Fear The Worst

I was missing the obvious, of course.

Yolanda Mills, whoever she was, knew I was off to Seattle. She’d practically invited me there.

“Maybe I was set up,” I said.

“Come again?” Je

“I was set up. The woman who called me, who said she’d seen my daughter. She knew I wasn’t going to be home.”

“Refresh my memory.”

I told her about Yolanda Mills, how I couldn’t find her in Seattle, how the cops out there believed she’d called me from a disposable cell phone.

“Seattle’s about as far away as someone could send you and still be in the country,” Je

“But she had a picture of her,” I said. “She sent it to me. It was a picture of Syd. I’m as sure of that as I can be.”

“Can I see it?”

“Computer,” I said.

I led us into the study, stepping over tossed books and dumped shoe boxes spilling out receipts. While the computer tower and monitor had been shoved about, they were reasonably intact. I fired it up, opened the email program, and found the message and attached photo from Yolanda Mills. I opened it for Detective Je

“It’s not the greatest picture in the world,” she said. “The way her hair is falling, you can’t see much of her face.”

“You see this?” I said, pointing to the coral, fringed scarf that Syd had tied about her neck. “I know that scarf. Syd has one just like it. You put that scarf with that hair, and that bit of nose you can see there, and that’s her. I’d bet my life on it.”

Je

I sat there at the computer, checked to see whether anyone else had been in touch in the last two days. There had been hardly any hits on the website for Syd, and my emails were all junk.

Je

“The color caught my eye when I was looking in your daughter’s room earlier,” she said. “It was dumped out onto the floor with everything else.”

I stood, reached for the scarf, and held it as though it might dissolve in my fingers.

“Is that the scarf?” she asked.

I nodded very slowly. “That’s the scarf.”

“So if your daughter was supposedly wearing this scarf in Seattle a few days ago, what’s it doing here in your house?”

That was a really good question.

I didn’t have much time to ponder it. A minute later, one of the uniformed cops poked his head into the study and said to Je

FIFTEEN

“WHAT?” I SAID.

The cop said nothing. He led Je

“I noticed a fu

Detective Je

“Lordy, Lordy, what do we have here?” she said.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Detective Je

“I think it might be cocaine.”

“If that turns out to be right, what do you think it’s doing in your pillow?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Want to hazard a guess?”

Slowly, I shook my head. “No.” I thought a moment. “Yes.”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Someone put it there,” I said.

The cop made a small snorting noise.

“I’d have to agree with you there,” Je

“I slept on that bed two nights ago. There was nothing in that pillow then. Someone put it there while I was away.”

“So what are you saying?” Je

“I don’t know,” I said. “To be honest, as strange as this is, I’m a little more concerned about how my daughter’s scarf can be here if she had her picture taken wearing it in Seattle.”

“One thing at a time,” Je

“I agree, that’d be pretty dumb,” I said. “About as dumb as my inviting you into my home to find it. And if this house really was broken into twice, once to hide those drugs, and then a second time by somebody else trying to find them, then how the hell did they overlook them? It took your officer here ten minutes to stumble onto them. I mean, look around. This house has been turned fucking upside down. And that pillow’s just sitting there full of drugs. Does that make any sense at all?”

Je

“Unless whoever put those drugs there did it after the house was torn apart,” she said. “A place that’s already been searched is a great place to hide something.”

“Even if that’s what happened,” I said, “my pillow is still a stupid place to hide anything. I’d find it.”

She turned her head and looked at me. “Unless you’re the one who put it there.”

“For Christ’s sake,” I said.

“Do you have a lawyer, Mr. Blake?” Detective Je

“I don’t need a lawyer,” I said.

“I think maybe you do.”

“What I need is for you to believe me. What I need is for you to help me figure out what’s going on. What I need is for you to help me find my daughter.”

That stopped her for a moment. “Your daughter,” she said. “She certainly wouldn’t have to break through a basement window to get in.”

“What are you getting at?”

“She could get in here anytime she wants. She has a key.”

“What? You think Sydney was here? You think my daughter’s been back? That she’d come back, and not let us know she’s okay? That she’d hide cocaine in my pillow?”

Kip Je

“I can’t explain it.”

“Take a shot at it,” she said. “That scarf, the one she’s wearing in a picture supposedly taken in Seattle, is here, in this house.”

I shook my head. “Maybe Syd was out there and came back.”

“Just how well do you know your daughter, Mr. Blake?”

“Very well. We’re very close. I love her.” I paused. “How well do you know yours?”

She ignored that. “Do you know all of Sydney’s friends? When she goes out late at night, do you always know where she is? Do you know who she talks to on the Internet? Do you know if she’s ever tried drugs? Do you know whether she’s sexually active? Do you know the answer to any of those questions with any certainty?”

“No parent would,” I said.

“No parent would,” she repeated, nodding. “So when I ask you how well you know your daughter, I’m not asking you how close you are to her or how much you love her. I’m asking whether it’s possible she could be involved in things, involved with people, you might not approve of.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you think Sydney could have been involved in drugs?”

“I can’t believe that.”

“Your daughter’s missing. Her car was abandoned. And there was blood on it. You need to start waking up to the fact that something’s going on.”

“You think I’m not-”

“You need to wake up to the fact that it’s possible, just possible, that Sydney may have been mixed up in some nasty things. She may have been hanging out with some nasty people. She told you she was working at that hotel. If she was lying to you about that, what else was she lying about?”