Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

But they cut me some slack. Not just my creative writing group, but my two other English classes as well. I think they were behaving not just out of respect for my feelings-in fact, that was probably a very small part of it. They didn’t act out because they were watching for signs that maybe I’d behave differently, shed a tear, get impatient with someone, slam a door, anything.

But I did not. So I could expect no special considerations the next day.

Jane Scavullo hung back as my morning class filed out of the room. “Sorry about your aunt,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “She was my wife’s aunt, actually, although I felt every bit as close to her.”

“Whatever,” she said, and caught up with the others.

About midafternoon, I was walking down the hall near the office when one of the secretaries charged out, saw me, and stopped dead.

“I was just going to go looking for you,” she said. “I paged your office, you weren’t there.”

“That’s because I’m here,” I said.

“Phone call for you,” she said. “I think it’s your wife.”

“Okay.”

“You can take it in the office.”

“Okay.”

I followed her in and she pointed to the phone on her desk. One of the lights was flashing. “Just press that one,” she said.

I grabbed the receiver, hit the button. “Cynthia?”

“Terry, I-”

“Listen, I was going to call you. I’m sorry about last night. What I said.”

The secretary sat back down at her desk, pretended not to be listening.

“Terry, something-”

“Maybe we need to hire another guy. I mean, I don’t know what’s happened to Abagnall, but-”

“Terry, shut up,” Cynthia said.

I shut up.

“Something’s happened,” Cynthia said, her voice low, almost breathless. “I know where they are.”

“Sometimes, when you don’t call when I’m expecting you to,” she said, “I think I’m the one being driven crazy.”

“Sorry,” he said. “But I’ve got good news. I think it’s happening.”

“Oh, that’s lovely. What was it Sherlock Holmes used to say? ‘The game is afoot?’ Or was it Shakespeare?”

“I’m not really sure,” he said.

“So you delivered it?”

“Yes.”

“But you need to stay a little longer to see what happens.”

“Oh, I know,” he said. “I’m sure it will end up on the news.”

“I wish I could tape it here.”

“I’ll bring home the newspapers.”

“Oh, I’d love that,” she said.

“There haven’t been any more stories about Tess. I guess that means they haven’t found out anything.”

“I guess we should just be grateful for whatever good fortune comes our way, shouldn’t we?”

“And there was something else on the news, about this missing detective. The one my…you know…hired.”

“Do you think they’ll find him?” she asked.

“Hard to say.”

“Well, we can’t worry about that,” she said. “You sound a bit nervous.”

“I guess.”

“This is the hard part, the risky part, but when you add it all together, it’s going to pay off. And when it’s time, you can come back and get me.”

“I know. Won’t he wonder where you are, why you’re not going to see him?”

“He hardly gives me the time of day,” she said. “He’s winding down. Maybe a month to go. Long enough.”

“You think he’s ever really loved us?” he asked.

“The only one he’s ever loved is her,” she said, making no attempt to hide her bitterness. “And has she ever been there for him? Looked after him? Cleaned up after him? And who solved his biggest problem? He’s never been grateful for what I’ve done. We’re the ones who’ve been wronged here. We were robbed of having a real family. What we’re doing now, this is justice.”

“I know,” he said.

“What do you want me to make for you when you get home?”

“A carrot cake?”

“Of course. It’s the least a mother can do.”

I phoned the police and lefta message for Detective Rona Wedmore, who’d given me her card when she’d asked me questions after we’d scattered Tess’s ashes on the Sound. I asked if she could meet me and Cynthia at our home, that we’d both be there shortly. Gave her the address in case she didn’t already know it, but I was betting she did. In my message I said that what I was calling about didn’t have to do, specifically, with the disappearance of Denton Abagnall, but it might, in some way, be related.

I said it was urgent.

I asked Cynthia on the phone whether she wanted me to pick her up at work, but she said she was okay to drive home. I left the school without explaining to anyone why, but they were, I guess, becoming accustomed to my erratic behavior. Rolly had just come out of his office, seen me on the phone, and watched as I’d run out of the building.

Cynthia beat me home by a couple of minutes. She was standing in the doorway, the envelope in her hand.

I came inside and she handed it to me. There was one word-“Cynthia”-printed on the front. No stamp. It had not gone through the mail.

“Now we’ve both touched it,” I said, suddenly realizing we were probably making all kinds of mistakes the police would give us shit for later.

“I don’t care,” she said. “Read it.”

I took the sheet of plain business paper out of the envelope. It had been folded perfectly in thirds, like a proper letter. The back side of the sheet was a map, crudely drawn in pencil, some intersecting lines representing roads, a small town labeled “Otis,” a rough egg shape labeled “quarry lake,” and an “X” in one corner of it. There were some other notations, but I wasn’t sure what they meant.

Cynthia, speechless, watched me take it all in.

I flipped the sheet over and the moment I saw the typed message, I noticed something about it, something that jumped out at me, something that disturbed me very much. Even before I’d read the contents of the note, I wondered about the implications of what had caught my eye.

But for the moment, I held my tongue, and read what it said:

Cynthia: It’s time you knew where they were. Where they still ARE, most likely. There’s an abandoned quarry a couple of hours north of where you live, just past the Connecticut border. It’s like a lake, but not a real lake because it’s where they took out gravel and stuff. It’s real deep. Probably too deep for any kids swimming there to have found all these years. You take 8 north, cross into Mass., keep going till you get to Otis, then go east. See the map on the other side. There’s a small lane behind a row of trees that leads to the top of the quarry. You have to be careful when you get up there, because it’s really steep. Down into the quarry there. Right down there, at the bottom of that lake, that’s where you’ll find your answer.

I flipped the sheet over again. The map showed all the details that were set out in the note.

“That’s where they are,” Cynthia whispered, pointing to the paper in my hand. “They’re in the water.” She took in a breath. “So…they’re dead.”

Things seemed almost blurry before my eyes. I blinked a couple of times, focused. I turned the sheet over again, reread the note, then looked at it not for what it said, but from a more technical point of view.

It had been composed on a standard typewriter. Not on a computer. Not printed off.