Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

“Okay.”

“Carol felt bad that the very first time she meets my dad, she’s not straight with him. She thought that if that other woman knew anything and could help you, that’d be a nice way to make it up to you. Not that you’d ever have known in the first place.”

Maureen said, slowly, “That’s what you were talking about.”

Trevor looked at her. “What?”

“On the phone, last night. I was going past your room and I heard you say something like you didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“You were listening to me?”

“It was just something I heard when I was walking by,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s what we were talking about. I said she didn’t have to do anything, that she didn’t have to get involved just to try to make a good impression on him.” He tipped his head toward his father.

“But she decided to do it.”

Trevor nodded. “She said she was going to give her friend a call. That’s all. Just call her up and tell her something had happened around that time at Knight’s, and that if she saw anything she should get in touch with you.”

“That was the last time you spoke with her?” Duckworth asked.

His son nodded.

“You remember anything at all about this woman?”

“It was dark. And like I said, I didn’t go over. She was probably around our age.”

“White? Black?”

“White.”

“Had she been in Knight’s earlier?”

“Not that we saw.”

“And no name? Carol must have mentioned her name if you talked about this a few times.”

“At first, when I asked who it was — you know, right after she saw her — she just said she was a friend. And it didn’t really matter then. It wasn’t an issue until you came and talked to us. And I said, after, what about your friend, and Carol said, maybe I should get in touch with her.”

“How would she know how to contact her?”

“She said she knew her from where she worked, that she had a number for her.”

Duckworth sighed. “Okay, that whole business, that’s my problem. What we want to do now is confirm that Carol is okay.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Is it possible,” Duckworth asked gently, “that maybe she thought things weren’t working out? That she didn’t want to see you any more, but couldn’t find a way to tell you to your face? So she turned off her phone, didn’t answer her door?”

Trevor looked at him with misted eyes. “I don’t know. I mean, if that’s what she did, I wasn’t picking up the signals, you know?”

Duckworth put a hand on his shoulder. “Here’s what I’m going to do. You don’t want to give her the idea you’re stalking her or something. So why don’t I go into the town hall, down to the planning department, and see if she’s there. In the meantime, you stay here, keep trying her on your phone. If you want, go back to her apartment, see if her car turns up. Does that sound like a plan?”

Trevor nodded. “I guess so.”

Duckworth smiled. “Good. That’s what we’re going to do.”

He gave his son a hug, then gave Maureen a kiss on the cheek as he headed for the door.

Duckworth phoned Trevor ninety minutes later.

“You got any news?” he asked his son.

“Nothing. I’m at her place. No sign of her car. You?”

Duckworth hesitated. “Carol Beakman didn’t show up for work today. And she didn’t call in sick.”

Jeremy was up and dressed and ready to hit the road before I even had my clothes on. I was in the bathroom, stepping out of the shower. He knocked on the door. I wrapped the towel around me and said, “Yeah?”

He poked his head in. “I’m starving. You okay with me going down for breakfast without you?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want the kid taking off on me, but if he’d wanted to disappear, it would have been easy enough to do that when I was in the shower. He hardly needed to ask. And where was he going to go? How would he make his escape? Not that I didn’t trust him — well, I didn’t trust him — but I had brought not only my gun into the bathroom but my car keys, too.

“I’m not gonna do a runner,” he said. “I’m just really hungry.”

“Fine,” I said, hitting the fan in the hopes it would clear the fogged mirror.

His head withdrew. Seconds later, I heard the door to our room open and close hard. I was a little worried that maybe someone at this hotel — as had happened at the other one before I decided to bail — might recognize him. But that was going to be a potential problem wherever we went.

I quickly shaved, tossed the towel into the tub, and came back into the room. My phone was sitting on the dresser. That might have appeared foolish, leaving it there. But I had a four-digit passcode on it, so Jeremy wasn’t going to be able to use it to make a call or message his friends.

I got into fresh socks and underwear, slipped on my pants and tied my shoes. As I put on my shirt and started doing up the buttons, I went to the window and looked outside. It was a little after eight in the morning, and traffic was busy as people headed to work.

I gazed down into the parking lot.

“For shit’s sake,” I said.

There was a red Miata convertible down there, top up. I couldn’t be certain that it was Jeremy’s girlfriend’s car. Red Miatas were not exactly rare. But it was an early one, the color was faded, and the top torn and ragged.

I hurriedly did the last of my buttons, grabbed my jacket, gun and phone, and bolted from the room. I skipped the elevator and took the stairs, going down them two at a time, then booted it down the first-floor hallway until I’d reached the hotel’s dining area. There were about thirty people there, many of them working the breakfast buffet table.

A quick scan of the room did not produce Jeremy.

In the time it had taken for me to get to the first floor, Jeremy could be in that car with Charlene Wilson and halfway to the interstate by now.

I went back to the lobby and out the main doors. I needed half a second to get my bearings. Our window hadn’t faced out the front of the building. The lot where I’d seen the Miata would be around the side of the hotel.

I ran.

As the other parking lot came into view, I saw the Miata, this time with the top down. Jeremy was in the passenger seat, Charlene was behind the wheel, but they were turned toward each other, and it looked like they were kissing.

The car was not running.

As I came up to Jeremy’s door, winded, he looked at me sheepishly. “I was coming right back in,” he said to me. “We’re not going anywhere.”

I wanted to blow my stack.

“Yeah, Mr. Weaver,” Charlene said. “It’s just a visit. Honest. I’m not taking him anywhere.”

“How?” I asked him.

“What?”

“How did you get in touch?” The first thing I thought of was the phone in the room, but I was pretty sure Jeremy had never used it.

He couldn’t look me in the eye. “It’s no big deal. It was only for a little while.”

“What was only for a little while?”

His head dropped as if the tendons in his neck had been severed. Then, slowly, he dug into the front pocket of his jeans and drew out a cell phone.

“Jesus,” I said.

It had a pale pink cover with tiny white polka dots. I recognized it instantly as Gloria’s phone, the one she had surrendered to Bob. Evidently, not for long.

“How’d you get this?” I asked.

“Mom stole it back from Bob and gave it to me when we were leaving the house,” he admitted. Probably, I thought, when she came running out to give him one last hug before he got in the car.

“So when your mom called last night, that was all for show?” I asked.