Don't Look for Me(66)

She texted with her father to avoid having to hear his voice. She didn’t want him to know what she’d found out, about the affair and the credit card charge in West Cornwall that day. She texted him what she knew about Kurt Kent and Edith Moore. He texted back that his PI was looking into the connection. Reyes called Mrs. Urbansky at the station, asking her to find out about the utility bills at the property on Abel Hill Lane. He asked where Chief Watkins was, said he needed to speak with him.

Then came talk of Nic going home, but she refused.

Then stay here.

Reyes insisted. He didn’t want her near Booth after the incident in his apartment, or across the street from the bar and Kurt Kent who could very well have read her expression when she saw that picture on her phone of him with Edith Moore.

It’s safer here.

He checked her into a room, then went back to Hastings to gather her things from the inn. She gave him her key—the one with the giant wooden ring. He returned a few hours later and they went to the bar.

Watkins is nowhere, Reyes reported. Not at the station or at home.

Mrs. Urbansky said he was taking a personal day. He hadn’t answered his cell, and Reyes didn’t want to alarm him by having Mrs. Urbansky track him down on the police radio. Confronting the chief would have to wait until tomorrow.

But he did have news—and a document. A title copied from the land records at town hall for a property on Abel Hill Lane.

It is a corporation—a group of investors like Booth said, he explained. A holding company. They would have to search the records with the secretary of state to get the names of the investors. Reyes said he hadn’t lived here back then, but remembered there was talk of turning the buildings into a mental facility for criminals. Again—just like Booth had said. It never happened—but that explained the fence with the barbed wire. He said the same corporation also owned the Gas n’ Go.

There was nothing online. The corporation was no longer active. But that made sense—Booth had told her the investors probably only held on to the property for tax reasons.

Reyes and the state trooper had searched the redbrick buildings, but not the house where the foreman once lived. They didn’t know it was part of the same parcel. It had a separate driveway but no registered street address. It was as though it didn’t exist at all.

Except it did.

And then …

Vodka.

Reyes talked about his childhood and what had happened to him after he killed that boy. Nic had confided in him about Annie. The afternoon became evening.

I guess we’re the same that way.

And then …

I can’t believe my father …

Don’t go there. Let’s see what more we find.

And then …

I can’t believe Kurt did this …

Don’t take it personally. It’s just money.

And then …

Easy for you to say. There was a night—when I was here the first time.

The night at the bar?

Yeah.

You were pretty lit.

Something happened.

I remember.

What do you mean?

In the back. You and Kurt.

How did you know that? Did he tell you?

Then silence.

Then recognition.

You were there? You saw us?

Reyes motioned to the waitress.

“Another round,” he said. Then to Nic, “I think we’re going to need it now.”

Nic protested. “No, no—I can’t. Not after what you just told me. I can’t believe you saw me with Kurt, with anyone, like that.”

Reyes drained what was left in his glass. Then his face got serious, mirroring hers. He reached out and took her hand. “It’s no big deal. So you made out with a complete stranger in a completely strange town. It happens.”

This got a slight smile out of her. Thank God for vodka. Her father was receding from her mind as the conversation turned to flirtatious banter.

“It shouldn’t, though. It shouldn’t happen. That’s not who I am.” Then she reconsidered. “It’s not who I used to be, anyway.”

He leaned back and nodded. “I was just trying to make you feel better.”

“Not possible,” Nic said. “These past five years have been such a mess. I’ve been such a mess.”

The drinks came. Reyes took his, but then waved off the vodka tonic for Nic.

“No—wait.” She reached for the drink, grabbing it from the tray before the waitress could leave.

“It wasn’t right away,” Nic explained. “After my sister died, I felt like I had to make up for her being gone, you know? I actually tried harder. Got better grades. Stopped going out with my friends, doing things teenagers do. Shopping, movies, texting all day about stupid shit on the Internet. But it didn’t last.”

“Is that when you started drinking?”

“Yeah. It’s so strange how all of it, the drinking, the men, it gives you this relief, you know? In the moment. But then it just makes it worse.”

Reyes leaned forward and took both of her hands in his.

“Listen, I was a disaster before the chief brought me here. After killing that boy, leaving the job—it was like I wanted to die, only I didn’t have the courage to do it, and more than that … there was this annoying part of me that wanted to live, that kept whispering that it wasn’t my fault and that I deserved to live, and I hated that part.”