flashed.
“For fuck’s sake Trey! Do the words ‘acting suspiciously’ mean anything to you at all?” I threw at him. “When I left you all you had to do was look miserable and say as little as possible. Why you should find that difficult, God only knows! You’ve certainly managed it perfectly well all day. But no, you had to go shooting your mouth off.”
The shell grew back around him almost instantly. I watched it harden over and cursed myself inwardly.
I sat back in my seat and let my breath out. “OK,” I said, trying to start again, calm, sensible. “Yes, I went back to the house. There was nobody there. Not only that, but the place has been cleared out – no clothes, no personal possessions. There’s just the furniture left. It’s like you were never there.”
“What about Dad?” Trey asked, sounding subdued.
“I’m sorry, there was no sign of him,” I said, as gently as I could. “I ran into one of your neighbours – Mr Brown. He reckoned he saw Keith loading up a U-Haul truck this morning. Even asked him to give a key to an estate agent.” I paused, flicked the kid a sideways glance. “Did you know your father was planning on moving out today?”
Trey shook his head mutely and that was the last I could get out of him. I didn’t think telling him about the two guys in the Buick was going to gain me anything other than scaring him half to death, so I kept their part in the proceedings to myself. With another sigh I started the Mercury up again and pulled out onto the road.
It was a little after four o’clock. Traffic was starting to heavy up for the evening rush hour and the quality of the light was already changing, softening down from the usual harsh brightness. I’d discovered that night arrives fast in Florida. You get maybe twenty minutes of sunset around six-thirty, then the day’s dead.
The idea of driving around all night didn’t appeal to me. Not in a car that the bad guys could easily recognise. Particularly not with Trey in the passenger seat. We needed shelter and somewhere to hide, and the sooner the better.
I was already heading towards the coast and the closer to the sea you got, the greater the proportion of motels to other buildings. I picked the first one that looked reasonable. Not too smart, not too shabby. The neon sign out front said they had vacancies and free HBO. Nevertheless, Trey looked horrified when I turned in.
I drove straight through the parking area to the back of the small diner next door where the Mercury couldn’t easily be seen from the road, and reversed into a space. The car only had a numberplate on the back and there was no point it making it easy to read for anyone doing a casual drive-by.
I switched off the engine. “Stay here,” I said. “Lock the doors when I’m gone and if anyone comes, hit the horn and don’t let them in. OK?”
He shrugged and muttered, “OK.”
I walked back to the reception via the central courtyard. The motel was made up of ugly two-storey blocks of accommodation lining the car park on three sides. Each block had ten rooms per floor. Their doors were all accessed from open walkways at the front with stairwells at either end. It looked more depressing from here than it had done when I’d picked it, but I wasn’t going to go back and admit defeat to Trey
I walked into the reception, which was small and nastily lit by a string of fluoro tubes across the water- stained ceiling tiles. It smelt of coffee that was brewed two days ago and has been on the hot plate ever since. The black girl behind the counter met my arrival with unsmiling lack of enthusiasm. Her name badge told me her name was Lacena. She had hair so elaborately styled and set it looked like a sculpture, and her fingernails were too long for her to have been able to put contact lenses in without the serious danger of losing an eye in the attempt.
She took an imprint of my credit card and a cursory glance at the photograph on my UK driver’s licence. Apart from my name, I filled in a completely fictitious set of details required on the registration form and took the key making as little eye contact as I could get away with.
Trey hadn’t shifted when I got back to the car. He’d even had the sense to slump down in his seat. I tapped on the window and he followed me silently to the room we’d been given.
We were in the left-hand block, on the top floor in the end room furthest from reception. The number on the key fob read 219, which was ambitious considering there were only around sixty rooms. Maybe they were just trying to make the place sound bigger than it was.
I opened the door on a pair of twin beds with cigarette-singed floral covers. The low-wattage bulb made the whole place look dingy and depressing.
“Oh man,” Trey moaned. “This place is a dump.”
He grabbed the remote control for the TV and flopped down on one of the beds. Even channel-hopping didn’t appease him, as he soon discovered that the promise of Home Box Office movies was a broken one. The picture on the other channels was so badly adjusted they were just about unwatchable. Still, there were hundreds to go at and he seemed determined to try every one.
I left him to it, pulling the edge of the curtain back slightly and looking down on the car park. It all looked quiet. No-one new had arrived since we’d checked in.
In my head I backtracked, replaying the conversation I’d had with Livingston Brown III outside the house. So Keith Pelzner had gone, apparently of his own accord. Sean, on the other hand, had not gone quite so willingly. I would have put money on it.
Then a man who’d come to the house as a policeman – and I could only assume he was a genuine cop – had followed Trey and me to the amusement park and tried to grab the kid. Something about the setup didn’t quite hang true. I kicked and pummelled at my lumpy thoughts, trying to break the sense out of them. Then my brain tilted, and in the light of what Brown had told me I began to look at things from a slightly different angle.
Supposing Oakley man hadn’t followed us? Supposing he didn’t need to, because he already knew where we were going to be? After all, Keith knew exactly where his son was heading. Exactly.
Just after he’d handed me that wedge of cash that morning he’d turned to the boy and said, “I suppose you’re gonna drag Charlie onto your favourite old woodie until one of you is sick, huh?”
Oh yes, Keith had known precisely the area of the park where we could be located, and that’s just where Oakley man had picked up our trail. I saw again the gun in his hands, the people scattering. The woman he’d shot fell again before my eyes.
But if the cop was there simply to snatch Trey, why had he fired at us?
I let the curtain fall closed and turned away from the window, moving to sit on the empty bed.
“Trey,” I said. “We need to talk.”
He sighed and clicked off the TV. I got the feeling his reluctance was more to do with a desire to avoid the subject rather than fascination with a fuzzy game show.
“OK,” he said. “Talk.”
“Have you any idea where Keith might have gone, or why he’s disappeared?”
He shrugged. “Sounds kinda like he’s run out on me, doesn’t it?”
I might have known this would be all about Trey. “Why would he do that?”
Another hunch of those skinny shoulders.
I waited, and when that seemed to be as much of an answer as I was going to get I added carefully, “Is there any reason you can think of why your father might want to harm you?”
His head snapped up at that, eyes unnaturally bright. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I can think of plenty.”
I sighed.
“Why not?” the kid threw back at me, his voice oozing with bitterness. “He already murdered my mother.”
Five
For a moment I sat very still, my face expressionless while my mind reeled. I skimmed back over every chance remark and casual word I’d overheard since I’d arrived in the Pelzner household and came up blank.
No-one had mentioned Trey’s mother.
From somewhere I’d formed a vague impression that it was a bit of a sticky subject as far as Keith was concerned, but I’d no idea what the official line was on her whereabouts.
I glanced at the boy. He was worrying at one of the burn holes in the bedspread with the end of his finger,
