“I know.”
“Aimee is missing. The police came around and questioned my daughter. This might be routine for you, but this isn’t my world. I’m not blaming you, but…”
“But?”
“I just… I just need time.”
“ ‘Need time,’ ” Myron repeated. “That sounds a whole lot like ‘need space.’ ”
“You’re making a joke again.”
“No, Ali, I’m not.”
CHAPTER 25
There was a reason Aimee Biel wanted to be dropped off on that cul-de-sac.
Myron showered and threw on a pair of sweats. His pants had blood on them. His own. He remembered that old Seinfeld routine about laundry detergent commercials that talk about getting out bloodstains, how if you have bloodstains on your clothes, maybe laundry wasn’t your biggest worry.
The house was silent, except for those customary house noises. When he was a kid, alone at night, those noises would scare him. Now they were just there — neither soothing nor alarming. He could hear the slight echo as he walked across the kitchen floor. The echo only happened when you were alone. He thought about that. He thought about what Claire had said, about him bringing violence and destruction, about him still not being married.
He sat alone at the kitchen table of his empty house. This was not the life he’d planned.
He shook his head. Truer words.
Enough wallowing, Myron thought. The “plans” part got his mind back on track. To wit: What had Aimee Biel been planning?
There was a reason she chose that ATM. And there was a reason she chose that cul-de-sac.
It was almost midnight when Myron got back in his car and started north to Ridgewood. He knew the way now. He parked at the end of the cul-de-sac. He turned off the car. The house was dark, just like two nights ago.
Okay, now what?
Myron went through the possibilities. One, Aimee actually went into that house at the end of the cul-de-sac. The woman who’d answered the door before, the slim blonde with the baseball cap, had lied to Loren Muse. Or maybe the woman didn’t know. Maybe Aimee was having a fling with her son or was a friend of her daughter’s, and this woman didn’t know about it.
Doubtful.
Loren Muse was no idiot. She had been at that door a fair amount of time. She would have checked into those angles. If they existed, she would have followed up.
So Myron ruled that out.
That meant that this house had been a diversion.
Myron opened the car door and stepped out. The road was silent. There was a hockey goal at the end of the cul-de-sac. This was probably a neighborhood with kids. There were only eight houses and almost no traffic. The kids probably still played on the street. Myron spotted one of those roll-out basketball hoops in one of the driveways. They probably did that too. The cul-de-sac was a little neighborhood playground.
A car turned down the block, just like when he’d dropped Aimee off.
Myron squinted toward the headlights. It was midnight now. Only eight houses on the street, all with lights out, all tucked in for the evening.
The car pulled up behind his and came to a stop. Myron recognized the silver Benz even before Erik Biel, Aimee’s father, got out. The light was dim, but Myron could still see the rage on his face. It made him look like an annoying little boy.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Erik shouted.
“Same thing as you, I guess.”
Erik came closer. “Claire may buy your story about why you drove Aimee here but…”
“But what, Erik?”
He didn’t reply right away. He was still in the tailored shirt and trousers, but the look wasn’t as crisp. “I just want to find her,” he said.
Myron said nothing, letting him talk his way down.
“Claire thinks you can help. She says you’re good at stuff like this.”
“I am.”
“You’re like Claire’s knight in shining armor,” he said with more than a trace of bitterness. “I don’t know why you two didn’t end up together.”
“I do,” Myron said. “Because we don’t love each other that way. In fact, in all the time I’ve known Claire, you’re the only man she ever really loved.”
Erik shifted his feet, pretending the words didn’t matter, not quite pulling it off. “When I made the turn, you were getting out of your car. What were you going to do?”
“I was going to try to retrace Aimee’s footsteps. See if I can figure out where she really went.”
“What do you mean, ‘really went’?”
“There was a reason she picked this spot. She used this house as a diversion. It wasn’t her real destination.”
“You think she ran away, don’t you?”
“I don’t think it was a random abduction or anything like that,” Myron said. “She led me to this specific spot. The question is, why?”
Erik nodded. His eyes were wet. “You mind if I tag along?”
He did, but Myron shrugged and started toward the house. The occupants might wake up and call the police. Myron was willing to risk that. He opened the gate. This was where Aimee had gone in. He made the same turn she made, went behind the house. There was a sliding glass door. Erik stayed silent behind him.
Myron tried the glass door. Locked. He ducked down and ran his fingers along the bottom. Some kind of crud had accumulated. Same with the door frame going up.
The door had not been opened in a while.
Erik whispered, “What?”
Myron signaled him to keep quiet. The curtains were pulled closed. Myron stayed low and cupped his hands around his eyes. He looked into the room. He couldn’t see much, but it looked like a standard family den. It was not a teen’s bedroom. He moved toward the back door. That led to a kitchen.
Again no teen bedroom.
Of course Aimee might have misspoken. She might have meant that she went through a back door to get to Stacy’s room, not that the bedroom was right there. But heck, Stacy didn’t even live here. So either way, Aimee had clearly lied. This other stuff — the fact that the door hadn’t been opened and didn’t lead to a bedroom. That was just the icing.
So where had she gone?
He got on all fours and took out his penlight. He shined it on the ground. Nothing. He hoped for footprints, but there hadn’t been much rain lately. He put his cheek flat on the grass, tried to look not so much for prints as any sort of ground indentation. More nothing.
Erik started looking too. He didn’t have a penlight. There was almost no other illumination back here. But he looked anyway and Myron didn’t stop him.
A few seconds later Myron stood. He kept the penlight low. The backyard was half an acre, maybe more. There was a pool with a whole other fence surrounding it. This gate was six feet high and kept locked. It would be hard, though not impossible, to scale. But Myron doubted Aimee had come here for a swim.
The backyard disappeared into woods. Myron followed the property line into the trees. The nice wooden
