A Tap on the Window (16 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

“What
was that?” I said, looking up. It had sounded to me like someone moving around. Definitely not a squirrel running across the roof.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Sanders said.

“Then you’re deaf,” I said. “It was upstairs.”

“There’s nobody upstairs,” he said. “I’m alone.”

I studied him. “Is she here? Is Claire here now?”

He shook his head quickly again. “No.”

I raised my head to the ceiling. “Claire!” I shouted.

“Shut up!” Sanders said. “Keep your voice down!”

“Why do I have to keep my voice down if there’s no one here?”

I made my way to the stairs, shaking Sanders’ hand off my arm as he attempted to stop me.

“Get out,” he said. “You’ve got no right to search my house!”

I glanced back at him. “Maybe you should call the cops.”

He stammered something unintelligible as I ascended the stairs. I was nearly halfway up when he charged after me. I felt arms locking around my knees, and I toppled forward. I reached out to brace my fall, but my right elbow connected with one of the hardwood steps, sending a charge up my arm.

“Shit!” I said.

“You son of a bitch!” Sanders said, grappling with my lower legs.

I managed to slip one free, then placed the bottom of my left shoe against his bare right shoulder and pushed. He flew back down the stairs and landed on his ass, the sash of his robe coming undone, exposing him. Nothing looks much more foolish, or more vulnerable, than a man with his junk hanging out for the world to see.

He scrambled to his feet, pulled the robe around himself, and retied the sash. I was half sitting, half standing on the steps, giving my elbow a gentle rub.

“We can make this easy or we can make this hard,” I told him.

“Please,” he said, in a voice that bordered on whimpering. “Just get out. What does any of this have to do with you, really? Can’t you just go?”

“Stay there,” I said, and climbed the rest of the flight. “Claire,” I called again, but not shouting this time. I didn’t want to sound threatening. “It’s Mr. Weaver, Scott’s dad. We met last night.”

At the top of the stairs I took a second to orient myself as Sanders, now halfway up the steps behind me, said, “I told you, she’s not here.”

I ignored him. There was a bathroom immediately to my right, and just beyond it a door to what looked like the largest of the three other rooms up here. This, I guessed, was Sanders’ room. A queen-sized bed, the covers thrown back. He’d clearly been under them when I’d arrived and had thrown on the robe to greet me at the door.

To the left, what had probably been a bedroom but was currently an office. A desk, bookshelves, a desktop iMac.

And straight ahead of me, the door closed, was Claire’s room. I didn’t need to be Poirot to figure that out. Stuck to the door was a miniature plastic license plate, the kind you can buy at novelty and souvenir shops, that bore the girl’s name.

“Claire?” I said hesitantly before pushing the door open and running my hand along the wall for the light switch. I flicked it on. The first, most obvious thing I noticed was that the bed was empty, and made, although it was littered with about a dozen magazines.

“I told you,” Sanders said behind me.

I stepped into the room.

There were several stuffed animals, a few dogs and two furry bunnies—a pink one and a blue one—that all looked worn with age, adorning the pillow. She’d probably had them since she was a child. The magazines were not what I might have expected. While there was one issue of
Vogue
, most were copies of the
New Yorker, the Economist, Harper’s
, and the
Walrus
, a Canadian magazine of news and commentary. On the bedside table were an iPad and the Steve Jobs biography that had come out a couple of years ago.

I picked up the iPad and pressed the
button to see what came up. An array of icons, most of them news sites.

“You’ve got no right to look—”

I whipped my head around and snapped, “Enough.”

I tapped on the stamp icon and brought up Claire’s e-mails. I gave recent messages in the in-box, and those that had been sent, a ten-second scan. The thing was, my generation felt so advanced, communicating through e-mails, but most kids texted, having abandoned e-mail long ago. No message jumped out at me.

I looked up, caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. When I was young, we tucked the edges of snapshots under mirror frames, but there were none displayed here. These days, hardly anyone had a picture that was on a piece of paper. Photos were shared online, posted, e-mailed, flicked across smartphone screens. Technology allowed us to share our photos with more people now than ever before, but where would these captured moments in time be in twenty years? On some outdated piece of hardware at the bottom of a landfill site? What happened to memories you couldn’t hold between your thumb and forefinger?

