Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

NEARLY three hours later, another call from Lewis. “We’ve arrived.”

“I’ll be there shortly,” Howard said.

They’d gotten into the city late, behind schedule. Howard was not going to be able to have his meeting with Morris Sawchuck. He’d call him from the car to cancel.

Howard stepped out onto the front stoop of his Eighty-first Street brownstone. His black Mercedes was parked just up the street. He walked to it and, standing by the driver’s door, got out his cell phone and called Morris.

“Hey,” Morris said. “I’m on my way.”

There were muffled driving sounds in the background. He’d be in his town car, with his driver, Heather, who was available to chauffeur him around whenever he needed her, 24-7.

“I’m sorry, Morris, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to reschedule.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m a little under the weather. Might be the flu. Let’s talk in the morning. Maybe we can do this tomorrow night. A hundred apologies.”

“Sorry to hear that. I was looking forward to this, but if you’re sick, you need to take care of yourself.”

“Thank you. I’m grateful for your understanding.” Howard forced a chuckle. “Our plans for world domination will hold until tomorrow.” He opened the driver’s door, slipped in behind the wheel, the phone pressed to his ear the whole time.

“Of course,” Morris said. “We’ll talk then.”

Howard ended the call, tossed the phone onto the leather passenger seat, pulled his door shut. He keyed the ignition and took off down the street.

HEATHER was just turning the town car onto Eighty-first when Morris, in the backseat, was telling his friend to take care of himself, that they would talk the next day.

Heather said, “Isn’t that Mr. Talliman up ahead, sir?”

Morris shifted to the center of the seat and peered through the windshield, saw Howard’s car pulling away from the curb.

“Yes,” Morris said. “He certainly appears well enough to drive.”

“Would you like me to pull up alongside him?”

Morris only had to think for a second. “No. No, we won’t do that.”

“Home, then?”

“No,” he said. “Let’s see where he goes.”

Which they did. All the way downtown to East Fourth Street. Howard parked his Mercedes at the curb and walked up to the front door of a darkened shop. There was an alley to the left of it, and a white van parked there.

“What is that place?” Morris asked. His eyes weren’t as sharp as they used to be, but Heather was an owl at night.

“Ferber’s Antiques,” she said. Even though the display window was unlit, she said she thought she could see a variety of children’s toys. The kinds they didn’t make anymore. Metal cars, old trains, what looked like a Meccano crane, a Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots boxing game.

“What the hell is he doing at a toy store in the middle of the night?” Morris said. “The place is closed.”

“Yes,” Heather said, “but someone’s there. A light just came on in the back. More like just a flicker, really.”

Morris watched as someone unlocked the door, opened it wide enough to allow Howard to slip inside, then closed it after him. A moment later, another flicker of light, like a curtain was moving from side to side, and then the shop went dark.

“We’ll wait,” Morris said.

Earlier that evening, the Promise Falls City Council was in a heated debate about whether to sell advertising on city land. The way it would work was, businesses could purchase a small sign that said This Garden Supported By, followed by the company’s name. The sign would be stuck into the ground wherever the city maintained gardens. So residents might see one by the tulip garden at the south end of the common, or along the median on Saratoga, or in the small park in the west end of town where dog owners could let their pets run off the leash. Some council members thought the signs would be a blot on the landscape. Others thought the plan was a great way to bring in revenues without raising taxes. Someone asked, “What are we going to do when a sex shop wants to sponsor a garden across from a church? Has anyone thought about that?”

Julie McGill, sitting at the press table, taking notes and giving a very good impression of someone who gave a shit, was wondering whether she’d bought the right kind of wine to take when she went back out to see Ray.

She didn’t really know if he was a red wine guy or a white wine guy. Maybe he wasn’t a wine guy at all. She hadn’t known him long enough to really know. So before she’d come to cover this council meeting, she’d bought two bottles of California red, one California white, and one French white, and a six-pack of Amstel. That way, she had all bases covered.

The problem was, she’d left all of it in her car when she got to city hall. It wasn’t like you could walk into the mayor’s office and say, Hey, can you put these in the fridge while I write down all the stupid shit you and the rest of the council say over the next couple of hours? Okay, maybe it wasn’t such a big deal with the red, which supposedly you didn’t serve chilled, although Julie still liked it that way. But maybe, once she got to Ray’s place, they could start with the red and put the two bottles of white into the freezer for half an hour or so.

God, all this planning around drinking, it was like being back in high school. Although, she had to admit, her attitude on the subject had not changed much since then. What did it matter what they drank so long as they got a good buzz on? And then, maybe, with any luck, they could finish what they’d started the other night.

She wouldn’t have to go back to the office to write this. The Standard had an office at city hall. Julie would pop in there, write a story on one of the computers about this ridiculous debate, file the damn thing, and get the hell out of here. These bozos actually had to think about this? It amazed her that even one person thought putting up tacky advertisements alongside roses, tulips, and azaleas was a good idea. You didn’t need brains to hold office; you only needed votes.

Sitting there, taking notes, Julie thought she’d rather be making calls about Allison Fitch. Who she was, why she’d disappeared, how she’d ended up dead in Florida months after vanishing from her New York apartment. She believed there was a story there, but she knew that when and if she got it, it’d be a hard sell with her own editors. “What’s this got to do with Promise Falls?” they’d want to know. She’d have to sell them on a local angle. That’d be Thomas, who’d inadvertently uncovered whatever it was that had happened by exploring the planet on Whirl360.

That gave her pause.

Would Thomas be okay being part of the story? How would Ray feel about it? She’d written plenty of stories without giving any thought to the embarrassment it might cause the principals, but she didn’t want to do that this time.

She’d find a way around it.

The ads-in-gardens debate ended with a courageous vote to defer any decision at all, and instead refer the matter to a committee for further consideration. Everything left on the agenda was of even less consequence, so Julie grabbed her notepad and her purse and filed her story from the Standard office on the premises. Then she got in her car, reached around to the floor behind the passenger seat to make sure her beverage purchases were still there, and headed out of town to the Kilbride place.

She was about two hundred yards from her destination when she saw a white panel van pulling out of the driveway, heading her way. The van’s headlights flashed past. She couldn’t see who was driving, and didn’t really even try to catch a look. It didn’t strike her as a big deal. At first, she wasn’t sure the van had come from Ray’s driveway.