I leaned in slightly. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, a lot of times, we pay the help under the table. Not everything, of course. But here and there, saves us a bit with the taxman, you know?”
“Sure.”
“But what I’m saying is, even if your daughter’d been here, getting paid in cash-and that could end up biting us in the ass, pardon my French-I’d tell you, because no parent should go through that, not knowing what’s happened to his child.”
I nodded, looked down at Syd’s face.
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“She has beautiful hair. She looks a little bit… Norwegian?”
“From her mother’s side,” I said. My mind wandered. “Too bad your cameras don’t work. If Syd had ever met someone in your lot…”
Veronica hung her head, embarrassed. “I know. What can I say. We have the cameras mounted so people will think there’s surveillance, but they’re not hooked up to anything. Maybe, if we were part of a larger chain…”
I nodded, picked up Syd’s picture and slipped it back into my jacket.
“May I show
I said, “Of course.”
She went into her purse and pulled out a computer printout snapshot of a boy, no more than six months old, wearing a Thomas the Tank Engine shirt.
“What’s his name?”
“Lars.”
“That’s different. What made you choose that?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “My daughter did. It’s her husband’s father’s name.” She gave me a second to let it sink in. “This is my grandson.”
I was momentarily speechless. “I’m sorry, I thought-”
“Aren’t you adorable,” Veronica Harp said. “I had Gwen when I was only seventeen. I don’t look so bad for a grandmother, do I?”
I had pulled myself together. “No, you don’t,” I said.
Pregnant at seventeen.
“Thank you for the coffee,” I said.
Veronica Harp put the baby picture away. “I just know you’ll find her, that everything will be okay.”
WE ARE RENTING A PLACE ON CAPE COD, right on the beach. Sydney ’s five years old. She’s been to the beach in Milford, but it can’t compare to this one that seems to go on forever. Sydney is mesmerized upon first seeing it. But she soon gets over her wonderment and is running down to the water’s edge, getting her feet wet, scurrying back to Susanne and me, giggling and shrieking.
After a while, we think she’s had enough sun, and we suggest going back to the small beach house-not much more than a shack, really-for sandwiches. We are trudging along, the sand shifting beneath our feet, trying to keep up with Syd, pointing at her tiny footprints in the sand.
Some kids are coming through the tall grass. One of them has a dog on a lead. Sydney crosses in front of the animal just as its snout emerges from between the grass. It’s not one of your traditionally mean-looking dogs. It’s some kind of oversized poodle with short-cropped black fur, and when it sees Sydney it suddenly bares its teeth and snarls.
Sydney shrieks, drops her plastic pail and shovel, and starts running. The dog bolts forward to go after her, but the kid, thank God, has a tight grip on the leash. Sydney runs for the beach house, reaches up for the handle to the screen door, and disappears, the door slamming behind her.
Susanne and I run the rest of the way, not making the kind of speed we want because the sand won’t allow us a good purchase. I’m in the door first, calling out, “ Sydney! Sydney!”
She doesn’t call back.
We frantically search the house, finally finding her in a makeshift closet-instead of a door, there is a curtain to hide what’s stored inside. She is crouched down, her face pressed into her knees so she can’t see what’s happening around her.
I scoop her into my arms and tell her everything is okay. Susanne squeezes into the closet and puts her arms around both of us, telling Sydney that the dog is gone, that she’s safe.
Later, Susanne asks her why she ran into the beach house, instead of back to us.
“I thought he might get you guys, too,” she says.
I SAT IN THE CAR, parked out front of the adult entertainment store, XXX Delights, which had a florist shop on one side and the clock repair place on the other. The windows were opaque to protect passersby from having to see any of the merchandise. But the words painted on the glass in foot-high letters left no doubt as to what was being offered. “XXX” and “ADULT” and “EROTICA” and “MOVIES” and “TOYS.”
Nothing from Fisher-Price, I was guessing.
I watched men heading in and out. Clutching items in brown paper bags as they scurried back to their cars. Was there really a need for any of this these days? Couldn’t this all be had online? Did these guys have to skulk about with their collars turned up, baseball hats pulled down, cheap sunglasses hiding their eyes? For crying out loud, go home and make out with your laptops.
I was about to go in when a heavyset, balding man strode past the florist and turned into XXX Delights.
“Shit,” I said.
It was Bert, who worked in the service department at Riverside Honda. Married, so far as I knew, with kids now in their twenties. I wasn’t going in while he was there. I didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing there, and I didn’t want him to have to explain what he was doing there.
Five minutes later he emerged with his purchase, got into an old Accord, and drove off.
I was actually grateful for the delay. I’d been steeling myself to enter the place, not because of the kind of business it was, but because I couldn’t imagine Sydney having a connection to it.
“This is a waste of time,” I said under my breath as I got out of the car, crossed the lot, and went inside.
The place was brilliantly lit with hundreds of overhead fluorescent tubes, making it easy to see the covers of the hundreds of DVDs displayed on racks throughout the store. A quick glance indicated that no niche market, no remotely obscure predilection, had been ignored. In addition to movies and magazines, the store carried a wide assortment of paraphernalia, from fur-lined handcuffs to life-size-if not entirely lifelike-female dolls. They were slightly more realistic than the blow-up variety, but still not take-home-to-meet-the-folks quality. Only a few steps from the entrance, surveying the empire from a raised platform like a pharmacist at the back of a drugstore, was the proprietor, an overweight woman with stringy hair reading a tattered paperback copy of
I stopped in front of her, looked up, cleared my throat, and said, “Excuse me.”
She laid the book down and said, “Yeah.”
“I wonder if you could help me,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. When I didn’t speak up right away, she said, “Go ahead, tell me what you’re looking for, I’ve heard everything and I don’t give a shit.”
I handed her a picture of Sydney. “You ever seen this girl?”
She took the photo, glanced at it, handed it back. “If you know her name, I can put it into the computer and see what movies she’s been in.”
“Not in a movie. Have you ever seen her here, in this store, or even in the area? Going back about three weeks?”
