“Most likely not. I’ve got some running around to do up that way today.”
Pause. “But it’s only nine A.M. now.”
“I know,” I said hastily. “So, is it—”
“Why don’t you just pick her up at the daycare when you’re ready? They’re open until—”
“Be less pressure,” I said, “if we do the handoff up at your house.”
Long pause. “What are you up to, Ben?”
Damn. This is what happens, when they’ve known you for years and have clocked all your moves. I sighed. “I’m doing some checking up for a friend of mine.”
“Now there’s a phrase I haven’t heard in awhile,” she said. “ ‘Checking up.’ ” From her tone you’d think I’d uttered a most odious obscenity. “What sort of ‘checking up,’ Ben?”
“Shyla Ryan, woman I work with,” I said. “College kid. Temps for Marge in the rental office during breaks. Her dad’s dropped out of sight, she asked if I’d do some looking around. I told her I’d help out.”
The tension was so tangible I could almost touch it. “God, this scares me,” she whispered “All those familiar terms. ‘Dropped out of sight.’ ‘Looking around.’ ‘Help out.’ ”
“Nothing to be scared of,” I said. “It’s something simple. Trust me.”
“You promised to stay out of that work.”
“It’s not ‘work.’ I’m not getting paid.”
“Don’t fence with me!” she flared “Back then you didn’t get paid either, half the time. That didn’t stop you from getting stabbed and beaten up and shot.”
I shook my head. “Nobody’s getting shot.”
I heard her intake of breath, uncharacteristically shaky. “Is this Shyla person... special to you?” Knowing what she was really asking, I replied patiently, “She’s a kid. We work together. I know how you feel about this, but... I sat there and looked at her and listened to her. In my mind’s eye she looked like Rookie twenty years down the line.”
I heard her inhale. “How manipulative of you to drag Rachel into this.”
“Happens to be the truth,” I said mildly.
Another pause. “You won’t forget to pick up her tonight,” she said.
“I won’t forget.”
In the background I could hear a female voice. Carole murmured something. To me she said, briskly, “You did promise me, you know. And Rachel, too.”
“I know. And I’ve been keeping it. And I know this nudges it.”
“Just so we understand each other. No rough stuff. Promise?”
I took a deep breath. “Promise.”
“All right.” She sounded cheerier, if only a little. “At least you told me. That’s an improvement.”
“Yes,” I replied. “It is.”
Randy Ryan’s apartment building was in Bloomfield Township, well north of the city, off Telegraph and Long Lake. It was a long low single story brick structure, capped with a massive layer of icy snow. The eaves were fringed with long, lethal-looking icicles stabbing downward. For Bloomfield, the place seemed low-rent and highly transient. Might as well have put “Divorced Dads Welcome” on their sign out front.
The parking lot sported a white ’Vette and a blue Crown Vic but no large black Ford Expedition with white fuzzy dice dangling from the mirror. I wedged my Mustang in a parking spot between the Vic and a mountainous pile of plowed snow.
Huddled in my peacoat, fists clenched in pockets for warmth, I crunched across the hard-packed white stuff toward the door of Apartment 3. Already I knew what I’d find. Second-hand mismatched furniture. Worn appliances. Neutral colors on the walls, the trim, in the carpet. TV and maybe a CD player. And few personal touches except — if Shyla’s description of their relationship was any indication — a picture or two of her arm-in-arm with her dad, smiling at the camera.
Five minutes later I left, my expectations fully confirmed. Only there was just one picture, of Shy-la alone, probably her high school graduation portrait a couple of years earlier. Her hair had been brown then and longer. She looked younger and more innocent, one to whom less had happened. Same blue eyes, though.
Of Ryan himself there was no recent sign. As Shyla had told me, the sinks were dry, the bed was neatly made, and what looked like several days’ worth of mail scattered the foyer carpet. To the front storm door were stuck three yellow tried-to-deliver sticky notes, from UPS or OOPS or somebody like that. The earliest one was dated December thirtieth.
I’d knocked on the other seven doors. The two that answered claimed no knowledge of Randy Ryan, past or present. I reboarded the Mustang and, heat on high, headed south on Telegraph. Normally four lanes each way, Telegraph was down to two narrow lanes now. They were walled with high white drifts that were already turning gray-black from tailpipe crud. The traffic ran slow and sullen, the lights especially lengthy at Quarton and Maple.
Worst of all was the sprawling interchange where Telegraph intertwined with the Reuther and the Lodge freeways. There the cars, the SUV’s, and the big rigs crept along in ten foot lurches. They noisily merged and disengaged like icy, metallic, salt-encrusted lovers, tailpipes sending up thick streams of inky exhaust like plumy cats’ tails into the frigid midmorning air. I just lived through it, smoking a cigar, playing Buddy Guy’s latest on the CD, tolerant, patient. Downright tranquil even. Surely in no hurry to meet Randy Ryan’s estranged wife.
“Oh, you,” she said, grimacing at me through the storm door. “Jennifer told me about you. Come on in, I guess.”
Jennifer? I wondered. Then, as I stepped inside, it clicked. “Thanks for your time,” I said. “I’m just wondering if—”
“I know why you’re here,” Virginia Ryan said, turning on me. Physically, she was quite different from Shyla, besides being older. Short and quite round, lipless and worn, she had short wavy dark hair and deep worry fines. Her eyes were as narrow and hard and colorless as shards of window glass. She wore dark stirrup pants and a light sleeveless shirt. Silver wedding rings twinkled as she gestured. This was, I sensed, a woman who liked to throw things, starting with words and moving on, as needed, to heftier items. “You’re trying to find that sorry, sleazebag, soon-to-be-ex-husband of mine.”
“No,” came another voice as Shyla entered the room. “He’s looking for Daddy. Hi, Ben,” she added, giving me a small wave.
“Hey, kid.”
The three of us stood, for a moment seemingly immobilized by tension. The living room of the small Redford Township ranch-house was a kaleidoscope of beige: dark, medium, and light. The furniture and decorations were rounded, puffy, and plush. The scent was potpourri and sweetish, with the hint of recently baked bread and remote tobacco smoke. “Can we sit down?” I asked.
“Well,” the mother said, “I’m going to. You do what you want.” She went to the sofa and sat on its edge, facing me, and hovered over the coffee table. On it was scattered piles of what looked like mail. “As to Randy, I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told Jennifer.” She ripped open an envelope, using considerably more force than needed. “He’s taken that money he stole and run off with that hillbilly slut girlfriend of his.”
Shyla, who stood in the archway to the dining room, scowled. “That’s so unfair. You don’t know anything about a girlfriend—”
“I have all the evidence I need,” her mother cut in flatly, unfolding an ad.
“And the money thing, too,” Shy-la charged on, “you don’t know that. You’re just connecting dots. It’s what you always do. You sit around and stew about things and—”
“For God’s sake!” Virginia snapped, slamming the ad down. “The police were here, Jennifer! Your father’s boss has filed a complaint!”