Hear No Evil Read online

  But I don’t press. Biting my lip, I leave my finger there. I should check messages at least. But do I need more stress at this point? I don’t have to call anyone back. Of course, then I’ll have to deal with the guilt. Whereas, if I don’t turn the phone on at all ... But I should find out who has called, who needs me. Shouldn’t I?

  Before I can push the button, a woman’s voice sounds near my elbow.

  “Excuse me. Are you Tayt?”

  Her voice is loud and I jump, my heart racing. I squirrel the phone away in my bag while simultaneously turning to her.

  The woman in front of me is model-beautiful, nearly six feet tall with long, smooth blonde hair that’s pulled back from her face.

  “I am, yes. You must be Sandra.” I stand, put out my hand. Her grip is tight and her handshake is strong. Wearing a puffy white ski jacket and black exercise tights, she looks ready to slalom to the register to place her order. She smiles and her teeth are very white against her tanned skin.

  “It looks like you’re in the middle of something. I’m early,” she laughs. “Did you need to finish what you’re doing before we meet?”

  I shake my head. “No, I’m all set.”

  “Did you place your order yet?”

  “Oh, ah, no. Not yet. I’ll go up with you.”

  Extracting my wallet from my bag, I practically jog behind Sandra to keep up. We place our orders at the shiny counter: hers for a raw Hawaiian flatbread “pizza” and mine for a Mango Tango smoothie.

  “That’s all?” she asks, eyebrows raised. “Oh, are you doing a cleanse?”

  I think of the meaty sandwich nearly as big as my head that I inhaled for lunch.

  “Um, no, I just had lunch.”

  Sandra gets distracted by the counterperson asking if she wants extra pineapple on her raw pizza and I turn to study the place. It’s modern and minimalist-looking, all shiny chrome bars with tall, glossy orange stools. The lighting is bright but flattering, no florescent bulbs in sight. There are gigantic framed posters on the walls of laughing, healthy-looking people enjoying nature. Each one is thin and athletic looking. I suck in my stomach, wishing now that I’d made it to the gym after all. Tonight. I’ll definitely go tonight.

  “All set,” Sandra says, balancing a turquoise tray on the flat of her palm.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. How much do I owe you?”

  She waves her other hand, making a pshaw sound and weaves between tables until we are back where we started. “Don’t worry about it. If you decide to take the job this can be your first payment.” She places the tray in the center of the table and smiles at me. “Totally kidding.”

  I smile back.

  We take our seats, me pressing myself carefully into the chair and trying to choose a position for my legs which is most flattering. The tiny table top doesn’t provide much coverage. Sandra draws her legs to the side, striking a pose that is both graceful and effortless.

  “So, do you live around here?” She asks, cutting slices of the strangest looking pizza I’ve ever seen.

  I nod my head.

  “Not far.”

  She nods, taking a bite of the concoction on her plate. I unwrap my paper straw and plunge it into the thick, orangey liquid in front of me. I expect a chalky, fibrous texture. Instead, the drink is as smooth as silk. Very tasty. I take another sip.

  “This is pretty good.”

  “First time here?” she asks, taking a bite of the pizza.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  She smiles, shakes her head. “Just a guess. My cousin owns the place, so I’m in here all the time. The food is really good; you’ve got to try this pizza sometime.” She pauses, wiping the corner of her mouth with a napkin that is covered in tiny daisies. “I’m happy to share. Would you like a bite of this one?”

  “Oh, uh, no, thanks. I’m good. It does look,” I search for a positive adjective. “Flavorful, though.”

  We sit in silence a couple of minutes, chewing and sipping respectively. Then I break it with a question. “So, you said when you contacted me that your boyfriend is missing. Is that right?”

  Sandra finishes chewing her bite, her eyes softening. She wipes her mouth again and nods.

  “Yeah. Mark has been gone since Saturday and the police don’t seem very concerned about finding him.”

  “Did you file a missing person’s report? Sorry if that sounds like a dumb question, but I want to make sure we’ve covered the bases.”

