Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Part 28

"From Swainsboro she moved to a decent-size paper near Nashville," he said. "Then The Columbus Dispatch, then the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, then The by-G.o.d Boston Globe."

I said nothing.

"You're lucky I'm observant as h.e.l.l," Randall said. "Because this all comes down to a single word. You know those bylines I mentioned?"

"Yeah?"

"Until about six months ago, hers read 'Patty Marx, Globe Staff.' Then she became 'Patty Marx, Globe Correspondent.'"

"What's that, a promotion?"

"h.e.l.l no," he said. "It means she went freelance."

"She's still pa.s.sing out Globe business cards."

"Of course she is. They probably gave her a thousand of them. Right before they laid her off."

I was thinking it through. "The cell number on the card was crossed off, changed."

"Because they took away her company cell." Randall was enjoying this. He'd probably predicted my objections in his head-in order. He's smart that way.

"But the e-mail address was still there."

"A courtesy," he said, "for laid-off hacks while they scramble for their next job."

"You seem pretty sure about all this."

"I called Patty Marx's former editor," he said, and I could feel him breaking into a smile.

"She definitely got laid off six months ago?"

"Most definitely. And that's not the best part."

"Chrissake, can you get to it?"

But you can't hurry Randall, can't make him do anything any way but his, and he was slow-playing the story.

"I got the editor on the phone, a very nice woman," he said. "I teased all this info out of her. Said I ran an antiques newsletter in the Berkshires, and Patty Marx had written three pieces for me, and I was d.a.m.ned if I could find her address."

"That was pretty clever."

"Obviously this editor wasn't supposed to give out the address, but she felt rotten about all the layoffs, and who wants to hold up a starving freelancer's check?"

"The address, Randall. What was the address?"

"How about the Alta Vista Inn?" he said.

"Where's that?"

"Rourke, New Hampshire."

So many ideas, so many facts to click through. As I pulled into Charlene's driveway, I tried to push away ugly thoughts I was having about Patty Marx-living in Rourke on the sly, it looked like. And her car-to-car meet with Phigg just before he turned up dead. I needed to talk with Ollie, too. I needed to move.

Randall and I had decided to hit Rourke first because it was closer. Then maybe a run to Enosburg Falls. I just wanted to shower off wallboard dust before we split.

As I stepped in the front door, though, I heard footsteps, saw Charlene step away from a dining-room window. She narrowed her eyes. "Where's Fred?"

I stopped cold. "I left him here. Why?"

"Your note."

"What note?"

Charlene's eyes went wide. She turned and fast-walked to the kitchen, then returned with a blue Post-it stuck to her fingertip. "I came home to catch up on spreadsheets," she said, holding the note up, "and found this. I thought you wrote it."

WERE AT F'HAM HOUSE, HOME BY DINNER. Block printed, it just about could have been written by me.

But it hadn't been.

Our eyes met. We sprinted upstairs, flew into Jesse's room.

The bed was made.

The curtains were pulled back just so.

The windows were both open eight inches.

All the clothes I'd bought Fred, which he'd kept atop Jesse's dresser rather than mess up her drawers, were gone.

My father had taken off.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

We spent the next ninety minutes in a full-court press, trying to find Fred before he got far. I had Charlene check the family luggage stash, which she kept in the attic. It was all there. "What does that matter, anyway?"

"A man with a rolling suitcase," I said, "is a whole 'nother thing than a man lugging his gear in a green trash bag."

She said I was right about that.

Charlene called the four cab companies that worked Shrewsbury while I dialed the local cops. Said my dad had slipped from the yard, might be confused, could be wandering down the main drag. Had anybody reported seeing him?

No dice.

Then I called the state police, Framingham barracks, got through to the detectives, and asked for Vic Lacross. "Ha!" said a nasally man's voice. "Year too late, friend. Long gone, good riddance." Click.

"What was that about?" Charlene said.

"Cop I used to know," I said. "I guess he's not a cop anymore. How about the taxis?"

She made a thumbs down.

We sat. Charlene drummed long fingernails on the telephone receiver. "An old man, no longer unkempt but hardly genteel-looking, carrying a Hefty trash bag. Such a man is not invisible in this town. How is he getting around, Conway?"

"He's got a ride," I said. "He must."

"Unless..."

