Orchids and Stone (17 page)

CHAPTER 16

Huddled in her truck in the Weather Service parking lot, Daphne looked at Lake Washington through tears, her fingers hooked on the steering wheel. She sagged, dropping her face into the cradle of her elbows, and shook in silence. It was an amateur’s bawling, a noncrier’s cry. But her body convulsed on and on until the sobs wracking her became wet and noisy. She wanted to turn them off, turn off the world and its confusion.

Metal groaned and cool air rushed into the truck. A man had opened her door, put his hands on her body. She gasped in fleeting terror.

“Hey. Hey?” Vic stroked her hair. “What is it? Did you see that detective? Did he—”

He stopped as she waved him off. His quick compassion and peppered questions agitated her, but she recovered enough to say, “I had a fight with Thea.”

He massaged her biceps. “Well, I’m assuming you won. Is she in the hospital? Is she alive?”

“Vic . . .”

His smile evaporated. “Call her. Apologize. Now, not later. Patch it up. You two have been friends for a long time. Keep it that way.”

Daphne banged her forehead on the steering wheel, then looked up at him with a grim smile that fell as soon as she saw his considered expression.

His face torqued as he twisted his lips to one side and squinted. “It’s not the only thing bothering you. I know this weekend marks a couple of lousy anniversaries. I know you’re upset about that little old lady. And if I were in your shoes, I might have a good cry myself.” He checked his watch. “We have time before I go get the kids. Let’s get a bite to eat somewhere.”

“But we have to get your car out of impound, figure out how much work it needs, where to take it. And I still have to get my wallet thing sorted out. I went to DMV and got a new license earlier. I canceled my credit cards, but that will make it harder to deal with the cell phone thing. I have to shut off the old one, get a new one. If we need to rent a car—”

“Can we handle one thing at a time, please?” he asked.

“Sure. Sure.” Daphne sniffed. “I’m trying to decide where to start.”

“Start with what’s bothering you the most. What is it? Your family? Us? This fight you had with Thea? Do you want to tell me about it? What do you want to do? You’re pretty agitated of late, Daph, and it’s not like you.”

Daphne couldn’t make herself work through it, just one thing. And when she told Vic details about her fight with Thea, he shook his head and said, “I think I’m with Thea on this one.”

“What? No! No, you’re with me. You have to be. Hey, you asked me to marry you.”

“You . . . didn’t say yes.”

She opened her mouth and shut it. Then she closed her eyes, opening them when tears would have leaked out if she didn’t make way.

Vic massaged her shoulder while he waited for a response. Finally, he asked, “Did you see that retired detective?”

Daphne nodded and sniffed. “Now I want to find Suzanne’s best friend. She was the one who first reported Suzanne missing.”

He rubbed his jaw. “So, it went okay with the detective? It was fine?”

She sprung her fingers from the steering wheel in annoyance. “Yes, it was fine. It was great. My dad killed himself because he lost hope when the detective retired ten years ago. It was fantastic.”

Bawling rocked her shoulders for a long time. Vic said nothing, one palm on her head, the other arm around her body, soft kisses into her hair. He knelt on the pavement, leaning into the truck while he caressed her.

His position couldn’t be comfortable, she realized, working harder to quit crying.

When she could talk, Daphne made her voice slow and clear. “The retired detective mentioned her, this girl, Lindsay. So I want to find her.”

“Do you recall her last name?”

“No.”

“Do you remember where her family lived? Would your mother perhaps be in touch with her? You’ve said your mom saved Suzanne’s old stuff. Do you think the girl’s old contact information might be there? A childhood phone number or address might still be her parents’ place. Or hers, even.” He gave a self-deprecating grin. “Some people still live in the house where they grew up.”

“If she’s moved—and she probably has—then her old information won’t put me in touch with her. She may have gotten married, changed her last name, but I don’t even remember what her last name was back then. I don’t know where to begin.”