These thoughts running through my head prompted me to tap on the iPad’s photo icon. Up popped the kinds of shots teenagers most often took of each other. Laughing, vamping, sticking out their tongues, standing around at parties, drinks in hand.

“Those pictures are private,” Sanders said.

He was wearing me out. “Like I said, call the cops.”

There were several shots of Claire and Hanna together. Hanna kissing Claire on the cheek. Claire grabbing Hanna’s nose. The two of them in prom dresses, hands on hips.

But there were shots of Claire with boys, too. Some that, by their placement farther down the screen, were probably taken longer ago, and featured an older-looking, round-faced kid. Young man, actually.

I turned the iPad toward Sanders. “Is that Roman Ravelson?”

“Honestly, would you please get—”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“And what about this boy?” In the more recent pictures, Claire was snuggling, kissing, and laughing with a young, clean-shaven black man with closely cropped hair. He stood a good foot taller than Claire.

“Dennis.”

“Dennis who?”

“Dennis Mullavey. Someone she used to go out with.”

“From Griffon?”

“No, I don’t know where from. He had a summer job here. He went back home, wherever that is.”

“Was it serious?”

Sanders shook his head in exasperation. “I don’t know. It was a summer romance. You remember those? They’re all the more intense because the time seems so limited. This is a—this is a total invasion of my daughter’s privacy.”

I set the iPad down and surveyed the top of the desk. It was cluttered with what I would have expected. Some makeup, bottles of nail polish, schoolbooks. I rounded the bed to see whether anything was tucked between it and the wall—I was thinking someone could have been hiding there, but no one was—then went to the closet door and opened it.

“For God’s sake,” Sanders said.

I was greeted with a kind of congealed mass of clothing. I doubted it was possible to stuff one more thing in there. I turned, looked at Sanders standing in the doorway, trying to look imposing.

“You should go,” he said.

He moved aside to let me leave the room, but instead of heading back down the stairs, I walked into his office. Nothing much to look at here. The closet was already open, jammed with cardboard filing boxes.

I crossed the hallway and returned to Sanders’ bedroom. There was something in the air, a scent I recognized. I had a feeling I’d smelled something similar not all that long ago.

“I’m not going to tolerate this intrusion any longer,” he said, but he didn’t have an ounce of authority left in his voice.

“How long has it been since you and your wife split up?” I was looking at the mattress as I walked around it.

“What does that have to do with—”

“Hang on.”

When I got to the far side of the bed to see whether anyone was hiding, I noticed there was an en suite bathroom off the bedroom.

Sanders caught me looking at it, and his body tensed.

I moved to the doorway. A sink, a toilet, and a tub. The shower curtain was drawn across the bathtub. The fabric was too heavy to show whether there was anyone hiding behind it, but you get a sense about these things.

“Claire?” I said.

No answer.

I said, “I’m going to count to five and then I’m going to pull back the curtain. One. Two. Three. F—”

“Okay!” Bert Sanders said in defeat. “Okay.” He spoke beyond me. “You might as well come out.”

From behind the curtain, a woman said, “I’m naked.”

For a second there, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I’d found Claire. But the feeling drifted away pretty quickly at the thought of Sanders out here, naked under his robe, and Claire in there, without a stitch on.

What the hell was going on?

“Hang on,” Sanders said, and ran to the closet, where he grabbed a second robe. I looked discreetly away as he went into the bathroom. I heard curtain rungs sliding back on the rod.

“Here you go,” Sanders said. “Just slip that on . . .”

“I tried to be quiet,” she said.

“I know, I know.”

He preceded her out. I figured it was now safe to turn around and look at Claire for the first time since I’d seen her run into Iggy’s the night before.

She didn’t look like the Claire I remembered at all. That’s because she wasn’t Claire.

It was Annette Ravelson, wife of Kent—the couple who owned the furniture store where my son had jumped to his death.

TWENTY-NINE

“Annette,”
I said as she tightened the sash on the robe.

“Cal,” she said, not able to meet my eye.

“You know each other?” Sanders asked.

“Of course I know Cal,” she said, then found the strength to look at me and asked, “You thought I was Claire? You were shouting her name all the way up the stairs.”

“I thought she might be here,” I said.

“Well, I guess it makes more sense that she might have been here than me,” Annette said.

“I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting to find you here, Annette. It’s late. Won’t Kent be creeped out, not finding you at home?”

