13
IT WAS JUST AS WELL that Sarah had left for her retreat by the time I’d gotten back home with Angie. I don’t quite know how I would have explained what I was about to do. Given the recentness of the Pool Boy incident, not very well.
The truth is, Sarah would have viewed such a plan as intrusive. An invasion of privacy. Wrongheaded. Difficult to justify, even for concerned parents.
Okay, perhaps.
But that was not what this was about. This was not about finding out what my daughter was up to. This was about finding out what Trevor Wylie was up to. And it made the most sense to follow Angie to find that out. I didn’t need to know what Trevor Wylie did every minute of the day. I just wanted to know whether he was targeting Angie.
Of course, I could have been up-front with her. I could have told her my plan. I could have explained to her that she should just go about her business as she normally would, that I didn’t care in the least what she was up to.
But being up-front presented a number of problems. Angie, who was now a young woman, might be of the view that having her father trail her cramped her style, and persuading her otherwise might present something of a challenge. The smartest thing, I decided, was to deal with this on my own. See what was going on. And, depending on what transpired, be up-front later if certain decisions had to be made. Like, for one, calling the cops about Trevor Wylie if he proved to be an actual threat.
About half an hour after I’d brought her home, Angie came bounding down the stairs. She’d touched up her makeup, brushed her hair, changed her clothes. She looked, I’d have to say, quite beautiful, and like most fathers, I have mixed feelings about having a beautiful daughter. There’s pride, and then there’s the business of not being able to sleep at night.
“I’m heading out in a couple of minutes,” she told me. I was in the family room off the kitchen, sitting in the recliner, watching the news, drinking some coffee. Doing my nonchalant thing. Doing it very well.
“Uh, actually, so am I,” I said, sensing the time had come to launch Operation Trevor, and stood up out of the chair. “I might as well take off now, too.”
I grabbed my jacket from the closet. I’d already tucked the Snapple bottle into a pocket, making it bulge out conspicuously. “Where you off to?” Angie asked.
“I just got a few things to do, and I’m meeting up with Lawrence, that detective I’m writing about, in a little while.”
“What’s in your pocket?” she asked, noticing the huge lump in my jacket.
“Just bringing a bottled water, something to drink in case I get thirsty,” I said.
Paul appeared in the front hall as I was about to leave. “Where you going?”
“I just told your sister. I’m doing a couple of things, then meeting up with Lawrence Jones.” The guilt I felt at not being totally honest with my son was offset by the six-pack of beer hidden in the backyard, I suspected, specifically for him. Trevor was doubtless old enough to buy booze, and was probably helping Paul get some.
Paul and I would definitely be having a chat about this. But not now. I had more pressing matters to deal with. I had a job to do. I was heading out into that dark night, a kind of Philip Marlowe, a private eye, going it alone against the forces of-
Enough.
“What if I need a ride tonight?” Paul asked. “Angie’s going out, you’re going out, Mom’s not here, there’s no car.”
I pulled out my wallet and handed him a twenty. Paul looked at it in his hand, not sure whether to believe his eyes. “If you run into a jam, grab a cab,” I said.
“A cab?” Paul said. “An actual cab? What if I end up not going out tonight?”
“Then you can give me the twenty back.”
Paul nodded quickly. “Well, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be going out.”
“Can I have the Virtue?” Angie asked, calling out from the kitchen. I glanced out and saw that it was at the end of the drive, blocking the Camry. I didn’t want to take the time to switch cars around.
“I’m taking it tonight,” I said.
“Aww. It’s got the sunroof.”
I said goodbye, got in the Virtue, moved the Snapple bottle from my jacket pocket to the cup holder, and slipped the key into the ignition. I turned it forward.
What the? I turned the key again.
What the hell was this? My new car didn’t want to start? I turned the key a third time, and it proved to be my lucky attempt. The engine turned over. It was, I told myself, just a fluke. I backed down the drive and headed south on Crandall. Once I was out of sight of the house, I tromped on the accelerator, although in a hybrid, that didn’t accomplish a lot. The car took its own time getting up to speed, making me anxious about circling the block in time to see Angie pull out.
But I managed to get around the block with a few seconds to spare before the Camry, with Angie at the wheel, backed out onto Crandall and headed south. Good, good, I thought. Everything was going okay. I was pumped. I was getting into it. At one point, I realized I’d been saying “Hello, shweetheart” under my breath unconsciously. But that was Sam Spade, wasn’t it, from
I’d have to check that later.
What I didn’t know, until Angie reached the end of the street and turned right, was that the left brake light was out on the Camry. Not good, but at the same time, as it got darker, it would make it easier to spot the car as I attempted to maintain some distance between us.
The other thing I quickly realized, not ever having driven behind Angie, was that Angie was not very good at remembering to signal. She’d made a right at the bottom of Crandall without putting on her turn indicator. And a mile or so further along, when she made a left, she forgot again.
I was going to have to talk to her about this. Just as soon as I could figure out how to tell her I’d been in a position to notice. I blamed Sarah for this. Angie’s disregard for the rules of the road had to be a genetic thing.
In addition to watching Angie, I was watching all the cars around her, in particular the black Chevy Lawrence and I had seen Trevor Wylie leave in earlier. So far, no sign of him.
The Camry turned onto Elmdale, home to a long block of coffee shops, ethnic restaurants, boutiques catering to the eclectic. I held back as the one Camry brake light came on and Angie began cruising the street slowly, evidently looking for someplace to park. I pulled over into a no-parking zone close to the curb, figuring I could idle there long enough to find out what she planned to do. A Jeep Wagoneer, a Mazda, then one of those new Mini Coopers drove past, and I did a quick study of each of the drivers, on the off chance that Trevor might be behind the wheel of something different. Two women, and an older guy, in the Cooper, trying to cure his midlife crisis.
Angie tried to parallel park at an open curb spot, but even from where I was sitting, it looked like a tight fit. She gave it a couple of tries, then went further up the street, where she found another, larger opening. This time, she slipped right in. Nice parking job, I thought. Way better than when we practiced it together prior to her final driving test.
She came back up the street on the sidewalk, in my direction, and I suddenly realized I needed an exit strategy to avoid being spotted. Could I back up and maneuver around the corner? I’d be trying to back right into