“Alumnus records,” Vic said. “Did Lindsay graduate?”

“I don’t know. Probably. I didn’t.”

He smiled and rubbed her neck. “Well, you can if you want to. Entirely up to you. Always was. But since you’re not an alumna . . .”

“And Thea’s the only graduate I know from Western Washington U.”

“Oh, I see,” Vic said, his gaze slung sideways as always when he was lost in thought. “Maybe the University office won’t be obstinate. They might give you contact info on her right over the phone even though you aren’t an alumna.”

“Will you help me?”

He left her side and paced around the front of her truck, tapping the hood with a finger, and asking as he circled, “Is all this, in truth, about Suzanne?”

She glared at him through the windshield, then the passenger’s window, glad for the excuse to raise her voice. “Neither, Vic. One’s got nothing to do with the other.”

He opened the truck’s passenger’s side and sank to the bench seat. “I don’t believe that,” he said, shutting the door too hard.

The impound yard, within a vast, slatted, chain-link compound, appeared to be part compressed parking lot, part wrecking yard. Beyond the small booth at the entry driveway, flatbeds and standard-hooking tow trucks rumbled at the ready or jockeyed about, lowering impounded vehicles into position. Vic stared like a little boy fascinated with big trucks.

“I’d no idea what it was like here,” he marveled, as they identified themselves to a man in a stained undershirt at the security booth. They shouted to be heard over the lot supervisor’s crackling radio and an idling diesel tow truck behind him.

“And you have no idea what it was like being in Gitmo,” she said, pulling her pickup over to park in the dust where the lot boss sent them.

Vic blinked. “No, I don’t. Tell me, what was it like, your hour in jail?”

Instead of answering, she pointed down a row of impounded cars to a sad new version of Vic’s old Honda. Crumpled fenders, missing bits of plastic in the grille and lights, with damage to the rear and right quarter panel as well. His vehicle looked forlorn amid the other impounds, some nice, some nasty. All pushed into tight rows as though they’d lost their eligibility to hold premium space in Normal Vehicle World, where cars are allotted an eight-foot-wide lane each.

Peering into the Honda’s backseat, surprise and relief flushed through with the sight of her coil nailer and loaded tool belt on the seat. She grabbed her tools and stowed them under her truck canopy.

“It might be drivable once the parts hanging onto the front tire are pushed away.” She tried not to look at Vic’s face, warned herself not to, and then looked.

His jaw worked, the muscles in the side of his face bopping. Standing at the Honda’s front bumper, Vic pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, as though he found it a toss-up between eyeing the mess or squinting to examine the wreck with poor vision.

“Who’s the only person you know who has gloves in her glove box?” Daphne said. But Vic wouldn’t play, his usual easy countenance lost.

She went back to her truck and returned, pulling on leather work gloves, then yanking detritus off the Honda’s left front wheel. Parts of the plastic broke but she couldn’t manually clear away the stiff, wrenched fender. Fetching back to her truck, Daphne pulled her shingler’s hammer from her tool belt.

While Vic stood in silence, Daphne hacked the remaining obstructive plastic off the Honda with her hammer’s adze. “There.” She opened her truck’s topper and threw the broken bits of car body into the bed.

Vic stood, gloomy, staring at his car. It had been his father’s. He wasn’t sentimental about possessions, but he took care of things, made them last. And his budget had been tight ever since Cassandra threw him out of their marriage and he’d moved back home. Soon after, his father had to be placed in the care facility, straining Vic’s finances to the near-breaking point.

Daphne felt guilty in her relative wealth. Flipping the heavy hammer in a lazy arc, she caught it when the blue cushioned handle spun opposite the forged head. It was a good hammer, a great one. She’d had it close to a decade. The toothe
d, gripping face was milled, forming one solid piece within the steel handle. A thumbscrew let her slide a thin cutting blade along the adze for fine work, and the adze could hatchet away serious material. The handle was coated in a special, shock-absorbing synthetic grip. The label advised users to always wear safety goggles when using a shingler’s hammer
but Daphne never heeded the warning.

