Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

“Something came up,” Bert said.

“You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?” she snapped.

“Forgotten what?”

“The meeting? At ten? At the home?”

How could he forget? She’d been reminding him about it all week. They’d moved Janine’s eighty-year-old mother, Brenda, out of her apartment and into a seniors home in Orange a month before, but it wasn’t working out. Brenda was making everyone’s life hell. Hated the food, dumped it on the dining room floor in protest. Accused staff of stealing from her even though she couldn’t tell them what was missing. Cheated at cards with the other “inmates,” as she called them. Pushed people in wheelchairs out of her way so she could get on the elevator first.

The managers of the home had compiled a list of grievances about her, and now they wanted her out.

Janine said there was no way her mother could return to her apartment, so she’d just have to move in with Bert and her.

Bert had objected. But Janine wasn’t hearing any of it.

“I won’t be able to make the meeting,” Bert said.

“You have to be there. We’re probably going to have to move her out right then and there,” Janine said.

“I told you, something’s come up, and it’s going to take all night to sort it out.”

“I’m not happy, Bert.”

“You’ve never been happy,” he said. “Jesus could return to earth and paint a smiley face on your puss and you’d still be miserable.”

“Don’t you—”

He ended the call, muted the phone. She’d call back. She always did.

Bert returned to the task at hand, imagining that it was Janine he was cutting up into pieces and feeding to the pigs.

He wondered whether the beasts had any kind of standards. If he brought his wife here, tossed her into the pen in bite-sized bits, would they turn their snouts up at her? Give her a pass? Bert guessed she’d be too distasteful even for them.

“It’s obvious you know about tonight,” I said to Vince Fleming, “but I don’t understand how.”

“This is going to go better with me asking the questions and you answering them,” he said.

“Bullshit,” I said. “My daughter’s scared out of her wits. She got mixed up with some dumbass kid, got dragged into something she had no business being involved in, and now she’s not even sure what the hell happened. You want answers? I want answers.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “What’d your kid tell you?”

“Grace,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“Her name is Grace.”

A long hesitation. “Okay. What did Grace tell you?”

I brought up my hands, folded my arms in front of me, and leaned back in the chair. “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No,” I repeated. “You want to know what she told me, then you tell me why you care.”

“You got a lot of balls for an English teacher,” Vince said.

“Clearly you’ve never taught in the high school system.”

“Don’t push me, Terry.”

“Look, I’m not an idiot. I know what you do and what you’re capable of. Your band of merry men could haul me out of here and I’d never be seen again. So, okay, you’re an intimidating son of a bitch, but I’m not the same guy you met seven years ago. You and I have a history, Vince, and I’m saying that warrants some mutual respect. Yeah, you helped Cynthia and me, and you got shot and now you wear that bag. I’m sorry. You want pity? I can’t imagine that. It’s beneath you. We’re all scarred, one way or another.”

I took a breath.

“I think you know what happened in that house tonight. Not all of it, obviously, or I wouldn’t be sitting here. You want me to answer your questions? Then you answer mine. Tell me what the hell is going on.”

Vince glowered at me for several seconds, then pushed back his chair, took four steps over to the kitchen counter, grabbed two shot glasses from the cupboard and a bottle of scotch, put them on the table in front of me, and sat back down. He splashed some brown liquid into each glass and shoved one toward me. He knocked his back before I’d touched mine.

I hate scotch.

But this seemed to be a peace offering, so I put it to my lips and downed half, doing my best not to make the face I made when I was four and my parents made me eat a brussels sprout.

Vince sighed. “Let’s say I have an interest in that house where... Grace was tonight.”

“What kind of interest?” I asked.

“You might already know. That’s why I needed to talk to you.”

I waited.

“And if you don’t already know, it’d be better to keep it that way. Believe me when I tell you, that’s for your sake, and your daughter’s.”

“But it’s not your house,” I said. “You don’t own it.”

“I do not.”

“It’s about the boy,” I said.

Vince nodded.

“Stuart Koch,” I said. “You know this kid?”

“I do.”

“How?” I asked.

Vince weighed whether to answer, then probably figured that if I didn’t already know, it wouldn’t be a difficult thing to find out. “He’s one of my guys’ kids. Eldon. You might remember him. Bald guy, gave you a lift when you came to visit me here before.”

I remembered. I hadn’t known his name, but I remembered the bald guy as one of the ones who’d tossed me into a car to bring me to my first meeting with Vince. So I had taught the son of one of Vince’s thugs.

Small world.

“Eldon’s been raising Stuart on his own for several years now, ever since his wife left him for a Hells Angel and moved to California, and doing a lousy job of it. Lets the kid get away with all kinds of shit and doesn’t know where he is most of the time.”

“Where’s Stuart now?”

“He’s being taken care of.”

“So he’s okay?”

Vince hesitated. “Like I said.”

I didn’t know how to interpret that. I wanted to believe it meant Stuart was alive, and that if he had been shot in that house, he was on the mend. Somewhere.

“Grace would like to talk to him. So she knows he’s okay,” I said.

“Great,” Vince said. “Let’s get her up here. Then I can ask her some questions, face-to-face, at the same time.”

I did not want Grace talking to this man.

“I’ll talk to him myself,” I said. “Pass on a message to Grace.”

“Would you recognize his voice? Would you really know it was him?”

I wasn’t sure, after all this time, whether I’d know Stuart’s voice on the phone. But I could ask him questions about when he was in my class. Then I’d know.

“I’d give it a shot,” I said.

“I’m trying to be nice, Terry. I’m showing you a courtesy. If I want to talk to your kid, there’s not a damn thing you’ll be able to do to stop me. But I talked to Jane, and she thought it’d be better to talk to her for me. And I went along with that. You want to keep it that way?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then help me out. What’d she tell you?”

I decided to tell him what I could.

“This Koch boy wanted to take the Porsche that was in the garage at that house for a spin. His plan was to break in, find a key, take the joyride, then return the car.”

“And that was the only reason?”

“Yes.”

“Grace didn’t mention anything else?”

I blinked. “What other reason would there be?” The only thing I could think of was sex. But there were a million places a couple of horny teenagers could make out. They’d hardly need to take the risks that came with breaking into a house. To my mind, the Porsche was the prize.

“You tell me,” Vince said.

“That’s what Grace told me. It was about taking the car. So you tell me. Why else would Stuart want to break in there?”