack again, but by this time he was looking down the barrel of my Glock.

“Whoa,” I said, my arm locked into position. The man froze.

When I heard the glass door behind me start to slide, I took a few steps to one side so I could keep my eye on the man and still see whoever was at the door.

It was Claire, dressed in a pair of panties and a T-shirt.

“It’s okay, Dennis,” she said. “It’s Mr. Weaver.”

Dennis Mullavey looked from Claire to me and back to Claire. I slowly lowered the Glock.

“You got coffee?” I asked.

The woman is awakened from a sound sleep. She looks at the clock, sees that it is five forty-five a.m. She grabs the phone next to her bed.

“Hello?”

“He thought he could outsmart me,” her son says.

“What are you talking about?”

“He found one of them. But he didn’t find the other.”

She throws back the covers and sits up. “What?”

“He found the one I put under the backseat. But he didn’t find the one I put inside the headrest.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m on the road. I think he’s figured out something. He took off half an hour ago. I’ve got a good feeling.”