  She nods. “I did. But the cops all seemed disinterested. They gave me the whole ‘an adult has the right to leave town without notice’ spiel. But that’s not like Mark. He always tells me where he’s going and when he’ll be back.”

  I pull a notebook and pen from my bag and start taking notes. “When did you see him last?”

  “Saturday morning at the gym. I had the early shift that day and he came in around ten for a workout. It got busy before he left so we didn’t have much of a chance to talk. I called him later that afternoon to see if he wanted to get together, but he didn’t answer. I left a message and then tried again on Sunday. Three times actually on Sunday. Still no response.”

  I frowned. “And he didn’t mention anything about going out of town. No work commitment that might have suddenly come up?”

  Sandra shakes her head. “He works as a waiter at a local restaurant.”

  “Oh. Which restaurant is that?”

  “Chantal’s.”

  I make a note on my pad. “Have you spoken with his boss?”

  Her face looks surprised.

  “No, I didn’t think of that.”

  “I’ll start there. Did you bring a photo along also?”

  She digs in the puffy coat’s pocket and extracts a small metal case. Clicking it open, she pulls out two photos and slides them over to me. The first shows a handsome man, probably in his mid-thirties, grinning for the camera. It’s a shoulders up shot, but I can tell he’s muscular and fit. His hair is brown, his eyes dark. The second picture is of Sandra and Mark together, both shiny with oil, both unnaturally tan, both wearing tiny bikinis and posing, muscles popping.

  “That last one was at the bodybuilding show in Burlington last spring. Mark placed first in his class and I came in second in the figure competition.”

  I go from feeling fat to bloated whale status. I nod. “Can I keep this one?” I point to the solo shot of Mark.

  “Sure. At some point I’d like it back though.”

  “Of course.” I tuck the photo into the front cover of the notebook.

  “I’ll need his contact information: address and phone number, family in the area, plus any other information you can think of. Who he hangs out with, where he likes to spend his free time, that sort of thing.”

  Sandra finishes chewing another bite and nods. “Anything that will help, just let me know. And whatever you normally charge, you can double it if you find him. I just want to know where he is, that he’s safe.”

  ***

  I leave shortly after Sandra finishes her lunch. I’m exhausted and its easy to talk myself out of going to the gym. Instead, I spend the rest of the afternoon reading and puttering around the house. Home has always been my favorite place to be. But after nearly three months straight, it’s quickly become the place to begin wall climbing.

  After tossing a load of wet stuff in the dryer, I lift a half-full basket of dry laundry onto my hip. My doctor told me that I shouldn’t be lifting anything more than a couple of pounds until the healing is complete. But that would involve, what? Carrying out pieces of clothes one by one?

  I grimace against the pulling feeling in my chest and shoulder and bang through the laundry room door, knocking my bag to the floor in the process. The burner phone falls out, the one that I never checked for voicemail messages.

  Chicken, a little voice inside says.

  Stepping over it, I set the laundry basket on the counter in the kitchen and retrieve the small phone from the floor. Not that I need to prove that voice wrong, but I
dial “1” to listen to new messages.

  “You have three new messages,” a mechanical sounding woman tells me. I press the same number again to listen.

  Silence. Then some soft, country music, then the message ends. I push delete and move onto the next. The second message begins with a kid whining in the background. Then a woman’s voice stumbles over a greeting.

  “Yes, I don’t know who you are but I need your help. Please, my baby girl ...” her voice breaks off and I can hear her crying wetly for a moment before it returns. “My daughter, Leanne. I need your help. Please call me.” She leaves a number and hangs up, the whining kid in the background gaining volume.

  Is she talking about that kid? Shivering as I picture that nanny show on TV, I press the save button, then listen to the last message. This one is filled with static, but then it clears and I hear the same woman’s voice.

  “Please, call me. My name is Reba...Reba Riddell. My husband doesn’t know I’m calling, but my daughter, Leanne, she needs help. Please call.” Again she leaves her phone number.