“And the window’s gone,” Vic said.

“Yeah.” Daphne looked away. On the next row, a tow truck driver angled a red convertible into an impound slot beside a navy Lincoln Town Car.

The
navy Lincoln Town Car? She stared across the row of disparate vehicles.

Could that be the Lincoln Town Car she’d chased? Lowering her hammer, Daphne fit herself sideways past the Honda and the car behind it, then down the aisle, ignoring the tow truck driver’s wave for her to not stand so close while he worked the convertible into a space.

“Hey, you need to move away.” The shout came from behind her. The lot boss had left his security booth to flag Daphne down.

She took one giant step back, appreciating the improved view of the big navy blue sedan as the tow truck driver stepped out, glared at her, and worked handles on his truck bed to lower the convertible’s front end.

The Lincoln Town Car had no license plate, but Daphne wondered if it had carried one starting with a
Y
. She pictured the man, Guff, driving the Lincoln. Driving too fast. She pictured the woman in the back, one hand holding Minerva Watts, the other gripping Daphne’s Carhartt jacket.

The tow truck driver released his hook from the convertible’s undercarriage and pushed a lever on his truck, winding his cable back up. Giving Daphne a snarling glance, he handed papers to the lot boss.

“Hot,” said the driver, pointing to the convertible.

The man running the impound yard nodded, looking at the paperwork. “Yeah, dude, heard that. Just like the one it’s next to.”

Daphne looked from one man to the other. “That car’s stolen?”

“You like that red rocket?” the tow truck driver asked. “It’d look good on you.”

She shook her head. “The other one.”

“The Town Car?” the lot boss asked. Surprise showed in his voice over which car attracted her interest.

“It doesn’t have license plates,” Daphne said.

The lot boss nodded. “It’s stolen from out of state. The cop took the plates when he had it hooked yesterday. Plates were stolen, too.”

“Wait,” Daphne said, looking from one man to the other. The tow driver rolled his eyes and climbed into his tow truck. “That car’s stolen and it had stolen license plates on it? I might know that car.”

The lot boss raised an eyebrow and grinned. “You been in it? Been driving it? Bet that cop would like to talk to you.”

“What cop?” she asked.

“The one who called to impound that Lincoln from The Ave yesterday.”

The Ave, in the University District. Her dread of the traffic when she chased the Lincoln out of Minerva Watts’s neighborhood toward the U District returned with a fresh tingle. When she beckoned for more, the man shrugged again, waving a hand as his explanation poured forth.

“The most interesting thing in the cop’s day was a stolen car. He was all proud for checking it out right. Abandoned car, parked along the curb too long. Plate matched the make, model, and color, but he ran the VIN and bingo, hot car out of California wearing a stolen Washington plate from a similar car.”

“I wasn’t driving it, I followed it. If it’s the same one anyway,” Daphne said, feeling the lot boss’s gaze on her. “Yesterday. The guy driving it stole my jacket. Was there a brown canvas jacket inside? It had my phone and wallet in the pockets.”

The lot man shook his head.

“Can I look?” Daphne sidled over to the car to peek into the windows. A few paper napkins lay crumpled on the back seat. She walked all the way around the car. Was it the same one? She could picture the couple seated inside, Minerva Watts beside the woman in the back seat. But how could she know it was the same car? She turned to the lot boss. “Did you look in the trunk?”

He shook his head. “No keys. Guy’s bringing ’em.”

She brightened. “Now? The owner’s coming here?”

“Nah,” he said. “This poor dude in the Midwest somewhere. He gave me a sad story about his mother in California dying and he finds out she signed over all her savings, her pension fund, her house, everything, to some stupid charity right before she died. The car’s the only thing he’ll get out of her estate and only because he was already on the title as an
and
.”

Daphne squinted at him. “What?”