I threw my bag into the back seat of the CR-V, put my coffee in the cup holder, and took a bite of muffin, crumbs raining down into my lap. Before turning the ignition, I let my head fall back onto the headrest and let out a long sigh. I’d had little sleep since my raid on Ian’s apartment. I felt like a damn fool. And worse, I was no closer to finding Syd.
I turned the key and hit the button on Syd’s music shuffler. There was an old Spice Girls tune—Syd was too young to have paid much attention to them their first time around, but got interested when they reunited for a tour a year or two ago—and another Beatles tune, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road,” from the White Album. What father didn’t want one of his daughter’s favorite songs to be about people having a fuck in the passing lane?
That was followed by—and I was guessing here on some of these—songs by Lily Allen, Metric, Lauryn Hill. Then some familiar chords kicked in and I thought, yes, a band I know and love: Chicago. Too bad the song had to be “If You Leave Me Now.”
I hadn’t cracked the lid on the coffee by the time I’d pulled up to the curb in front of my house a few minutes before eight, but there were muffin crumbs all over my lap and down on the floor mats of the CR-V.
There was a police car in the driveway, and parked out front of the house next door, what looked to be Kip Jennings’s car. There was no one in the driver’s seat, but there was someone sitting on the passenger side.
I took my coffee and as I came up even to the car I saw that there was a young girl sitting there. Twelve, thirteen years old. There was a backpack on the floor by her feet. On her lap was an open textbook. She glanced through the open driver’s-side window at me.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re Cassie.”
She didn’t say anything.
I stood well away from the window. “Doing some last-minute studying?”
“My mom’s a cop and she’s coming back any minute,” she said.
“I’ll leave you be,” I said and turned for my house. Kip Jennings was coming down the driveway.
“Morning,” I said. “You’ve trained your daughter well.”
“What?”
“The whole talking-to-strangers thing. I backed right off.”
“I have to get her to school. I was dropping by here on the way. We’re done with your house. You can have it back.”
“Great.”
“It’s still a mess.”
“I figured.”
“There are companies you can call to help with the cleanup. I can get you a list.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You’re not going to be charged,” she said. “The cocaine.”
“Nice to know.”
“And it was coke,” she said. “But cut with so much lactose you’d be one pissed-off junkie if you paid very much for it.”
“It wasn’t mine.”
She regarded me thoughtfully, then said, “Doesn’t much matter one way or another. The D.A. would never have gotten a conviction.”
“I think it’s important that you know I’m innocent.”
“I’ll bet you do,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I think you’re probably telling the truth.”
Probably.
“Because,” she said, “I believe we were meant to find it.”
“Meant?”
From her car: “Mom! I’m gonna be late!”
“Hold your horses!” Jennings shouted. “Yeah. Meant to find it, meant to think it was yours.”
I remembered Edwin Chatsworth advising me not to talk to this woman, but said, “They tore the place apart like they were looking for something. They knew the moment I came home I’d call the police. Then the police would find the cocaine.”
Detective Jennings nodded back. “Yeah. And then we put the heat on you.”
I looked at her. “Why would someone do that?”
“What a coincidence. I was going to ask you that.”
“Mom!”
Jennings sighed. “She’s just like her father.”
I had thought Jennings was a single mom. “He a police officer, too?” I asked.
Something in Jennings’s face twitched, even though she tried hard not to show it. “No,” she said. “He’s an engineer. And he’s working somewhere in Alaska, and if we’re lucky, he won’t ever be coming back.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t.
“Divorced, three years,” she said. She puffed herself up a bit. “And Cassie and I, we’re good.”
“She’s tough,” I said. “That comes across pretty quick.”
“Mr. Blake,” she said, “you need to think why someone would go to all the trouble to get you out of town and then see if they could get you framed for drug possession.”
I looked up the street at nothing in particular.
“And you need to keep thinking about the question I asked you before. Just how well did you know what your daughter was up to?”
I said, “The bloodstains on Syd’s car… have you found out anything yet?”
“You’ll be the second to know,” she said, then got into her car and drove her daughter to school.
I DECIDED TO TACKLE THE CLEANUP a room at a time.