Linwood Barclay: Fear The Worst

If I’d thought any of this was worth a comment, I might have said something.

“Anyway,” Laura said, “what I’m working up to, Tim, is you’re going to come in this month at the bottom of the board. I mean, unless there’s some sort of miracle in the last week of the month. It’s already the…” She glanced at the wall calendar that showed a Honda Pilot driving over a mound of dirt. “It’s July 23. That’s too late to pull one out of the hat. You haven’t sold a car yet this month. You know how it works around here. At the end of the day, it’s all about selling cars. Two months at the bottom of the board and you’re out.”

“I know how it works,” I said. She’d only said “at the end of the day” twice in this conversation. Most chats, regardless of duration, she managed to get it in three times.

“And believe me, we’re taking into account your situation. I think, honestly, it would take three months at the bottom of the board before you’d be cut loose. I want to be fair here.”

“Sure,” I said.

“The thing is, Tim, you’re taking up a desk. And if you can’t sell cars from it, I have to put someone in there who can. If you were sitting where I am, you’d be saying the same thing.”

“I’ve been here five years,” I said. Ever since my bankruptcy, I thought, but didn’t say aloud. “I’ve been one of the top-if not the top-salesman for all of them.”

“And don’t think we don’t know that,” she said. “So listen, I’m glad we had this chat, you take care, good luck with your daughter, and why don’t you give that couple a call, tell them we can throw in a set of mudguards or something? Pinstriping, hell, you know how this works. At the end of the day, if they think they’re getting something for nothing, they’re happy.”

Bingo.

I DIDN’T TURN OFF ONTO BRIDGEPORT AVENUE on the way back from work. I usually got off Route 1 there, went half a mile up to Clark, hung a left and drove over the narrow bridge that spans the commuter tracks, hung a left onto Hill, where I’d lived the last five years after Susanne and I sold our mini-mansion, paid off what debts we could with the proceeds, and got much smaller places of our own.

But I kept going up the road until I had reached the Just Inn Time on the right, turned into the lot, and parked. I sat in the car a moment, not sure whether to get out, knowing that I would. Why should today be any different from every other day since Syd vanished?

I got out of my CR-V. I got to drive this little crossover vehicle for free, but if and when Laura canned me I’d be on my own for wheels. Even though it was after six, it was still pretty hot out. You could see waves of humidity coming off the pavement just before Route 1 went under 95 a little farther to the east.

I stood in the lot and scanned as far as I could see in all directions. The HoJo’s was up the street, and beyond that the ramp coming down from the interstate. An old movie theater complex a stone’s throw to the west. Hadn’t we taken Sydney there to see Toy Story 2 when she was seven or eight? For a birthday party? I recalled trying to corral a pack of kids into one row, the whole kittens-in-a-basket thing. The hotel was just down from where the road forked, Route 1 to the north, Cherry Street angling off to the southwest. Across Cherry, the King’s Highway Cemetery.

There were a couple dozen other businesses that, if I couldn’t actually see from standing in the lot here, I could see the signs for them. A video store, a clock repair shop, a fish-and-chips takeout place, a florist, a Christian bookstore, a butcher’s, a hair salon, a children’s clothing store, an adult book and DVD shop.

They were all within walking distance of the hotel. If Syd had left the car parked here every day, she could have gotten to any of these businesses in just a few minutes.

I’d been in to almost all of them at some point since she’d gone missing, showing her picture, asking if anyone had seen her. But stores had different staff working in them depending on the day and time, so it made sense to make the rounds more than once.

Of course, Syd didn’t have to be working secretly at any of those places. Someone else with a car could have been meeting her every day in this lot, taking her God knows where from nine to five.

But if she had been working at one of these businesses within eyeshot of the hotel, why didn’t she want me or her mother to know? Why would we care if she worked at a clock repair place, or a butcher’s, or a-

An adult book and video shop.

My first time along that business strip, it was the one store I hadn’t been in. No way, I told myself. No matter what Syd was doing, no matter what she might be keeping from us, there was no way she’d been working there.

Not a chance.

I was actually shaking my head back and forth, muttering the words “No way” under my breath as I leaned up against my car, when I heard someone say, “Mr. Blake?”

I glanced to my left. There was a woman standing there. Blue jacket and matching skirt, sensible shoes, a Just Inn Time badge pinned to her lapel. She had some years on me, but not many. Mid-forties, I guessed, with black hair and dark brown eyes. Her corporate uniform wasn’t sufficiently dowdy to hide what was still an impressive figure.

“Veronica,” I said. Veronica Harp, the manager I’d spoken to on the phone the night Sydney disappeared, and seen a number of times since. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Blake.” She paused, knowing that politeness called for her to ask the same, but she knew what my answer would be. “And you?”

I shrugged.

“You must get sick of seeing me around here.”

She smiled awkwardly, not wanting to agree. “I understand.”

“I’m going to have to go back to all those places,” I said, thinking out loud. Veronica didn’t say anything. “I keep thinking she must have been going to a place she could see from here.”

“I suppose,” she said. She stood there another moment, and I could tell from her body language she was struggling with whether to say something else, or go back into the hotel and leave me be. Then, “Would you like a coffee?”

“That’s okay.”

“Really. Why don’t you come in? It’s cooler.”

I walked with her across the lot toward the hotel. There wasn’t much in the way of landscaping. The grass was brown, an anthill spilled out, volcano-like, between two concrete walkway slabs, and the shrubs needed trimming. I glanced up, saw the security cameras mounted at regular intervals, and made a disapproving snort under my breath. The glass front doors parted automatically as we approached.

She led me to the dining area just off from the lobby. Not a restaurant, exactly, but a self-serve station where the hotel put things out for breakfast. Single-serving cereal containers, fruit, muffins and donuts, coffee and juice. That was the deal here. Stay for the night, help yourself to breakfast in the morning. If you could stuff enough muffins into your pocket, you were good for lunch.

A petite woman in black slacks and a white blouse was wiping down the counter, restocking a basket with cream containers. I couldn’t pinpoint her ethnicity, but she looked Thai or Vietnamese. Late twenties, early thirties.

I smiled and said hello as I reached for a takeout coffee cup. She shifted politely out of my way.

“Cantana,” Veronica said to her.

Cantana nodded.

“I think the cereals will need restocking before breakfast,” Veronica said. Cantana replenished the baskets from under the counter, where there were hundreds of individual cereal servings in peel-top containers.

I filled my takeout cup, handed an empty one to Veronica. She sat down at a table and held out her hand to the vacant chair across from her.