No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [102]
“Sure,” he said as we got into his truck, which was parked alongside the curb on East Broadway.
“I’ve always wanted to get a place along here, as long as I’ve lived in Milford,” I said.
“I’ve always lived around here,” Vince said. “You?”
“I didn’t grow up around here.”
“As kids, sometimes, when the tide was out, we’d walk out to Charles Island. But then you wouldn’t have time to get back before the tide came in again. That was always fun.”
I felt some anxiety about my new friend. Vince was, not to put too fine a point on it, a criminal. He ran a criminal organization. I had no idea how big or small it was. It was certainly big enough to have three guys on the payroll who were on call to grab people off the street who made Vince nervous.
What if Jane Scavullo hadn’t walked in? What if she hadn’t persuaded Vince I was an okay guy? What if Vince had continued to believe that I presented some sort of a threat to him? How might things have turned out?
Like a fool, I decided to ask.
“Suppose Jane hadn’t dropped by when she did,” I said. “What would have happened to me?”
Vince, right hand on the wheel, left arm resting on the windowsill, glanced over. “You really want an answer to that question?”
I let it go. My mind was already heading in another direction, questioning Vince Fleming’s motives. Was he helping me because Jane wanted him to, or was he genuinely concerned about Cynthia? Was it a bit of both? Or had he decided that doing what Jane wanted was a good way to keep an eye on me?
Was his story about what he saw out front of Cynthia’s house that night true? And if it wasn’t, what possible point would there be in telling it?
I was inclined to believe it.
I gave Vince directions to our street, pointed out the house up ahead. But he kept on driving, didn’t even slow down. Went right past the house.
Oh no. I’d been suckered. I was about to have a date with a wood chipper.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What are you doing?”
“You got cops out front of your house,” he said. “Unmarked car.” I glanced into the oversized mirror hanging off the driver’s door, saw the car parked across the street from the house receding into the background.
“That’s probably Wedmore,” I said.
“We’ll drive around the block, come in from the back,” Vince said, like he did this sort of thing all the time.
And that’s what we did. We left the truck one street over, walked between a couple of houses, and approached my house through the backyard.
Once inside, I looked for any evidence that Cynthia might have returned, a note, anything.
She had not.
Vince wandered the first floor, looking at the pictures on the walls, the books we had on our shelves. Casing the joint, I thought. His eyes landed on the open shoeboxes of mementos.
“The hell’s this stuff?” he asked.
“It’s Cynthia’s. From her house when she was a kid. She goes through it all the time, hoping it will offer up some sort of secret. I was kind of doing the same thing today, after she left.”
Vince sat on the couch, ran his hand through the stuff. “Looks like a lot of useless shit to me,” he said.
“Yeah, well, so far that’s exactly what it’s been,” I said.
I tried phoning Cynthia’s cell on the off chance that it might be on. I was about to hang up after the fourth ring when I heard Cynthia say, “Hello?”
“Cyn?”
“Hi, Terry.”
“Jesus, are you okay? Where are you?”
“We’re fine, Terry.”
“Honey, come home. Please come home.”
“I don’t know,” she said. There was a lot of background noise, a kind of humming.
“Where are you?”
“In the car.”
“Hi, Dad!” It was Grace, shouting so she could be heard from the passenger seat.
“Hi, Grace!