“I told you, he’s out of town,” Annette said. “On a buying trip. It’s like a furniture wholesalers’ convention. He picks what lines he wants us to sell.” She stuck out her lower lip and managed to blow a lock of hair out of her eyes. She glanced at Bert, then back to me, and said, “I know this kind of looks bad.”

I said nothing, but peeked into the bathroom. Thrown into the dry tub were her clothes, shoes, and a handbag. She’d evidently hurriedly collected, from the bedroom, all evidence of her presence. Her purse landing in the tub was probably the noise I’d heard, and that scent I’d picked up earlier was the perfume she’d been wearing when I’d run into her earlier, before going into the town hall.

Annette said, “Why are you looking for Claire? Bert, is Claire in some kind of trouble?”

Sanders had sat down on the edge of the bed and was rubbing his shoulder where I’d given him a shove down the stairs with my foot. “I don’t know,” he said defeatedly. “I’m not sure I have any idea what’s going on anymore.”

“Annette, vouch for me,” I said. “I’m trying to help Bert here, but he doesn’t trust me.”

“Help him with what?”

“I think Claire
is
in trouble, but Bert either doesn’t think so or doesn’t want to admit it to me. But there’s more reason now to be concerned.”

“Why?” Annette asked. “What?”

Sanders lifted his head. “The Rodomskis’ kid is dead.”

Annette’s eyes widened. “What?”

“She was murdered.” He pointed a feeble finger at me. “You tell her.”

“Hanna Rodomski,” I said.

“I know who she is,” she said, aghast. “I know her parents. My God, this is terrible. They must be devastated.”

I imagined they were, but I hadn’t seen them since discovering their daughter’s body. I felt a pang of guilt, as though I should be at the Rodomskis’ house and not here, but I believed every minute counted now where finding Claire was concerned.

“Does Claire know?” Annette asked. “Bert, does she know what’s happened to Hanna?”

Sanders looked at me. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible, the way kids are all connected these days. Do regular people know yet? Has it been on the news?”

“I don’t think so. But it’s only a matter of time. Like you say, if Claire has access on her phone or if she’s near a computer, this kind of thing will spread like wildfire on social media before it hits the news.” I hesitated. “She should hear it from you.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right,” Sanders said, and turned to look at the phone on the bedside table.

Pick up the goddamn phone and call her
, I thought. But it looked like he was heading in that direction.

“She probably has her cell phone turned off,” he said.

“Why would that be?” I asked.

“They can track you, right? If your cell phone is on.”

“What are you talking about, Bert?” Annette asked. “Who’d be tracking—oh God, you’re not serious. You really think he’d do that?”

“Who?” I asked. “Who’d do what?”

Annette gave me a critical look. “Your brother-in-law, that’s who.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, do you have any idea how much trouble I had to go to, to sneak in here tonight?” she asked. “Had to park a block over that way.” She pointed toward the back of the house. “Had to sneak between houses, acting like Catwoman. Could have used some night-vision goggles. Ripped my nylons on some prickly bushes. It’s not like Bert can go anywhere to meet
me.
They’re watching him all the time, his comings and goings. But I can sneak in through the back way and no one spots me.”

“You’re worried the chief is going to find out you two are having an affair?”

“It’s not that,” Sanders said, his hand resting on the receiver. “Perry’s trying to put the fear of God into me.”

“Bert, yes, Perry’s being a total asshole,” Annette said, “but why would he be tracking your daughter’s whereabouts? I mean, she’s on a school trip to New York. Why would he care about that? And if she doesn’t have her cell on, then get in touch with the teacher or call the hotel where she’s—”

“That’s not where she is,” Sanders said. “She’s not on a school trip to New York. That’s just what I told you.”

Annette Ravelson blinked. I could see she was hurt. Always disappointing when the man you’re cheating on your husband with isn’t honest with you.

“Don’t be upset,” he said to her. “You know I’m living in a fishbowl these days. Everything’s on a need-to-know basis.”

Exasperation overwhelmed him as he said to me, “You heard what my neighbor said. You never know when there’s gonna be a cop car watching this house. It’s all part of Perry’s intimidation campaign to get me to shut up, to let this whole thing about how he runs his department just go. He’s watching me, and he’s got his jackbooted thugs watching me, and up until a couple of days ago, Claire, too. If Perry can walk all over the constitutional rights of everyone else who dares venture inside the town limits, why not the mayor’s? Why not my daughter’s?”

