Linwood Barclay - Fear The Worst

“Shit,” I said.

It was Bert, who worked in the service department at Riverside Honda. Married, so far as I knew, with kids now in their twenties. I wasn’t going in while he was there. I didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing there, and I didn’t want him to have to explain what he was doing there.

Five minutes later he emerged with his purchase, got into an old Accord, and drove off.

I was actually grateful for the delay. I’d been steeling myself to enter the place, not because of the kind of business it was, but because I couldn’t imagine Sydney having a connection to it.

“This is a waste of time,” I said under my breath as I got out of the car, crossed the lot, and went inside.

The place was brilliantly lit with hundreds of overhead fluorescent tubes, making it easy to see the covers of the hundreds of DVDs displayed on racks throughout the store. A quick glance indicated that no niche market, no remotely obscure predilection, had been ignored. In addition to movies and magazines, the store carried a wide assortment of paraphernalia, from fur-lined handcuffs to life-size-if not entirely lifelike-female dolls. They were slightly more realistic than the blow-up variety, but still not take-home-to-meet-the-folks quality. Only a few steps from the entrance, surveying the empire from a raised platform like a pharmacist at the back of a drugstore, was the proprietor, an overweight woman with stringy hair reading a tattered paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged.

I stopped in front of her, looked up, cleared my throat, and said, “Excuse me.”

She laid the book down and said, “Yeah.”

“I wonder if you could help me,” I said.

“Sure,” she said. When I didn’t speak up right away, she said, “Go ahead, tell me what you’re looking for, I’ve heard everything and I don’t give a shit.”

I handed her a picture of Sydney. “You ever seen this girl?”

She took the photo, glanced at it, handed it back. “If you know her name, I can put it into the computer and see what movies she’s been in.”

“Not in a movie. Have you ever seen her here, in this store, or even in the area? Going back about three weeks?”

“We don’t have a lot of girl customers,” she said flatly.

“I know, I’m probably wasting my time-”

“And mine,” she said, her hand on the book.

“But if you wouldn’t mind taking another look.”

She sighed, lifted her hand off the book, and took the picture a second time. “So who is she?”

“Sydney Blake,” I said. “She’s my daughter.”

“And you think she might have been hanging around here?”

“No,” I said. “But if I only look in the places where I think she might have been, I might not ever find her.”

She studied the picture for two seconds and handed it back. “Sorry.”

“You’re sure?”

She looked exasperated. “You need help with anything else?”

“No,” I said. “Thanks anyway.” I let her get back to Ayn Rand.

As I stepped out, a thin, white-haired woman was locking up the flower shop. A young man, mid-twenties, was obediently standing by her, like a dog waiting to be told what to do. The woman looked my way briefly but turned her head before we could make eye contact. You didn’t want to be making eye contact with men coming out of XXX Delights.

“So we’ll see you in the morning,” the woman said to the man.

“Yup,” he said.

I’d talked to this woman before, shown her Syd’s picture, maybe a week ago. She’d actually taken the time to study the photo, and seemed genuinely sorry when she wasn’t able to help me.

“Hello,” I said.

She didn’t turn my way, although I was sure she heard me. “Hello,” I said again. “We spoke last week?” I didn’t have to struggle hard for a name. The sign in the window said Shaw Flowers. I said, “Mrs. Shaw?”

I took a couple of steps toward her and she turned warily. But when she saw in my hand the photo the woman in the porn shop had returned to me, she seemed to relax.

“Oh, I remember you,” Mrs. Shaw said.

I nodded my head toward the store I’d just come from. “Still asking around.”

“Oh my,” she said. “You didn’t find your daughter there, did you?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, that’s good,” Mrs. Shaw said.

Like finding Syd there would be worse than never finding her at all.

“Hi,” I said to the young man standing next to her.

At first, I’d put him in his mid-twenties, but now I wasn’t sure. There was a boyishness about him, his skin soft and milky white, his short black hair cut perfectly, as though he’d just jumped out of a barber’s chair. He had the kind of looks that would make people think, even when he was in his forties, that he’d just finished school. He was slim, and stood a full head taller than Mrs. Shaw, and his eyes always seemed to be moving.

“Ian, say hello,” she said, like she was talking to a six-year-old.

“Hello,” he said.

I nodded. “You work here?” I asked him. “Because I don’t remember you when I was here the last time.”

He nodded.

“Ian’s out on deliveries all day,” Mrs. Shaw said, pointing to a blue Toyota Sienna minivan parked near my CR-V. Shaw Flowers was stenciled on the rear door windows. “Remember my telling you?” she said to Ian. “About the man who came by looking for his daughter?”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember. You didn’t tell me.”

“Of course I did. Oh, you never listen.” She smiled at me, rolled her eyes, and said, “He’s always off somewhere else even when he’s there. Or he’s got those little wires in his ears.”

Ian looked down and away.

“You should show Ian her picture,” Mrs. Shaw said. “He lives right here. He’s taken the apartment behind the store.”

A man went into the porn shop and Mrs. Shaw scowled. “We were here long before them,” she said to me quietly. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to move my shop. We tried a petition before to get rid of them, and it looks like we’re going to have to do it again.”

I handed the picture to Ian. “Her name’s Sydney.”

He took the shot, barely glanced at it, handed it back, and shook his head. “I don’t know her,” he said.

“But have you ever seen her around?” I asked.

“No,” he said. Then, abruptly, he gave Mrs. Shaw a light hug and an air kiss and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then he walked around the corner of the building and disappeared.

THERE WAS SOMEONE WAITING FOR ME when I pulled into the driveway.

Susanne and Bob were sitting in his black Hummer. Both front doors opened when I pulled up. As I was putting my car in park and unbuckling my seat belt, Susanne was coming up around the back. Last time I’d seen her she’d been on crutches, and now she was using a cane, grasped firmly in her right hand. She wasn’t moving a whole lot faster, but she did manage to plant herself by my door as I got out.

I wondered whether I should get ready to defend myself. The first time I saw Susanne after Syd had vanished, she and Bob had driven over from Stratford and she’d strode up to me on her crutches and balanced herself long enough to slap me across the face, shouting, “It’s all your fault! You were supposed to be looking after her!”

And I took it, because it was an opinion I shared.

Not much had changed since then, at least from my point of view. I still felt responsible. Still felt it was my fault Syd had slipped away from me, on my watch. There had to have been signals I’d missed. Surely, if I’d been paying better attention, things never would have gotten to this point.

Even though I still felt that way, I wasn’t in the mood today for an attack. So as I got out of the car, I braced myself.