No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [81]
“What are they saying?” Cynthia asked.
“Hang on,” Wedmore said, but then we saw the man pick up his radio and Wedmore grabbed hers.
“Got something,” the radio crackled.
“What?” Wedmore asked.
“Car. Been there a long time. Half buried in silt and shit.”
“Anything inside it?”
“They’re not sure. We’re going to have to get it out.”
“What kind of car?” Cynthia asked. “What does it look like?”
Wedmore relayed the question, and down in the lake, we could see the man asking the divers some questions.
“Looks sort of yellow,” the man said. “A little compact car. Can’t see the plates, though. The bumpers are buried.”
Cynthia said. “My mother’s car. It was yellow. A Ford Escort. A small car.” She collapsed against me, held on to me. “It’s them,” she said. “It’s them.”
Wedmore said, “We won’t know that for a while. We don’t even know if there’s anyone in that car.” Back into the radio, she said, “Let’s do what we have to do.”
That meant bringing in more equipment. They thought that if they brought in an oversized tow truck from the north, got it right up to the edge of the lake, they could run a cable out into the water, have the divers attach it to the submerged car, and slowly pull it out of the muck at the bottom of the lake and to the surface.
If that didn’t work, they’d have to bring in some sort of barge affair, take it out onto the water, position it over the car and lift it up directly from the bottom.
“Nothing’s going to happen for a few hours,” Wedmore told us. “We’ve got to get some people up here, they’ve got to figure out how they’re going to do this. Why don’t you go someplace, head back to the highway, maybe go up to Lee, get some lunch. I’ll call your cell when it looks like something’s about to happen.”
“No,” Cynthia said. “We should stay.”
“Honey,” I said, “there’s nothing we can do now. Let’s go eat. We both need our strength, we need to be able to handle what may come next.”
“What do you figure happened?” Cynthia asked.
Wedmore said, “I guess someone drove that car right up here, where we’re standing, then ran it right off the edge of this cliff.”
“Come on,” I said again to Cynthia. To Wedmore, “Please keep us posted.”
We drove back down to the main road, back to Otis, then north to Lee, where we found a diner and ordered coffee. I hadn’t had much of an appetite first thing in the morning, so I ordered a midday breakfast of eggs and sausage. All Cynthia could manage was some toast.
“So whoever wrote that note,” Cynthia said, “knew what he was talking about.”
“Yeah,” I said, blowing on my coffee to cool it down.
“But we don’t even know if there’s anyone in the car. Maybe the car was ditched there, to hide it. But it doesn’t mean anyone died in that accident.”
“Let’s wait and see,” I said.
We ended up waiting a couple of hours. I was on my fourth coffee when my cell phone rang.
It was Wedmore. She gave me some directions that would get me to the lake from the north side.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“It’s gone faster than we thought,” she said, bordering on amiable. “It’s out. The car’s out.”
The yellow Escort was already sitting on the back of a flatbed truck by the time we arrived at the site. Cynthia was out of the car before I’d come to a full stop, running toward the truck, shouting, “That’s the car! My mother’s car!”
Wedmore grabbed hold of her before she could get close. “Let me go,” Cynthia said, struggling.
“You can’t go near it,” the detective told her.
The car was covered in mud and slime, and water was seeping out around the cracks of the closed doors, enough so that the interior, at least above the window line, was clear of water. But there was nothing to be seen but a couple of waterlogged headrests.
“It’s going to the lab,” Wedmore said.
“What did they find?” she asked. “Was there anything inside?”
“What do you think they found?” Wedmore asked. I didn’t feel good about the way she’d asked. It was as though she thought Cynthia already knew the answer.