Authors: Alison Gaylin
The steering wheel is smooth plastic. It feels strange under her hands compared with the leather-covered wheel in Brenna and Jim’s Volvo—and it gives her a weird thrill, that differentness.
“Brenna? You there?”
It’s only one morning out of your life. Satisfy your curiosity and it’s over . . .
“Yo, Bren-na!” Trent said, and she was back in the Sienna, on the night of September 30, 2009, with a dull ache behind her eyes, and the Tarry Ridge exit looming five car lengths ahead.
“Tell me anything,” Brenna said. “What club are you at? What are you drinking?”
“I’m drinking Bacardi and Coke. I’m in bed.”
“You’re in
bed
?”
“No, that’s the club’s name,” he yelled. “Bedd! With two Ds! It’s in Brooklyn!”
Brenna’s palms were sweating. “You scoring or what?”
“Not yet,” Trent replied, as if she’d asked if he’d bought tickets for tomorrow night’s Rangers game. “But I’m about to.”
“Who’s the lucky girl?”
“Blonde in a pink tube top. Man, I love tube tops. They like . . . do what
you
want to be doing, know what I mean?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, I totally get that.”
“This blonde . . . she’s kinda got a Jessica Alba thing going on.”
“Jessica Alba isn’t blonde.”
“I’m talking from the neck down,” he said. “And she is massively checking me out . . . Hey baby. How about I buy you another one of those cosmos—with chaser of
Trent
.”
Brenna winced. “That couldn’t possibly have worked.”
“What’s your name, gorgeous? Diandra. That is a name that’s made to be moaned in ecstasy. Know what I’m saying, sweet thang?”
For several seconds, Brenna heard nothing but ambient noise—a thumping bass pressing through super-powered speakers, the whooping chatter of at least a hundred club patrons . . . “Let me guess,” she said. “Diandra’s throwing up.”
“Wrong, Miss Wiseass. She’s giving me her digits.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“What? No, baby, no I wasn’t calling you wiseass I was . . . Yeah, I’m on the phone with my . . . but . . . No, I’m telling you, this is
my boss
. I swear, I . . . Wait . . . Oh now don’t be like that . . . Damn.” Trent groaned. “Completely
carpet-bombing my game
.”
“Sorry.”
Trent sighed. “So tell me about this new client in Tarry Ridge.”
“His name’s Nelson Wentz,” Brenna said. “He’s the husband of Carol Wentz. That’s the woman Morasco was asking about.”
“I remember. Just because I don’t have your memory thing, it doesn’t mean I’m brain-dead.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“Why’d he contact you? Did Morasco throw him your way?”
“Hardly.”
Nelson Wentz had called Brenna’s cell as she was leaving Annette Shelby’s hotel room, accusing her of abducting his wife. Within twenty seconds, though, she’d been able to tell he was grasping at straws.
Carol ran five searches on you before she disappeared
, he had said.
She wanted your Web site, your address and phone number, your career history. She did a search with your name plus “missing adult” . . .
But when Brenna had suggested that perhaps Carol had been interested in hiring her—
Do you know anyone she might have been trying to find?
—Wentz had caved, weeping into the phone.
Brenna wasn’t proud of it, but the sound of grown men crying always made her skin crawl, and this phone conversation had been no exception. She’d offered up half a dozen
I’m sorry
s. (Such an ineffectual phrase—as if Brenna was to blame for Nelson Wentz’s tears and could, by way of apology, make him stop.) But then he’d started telling her how no one on the Tarry Ridge police force would help him look for his wife, how he’d had the interest of one detective for about five minutes, but now it was back to business as usual.
Your wife left you.
You’ll just have to get used to it
. No one had said that, of course, but it didn’t matter. That was the
feeling
Nelson had gotten from the police in his hometown—the same feeling Brenna and her mother had gotten from Detective Grady Carlson of the Pelham Precinct on September 8, 1981—he of the bile-brown Members Only jacket and the crumbs in his mustache and the statistics about unhappy teenage girls who run away from home . . . “Would you like me to help you find Carol?” Brenna had heard herself say. And thus she and Nelson Wentz had struck a deal.
“He cried?” Trent said.
