The Silent Sister(50)

* * *

That night, I tossed and turned until two A.M., more awake than I’d been when I went to bed. I finally decided to get up and tackle my father’s computer. I had to see what needed saving from the hard drive before I turned it over to Christine. Maybe concentrating on that task would clear Tom and Verniece—and my worry about my brother—from my mind.

I walked barefoot down the hall to Daddy’s office and switched on his small desk lamp. The house was deathly quiet as I sat down at the computer. When I pressed the power button, the old machine let out a human-sounding gasp that broke the silence and sent a chill up my spine. The clunky monitor was slow to come to life, and once it did, I groaned. It wanted a password. Great.

In movies, people always managed to come up with the appropriate password to hack into a computer. A child’s name. An anniversary date. Something obvious. I tried every possible combination of letters and numbers I could think of without luck before heading back to bed. Maybe Jeannie would have some idea of a password he’d use, I thought as I lay awake staring at the dark ceiling. She seemed to know everything else about him. If she didn’t know what it was, I’d have to ask Danny for help. He knew everything there was to know about computers, and if anyone knew a way to get into my father’s files without a password, it would be him. How I’d get him to come back to the house, though, was another question entirely.

And of course, I’d have to find him first.

* * *

I was just waking up the following morning when Jeannie and Christine arrived. I heard their car doors slam outside, their muted voices on the front porch as they let themselves in with Jeannie’s key. In a moment, one of them would knock on my bedroom door, badgering me about my father’s cabinets or the computer or whatever. My house was not my own.

I got out of bed, brushed my teeth, then threw on my running clothes. I managed to escape down the stairs and out the front door without them seeing me, and I headed for the river at an easy jog, still yawning from my mostly sleepless night. When I reached the path along the river, I spotted five kayakers paddling south. I slowed down, then stopped altogether, standing at the railing near the river’s edge as I watched the kayaks cut through the water in a chevron shape. The lead kayak was yellow, like my sister’s had been. Weird timing, I thought, as my mind drifted back to the conversation with the Kyles.

Two sets of footprints.

I pulled my phone from my shorts pocket and dialed Danny’s number. No answer. Turning around, I started for home, running now. I went in the back door to find Jeannie rooting around in one of the kitchen cabinets. She looked up in surprise and opened her mouth to speak, but I grabbed my keys from the key rack, gave her a quick wave, and left before she could ask me anything.

* * *

Danny was still not in his trailer, but this time his car was gone as well and I guessed he was either at the store or in a bar. I sat in the sweltering heat of my car, remembering the e-mail Harry had sent me about Danny hanging out at Slick Alley these days.

I turned the key in the ignition, hoping I’d see his Subaru in the Food Lion parking lot rather than at the pool hall, for both our sakes. I jostled my car back and forth in the tight clearing, then headed back to New Bern. Fifteen minutes later, I spotted Danny’s black Subaru in the Slick Alley parking lot. The building itself was a one-story, flat-roofed rectangle of concrete that had once been painted white but now blended into the gray sky behind it. SLICK ALLEY BILLIARDS was hand painted in green letters above the door, and on the side of the building, someone had painted a picture of a busty blond woman as she bent over a pool table to take a shot. Lovely.

It was not yet eleven in the morning, but there were already ten cars in the lot. I parked between the Subaru and a green truck and got out of my car before I could change my mind. When I pushed open the front door of the building, a dozen male heads turned in my direction and I wished I was wearing something other than my running shorts and tank top. The place was like every stereotype I’d ever seen of a pool hall—murky light, smoky air, faint background music interrupted by the muffled thwak of pool balls hitting one another at the tables. A row of booths lined the left wall of the room, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw my brother in the last booth, a book in his hands and his eyes on me. He didn’t wave. Didn’t rise. I walked toward him, ignoring the looks and comments and lip smacking of the pool players as I passed them.

Danny was alone in the booth, except for a full bottle of beer and one empty, and I slid onto the bench across from him. The fake leather seat felt sticky beneath my bare thighs.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

I’d expected to tell him about my conversation with the Kyles, but knew I couldn’t do it here. I had no idea how he’d react to anything I said about Lisa. “I need your help getting into Daddy’s computer,” I said instead. “It’s password protected.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Well, I don’t know how else to get to talk to you, Danny,” I said. “You won’t use the phone I got you.”

“Why do you need to get into his computer? You should just wipe the drive clean and chuck it.”

“I have to see if there’s anything important on it before I get rid of it. I need your help. Please.”

He shook his head. “I told you. I’m not going in that house again.”