Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

“Thursday,” she said. “He called me Thursday. Said things were getting fixed. He sounded really happy. But after that I heard nothing. Yesterday I went to his place. He hasn’t been there. No one’s seen him.” Taking a cigarette out of her small purse, she put it to her lips, bending forward to accept my light. Nodding her thanks, she took a big hard hit and looked at me, exhaling. “I am so scared, Ben,” she said quietly. “He never goes away without letting me know. Never.”

“ ‘His’ place,” I said, waving out the wood kitchen match. “Your parents divorced?”

“Separated,” she answered. “He moved out four months ago. My mother has been such a bitch to him.” She took another drag. “So how about it?” she asked, brightening. “Will you help me?”

Hating myself now, I said, “Wish I could. But I don’t do that kind of stuff any more. Been out of it for years.”

“But you used to,” she pressed. “I heard all about you. Marge has told me things, and Mrs. Janusevicius—”

“Be careful what you believe,” I advised. “The stories get wilder in the retelling.”

“I heard you were awesome,” she said quietly.

I shook my head. “Work with the police, Shyla. This kind of thing, it’s their job.”

Now she was blinking, and I feared what was coming. “What they said, Marge, and Mrs. J, and the colonel and everybody — what they told me,” she said, voice shaking a bit, “is that you always came through for your friends.” She stared straight at me, blue eyes shiny. “Aren’t I your friend, Ben?”

The cell phone whistled just as I was wheeling my Mustang out of the parking lot. Bracing the wheel with my knee, I jammed the shifter into third with one hand and pressed SND with the other. “Perkins.”

“You called?” came Carole’s voice.

“Morning, Your Honor,” I said, and braced myself. “About tonight.”

“Yes?”

“Instead of picking up Rookie at the courthouse, how’s about if I swing by your place later, around suppertime.”

“Works for me,” she answered. “But doesn’t that take you out of your way?”

“Most likely not. I’ve got some running around to do up that way today.”

Pause. “But it’s only nine A.M. now.”

“I know,” I said hastily. “So, is it—”

“Why don’t you just pick her up at the daycare when you’re ready? They’re open until—”

“Be less pressure,” I said, “if we do the handoff up at your house.”

Long pause. “What are you up to, Ben?”

Damn. This is what happens, when they’ve known you for years and have clocked all your moves. I sighed. “I’m doing some checking up for a friend of mine.”

“Now there’s a phrase I haven’t heard in awhile,” she said. “ ‘Checking up.’ ” From her tone you’d think I’d uttered a most odious obscenity. “What sort of ‘checking up,’ Ben?”

“Shyla Ryan, woman I work with,” I said. “College kid. Temps for Marge in the rental office during breaks. Her dad’s dropped out of sight, she asked if I’d do some looking around. I told her I’d help out.”

The tension was so tangible I could almost touch it. “God, this scares me,” she whispered “All those familiar terms. ‘Dropped out of sight.’ ‘Looking around.’ ‘Help out.’ ”

“Nothing to be scared of,” I said. “It’s something simple. Trust me.”

“You promised to stay out of that work.”

“It’s not ‘work.’ I’m not getting paid.”

“Don’t fence with me!” she flared “Back then you didn’t get paid either, half the time. That didn’t stop you from getting stabbed and beaten up and shot.”

I shook my head. “Nobody’s getting shot.”

I heard her intake of breath, uncharacteristically shaky. “Is this Shyla person... special to you?” Knowing what she was really asking, I replied patiently, “She’s a kid. We work together. I know how you feel about this, but... I sat there and looked at her and listened to her. In my mind’s eye she looked like Rookie twenty years down the line.”

I heard her inhale. “How manipulative of you to drag Rachel into this.”

“Happens to be the truth,” I said mildly.

Another pause. “You won’t forget to pick up her tonight,” she said.

“I won’t forget.”

In the background I could hear a female voice. Carole murmured something. To me she said, briskly, “You did promise me, you know. And Rachel, too.”

“I know. And I’ve been keeping it. And I know this nudges it.”

“Just so we understand each other. No rough stuff. Promise?”

I took a deep breath. “Promise.”

“All right.” She sounded cheerier, if only a little. “At least you told me. That’s an improvement.”

“Yes,” I replied. “It is.”

Randy Ryan’s apartment building was in Bloomfield Township, well north of the city, off Telegraph and Long Lake. It was a long low single story brick structure, capped with a massive layer of icy snow. The eaves were fringed with long, lethal-looking icicles stabbing downward. For Bloomfield, the place seemed low-rent and highly transient. Might as well have put “Divorced Dads Welcome” on their sign out front.

The parking lot sported a white ’Vette and a blue Crown Vic but no large black Ford Expedition with white fuzzy dice dangling from the mirror. I wedged my Mustang in a parking spot between the Vic and a mountainous pile of plowed snow.