Don't Look for Me(62)

“That is very funny,” I say. I think about how many times I stood right in that spot, looking for a bottle of water.

Her laughter slows quickly, as though she’s caught herself. I can see now that she’s done with this secret because her eyes glance at the camera down the hall and her face grows apprehensive.

I change the subject.

“Do you like lime?” I ask, forcing myself to remain neutral. Normal, whatever that is under these circumstances. I hold the Jell-O pack in front of her.

“No!” she says. “I hate lime.”

Yes, I think. I already know this because she’s told me before.

“I like orange,” I say. “Do you want strawberry?”

She nods.

“Okay—you bring this to the kitchen and heat it up, and I will mix the Jell-O.”

She picks up the chicken and walks carefully down the hall. When she is out of sight, I take the Jell-O and the bowls and I go to the bathroom.

I close the door and I grab the antifreeze from beneath the sink. I pour the small amount that is in the coffee cup into one of the bowls, thinking about Mick as he watched me pick out water.

I mix the antifreeze with the powder of lime Jell-O, thinking about Mick as he watched me at the register.

Then I make the orange and the strawberry and pour them into separate bowls, thinking about Mick as he wrote down my license plate number and researched my family.

Alice returns with the chicken and some plates and silverware. Then I send her back to the kitchen three times, carrying with two hands each of the bowls so they don’t spill. My life may be in one of them.

Then we eat. And we wait for Mick to come home.

So we can have our dessert.





28


Day fifteen





“Where are we going?” Reyes asked.

He’d done what she’d requested the second she’d jumped in his car—drive!

Nic was breathing hard. She managed to get out one word.

“Laguna.”

“Okay,” Reyes said. “But I thought you wanted to go to town hall—to look up that property.”

Nic shook her head no. Then she said more words. “I need to get out of Hastings. I need time to think.”

Reyes jerked his head back quickly. “Okay. Here…” He placed his hand on her back. “Lean forward—head between your knees. You’re hyperventilating.”

Nic leaned down and rested her head in the palms of her hands. When her mind cleared, she pulled out her phone and studied the photo—making sure she was right.

Then she told Reyes.

“Kurt Kent and Edith Moore,” she began. “They know each other. They met in a car outside the hospital where she works.”

Reyes looked at her quickly, then back at the road. “Whoa!” he said. “Slow down. Start from the beginning.”

Nic told him about her father’s PI. How he’d gone to Schenectady to look into Edith. How he’d followed her from the moment after they’d met with her in Hastings.

Reyes pulled over then, parking on the dirt shoulder just before the entrance to the Gas n’ Go.

He motioned to see the photo.

Reyes looked at it closely. “Damn. That’s Kurt, all right.”

The phone rang. Nic took it back, picked up the call.

“Dad—I’m fine. I’m with the police.”

She listened patiently then as he told her to come home, to get the hell out of there, to let the PI handle things from here. She agreed to everything, though she had no intention of going home without her mother. She would get out of Hastings, as far as the casino. But that was all.

Kurt was a liar, and he had tried to cast doubt on Reyes’s story and his intentions. He’d tried to implicate Watkins in her mother’s disappearance. The truth was, Reyes could have fallen into her bed last night. But instead, he’d turned around and left.

She hung up the call, then looked at Reyes.

“This is what my father thinks. And the PI,” she began. “After my mother went missing, Kurt knew to wait until all the other calls led to nothing. Until everyone stopped calling in tips and the case got cold. Then he had his girlfriend, or whatever she is to him, come out of the woodwork with this bullshit story about passing through town the night of the storm.”

Reyes continued the story.

“And now—whenever you happen to find your mother—Edith Moore is first in line to collect the cash. That’s what I feared when we found out she was lying about being in New York.”

“And how could she have seen the letters on my mother’s purse? From across the street and through the rain?”

“Shit,” Reyes said. “I can’t believe I missed that. I was so focused on trapping her in the lie about her E-ZPass records.”

Nic nodded but then felt her face tighten.

“What?” Reyes asked, leaning forward, reaching for her hand.

“What if he knows where she is? What if he’s known all along and he waited for the other leads to die down so that now he could lead me to her?”

Reyes squeezed her hand tighter and smiled. “Well, who cares, right? If he helps you find your mother, that’s all that matters! We can go after the little prick later. I think we have to play this out—pretend you don’t know a thing about it and let him lead you to her however he plans to do it.”