“He misses his wife.”
“Whatevs. Seems a little dramatic for a phone call with a stranger. You got his social? I can run a check.”
“Already did,” Brenna said. “Absolutely clean. Not even a late credit card payment. Nelson Wentz misses his wife, Trent. He loves her. He’s at his wit’s end.”
“Hel-lo. Smokin’ hot brunette at five o’clock.”
“God, you’re so sensitive.”
“I am. See, most guys would only notice the double Ds. I notice the legs, too, and the face.”
Brenna sighed. She was on Main Street now—3.5 miles away from Nelson Wentz’s home according to Lee, the suave Australian voice on her GPS and for close to a year, the only man in her life. As Trent told his brunette that heaven must be missing an angel—
They still used that one?
—Lee requested Brenna make a right at the next intersection. She crawled toward it, checking out the retail space: Gap, Barnes & Noble, a Starbucks, plus an art-house theater, three galleries, a very high-end boutique, and a paint-your-own pottery store—all of them new to her.
Main Street was no time capsule, that was for sure. It was more like the Growing Dinosaurs Maya used to play with as a five-year-old. They started out as specks of sponge, but if you put one in a dish with a drop of water, it would expand overnight into a four-inch T-Rex—five hundred times its original size. For Tarry Ridge, it had been two drops—the ultra-exclusive Waterside Condominiums, brand-new eleven years ago, when Brenna had last been here, and the five-year-old Riverview Shopping Center, which was not so much a mall as Fifth Avenue with escalators. It had a Barneys, a Nobu, a Tiffany’s with marble floors and chandeliers . . . The
New Yorker
had once done a Talk of the Town piece on the Riverview Shopping Center, referring to it in the headline as “Privilege under Glass.”
Both were the brainchild of New York City developer Roger Wright—aka Donald Trump without the divorces, bankruptcies, Page Six mentions, and hair jokes. For sentimental reasons apparently, Wright had deemed his hometown a good place to build and, as ever, his instincts had proven correct. Over the past decade, this one-two punch of prime real estate had transformed the town from sleepy suburb into a glittering T-Rex of a bedroom community, with property values tripling and quadrupling on even the smallest of homes and more or less staying there, even with the housing bubble bursting. Nelson Wentz had made Brenna a very generous offer, yes. But unless he was leading a secret double life as a high-stakes gambler, the man was good for it.
“So, uh . . . Brenna?” Trent was saying. “You still need me to yap at you or what?”
“I’m fine. See you tomorrow. Have fun in Bedd.”
“That would be the plan.”
“Trent.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Brenna ended the call. She saw one place she remembered—a stationery/candle store called Wax Attax—and pulled over to the curb to get a closer look. The last time she’d been here, it had been morning, and it was now more than three hours past the store’s 6
P.M.
closing time. Plus the window display consisted entirely of Webkinz—Internet-friendly stuffed animals that didn’t even exist eleven years ago. But the spiky logo was the same—“Wax Attax!” rendered across the top of the window in thick, chrome-colored spray paint.
Looking at the name, Brenna returned to the morning of October 20, 1998, when she’d rung the bell on the counter and was greeted by a clerk with a halo of frizzy white hair, a black sateen blouse, and a name tag that said “Kaye.”
The store had reeked of scented candles—vanilla mostly, with a little licorice worked in as if to intensify the headache. Kaye had been pleasant, though. Standing in front of the crepe-paper black cat and grinning cardboard jack-o’-lantern that had been tacked behind the counter for Halloween, she’d resembled a kindly witch. Seemed to know it, too.
“What spooky delights can I help you with?”
“Actually,” Brenna says, “I couldn’t help but notice all the kids’ items you have . . .”
“Are you a mom?”
“I have a three-year-old.”
“Oh, well you might be interested in our Sunday story hour! Do you live around here?”
“I live in the city.” Brenna takes a breath. “I was just wondering . . . Did Iris Neff ever come in here? For the story hours?”
“Are you a reporter?”
“What? No, I—”
“Because I really can’t say anything. I know you’re just doing your job.”
“I’m not a reporter.”
“Iris is a very smart little girl. With a wonderful imagination. My prayers are with her and her mom.”