  The mechanical recorded voice tells me that the call came in two weeks ago and guilt blooms in my chest like algae.

  Crap.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning is bright and blue, the sky overhead nearly void of clouds. The sun feels good after being MIA for so long, but the air is still frigid. I unlock my office door and turn up the heat dial of the thermostat, leaving my coat and scarf on. Hunching at my desk, I fire up the laptop and open a new file for Sandra Garrison. After that, I start a pot of coffee brewing. I’m just thinking of trying Phil again when the office phone rings.

  I go through my regular greeting and—surprise, surprise—Phil happens to be on the other end.

  “I tried to call you several times,” I say. “I couldn’t leave a message—”

  “No voicemail. Look, I don’t have a lot of time. I’m at work again and my boss is a real jerk. I need to meet with you. There’s a situation that I’m dealing with that requires your skills.” He clears his throat. “I looked around your website and saw that you offer security details for events, right?”

  “Well, yeah I do, but—”

  “I have something in two weeks and I need your help. It’s a...” His voice fades out for a moment and I think the call’s been disconnected. “It’s a private function.”

  Pause.

  I clear my throat. “Phil, do we know each other? Your voice sounds really familiar.”

  There’s another moment of silence and then he says, so quietly I can barely hear him, “We graduated in the same class. Phil Hunley.”

  I nearly clap my hand over my mouth. Immediately it wants to blurt, “Phil the Pill,” which would not only be unprofessional but also inappropriate. Phil used to wear all black before Goth was a thing at our high school along with dark makeup. He kept stolen prescription medicine on him at all times, sewed into the hems of his clothes. And once, I saw him extract a teeny tiny silver case from his ear, with—you guessed it—a couple of teeny tiny pills inside.

  “Oh, wow,” I manage. “It’s been a long time.”

  Awkward pause.

  “Um, well, you said you need security at this event?”

  Phil sighs. “I have to go. My boss is out in the hall.” His voice is a near whisper and I picture him in a broom closet filled with mop, pail, and cleaning supplies.

  “I’ll help,” I tell him quickly. Honestly, I always felt a little bad for Phil. He didn’t have any friends in school. Plus, I’ve always had a soft spot for loners. Or losers. Maybe both. Probably because I see myself in both camps.

  “Great.” His voice is relieved. “I’ll get in touch soon with more information. Don’t bother trying to call unless you keep weird hours. Between work and my side business, I can rarely answer my phone. Gotta go.”

  He hangs up before I can get out a goodbye.

  I sit back in my chair a few minutes reminiscing on the painful years known as high school. Is there anyone who really looks back on that time with honest longing? Pfft, not me. I pour my first cup of the day and burn my tongue in my haste to get some caffeine flowing in my veins.

  Next, I do the regular morning routine. It feels really good to be “back in the saddle,” so to speak. Voicemail messages are nonexistent, but I have jobs in the works already, so this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I check the website and see that traffic is slow. Not surprising since my marketing efforts have been nil these last several weeks. Making a mental note to work on that, I respond to a couple of emails, then make a bank transfer so that I can pay the utility bills without going in arears.

  Finally, I settle into my first real work of the day: mapping out a plan to find Sandra’s beloved, Mark. I make a note to call my ex-turned-friend and state trooper, C.J., and see what the police have been doing as far as the search goes. Odd that I haven’t seen anything in the paper. I make another mental note to pick up a copy of today’s paper.

  While the P.I.s of old might have started with some serious gumshoe tracking, in today’s world social networking is where it’s at. I check LinkedIn and Twitter but Mark has accounts with neither. Facebook, however, is a score. Mark isn’t a chatty fellow online but he is part of a few weightlifting groups and I see that the most recent comment from him was on Saturday. I check geotags and make a note of the longitude and latitude for future reference. No comments on his page, other than a few posts on his timeline from Sandra.

  “Hey, sweetie, how are you? Call me when you can, k?”

  “Mark, where ARE you? Please call me ASAP.”

