Don't Look for Me(11)

“Nicole!”

She got up and lumbered her large girth around the metal corners. She reached her hands over the counter and grabbed Nic by the shoulders.

“Nicole,” she said again, her face contorting with sympathy. “How are you? How was the drive?”

Mrs. Urbansky had been nothing but kind to her during the search for her mother. It hadn’t been easy to let it in then. And it wasn’t now.

“Fine,” Nic answered.

Mrs. Urbansky let up on her hold and crossed her elbows on the counter. The soft flesh of her arms bulged out from the creases as she rested her chin on her knuckles.

“So, you think you have a new lead?”

Nic shrugged. “We’ll find out tomorrow.”

“So odd after all that searching, and the reward money…” Mrs. Urbansky said, apprehension in her voice.

She wasn’t wrong—the search parties had been thorough. They had begun at the edge of the dense fields that lined Hastings Pass and Route 7, and moved through the tall, sharp stalks until they ended. Some of the property bled right into other fields. Some was divided up by split-rail fencing. Others were met with lawns belonging to old farmhouses. When all was said and done, Nic, her father, the police, and volunteers, had covered thirty-two square miles of land. Which was a lot of land.

Houses were checked as well. Five miles in every direction from where the car was found. No one had seen Molly Clarke the night of the storm.

It all played on a loop now, a recurring bad dream.

Hastings. She’d spent much of those four days swinging between panic and sedation. She’d spent much of it in that bar. She could see the acknowledgment on Mrs. Urbanskys’s face.

“But you never know, right?” the woman said, smiling now. “Come around, sweetheart. I’ll take you back to see the chief.”

Chief of police Charles Watkins. Most people just called him “the chief.” Average height. Full head of hair. Nic remembered him better than the others because he had been in charge of things, or at least that was how it seemed.

Mrs. Urbansky had made a point to tell her about his dead wife—Died of heart disease, and at such a young age! She’d said it as though Nic might be interested, as a single woman herself. Never mind that Nic was just twenty-one and Watkins was old enough to have a dead wife, even if that wife had been relatively young when it came to dying.

She’d said it after the note was found, when the mood had lifted off the town just like the cloud cover from the storm. Hearing Mrs. Urbansky’s voice now brought it back—the feeling as everyone began to believe that this was not a tragic accident but instead a scandal. A fun story to tell at the bar, the wealthy woman from the southern part of the state, the richer part, the enviable part. Unhappy Housewife Leaves It All Behind; Walks Away from Kids and Husband … And with the fun story, relief that their misery hadn’t ensnared an outsider. A sign that their plight wasn’t as dreadful as it seemed.

But, yes, it was, Hastings. It was every bit as dreadful.

Chief Watkins was in his office. The smell was the same—carpet cleaner and printer ink. A hint of mildew from the dying leaves outside.

He got up, nodded in her direction. After the time they had spent together, they were somewhere between a hug and a handshake. The nod served the situation.

“Sit,” Watkins said.

Nic took a seat on a hard metal chair across from his desk.

“I’ll leave you two.” Mrs. Urbansky left, still smiling.

Watkins wore a beige uniform with short sleeves and a blue tie. There were patches sewn on the chest. A badge was pinned there as well. She had thought it then and she thought it again now, how he looked like a Boy Scout leader.

He leaned back and stretched his arms into the air, clasping his hands behind his head.

“Is this about the call?” he asked. “From the woman who says she saw your mother?”

“Yeah,” Nic answered. She went on then to explain about the truck and the letters on the orange purse, and about Edith Moore and how she’d been driving from town that night.

Watkins nodded as though taking in the information.

“Okay,” he said. “I get it. Why you came back. I would do the same if it was my family. Gotta sleep at night, right?”

“Something like that.”

“So how can we help?” Watkins asked. His tone was patronizing.

She rambled off the list she’d made, things about the DMV and dark pickup trucks in the area, and finding their owners and asking where they were the night of the storm, driving their trucks.

Watkins groaned, but he humored her, listening, nodding. Then he leaned forward, clasped his hands in front of him on the desk. He had the authority moves down to a nice little dance. This was something else she now remembered, how he had provoked her with the comfort he seemed to find in his position of power.

“You should have someone with you,” Watkins said then. “She could be after that money. It was too much for around here. That kind of money—makes people a little crazy.”

“I’m meeting her tomorrow at ten—at the Gas n’ Go.”

Watkins nodded, palms now pressed into piles of papers. “I’ll get Reyes to meet you. Remember him? Officer Reyes?”

“Yes,” Nic said. But not exactly. She remembered a lot of cops—the two local policemen and the state troopers. Their names, faces, had all melded together behind the uniforms.