“I want you to find Claire. I mean, look, maybe she’ll call me in the next hour. Maybe she’ll be in touch before the day is out. But what if she isn’t? Then I’ll have lost a day trying to find out what’s happened to her.”
“I guess you don’t want to go to the police and report her missing,” I said.
Sanders almost chuckled. “No, I don’t think so. But I have to ask, is it going to be difficult for you to help me with this, given the animosity between you and your brother-in-law?”
“Probably,” I said. “But that’s okay. Look, I have a couple of things I was going to follow up on this morning, anyway. There are a couple of gas stations close to Iggy’s. Someone who’d been waiting around to pick Claire up might have filled up before or after. And I’ll make some calls to local landscapers, see if I can get a lead on this Dennis Mullavey character.”
For a moment I thought I’d been cut off. Sanders wasn’t saying anything.
“Bert?” I said.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was shaky. He’d broken down. He’d been crying. “Tell me you don’t think she’s ended up like Hanna.”
“I’m gonna do my best to find her.”
“I just want to know she’s okay. I have to know she’s okay.”
Thirty-four
I hung up.
Donna said, “I’ll get breakfast going.”
A few minutes later, in the kitchen, things felt slightly different. Not unlike the feeling after a tornado whips through. You’ve been through this horrendous storm, wondering whether the roof will fly off, the walls will come crashing in, the car will get flipped over onto its roof.
But then the storm’s roar fades away and you think it’s safe to venture outside. The sun is coming out. You’ve lost a few trees, the power’s out, half the shingles on the roof have been blown off.
But you’re still standing.
We brushed against each other as we went about our morning routine without the recent awkwardness. I placed a gentle hand on her hip in a way I hadn’t in some time. She made enough coffee for two. Most mornings, lately, she had been grabbing coffee on her way to work and I’d stopped by a drive-through en route to whatever job I had at the time.
While we sat at the kitchen table eating some English muffins with jam, I opened up the laptop and looked up Griffon-area landscapers. There were four listed, but when I went to their respective Web sites, one — Hooper Gardening — had photos of orange pickup trucks. I made a note of the number. It wasn’t even eight a.m., so I’d give them a call in another hour or so.
There were other things I could get started on first.
There were two self-serve gas stations within sight of the restaurant. If I checked their security footage from two nights ago, I might be able to get a better look at that Volvo. Maybe I’d be able to pick up a license plate, or see the driver.
It wasn’t much, but it was something. I was also thinking about Patchett’s, and whether there might be more leads worth following from there. Owner Phyllis Pearce seemed to know everybody’s business. Maybe she knew something about Claire Sanders and Dennis Mullavey. I’d gone back to Claire’s Facebook page to see if he was among her friends, but his name didn’t come up.
Donna was ready for work ahead of schedule so she could get a ride with me in her Corolla. She didn’t lean over for a kiss as she got out the passenger side, but she reached over and squeezed my hand.
Neither of us said a word.
From there, I drove to the first of the two service stations on Danbury within walking distance of Iggy’s. I pulled up to the pump, got out, and put a quarter of a tank of unleaded into the car, casting my eyes around as I did so, taking in the cameras. Most self-serve places now required you to put your credit card in first and have it approved, so you couldn’t take off without paying. If you wanted to pay cash, you usually had to go in and put down a deposit before they’d activate the pump.
Those cameras had been more important back in the day when people filled their tanks before they paid. Station owners no longer had that kind of trust in their customers, but the cameras remained.
Even though I’d paid at the pump, I went inside on the pretext of buying a treat. As I was getting out a five to pay the woman standing behind the counter for a Mars bar, I brought out my detective license as well.
“What’s this?” the woman asked tensely. She was in her mid-twenties, and thin enough to make one wonder whether she was anorexic. “You a cop? Because if you are, I’ve got the petition right here. I don’t always remember to get everyone to sign it, but most of the time I do. And I get the people to write down their addresses, too.”
“I’m private,” I said. “I don’t care if anyone signs that thing or not.”
That seemed to relax her. “That’s good, because I hate asking. Why the fuck should I have to do PR for the cops, right?”
“Right.” I explained I was looking for a vehicle that might have filled up here a couple of nights ago.
“What for?” she asked.
“Some guy who may have picked up a girl out back of Iggy’s.” I implied menace.
“Oh, okay. When was this?” When I told her the time period I was interested in, she shook her head. “Sorry. We erase everything after twenty-four hours if nothing happens so the hard drive or whatever doesn’t get all filled up.”
I sighed. “Did you happen to be on night before last? Between nine thirty and ten thirty?”
This time, a nod. “Yeah, I did a double, because Raul had the flu, although I think he was faking it.”
“You remember a Volvo station wagon coming in around that time? Silver or gray, I think.”
“You’re kidding, right? I couldn’t even tell you what kind of car you’re driving, and it’s sitting out there right now.”
I thanked her, paid for the Mars bar, and left. I was doing up my seat belt when I thought I noticed an old silver Hyundai with tinted windows parked on the other side of Danbury. I was staring at it, wondering if it could be the car that had been following me the night before, when it started up, pulled onto the road, and drove off.
The second gas station was just behind me and across the street. I wheeled out, spent ten seconds tops on the road, then pulled up at another set of pumps. I filled the tank another quarter, which pretty much topped up Donna’s car, and scanned the area for cameras at the same time. When I went inside, I didn’t bother buying another candy bar.
“I am very sorry, sir, but our cameras are not even working,” said the East Indian man at the cash register when I asked him about seeing surveillance footage. “They are still up there to scare the customers, but we do not record anything.”
I asked him if he had any memory of a silver or gray Volvo wagon from two nights ago.
“I was not on,” he said.
“Who was here that night?”
“Samuel. He was here. But I can guarantee you he did not see a thing.”
“Why’s that?”
The man pointed to a stack of skin magazines on the counter behind him, next to a display of cigarettes. “Samuel looks at porn all night and only gets his nose out of the books when there is someone standing right in front of him.”
“I thought everyone looked at porn online now,” I said.
“Samuel is seventy years old. He has never got into the computer thing,” the man said. “I am sorry.”
So was I. It had been a long shot, at best. Time to move on to something that might be more productive.
I got out the number for Hooper Gardening and dialed. I asked the woman who answered for the owner/manager, and she said Bill Hooper was out of the office. I gave her my number and she said she would have him return my call.