“Claire was feeling the heat?” I asked.

“How could she not?” Sanders said. “She said she couldn’t stand it, the cops watching me like that. She was sick of getting caught up in my battle with them, and who the hell could blame her? She wouldn’t go into specifics, but one night outside Patchett’s a cop stopped her, and another time, more recently, same officer, I think, took her purse from her, supposedly to search for drugs, which there were absolutely none of, and we had to go down to the station to pick it up the next day. Can you blame her for wanting to get the hell out of this town? She figured out a way to do it without the cops knowing where she went.”

“You knew she was doing this thing with Hanna.”

“I didn’t know exactly
what
she was doing, but she told me she had something all worked out.”

“She must have told you where she was going.”

Sanders’ hung his head in a gesture of admission. “To Toronto. To stay with her mother, my ex-wife. Caroline. Caroline Karnofsky now.”

“Caroline picked her up?”

Another nod. “Claire set it all up with her mother. Claire said if there were any problems, she or her mother would call. I didn’t hear anything, so everything must have gone off just fine.”

I pointed to the phone and mimed a dialing motion with my fingers. “You need to let her know.”

Sanders moved to pick up the receiver, then hesitated.

“This line,” he said. “It might not be safe.”

“Seriously?” I said. “You think the chief has your line tapped?”

“It’s crossed my mind. Sometimes I think I hear clicks. You know what they say. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean—”

I waved my hand. “I know. But, Jesus, he wouldn’t . . .” But I knew that over the years Perry had done surveillance work. And he’d have people in his department who’d know how to do that sort of thing.

“If you really believe that,” I said, “for all we know, the whole house is bugged. Someone could be listening to what we’re saying right now.”

Annette’s look of horror was immediate. “What? You mean someone could have heard what—someone could have been listening to us in this room, like, just a little while ago?”

She was no doubt replaying in her head the things she’d said in the throes of passion. Sanders appeared to be doing the same.

“If someone recorded that . . .” She didn’t bother to finish. I could imagine what she was thinking. If someone had all this on tape—okay, more likely a digital recording—and played it for her husband, well, that couldn’t be good.

“I don’t suppose you’d want Kent hearing that,” I said.

Annette didn’t like it when I said her husband’s name. “Don’t even joke about such a thing,” she said.

I had bigger things to worry about than Annette Ravelson’s infidelities becoming public. I entered the bathroom and called out, “Annette, come get your clothes.”

She came in, scooped everything out of the tub, and grabbed her purse, too. “I’ll go get dressed in Claire’s room.”

I pulled the curtain back across the tub, then turned the cold tap on full blast. I yanked the knob that turned the shower on. Streams of water hit the plastic curtain, creating a low-level background noise like rain on a tin roof. I waved Sanders to come in, and handed him my cell phone.

“If your phone, or this place, is bugged, this should keep anyone from hearing.”

Sanders entered a number into my cell and put it to his ear.

“It’s ringing,” he said. Then, “Caroline, it’s me . . . I know, I know this isn’t my number. I’m using someone else’s phone.”

I leaned in, my head nearly touching Sanders’, so I could hear both sides of the conversation.

“Is everything okay?” Caroline asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I just—”

“Where are you? What’s that noise? Are you standing in the rain?”

“I’m in the— Don’t worry about that. Caroline, I need to talk to Claire. Is she there? Can you put her on? I’ve got some bad news for her.”

“Claire’s not here. Why would Claire be here?”

“It’s okay, it’s safe to talk,” Sanders said. “There’s no way they could be listening in on this phone.”

“Bert, Claire isn’t here.”

“When will she be back?”

“Bert, you’re not hearing me. She’s not staying with me. She’s not supposed to be coming to see me for another couple of weeks.”

Sanders’ voice went up. “But—but you picked her up last night. Here. In Griffon.”

“Bert, I did no such thing. Where’s Claire?”

Panic was creeping into both their voices.

Sanders said, “Claire set it up. She said you were picking her up. Last night. At Iggy’s. She
has
to be with you.”

“Listen to me, Bert,” Caroline said, sounding nearly breathless. “Claire is not here. Claire hasn’t been here in weeks. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”