“Why do you think that is?”
“She feels threatened. For so long it’s just been me and her. We were this tiny contained unit, you know? But me finding out about half siblings, it’s like, what’s that phrase? They’re going to breach the ramparts?”
“Yeah.”
“What the fuck is a rampart?”
“It’s like a castle wall.”
She nodded, eyes on the road ahead. “Okay, point the phone at yourself. It’s twenty questions time.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna ask you some shit, see if we really have stuff in common.”
“Okay,” he said, holding up the phone and aiming it at himself.
“Favorite movie?”
Miles thought for a moment. “I have a couple. The Godfather, the second one. Rear Window.”
“Rear what?”
“Rear Window. A Hitchcock classic.”
“The fat bald guy?”
“Yeah. The fat bald guy. You?”
“Lady Bird,” she said.
“I never got to that one.”
“Okay, so that was a miss. Favorite ice cream?”
“Butter pecan,” he said, and instantly saw the disappointment on her face.
“Rocky road,” she said.
“They both have nuts in them,” Miles said, but Chloe did not look encouraged.
“Favorite TV show,” she said. “Of all time.”
“The Wire?”
“Oh, come on, that’s everybody’s go-to answer. Be a little original.”
Miles had to think again. “I guess maybe Six Feet Under, about the family that ran the funeral home. Although, given the theme, I might not enjoy it as much today. You?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I won’t,” he said, now aiming the phone at her.
“Mister Rogers. He died around the time I was born and so they weren’t making any new shows. But my mom found tons of episodes at a flea market that someone recorded on videocassette. Remember VCRs?”
“I do.”
“So I had about fifty episodes that, when I was little, I’d watch over and over again.” She bit her lower lip for a second. “I used to imagine he was my dad.” She glanced over at Miles. “I bet you don’t even own a cardigan.”
“I don’t.”
“Okay, gonna give this one last try. Favorite fast food.”
“Pizza.”
“God damn it,” Chloe said, banging her fist on the steering wheel. “Tacos.” She shook her head and looked at him sorrowfully. “No way you’re my dad.”
“I guess there’s no point even doing a DNA test,” he said. “Can I put the phone down now?”
“Hell no. Keep shooting. Tell me your story.”
He told her about growing up in Stamford. His father, an insurance salesman, was an alcoholic. His mother dealt with her husband’s addiction by taking pills. Despite their addictions, they managed to get through each and every day, doing their best to fool the world into thinking they were a happy couple when in fact they were barely holding it together. For Miles and his older brother, Gilbert, home life was akin to walking on eggshells. His father was consistently abusive emotionally and, occasionally, physically. When Gilbert left to go to college, Miles knew he couldn’t survive in that house if no one was there to have his back, so he left, too. Not officially. But he bounced around from one friend’s house to another until he finished high school, and then he was gone for good.
“Are your parents still alive?”
“No. After my brother and I left the nest, they were in a car accident.”
“Do you miss them?”
“Yes,” he said.
That surprised her. Her eyebrows shot up for a second. “Really?”
“They’re my mom and dad,” he said.
“You and your brother — shit, I just realized I have an uncle — are you close?”
Miles considered the question. “We have been. He works for me. But I think this would be the wrong week to ask him if he feels close to me. My arm’s getting tired holding this phone.”
“Suck it up. What’s the deal with your brother? Why’s he pissed with you?”
Was he ready to get into it? About how he planned to disperse his estate? He’d made it clear to Chloe he was well fixed, but if it had occurred to her some money might be coming her way, she gave no indication.
“Long story,” he said, finally, putting down the phone and turning off the video function.
They made a stop at a fast-food burger place — they hadn’t passed any place advertising pizza or tacos — and Miles invited Charise to join them.
Charise, a large woman who tipped the scales at 225, said she was trying to eat more healthily, but one whiff of all that grease weakened her resolve.
While the three of them ate, Chloe, her mouth full of fries, said to Charise, “This is my first meal in my entire life with my dad.”
Charise’s eyebrows rose a notch. “Oh?”
“This doesn’t look like the kind of place that has champagne,” Chloe said, grinning.
“I don’t think so,” Miles said. “Maybe later.”
Charise looked across the table at Miles, her expression an unspoken question. Miles was about to offer a short explanation, but Chloe cut him off.
“Save it for later. No one wants to hear the word ‘sperm’ while they’re eating.”
They were back on the road in twenty minutes. Bringing Charise up to speed would have to wait, given that she was in the trailing car. About an hour after they’d left the burger place, Chloe pointed ahead and said, “This is it, up here. Just past the fire station.”
She slowed the Pacer, hit the blinker, and turned off the main road onto a gravel driveway. She made a turn around a copse of trees, and there was the trailer. Charise stayed on the main road, pulling over onto the gravel shoulder to wait.
“So this is it,” Miles said, scanning the trailer from one end to the other.
“I don’t see his car,” Chloe said. “Let me try him again.”
She got out her phone, tapped the screen, put it to her ear. She waited for several seconds before it went to voice mail.
“Hey, Todd,” she said. “We’re at your place. Where are you? Wherever it is, you need to get your ass back here ASAP. I brought someone you need to meet.”
She ended the call, tucked the phone back into the front pocket of her jeans.
“I heard it inside,” Miles said.
“Heard what?”
“When you called him, I heard a phone ring inside the trailer.”
Twenty-Three
Worcester, MA
The plan had been, once Kendra Collins and Rhys Mills got to the funeral home about an hour’s drive from Springfield — one of several across the country with whom they had a standing arrangement for body disposal — they would search Todd Cox’s body for a second cell phone before they put him on the conveyor belt and sent him on his final journey, right into the crematorium. They’d realized there had to be a second phone after recalling the Verizon bill they’d seen on the trailer’s kitchen table. They were hoping to find it in Todd’s pocket.
They hauled the body bag up onto a table, unzipped it, and Kendra, pulling on some latex gloves and holding her breath, dug down into the front pockets of the dead man’s jeans, but came up empty.
“Maybe it’s in one of his back pockets,” Rhys suggested, turning away, trying not to gag.