First Drop (6 page)

“And where exactly did you get that idea?” I said, hearing the soft note of anger in my own voice.

Trey swallowed, hung his head, “I overheard Mr Whitmarsh talking to Dad this morning,” he mumbled.

I was glad he wasn’t looking at my face as he spoke.
Well
, that
explained a lot. And there was I thinking Sean and I had been so careful . . .

“Well, look on the bright side,” I said with a touch of bite, opening my car door and climbing out into instant heat. I ducked back and met his eyes. “I may just be ‘somebody’s girlfriend’ as you put it, but I’ve managed to keep
you
alive ‘til now.”

***

As we walked into the diner one of the waitresses grabbed two wipe-clean menus from the rack and hustled towards us. She was middle-aged and the kind of slim you get from constant hard work rather than fashionable exercise. But even her jaded gaze fluttered slightly at our appearance.

“Hi there, how ya doing?” she greeted us, her mouth on automatic pilot as though bloodstained people walked in off the street all the time. Only her eyes betrayed the hint of nervousness. “Just two? Smoking or non?”

“Non,” I said.

She led us to a corner booth. I sat with my back to the window, facing the door. Trey slid in opposite.

“Can I get you guys anything to drink?” the waitress asked, plonking the menus on the scuffed laminate in front of us. Her badge said her name was Joyce and she was happy to help.

Despite his distaste at the idea of food, now we were sitting down Trey ordered a Coke. I shook my head and asked the way to the ladies’ room instead. It was right at the back, Joyce told me, next to the kitchen.

On my way there I took a long but casual look at the other occupants of the booths, but nobody set the alarm bells ringing. Inside the washroom I got my first proper look at myself in the half-length mirror, and Joyce’s apprehension became all the more understandable. The blood might have lost some of its impact now it had dried to a dullish dark hue, but there seemed to be a hell of a lot of it. Some had even splashed up onto the underside of my chin.

I suppressed a shudder and ran hot water into the sink. There were no plugs so I had to wad toilet paper into the plug hole until I’d got half a basinful, then I scrubbed at my arms and face until the skin was pink, although I couldn’t do much about my shirt. I’d just have to wait and change when I got back to the house.

I left the washroom and moved out past the kitchen again. Ahead of me, at the counter, Joyce was talking in low tones with one of the cooks, glancing constantly in the direction of the restrooms. She broke off quickly when she saw me coming.

By the doorway was a staff notice board which seemed to be covered more in personal photographs than official paperwork. My eye landed on one of the snapshots, which was unmistakably of Joyce, kneeling on a lawn with a pair of German Shepherd dogs.

Inspiration was born of desperation.

I walked as casually as I was able back through the diner towards our booth, managing to snag the waitress between tables.

“Joyce,” I said, earnest, “I need to ask you a really big favour.”

She eyed me warily, her jaw working gum as a reflex action. “What is it, honey?”

“Well, I’m supposed to be looking after Trey over there,” I said, nodding in the direction of the kid’s back. “And well, this afternoon his dog got loose on the road and got himself run over.”

“Oh jeez, that’s terrible,” she said, her face animating for the first time as the relief flooded in. “Oh, the poor kid.”

“Yeah,” I said, waving a hand towards my shirt. “It wasn’t nice. We did everything we could, but . . .” I let my voice trail off, shaking my head, getting into my stride. “The thing is,” I went on, “I’ve got the dog in the back of the car and I really need to go and take him to the nearest vet’s where they can, you know, dispose of him, but I don’t want Trey to be any more upset today. You see, it happened right in front of him.”

I swear I saw a tear start to well up in Joyce’s eye and I felt a stir of guilt at playing on the woman’s emotions like this.

“No problem, honey, you leave the kid right here and I’ll take real good care of him for you.”

I dug in my pocket for some of the cash Keith Pelzner had given to me that morning and pulled out a fifty. “Would you get him whatever he wants to eat until I get back?” I asked. “I’ll try to be as quick as I can.”

She nodded and smiled, relaxed now as she followed me back to the table. I put my hand on Trey’s shoulder.

“OK,” I said carefully, “I’m going to go and take care of Rex now, so I want you to stay here with Joyce for a while.”

Trey opened his mouth to ask what the hell I was talking about. I surreptitiously dug my thumb into the front of his protruding collarbone hard enough to shut him up. He squirmed out from under my hand and glared at me with resentment.

Joyce watched this display of belligerence indulgently. “Don’t you worry,” she said to me. “He’ll be just fine.” Some waitressing sixth sense made her aware then that one of the other diners was approaching the counter, clutching his bill. “I’ll be right with you,” she said and hurried away.

“No arguments!” I warned Trey quietly when she was out of earshot. “Now, for God’s sake try to look upset about this mythical dog who’s just been run over, and stay put until I get back.”

I straightened up, was about to turn away when he stopped me.

“So what happens,” he said in an uncharacteristically small voice, “if you don’t come back?”

“Trey,” I said, passing him a grim smile, “I don’t think you could be that lucky, do you?”

It was only when I was safely in the Mercury and had pulled out onto the road that I allowed the real worry to surface. It welled up and washed over me like a blocked drain, only smelling twice as bad.

I reached for the mobile and re-dialled the numbers for the house, Whitmarsh, and Sean, but with no joy on any of them. I stuffed the phone back into my pocket, frustrated. Instinct told me that going to the house wasn’t a good idea, that my actions were being dictated to me, but what else could I do?

I knew this wasn’t a straightforward kidnap attempt on the boy, otherwise I would have been able to contact them by now. All the worst possibilities I could come up with flooded in, but whatever had happened, I told myself, it was better to know now.

