“When was the last time?”
“Maybe eight, ten months ago. It’s been a while. And the last time before that was way more than a year ago, for a few days.”
“He came here?” I asked.
“His wife wouldn’t exactly be crazy about it if I went and stayed with him at their place.”
“Ronald stayed here for a while? More than a year ago?”
“He had a blowout with his missus, needed a place to camp out for a while. So I shipped Patty off to stay with my sister in Hartford for a bit so I could have some peace and quiet. Seemed like a good time for a bit of a reunion with Ronald.”
“He slept in your room?”
She looked at me and said, “Duh.”
“I’m just asking because he’d have been in the same room with this file.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not accusing him of anything,” I said. “I’m just saying it’s possible. He might have gone looking through your things, looking for something else-”
“What, a pair of my panties to try on?”
“I was thinking more like money. And instead, he came across that envelope. Maybe he’d have thought there was money in it, looked inside, found something else.”
“Anyway,” she said dismissively, “it’s not like it would be a huge shocker, even if he had looked inside. He already knew he wasn’t Patty’s father.”
“But he’d never known the actual identity of Patty’s biological father. And that I had a daughter of my own, about Patty’s age.” My mind was racing, trying to see whether any of these pieces fit together. “If he did see the file, do you think he would have told Patty?”
This time she was more definite. “No way,” she said. “Even though he was a piss-poor father to her, he still felt he was more her father than anyone else was. He wouldn’t have wanted to admit you existed.”
That made sense to me. “But if he read the file, is there any way he might act on the information?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just thinking out loud here. Do you think he might have engineered a way for the girls to meet each other?”
“Why?”
“I’m telling you I don’t know. I mean, would he do it out of mischief? Because he liked the idea that he knew they were half sisters, even if they didn’t know?”
And did it have anything to do with the fact that they were both, now, missing? I didn’t pose the question out loud. I felt I was already too far down a strange road without a map.
“That sounds crazy to me,” Carol said.
“Have you been in contact with Ronald since Patty went missing?”
“Yeah, the first day, before I called the cops,” she said. “I felt like an idiot doing it, because I knew what the chances were. So I call him at work and say, you know, has Patty been by your place or anything, and he says, you’re kidding, that’d be a first.”
“She doesn’t keep in touch with him,” I said.
“No. And he couldn’t be happier. He’s not bad in the sack, but as a dad he’s a complete and total washout.”
I tossed the various pages of the report onto the envelope and stood up, paced back and forth a few steps. “We need to talk to him,” I said.
“Huh?”
“We need to go talk to Ronald.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“I want you to introduce me. Just tell him the truth. That I’m Tim Blake, my daughter Sydney is a friend of Patty’s, the two of them are missing. I want to see his face when you tell him who I am.”
“You think that’ll prove something,” she said.
“It might,” I said. “He still work for Sikorsky?”
“In his dreams. He works at a liquor store.” Right, I thought. I did know that. “He’s probably still on. I’d shop there, but the son of a bitch doesn’t give me a discount. So I take my business elsewhere.”
My cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
“You said you were going to get back to me.” It was Detective Jennings.
Hearing her voice made me feel as though a trapdoor had opened under me. “I’ve kind of had a lot on my plate,” I said. “When I get a minute, I’ll call you.”
“Where are you, Mr. Blake?” she asked.
“Out and about,” I said. Carol Swain looked at me curiously.
“I want to talk to you right now,” Jennings said. “In person.”
“Why’s that so important?”
“I dropped by your house,” she said.
I swallowed. “Oh,” I said. “Like I said, I’ve been out, looking for Syd.”
“I’m not asking you to come in,” Jennings said firmly. “I’m telling you. You’re coming in right now, or we’re going to find you and bring you in.”
I decided to take a shot at playing dumb. “I don’t understand the urgency.”
“Mr. Blake, one of your neighbors saw you come home less than an hour ago and leave again in a hurry. I know you were here.”
“I really have to go.”
“Mr. Blake, let me lay it out for you. Kate Wood is dead. Unless you can tell me something to persuade me otherwise, you’re the lead suspect in a homicide.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said. Carol was still looking at me.
“That’s not what I’d call persuasive,” Jennings said. “Call your lawyer, Edwin Chatsworth. He can arrange a surrender so no one has to get-”
I closed the phone and said to Carol Swain, “Let’s go see your ex.”
I PUT MILT IN THE BACK SEAT so Carol wouldn’t crush him when she got into the Beetle. She gave me directions to a store in Devon, not far from the dealership, that was sandwiched between a courier franchise and a distributor of appliance parts.
At a four-way stop, we waited for a police car to go through ahead of us. I gripped the wheel a little tighter and held my breath, trying to will myself into a state of invisibility as the patrol car went past.
Carol picked up on my anxiety. “Somebody looking for you?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” I said. I figured it would take a few more minutes for Jennings to put the word out to every cop in Milford to be watching for me. It wouldn’t take her long-a call to Susanne or Bob would do it-to find out what I was driving now.
It was getting to be dusk as I pulled into a spot in front of the liquor store. Carol Swain was out of the car before I’d turned the ignition off. She was making a beeline for the door and I told her to wait up.
An elderly, unshaven man clutching a brown-bagged bottle shuffled out the door as we went in. The old guy had evidently been the sole customer. The only one left in the store was the man behind the counter.
The guy who scratched Patty’s mother’s itch every eight to ten months might have been a good-looking man once. About five-ten, strong jaw, blue eyes. But he was thin to the point of emaciated, his hair was thinning, and he’d gone a day or two without shaving. He peered at me through a pair of cheap reading glasses.
“Hey,” he said. He noticed his ex first, me second, and my nose third. He didn’t look puzzled, surprised, annoyed, intimidated, you name it. There was nothing there.
