Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

“Where did you get this?” I asked, trying very hard to keep my voice controlled.

“It was in the mail at Pamela’s,” Cynthia said. “In the mailbox. Someone left it there. The mailman didn’t bring it. It doesn’t have a stamp on it or anything.”

“No,” I said. “Someone put it there.”

“Who?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“We have to go up there,” she said. “Today, now, we have to find out what’s there, what’s under the water.”

“The detective, the woman who met us at the dock, Wedmore, she’s coming. We’ll talk to her about that. They’ll have police divers. But there’s something else I want to ask you about. It’s about this note. Look at it. Look at the typing-”

“They have to get up there immediately,” Cynthia said. It was as if she thought whoever was at the bottom of that quarry might still be alive, that they might still have a bit of air left.

I heard a car stop out front, looked out the window and saw Rona Wedmore striding up the driveway, her short, stocky frame looking capable of walking straight through the door.

I felt a sense of panic.

“Honey,” I said, “is there anything else you want to tell me about this note? Before the police get here? You have to be totally honest with me here.”

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“Don’t you see something odd about this?” I said, holding the letter in front of her. I pointed, very specifically, to one of the words in the letter. “Right here, at the beginning,” I said, pointing to “time.”

“What?”

The horizontal line in the “e” was faded, making it almost look like a “c.” The word almost appeared to be “timc.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cynthia said. “What do you mean, be honest with you? Of course I’m being honest with you.”

Wedmore was mounting the front step, fist ready to knock.

“I have to go upstairs for a moment,” I said. “Answer that, tell her I’ll be right down.”

Before Cynthia could say another thing, I bolted up the stairs. Behind me, I heard Wedmore knock, two sharp knocks, then Cynthia open the door, the two of them exchange greetings. By then I was in the small room I use to mark papers, prepare lessons.

My old Royal typewriter sat on the desk, beside the computer.

I had to decide what to do with it.

It was obvious to me that the note Cynthia was, at that moment, showing to Detective Wedmore had been written on this typewriter. The faded “e” was instantly recognizable.

I knew that I had not typed that letter.

I knew Grace could not have done it.

That left only two other possibilities. The stranger we had reason to believe had entered our home had used my typewriter to write that note, or Cynthia had typed it herself.

But we’d had the locks changed. I was as sure as I could be that no one had been in this house in the last few days who wasn’t supposed to be here.

It seemed unthinkable that Cynthia had done this. But what if…what if, under what could only be described as unimaginable stress, Cynthia had written this note, which was directing us to a remote location where supposedly we would learn the fate of the members of Cynthia’s family?

What if Cynthia had typed it up, and what happened if it turned out to be right?

“Terry!” Cynthia shouted. “Detective Wedmore is here!”

“In a minute!” I said.

What would that mean? What would it mean if Cynthia somehow actually knew, all these years, where her family could be found?

I was breaking into a sweat.

Maybe, I told myself, she’d repressed memories. Maybe she knew more than she was aware. Yes, that could be it. She saw what happened, but forgot it. Didn’t that happen? Didn’t the brain sometimes decide, Hey, what you’re seeing is so horrible, you have to forget it, otherwise you’ll never be able to get on with your life ? Wasn’t there an actual syndrome they talked about that covered this sort of thing?

And then again, what if it wasn’t a repressed memory? What if she’d always known-

No.

No, it had to be another explanation altogether. Someone else had used our typewriter. Days ago. Planning ahead. That stranger who’d come into the house and left the hat.

If it was a stranger.

“Terry!”

“Right there!”

“Mr. Archer!” Detective Wedmore shouted. “Haul it down here, please.”

I acted on impulse. I opened the closet, picked up the typewriter-God, those old machines were heavy-and put it inside, on the floor. Then I draped some other things over it, an old pair of pants I’d used to paint in, a stack of old newspapers.

As I came down the stairs, I saw that Wedmore was now with Cynthia in the living room. The letter was on the coffee table, open, Wedmore leaning over it, reading it.

“You touched this,” she scolded me.

“Yes.”

“You’ve both touched it. Your wife, that I could understand-she didn’t know what it was when she took it out. What’s your excuse?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I ran my hand over my mouth and chin, tried to wipe away the sweat I was sure would betray my nervousness.

“You can get divers, right?” Cynthia said. “You can get divers to go into the quarry, see what’s there.”

“This could be a crank,” Wedmore said, taking a strand of hair that had fallen in front of her eye and tucking it behind her ear. “Could be nothing.”

“That’s true,” I offered.

“But then again,” the detective said, “we don’t know.”

“If you don’t send in divers, I’ll go in myself,” Cynthia said.

“Cyn,” I said. “don’t be ridiculous. You don’t even swim.”

“I don’t care.”

“Mrs. Archer,” Wedmore said, “calm down.” It was an order. Wedmore had a kind of football coach thing going on.

“Calm down?” said Cynthia, unintimidated. “You know what this person, who wrote this letter, is saying? They’re down there. Their bodies are down there.”

“I’m afraid,” Wedmore said, shaking her head skeptically, “that there might be a lot down there after all these years.”

“Maybe they’re in a car,” Cynthia said. “My mother’s car, my father’s car, they were never found.”

Wedmore took a corner of the letter between two brilliant red-polished fingernails and turned it over. She stared at the map.

“We’ll have to get the Mass. State Police in on this,” she said. “I’ll make a call.” She reached into her jacket for her cell phone, opened it up, prepared to put in a number.

“You’re going to get some divers?” Cynthia said.

“I’m making a call. And we’re going to have to get that letter to our lab, see if they can get anything off it, if it hasn’t already been made pretty useless.”

“I’m sorry,” Cynthia said.

“Interesting,” Wedmore said, “that it was done on a typewriter. Hardly anyone uses typewriters.”

I felt my heart in my mouth. And then Cynthia said something I couldn’t believe I was hearing.

“We have a typewriter,” she said.

“You do?” Wedmore said, holding off before entering the last number.

“Terry still likes to use one, right, honey? For short notes, that kind of thing. It’s a Royal, isn’t it, Terry?” To Wedmore, she said, “He’s had it since his college days.”

“Show it to me,” Wedmore said, slipping the phone back into her jacket.

“I could go get it,” I said. “Bring it down.”

“Just show me where it is.”

“It’s upstairs,” Cynthia said. “Come, I’ll show you.”

“Cyn,” I said, standing at the bottom of the stairs, trying to act as a barrier. “It’s a bit of a mess up there.”