Fear The Worst

“And you need to keep thinking about the question I asked you before. Just how well did you know what your daughter was up to?”

I said, “The bloodstains on Syd’s car… have you found out anything yet?”

“You’ll be the second to know,” she said, then got into her car and drove her daughter to school.

I DECIDED TO TACKLE THE CLEANUP a room at a time.

First, of course, I went upstairs to check for any phone or email messages, even a fax. There was nothing. It occurred to me that with all of today’s technologies, there were now more ways than ever to know with absolute certainty that no one wanted to get in touch with me.

Then I went back down to the kitchen. It made sense to put this room in order first. I found some garbage bags under the sink and dumped in food that could not be saved. Items from the refrigerator that had been tossed about and gone bad, spilled cereal that covered the floor.

I’d been going at it for about an hour when I heard someone shouting over the drone of the vacuum cleaner.

“Hello?”

The front door was open. Standing there was a slight man in a suit that had to be five sizes too big for him. You could slip three fingers between his neck and his buttoned shirt collar. His stringy black tie was askew, and it seemed awfully early in the day to look this unkempt. His concave chest made him look as though he was caving in on himself. He was the guy who got sand kicked in his face on the back page of my comic books when I was a kid.

“I rang but you couldn’t hear me,” he said.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Are you Tim Blake?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Arnold Chilton,” he said. “I think Bob Janigan mentioned me to you?”

Huh?

Then I remembered. The detective, or security expert, whatever. The one Bob said might be able to help us track down Sydney. I was surprised, knowing how pissed Bob was with me at the moment, that he’d still decided to go ahead with this.

“Bob got in touch with me a few days ago,” he said, “but I’ve kind of been swamped getting my mom moved into a nursing home.”

“Oh,” I said. I extended a hand and he took it.

Arnold Chilton whistled as he took in the mess. I hadn’t started on the living room yet. “That must have been some party,” he said.

“It wasn’t a party,” I said. “Someone broke in and tore up the place.”

“Wow,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You got some time for some questions?” he asked.

“Why don’t we go outside?” I suggested. “There’s really nowhere to sit down in here yet.”

“Okeydoke,” Chilton said. We walked out onto the front lawn, turned, and looked back at the house.

“This is good of Bob to bring you into this,” I said. “He and I, we don’t always see eye to eye on everything.”

“He said something like that.”

“I’ll just bet he did,” I said. “The police are investigating Syd’s disappearance, of course, but having someone else on this, that’s great. I’ve been doing everything I can to find her-I even went on a wild-goose chase to Seattle this week-but haven’t made much headway. You know her car was found?”

“Didn’t know that,” Chilton said.

I thought the mention of the Seattle trip and the discovery of Syd’s car would have sparked further questions.

“Have you spoken to Detective Jennings?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Kip Jennings,” I said. “The police detective?”

“I think Bob did mention her, or his wife Susanne did.”

“Susanne is not his wife,” I said. “We used to be married, but she hasn’t married Bob. Yet.”

“That’s right! I knew that.”

“Did they tell you about Detective Jennings? Did they give you her number? Because you’re going to want to talk to her.”

“I’m pretty sure they mentioned her. I just don’t think I wrote it down.”

“I have her number,” I offered.

“Good,” he said, nodding agreeably.

“So, are you, what, a friend of Bob’s?” I asked. “Or have you done work for him before?”

“Yeah, I’ve done some stuff for him in the past,” Chilton said.

I wondered why my ex-wife’s boyfriend might have used the services of a private detective. And whatever reason it might have been, did Arnold Chilton actually produce any results? He wasn’t inspiring me with confidence.

“So, let’s get down to cases,” he said. “Tell me about the day your daughter disappeared.”

I told the story for the hundredth time. Chilton scribbled into a tattered notebook that had been jammed into a jacket pocket.

“What about friends?” he asked. “You got some names of her friends?”

“Patty Swain,” I said. “And there was a guy she used to go out with a few times, Jeff Bluestein. He helped me set up the website.” That reminded me. I had meant to ask him, when he’d popped by the dealership with Patty, to double-check that emails sent to the site were actually getting there. Not fully understanding how all that stuff worked, I was paranoid about things going wrong.

“How do you spell that?” Chilton asked.

I started to spell Bluestein, but he held up his hand. “The first name,” he said.

I blinked. “J-e-f-f,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, making his notes. “Sometimes people spell it with a G, don’t they?”

“That’s true,” I said.

“But not G-e-f-f. It would be G-e-O-f- f.”

“Yes,” I said. Did I need to tell him it was Syd with a y and not an i?

“Now,” he said, “did you notice anything weird with Sydney before she took off?”

“No,” I said. I only hoped he was right, that Sydney “took off.” “We had a small argument at breakfast. About some new sunglasses she had.”

“What was that about?”

I didn’t want to get into it with him. I didn’t want to believe it had anything to do with why Syd left, and it wasn’t any of Arnold Chilton’s business anyway. “It wasn’t a big deal,” I said.

“Was she doing drugs? Like, dealing or something like that?” I thought about the coke found in my room, but said nothing. He continued, “Hooking, maybe?”

That made me want to punch his lights out. I felt my hands forming into fists. “Listen, Mr. Chilton-”

“Just call me Arnie.” He grinned.

“Arnie,” I said, stretching the word out, “my daughter was neither a drug dealer nor a