Wherever Syd might be, it wasn’t with extended family. Susanne’s and my parents were dead, neither of us had siblings, and what few relatives we had—an aunt here, an uncle there—we’d put on alert.
“Of course,” said Lorna, “we’re well aware of the excellent repair records that the Hondas have, and good resale value.”
I’d had two emails the day before, but not about Sydney. They were from other parents. One was from a father in Providence, telling me that his son Kenneth had been missing for a year now, and there wasn’t a moment when he didn’t think about him, wonder where he was, whether he was dead or alive, whether it was something he’d done, as a father, that had driven Kenneth away, or whether his son had met up with the wrong kind of people, that maybe they had—
It wasn’t helpful.
The second was from a woman outside Albany who’d stumbled onto the site and told me she was praying for my daughter and for me, that I should put my faith in God if I wanted Sydney to come home safely, that it would be through God that I’d find the strength to get through this.
I deleted both emails without replying.
“But the Toyotas have good resale value as well,” Lorna said. “I was looking in Consumer Reports, where they have these little charts with all the red dots on them? Have you noticed those? Well, there are lots of red dots if the cars have good repair records, but if the cars don’t have good repair records there are lots of black dots, so you can tell at a glance whether it’s a good car or not by how many red or black dots are on the chart. Have you seen those?”
I checked to see whether there were any messages now. The thing was, I had already checked for messages three times since Lorna and Dell had sat down across from me. When I was at my desk, I checked about every three minutes. At least twice a day I phoned Milford police detective Kip Jennings—I’d never met a Kip before, and hadn’t expected that when I finally did it would be a woman—to see what progress she was making. She’d been assigned Sydney’s case, although I was starting to think “assigned” was defined as “the detective who has the case in the back of his or her desk drawer.”
In the time that Lorna had been going on about Consumer Reports recommendations, a message had dropped into my inbox. I clicked on it and learned that there was a problem with my Citibank account and if I didn’t immediately confirm all my personal financial details it would be suspended, which was kind of curious considering that I did not have a Citibank account and never had.
“Jesus Christ,” I said aloud. The site had only been up for nearly three weeks—Jeff got it up and running within days of Syd’s disappearance—and already the spammers had found it.
“Excuse me?” Lorna said.
I glanced at her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Just something on my screen there. You were saying, about the red dots.”
“Were you even listening to me?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Have you been looking at some dirty website all this time?” she said, and her husband’s eyebrows went up. If there was porn on my screen, he wanted a peek.
“They don’t allow that when we’re with customers,” I said earnestly.
“I just don’t want us to make a mistake,” Lorna said. “We usually keep our cars for seven to ten years, and that’s a long time to have a car if it turns out to be a lemon.”
“Honda doesn’t make lemons,” I assured her.
I needed to sell a car. I hadn’t made a sale since Syd went missing. The first week, I didn’t come into work. It wasn’t like I was home, sick with worry. I was out eighteen hours a day, driving the streets, hitting every mall and plaza and drop-in shelter in Milford and Stratford. Before long, I’d broadened the search to include Bridgeport and New Haven. I showed Syd’s picture to anyone who’d look at it. I called every friend I could ever recall her mentioning.
I went back to the Just Inn Time, trying to figure out where the hell Syd was actually going every day when I’d believed she was heading into the hotel.
I’d had very little sleep in the twenty-four days since I’d last seen her.
“You know what I think we’re going to do?” Lorna said, scooping the pamphlets off the desk and shoving them into her oversized purse. “I think we should take one more look at the Nissan.”
“Why don’t you do that?” I said. “They make a very good car.”
I got to my feet as Lorna and Dell stood. Just then, my phone rang. I glanced at it, recognized the number on the call display, let it go to message, although this particular caller might not choose to leave yet another one.