Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [89]
As I waited for my food, I couldn’t help thinking about Woodland Dunes, right across the lake, just sixty or so miles away. I got out my Palm Pilot and looked up Ty’s number at Long Beach Inn.
“Oh, sorry, he’s not here.” It was Molly, Ty’s friend, and she sounded decidedly unsorry that Ty wasn’t around to talk to me.
“Do you know what time he’ll be back?”
“Who knows? He’s visiting his mom, and those two talk for hours.”
“Okay, I’ll call him tomorrow,” I said. Molly hadn’t even asked if she could take a message, and I doubted that Ty would get it if I left one.
“Great, thanks,” she said, and she hung up.
I flipped through the channels. I tried to watch Court TV, but they were covering some depressing child-abuse trial. I gave a sitcom fifteen minutes, but found myself more irritated than amused. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wanted to talk to Ty. I had his parents’ number, but I didn’t know if I should bother him there. Finally, I decided it was no big deal. At least I could tell him to call me later.
The phone rang at the Mannings’ house. I felt consumed by an adolescent nervousness, like when I’d called a boy for the first time in high school.
But when I heard a deep, grumbled “Hello?” I got even more anxious.
“Chief Manning,” I said. “It’s Hailey Sutter.”
A long pause. “Are you looking for Ty?” So much for chitchat.
“Yes, the person at the inn said he was here.”
“You just missed him.”
“Oh, well, I’ll try him later.”
Chief Manning grunted in what I assumed was assent.
“Say hello to your wife,” I said, not wanting to let him off the phone. Why not ask him some more questions about his investigation? He was one of the few people who knew anything.
“Will do,” he said. “Goodbye then.”
“Wait!” I called out. “Can I ask you a quick question?”
Another pause. “All right.”
“I was wondering if you’d ever found anything about the man who my mom was seeing before she died.” I knew from his records that no one had been able to identify him, but maybe Chief Manning had learned something after the investigation was closed.
“You know about that?” he said.
“Yes.” I didn’t add that I knew most of it from his own records, the ones his son had copied for me.
“We could never identify him.”
“Do you know how long they were together, or even if they were still together when she died?”
“Well, if I remember right, she told your father she’d been seeing him for a year, maybe less.” His voice died off quickly as if there was more but he was reluctant to speak.
“Did you talk to other people, like her friends? You must have interviewed someone who saw them together.”
A pause. “There was a neighbor that night who thought she saw someone pull into your driveway. She thought maybe a man was driving, but she couldn’t say any more than that. I really don’t know anything else.”
A car in the driveway. A man at the wheel. I wanted to ask him why that wasn’t in his records, but of course I couldn’t. And something was tugging at my brain. A car in the driveway. A sound outside the house. The honking of a car horn. I remembered that. The car horn. I could hear it now. I could see my younger self standing near my mom.
It was evening, and I had walked out of my room to get a snack. I saw mom on the landing, standing still, as if she couldn’t decide where to move. She turned and knelt in front of me.
“Hailey,” she said, placing her hands on my shoulders. They felt as if they were pinning me to the ground. “I need to talk to you, and I need you to listen. I need you to act like a big girl.”
I nodded, staring into her light brown eyes.
She looked down for a second, and I did, too. The shoes