  “Mark. Seriously? Call me.”

  The messages were posted daily between Sunday and yesterday, one per day. I look for his phone number, just to see if there’s anything listed that Sandra didn’t give me, but don’t see anything. Most people create privacy settings to hide that information anyway, but it’s always worth a shot. Techno-dummies do exist and make my work much easier.

  I decide a field trip is in order. After turning off the coffeepot and washing my mug, I go through the whole winter clothes thing in reverse. My combat boots are so worn in and warm that they feel like slippers and I hate to take them off. I do, though, exchanging them for my wool-lined winter boots, pulling the laces tight.

  I look longingly toward the rear parking lot after locking up and descending the staircase but turn the other direction and begin my trek up street, toward the center of St. Albans. If I can’t get my ever-expanding bum to the gym, I can at least burn off a few calories by walking.

  The air is crisp and cold. My breath makes tiny white clouds as I walk past a shopping plaza, a pharmaceutical company and cross train tracks where Amtrak deposits and picks up passengers. There aren’t many other pedestrians out. In the warmer months the streets tend to be filled with young moms pushing baby strollers and punks wearing hoodies and yammering into cell phones. I pass Snuffy’s on the corner, one of my favorite greasy spoons. The smell of hot fat and something sweet fills my nose and makes my mouth water. Maybe just a little treat...?

  I give myself a mental shake and take in Main Street ahead of me. Taylor Park is across the street, covered in snow and showcasing barren trees along with a dull green fountain and a war memorial. At night the trees are lit with strands of tiny white lights, and around Christmas a wooden sleigh and reindeer make the park home. Now though, in mid-January, the park is spartan.

  I pass a bank, a series of small shops carrying everything from specialty foods to artwork, a hair salon, and a couple of antiques stores. A bookstore on the end of one block is next door to Chantal’s, a French-inspired restaurant. It’s also the employer of Mark Chester. I try the door and am surprised to find it open; I’d anticipated taking care of a few errands on foot just to kill time.

  The interior is dark, all white-clothed tables, and stark artwork on the exposed stone walls. A long, black bar lines the left side of the room and the smell of food hangs in the air. A lone man stands behind the bar, polishing gla
sses.

  “May I help you?” he asks, pausing mid-wipe.

  I head in that direction. “Yes, I hope so. I’m looking for an employee of yours, Mark Chester.”

  His eyebrows raise and he goes back to wiping, maintaining eye contact. “And you are?”

  “Tayt Waters, of T.R. Waters Securities.”

  He breaths out loudly. “I see.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “I suppose there must be if you are here, correct?”

  His voice has a slight hint of a French accent. He’s attractive, in a snooty sort of way: longish nose and receding hairline, but his eyes are chocolate colored and lined with so many dark lashes, it looks like he’s wearing eye makeup.

  “I’m Jean-Pierre, the owner. I haven’t seen him since Saturday,” he says. “He did not show up for his shift on Sunday afternoon. No call, either, if you were going to ask.”

  I was, but don’t tell him that. Instead, I nod, take my notepad and pen out.

  “Is that unusual? Is he a good worker?”

  Jean-Pierre shrugs, places the glass he was polishing under the counter and smooths a hand over his sparse hair.

  “He is a good server. He has been here for let’s see,” he studies the ceiling. “Ten months? No, nine months now. No trouble.” He glances at me then notices something on the bar and wipes his white towel over it. He rubs and buffs for a few seconds in silence. “Not the best in the world,” (his the sounds like a zee), “but I have had worse. None that lasted, of course. This is a top notch establishment. I do not suffer fools for employees.”

  I nod, grateful he’s not my boss. I’m suddenly very conscious of my less-than fashionable ensemble. I can practically feel his inner French fashion police glaring at me. If only I fit into something other than these stupid stretchy pants.

  “Any idea where he would have gone?” I push thoughts of my appearance to the back of my mind. “Was he friends with any of the other employees?”

  He shrugs. “No, no idea where he would have gone. Out west maybe.”

  West?