Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

“Stars,” Grace said.

I turned and looked at her, grinning impishly in the dim light. “Thank you, Carl Sagan,” I said. I got my eye back in position, went to adjust the scope a bit, and it slipped partway off its stand.

“Whoa!” I said. Some of the tape Grace had used to secure the telescope had worked free.

“I told you,” she said. “It’s kind of a crappy stand.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, and looked back into the scope, but the view had shifted and what I was looking at now was a hugely magnified circle of the sidewalk out front of our house.

And a man, watching it.

His face, blurry and indistinct, filled the lens. I abandoned the telescope, got out of the chair and went to the window. “Who the hell is that?” I said, more to myself than Grace.

“Who?” she said.

She got to the window in time to see the man run away. “Who’s that, Daddy?” she asked.

“You stay right here,” I said, and bolted out of her room, went down the steps two at a time, and nearly flew out the front door. I ran down to the end of the drive, looked up the street in the direction I’d seen the man run. A hundred feet ahead, red brake lights on a car parked at the curb came on as someone turned the ignition, moved it from park to drive, and floored it.

I was too far away, and it was too dark out to catch a license plate, or tell what kind of car it was before it turned the corner and rumbled away. From the sound of it, it was an older model, and dark. Blue, brown, gray, it was impossible to tell.

I was tempted to jump in my car, but the keys were in the house, and by the time I had them the man would be to Bridgeport.

When I got back to the front door, Grace was standing there. “I told you to stay in your room,” I said angrily.

“I just wanted to see-”

“Get to bed right now.”

She could tell from my tone that I wasn’t interested in an argument, and she tore up the stairs lickety-split.

My heart was pounding, and I needed a moment for it to settle down before I went upstairs. When I finally did, I found Cynthia, under the covers, fast asleep.

I looked at her and wondered what sorts of conversations she was listening in on or having with the missing or the dead.

Ask them a question for me , I wanted to say. Ask them who’s watching our house. Ask them what he wants with us .

Cynthia phoned Pamand arranged to show up for work a bit late the next day. We had a locksmith coming at nine. If we hadn’t already booked one, last night’s incident surely would have tipped me in that direction. If the locksmith ended up taking longer installing deadbolts than expected, Cynthia was covered.

I told her, over breakfast and before Grace came down to go to school, about the man on the sidewalk. I contemplated not doing so, but only briefly. First of all, Grace would in all likelihood bring it up, and second, if there was someone watching the house, whoever he was and for whatever reason, we all needed to be on high alert. For all we knew, this had absolutely nothing to do with Cynthia’s particular situation, but was some sort of neighborhood pervert the entire street needed to be alerted to.

“Did you get a good look at him?” Cynthia asked.

“No. I went to chase him down the street, but he got in a car and drove away.”

“Did you get a look at the car?”

“No.”

“Could it have been a brown car?”

“Cyn, I don’t know. It was dark, the car was dark.”

“So it could have been brown.”

“Yes, it could have been brown. And it could have been dark blue, or black. I don’t know.”

“I’ll bet it was the same person. The one who was driving past me and Grace on the way to school.”

“I’m going to talk to the neighbors,” I said.

I managed to catch the people on both sides as they were leaving for work, asked them if they’d noticed anyone hanging around last night, or any other night for that matter, whether they’d seen anything they’d consider suspicious. No one had seen a thing.

But I put in a call to the police anyway, just in case someone else on the street had reported anything out of the ordinary in the last few days, and they transferred me to someone who kept track of these things, and he said, “Nothing much, although, hang on, there was a report the other day, something quite bizarre, really.”

“What?” I asked. “What was it?”

“Someone called about a strange hat in their house.” The man laughed. “At first, I thought maybe this was a typo, that someone got a bat in their house, but nope, it’s ‘hat.’”

“Never mind,” I said.

Before I left for school, Cynthia said, “I’d like to go out and see Tess. I mean, I know we were there last weekend, and we don’t usually see her every week, but considering what she’s been through lately, I was thinking that-”

“Say no more,” I said. “I think that’s a great idea. Why don’t we go over tomorrow night? Maybe take her out for ice cream or something?”

“I’m going to call her,” Cynthia said.

At school, I found Rolly rinsing out a mug in the school staff room so he could pour himself some incredibly horrible coffee. “How’re things?” I asked, coming up behind him.

He jumped. “Jesus,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said. “I work here.” I got myself a mug, filled it, added a few extra sugars to mask the taste.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

Rolly shrugged. He seemed distracted. “Same old. You?”

I let out a sigh. “Someone was standing in the dark staring at our house last night, and when I tried to find out who it was, he ran away.” I took a sip of the coffee I had poured. It tasted bad, but at least it was cold. “Who’s responsible for this? Is the coffee thing contracted out to a sewage disposal company?”

“Someone was watching your house?” Rolly said. “What do you think he was doing there?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, but they’re putting deadbolts on the doors this morning and just in time, it seems.”

“That’s pretty creepy,” Rolly said. “Maybe some guy, he’s trolling your street, looking for people who’ve left their garage doors open or something. Just wants to steal some stuff.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Either way, new locks aren’t a bad idea.”

“True,” Rolly said, nodded. He paused, then said, “I’m thinking of taking early retirement.”

So we were done talking about me. “I thought you had to stay at least until the end of the school year.”

“Yeah, well, what if I dropped dead? They’d have to find someone fast then, wouldn’t they? It only means a few bucks less per month on my pension. I’m ready to move on, Terry. Running a school, working in a school, it’s not like it used to be, you know? I mean, you always had tough kids, but it’s worse now. They’re armed. Their parents don’t give a shit. I gave the system forty years and now I want out. Millicent and I, we sell the house, sock some money into the bank, head to Bradenton, maybe my blood pressure will start to go down a little bit.”

“You do look a bit tense today. Maybe you should go home.”

“I’m all right.” He paused. Rolly didn’t smoke, but he looked like a smoker who desperately needed to light up. “Millicent’s already retired. There’s nothing to stop me. None of us are getting any younger, right? You never know how much longer you’ve got. You’re here one minute, gone the next.”

“Oh,” I said. “That reminds me.”

“What?”

“About Tess.”

Rolly blinked. “What about Tess?”

“It turns out, she’s going to be okay.”

“What?”

“They did another test, turns out the initial diagnosis was wrong. She’s not dying. She’s going to be okay.”