I considered calling the cops and letting them check it out, but then I remembered Oakley man. I couldn’t identify him by name and I hadn’t been close enough to him when he’d come to the house to read his badge number. Supposing he was the one they sent to investigate? I could try explaining the whole scenario but I knew just who the police were likely to believe first. And it wasn’t me.

OK Fox, on your own again.

It took less than ten minutes before I was turning into the end of the Pelzners’ road and crawling down towards the house. The dead-end layout made it impossible to do a drive-by. I was going to have to go straight in and get it over with.

I drove slowly right to the end and swung the car in a circle, as though I was simply turning round. The house looked quiet, but then, all the houses along this road looked quiet. It was too upmarket an area to stand for untidy rowdiness on the front lawn.

The opener for the electric gate was attached to the Mercury’s sun visor, but I didn’t want to take it right into the driveway. Instead I pulled up by the kerb next door, leaving the car facing the main road. No other vehicles had followed me into the street and none were already parked there. Nevertheless, I’d already started to sweat before I even got out of the car and it had little to do with the heat.

I took the opener with me, walking quickly across the road and through the gap as soon as it was wide enough, then closing the gates behind me. I did a rapid circuit of the exterior of the house, checking for obvious signs of forced entry. There weren’t any.

I even peered in through a couple of the ground-floor windows. The furniture was all in its usual carefully co-ordinated positions. Juanita and the other maids kept the place immaculate, as though in readiness for a magazine photo shoot. If Keith Pelzner had been taken from here, he – and his bodyguards – had gone without a fight.

I went in via the door to the kitchen, which was the only one I had a key for. There was a keypad for the alarm next to it. A glance at the panel on my way in told me the system hadn’t been set.

I did a fast sweep of the ground floor rather than a thorough search but even so there was nothing to find. No disturbance. No breakages. No sign of hurry. It was like they’d all simply got up and walked out of the front door. And then someone had sent the cleaners in.

I carefully used the bottom of my shirt to touch the door handles. If the place had been wiped down I didn’t want mine to be the only prints they found.

Upstairs I ran through the bedrooms in the main part of the house but they were all empty. Nothing in the drawers or the wardrobes, no personal effects at all. Even Keith’s study had been stripped of its usual mess of paper printouts and notes. His computer was gone, too.

With my heart in my mouth, I walked along the corridor to the rooms they’d given to me and to Sean. I looked in my own first. My bag and all my clothes had been taken.

I’d put my passport in the top drawer of the dressing table. I almost didn’t have to check to know it wouldn’t be there but I couldn’t suppress the squirt of panic when I proved myself right, even so. The feeling of being trapped with no back door out of there was suffocating me.

I took a couple of deep breaths, acutely aware of the amount of time I’d been in the house already. The longer I was there, the greater the risk. Still I couldn’t put it off any longer. I moved from my room to Sean’s. They were next door to each other, back to back. His was a mirror image of mine.

I knew the layout pretty well, because I’d spent the previous night there.

***

I’d gone simply to talk to him. At least, that’s what I’d told myself to begin with. Not so much talk as argue, really. I was pissed off with the way the job was unfolding and he was the only one I could shout at about it.

Ten minutes after I’d heard him go in I was outside, banging on the door. At first I thought he was avoiding me. He’d seen at dinner how annoyed I was at Whitmarsh’s automatic assumption that my sole purpose in life was to look after the kid. It was only Sean’s warning glance and his murmured, “later,” that had stopped me shooting my mouth off there and then.

I knocked again, louder this time. I was about to give it a third go when the door opened and there was Sean, wearing nothing but a towel round his hips, water glistening across his naked upper body.

“Sorry,” he said, rubbing at the back of his dark hair with another towel. “I was in the shower.” He stepped back, opening the door wider. “Come on in.”

I swallowed, the action ungluing my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Look,” I said, my anger fleeing, “you’re busy. I can come back la—”

“Charlie,” he said, cutting me off in mid-waffle, pinning me with that deadly gaze. “Shut up and come in.”

I did as I was told almost meekly. He shut the door and turned to face me, a smile playing round his lips. I was trying not to look at the expanse of skin on view, but I couldn’t help it.

Even though he’d been out of the army for the best part of four years by that time, Sean was still fighting fit in the true sense of the word. Every lean inch of him was packed with the muscle of an athlete rather than a weight-lifter. He’d always been wide across the shoulders but he’d never used that as an excuse to bulk up.

My eyes strayed to the small scar just below the point of his left shoulder. The memory of how close I’d come to losing him hit me like a blow.

I realised Sean hadn’t moved but was just standing there without conceit watching me, watching him. I tore my eyes away, face heating, and sat down on the bed rather abruptly.

“So,” he said, “what’s on your mind?”

The flush, which had been starting to subside, flared painfully.

He laughed softly, then reached over to a chair and picked up a bundle of clothing. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll take myself out of your sight into the bathroom. You can yell at me from here.”

It was only when he was safely in the other room that my brain seemed inclined to resume normal service. “What the hell is going on, Sean?” I demanded, trying to pick up the thread of my earlier indignation. “Did you know I was going to be here as some kind of glorified nanny?”

“No.” His voice floated back to me. He’d left the door open just a slit and I could see him moving about behind it in a series of tantalising snatches. “I can’t start kicking up too much of a fuss about the way Whitmarsh is handling you, because as soon as he asks for a list of your previous jobs, we’re a bit snookered. It’s one of those difficult situations where nobody wants you without experience, but to
get
the experience . . .” I heard rather than saw him shrug. “You’ve no idea how much bullshitting you have to do to get started in this business.”