florist, a Christian bookstore, a butcher’s, a hair salon, a children’s clothing store, an adult book and DVD shop.
They were all within walking distance of the hotel. If Syd had left the car parked here every day, she could have gotten to any of these businesses in just a few minutes.
I’d been in to almost all of them at some point since she’d gone missing, showing her picture, asking if anyone had seen her. But stores had different staff working in them depending on the day and time, so it made sense to make the rounds more than once.
Of course, Syd didn’t have to be working secretly at any of those places. Someone else with a car could have been meeting her every day in this lot, taking her God knows where from nine to five.
But if she had been working at one of these businesses within eyeshot of the hotel, why didn’t she want me or her mother to know? Why would we care if she worked at a clock repair place, or a butcher’s, or a-
An adult book and video shop.
My first time along that business strip, it was the one store I hadn’t been in. No way, I told myself. No matter what Syd was doing, no matter what she might be keeping from us, there was no way she’d been working there.
Not a chance.
I was actually shaking my head back and forth, muttering the words “No way” under my breath as I leaned up against my car, when I heard someone say, “Mr. Blake?”
I glanced to my left. There was a woman standing there. Blue jacket and matching skirt, sensible shoes, a Just Inn Time badge pinned to her lapel. She had some years on me, but not many. Mid-forties, I guessed, with black hair and dark brown eyes. Her corporate uniform wasn’t sufficiently dowdy to hide what was still an impressive figure.
“Veronica,” I said. Veronica Harp, the manager I’d spoken to on the phone the night Sydney disappeared, and seen a number of times since. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Blake.” She paused, knowing that politeness called for her to ask the same, but she knew what my answer would be. “And you?”
I shrugged.
“You must get sick of seeing me around here.”
She smiled awkwardly, not wanting to agree. “I understand.”
“I’m going to have to go back to all those places,” I said, thinking out loud. Veronica didn’t say anything. “I keep thinking she must have been going to a place she could see from here.”
“I suppose,” she said. She stood there another moment, and I could tell from her body language she was struggling with whether to say something else, or go back into the hotel and leave me be. Then, “Would you like a coffee?”
“That’s okay.”
“Really. Why don’t you come in? It’s cooler.”
I walked with her across the lot toward the hotel. There wasn’t much in the way of landscaping. The grass was brown, an anthill spilled out, volcano-like, between two concrete walkway slabs, and the shrubs needed trimming. I glanced up, saw the security cameras mounted at regular intervals, and made a disapproving snort under my breath. The glass front doors parted automatically as we approached.
She led me to the dining area just off from the lobby. Not a restaurant, exactly, but a self- serve station where the hotel put things out for breakfast. Single-serving cereal containers, fruit, muffins and donuts, coffee and juice. That was the deal here. Stay for the night, help yourself to breakfast in the morning. If you could stuff enough muffins into your pocket, you were good for lunch.
A petite woman in black slacks and a white blouse was wiping down the counter, restocking a basket with cream containers. I couldn’t pinpoint her ethnicity, but she looked Thai or Vietnamese. Late twenties, early thirties.
I smiled and said hello as I reached for a takeout coffee cup. She shifted politely out of my way.
“Cantana,” Veronica said to her.
Cantana nodded.
“I think the cereals will need restocking before breakfast,” Veronica said. Cantana replenished the baskets from under the counter, where there were hundreds of individual cereal servings in peel-top containers.
I filled my takeout cup, handed an empty one to Veronica. She sat down at a table and held out her hand to the vacant chair across from her.
“Just tell me if I asked you this already,” she said, “but you did ask at the Howard Johnson’s?”
“Not just at the desk,” I said. “I showed her picture to the cleaning staff, too.”
Veronica shook her head. “Aren’t the police doing anything?”
“As far as they’re concerned, she’s just another runaway. There’s no actual evidence of any… you know. There’s nothing to suggest anything has actually happened to her.”
Veronica frowned. “Yeah, but if they don’t know where she is, how can they-”
“I know,” I said.
Veronica sipped her coffee, then asked, “You don’t have other family to help you look? I never see you here with anyone.”
“My wife-my ex-wife-has been working the phones. She hurt herself a while back, she can’t walk without crutches-”
“What happened?”
“An accident; she was doing that thing where you’re hooked up to a kite behind a boat.”
“Oh, I would never do that.”
“Yeah, well, that’s ’cause you’re smart. But she’s doing what she can, even so. Making calls, looking on the Net. She’s torn up about this just like I am.” And that was the truth.
“How long have you been divorced?”
“Five years,” I said. “Since Syd was twelve.”
“Is your ex-wife remarried?”
“She has a boyfriend.” I paused. “You know those commercials for Bob’s Motors? That guy yelling at the camera?”
“Oh my, that’s him? That’s her boyfriend?”
I nodded.
“I always hit the mute when that comes on,” she said. That made me smile. First time in a while. “You don’t like him,” she said.
“I’d like to mute him in person,” I said.
Veronica hesitated, then asked, “So you haven’t remarried or anything?”
“No.”
“I can’t see someone like you being single forever.”
I’d been seeing a woman occasionally before Syd disappeared. But even if my life hadn’t been turned upside down in the last few weeks, that relationship’s days had been numbered. Spectacular in the sack can trump needy and loony for a week or two, but after that, the head starts to take over and decides enough is enough.
“You think it’s possible,” I said, “my daughter was meeting someone here? Not working here formally, but, I don’t know, doing something off the books? Because I think she was getting paid in cash.”
I’d taken one of my many pics of Syd from my pocket, put it on the table, just to look at her.
“I’m going to be honest with you here,” Veronica said.
“Yes?”
“Sometimes,” and she lowered her voice slightly, “we don’t do everything on the up-and-up here.”