Then we were both up, flashing down bas.e.m.e.nt stairs to the garage beneath the kitchen. Two years ago, when Charlene bought her Volvo SUV, she decided to hang on to her old white Accord rather than trade it in. It would be a great first car for Jesse, if Jesse ever bothered to get her driver's license.

It was easy to picture: Fred, with the house to himself for a few days, poking around, finding the Accord, digging for its keys in the kitchen junk drawer....

But when I shouldered into the garage, there sat the car, dusty and buried in junk.

"So he got a ride when he left," Charlene said. "Who from?"

As we crossed the bas.e.m.e.nt, I remembered Charlene's booze, Fred's first day here. My stomach sank. I froze.

"What?" she said.

I stepped to the shelf where I'd stashed the booze, pulled away painting supplies.

Fred had taken it all. Every bottle.

I leaned on the wall and explained it to Charlene.

She put her head in her hands.

Ninety minutes later, Randall and I eased past a carved-wood sign that said ALTA VISTA INN. Beneath it hung two smaller signs: OFF-SEASON RATES and WEDDINGS WELCOME.

"Must have nice views up there," Randall said, craning his neck to look at the huge brown Victorian. To get here we'd taken a hard right off Main Street, not far from Mechanic Street. Then we'd spooled slowly upward on back roads for a mile and a half. The Alta Vista Inn sat on what had to be the highest lot for miles, centered in a three-acre clearing.

"Probably started out as an industrialist's house," Randall said as I pointed my truck back toward town. "Back when this town was something."

"Weird place for a city reporter to live," I said. "Unless..."

He looked at me.

"Unless she was working there, and a bed came with the job."

"Why would a gal like her change sheets at a B and B?"

"First, it kept her close to Tander Phigg," I said. "Also, she was black."

"So?"

I swept an arm at the main street. "Town like this, can you think of a better place for a black girl to fit in?"

Randall tapped an index finger to his cheek. "Sad but true," he finally said. "So what's her deal? Did Patty Marx get laid off, then move up here to stalk poor Tander Phigg?"

I shrugged. "Stalking him, or maybe stalking his money."

He thought a few seconds. "She didn't strike me that way."

I shrugged again. "First order of business, let's see what we can learn from the inn."

I backtracked out of town to an off-brand gas station specializing in diesel for a freight company next door. Drove past the station, swung into the freight-company lot.

Randall said, "You can't just pull up to the pay phone?"

"Security cams. Learned about them the hard way."

I fished under Randall's side of the bench seat, came up with a blue baseball cap that said FLATOUT in orange letters, pa.s.sed it to him. "Pull it low. And, ah, try to sound black."

"The indignity of it all." He closed the door and jogged to the gas station pay phone. As I watched him trot, I shook my head: You'd never guess he had a strap-on foot.

He was back in three minutes. "Nice lady," he said, stuffing the cap beneath the seat. "She used to work in the financial district in Boston, hubby was a lawyer, they both took buyouts, wouldn't trade this life for anything."

"You got all that in three minutes?"

"Well, there wasn't much she could tell me about Patty Marx," he said. "Patty replied to an ad around Thanksgiving. Ski season was coming up, so they hired her more or less over the phone. She did nice work, maid and breakfast service. Never spoke except for small talk. The lady just about dropped the phone when I told her Marx used to be a Globe reporter. She kept to herself, hung out with her boyfriend on Mondays, which were her only days off during ski season. A few weeks ago she was just plain gone one morning. They're holding her last paycheck. The lady and her husband figured Patty got itchy when warm weather hit and took off. Happens all the time, she said."

I said, "Boyfriend?"

"You're good at picking out key concepts, aren't you?" Randall smiled. "Yeah, her boyfriend. Polite redheaded kid named Josh."

"Try again," I said, moving into the fast lane to blow past a semi. I looked at the speedometer. Ninety-three. We'd been moving that fast or close to it for three hours, would make Enosburg Falls in twenty minutes.

Randall punched in a number, listened, shook his head. Then again. "Straight to voice mail, Ollie and Josh both."

Soft rain fell as I left Route 89 and started the final eastbound run. We were quiet, talked out; we'd kicked around ideas for the first two and a half hours of the drive.

There was a lot we didn't know. We did know, though, that if Patty Marx was palling around with Josh Whipple, we needed to take a good hard look at both of them.

I cut onto Ollie's mother's street, spotted her house, pulled in behind an Oldsmobile Intrigue.