“I’m not a reporter,” Brenna says for the third time. She slips one of her old cards out of her purse—“Brenna Spector—Errol Ludlow Investigations.” She hasn’t used these cards since marrying Jim, and that feeling seizes her again—that weird, guilty thrill.
With the pen from the counter, she crosses off Errol’s number and writes down her cell. “Sorry—we have to get new cards,” she tells Kaye. “I’m a private investigator. And actually, I’m just helping out with one tiny part of the case.”
Kaye blinks. “Okay . . .”
“Did you ever hear Iris mention anything about a blue car with a dent in the back?”
Kaye shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Certainly not that I remember.”
“Have you maybe seen a car fitting that description that you haven’t—” Brenna’s sentence is cut off by the chirp of her phone.
“I’m sorry. We really don’t allow cell phones in here,” Kaye says. “People always speak so loudly on them.”
“I understand.” Brenna hurries outside the store to take her call, but by the time she does, it’s gone to voice mail.
Brenna knows who it is before checking the message—she always knows when it’s Jim calling, and again, this very specific sixth sense proves right.
“Can’t wait to give you that surprise,” he says. Brenna’s stomach tightens. What would Jim say if he could see her here? What would he say if he saw her give that woman a card with Errol Ludlow’s name on it?
Go home. Now.
She puts the phone in her pocket and starts down the street toward her rental car.
She hears a rush of footsteps behind her. “Miss Spector?”
Brenna turns. It’s Kaye. Her cheeks are flushed. “Listen, this is probably nothing,” she says. “But I . . . I do remember one time in story group, Iris got into an argument with another little girl.”
“Okay . . .”
“The girl said there was no Santa Claus, and Iris . . . strongly disagreed.”
“So . . . Iris believes in Santa Claus?”
“She didn’t just believe. Iris was adamant—argued it like a little lawyer. She said that when he wasn’t in the North Pole, Santa came to Tarry Ridge. She told the little girl that our town is Santa’s vacation home.”
Brenna smiles a little. “Well . . . you did say that she has a wonderful imagination.”
“Yeah, I know. And Iris did—does . . .” Her voice cracks.
“I’m sure this is very hard. A missing child is—”
“No wait. Here’s the thing . . .”
Kaye closes her eyes for several seconds, puts her fingertips to her temples.
“Are you okay?”
The eyes open. “Yes,” she says. “This . . . It’s just a little weird.”
Brenna nods, waiting.
“Iris said that when Santa visits Tarry Ridge, he drives a blue car.”
A truck swooped past Brenna’s parked Sienna, shaking her into the present. For several seconds she sat there, staring at that “Wax Attax!” sign, gritting her teeth.
Enough thinking
. She would visit Nelson Wentz, get a look at that computer, collect her deposit, and call it a night. But when she started up her car and drove up the street and Lee again told her to make a right on Muriel Court, Brenna found herself turning left instead. And when Lee intoned, “Recalculating . . .” Brenna switched him off and kept driving. She didn’t want to turn back.
I
t was something Brenna always did at the start of investigations—visiting the last place her missing person had been seen. She found it helpful to put herself in the shoes of that person, to retrace steps in reverse. But this was different. Carol Wentz had never been seen at 2921 Muriel Court. Only her
wallet
had been seen there—a flimsy tie to say the least, as wallets went missing a lot more often than their owners. It was very possible someone had stolen the wallet from Carol—or even found it somewhere—before leaving it in the Neff living room.
Yet Brenna was compelled to drive there—
yanked
, as if the Neff house was made of magnets. It all begged the question:
Who is my real missing person?
Brenna had no desire to answer that one, so she stared at houses instead.
Main Street may have been a Growing Dinosaur, but Muriel Court—at least the western part of it—was a true time capsule. Everything about that stretch of street looked exactly the way it had back in 1998—the uniformly square and manicured lawns, staid New England homes looming over them like reproachful aunts. No add-ons or swimming pools or studio spaces. Other areas of Tarry Ridge had been overrun with mini mansions and gated housing developments, all of them so new that gift wrap seemed fitting—but not this stretch. As far as Brenna could tell in the dark, even the paint jobs were the same.