Caught (14 page)

Her phone rang. Wendy checked her watch and shook her head. It had taken Win less than a minute.

"Hello?"

"Phil Turnball was fired for embezzling two million dollars. Have a pleasant day."

Click
.

Win.

She remembered something. Blend, right? That was the name of the place. She had gone there once to see a concert. It was in Ridgewood. She pulled up the Web site and clicked on Calendar of Events. Yep, tonight was open-mike night. It even said: "Special Appearance by new rap sensation Ten-A-Fly."

There was a knock on the door. She called, "Come in," and Pops stuck his head in the doorway. "You okay?" he asked.

"Sure. Do you like rap?"

Pops furrowed his brows. "You mean like the paper stuff on presents?"

"Uh, no. As in rap music."

"I'd rather listen to a strangled cat cough up phlegm."

"Come with me tonight. It's time we opened up your horizons."

TED MCWAID WATCHED his son, Ryan, at the Kasselton lacrosse field. Day had surrendered her rays, but the field, made from some newfangled artificial turf, had stadium-quality lights. Ted was at his nine-year-old son's lacrosse game because what else was he going to do, hang around the house and cry all day? His former friends--"former" was probably unkind but Ted wasn't in the mood to be charitable--politely nodded and made no eye contact and generally avoided him, as though having a missing child was contagious.

Ryan was on Kasselton's third-grade travel team. Stick skills were, to put it kindly, somewhere between "still developing" and "nonexistent." The ball spent most of the time on the ground, no boy able to keep it in the stick webbing for very long, and the game began to resemble hockey players at a rugby scrum. The boys wore helmets that looked too big on their heads, like the Great Gazoo on
The Flintstones,
and it was nearly impossible to tell which kid was which. Ted had cheered for Ryan an entire game, marveling at his progress, until the kid took his helmet off at the end and Ted realized that it wasn't Ryan.

Standing a little way from the other parents, thinking about that day, Ted almost smiled. Then reality pushed its way back in and snatched his breath. That's how it always was. You could sometimes slip into normalcy, but if you did, you paid a price.

He thought of Haley on this very field--here the day it opened--and the hours she spent working on her left. There was a lacrosse retriever in the far corner of the field, and Haley would come down and work on her left because she needed to improve her left, the scouts would be looking at her left, her weakness was her damn left, and UVA would never recruit her if she couldn't go to her left. So she worked on the left nonstop, not just down here, but walking through the house. She started using her left for other things, like brushing her teeth, writing notes for school, whatever. All the parents in this town trying to push their kids to be better, riding them day and night for better grades, better athletics, all in the hopes of getting into what someone deemed a more desirable institution of higher learning. Not Haley. She was self-driven. Too driven? Maybe. In the end UVA hadn't taken her. Her left became damn good, and she was fast for a high school team or maybe a lower-level Division I program, but not UVA. Haley had been crushed, inconsolable. Why? Who cares? What difference did it make in the long run?

He missed her so damn much.

Not so much this--going to her lacrosse games. He missed watching TV with her and the way she'd want him to "get" her music, the YouTube videos she thought were so funny and wanted to share with him. He missed the dumb stuff, like doing his best "moonwalk" in the kitchen while Haley rolled her eyes. Or purposely over-smooching Marcia until a mortified Haley would frown and shout, "Helloooo, yuck, children present!"

Ted and Marcia hadn't touched each other in three months--by mutual unspoken but implied consent. It just felt too raw. The lack of physical togetherness wasn't causing tension, though he had sensed a widening chasm. It just didn't feel that important to work on it, at least right now.

The not knowing. It weighs on you. You start to want an answer, any answer, and that just makes you feel more guilt-ridden and horrible. The guilt ate him up, kept him up every single night. Ted was not good with confrontation. It made his heart beat too fast. An argument with a neighbor last year over a property line had robbed him of weeks of sleep. He stayed up, rehashed, reargued.

It was his fault.

Man Rule Number One: Your daughter is safe in your home. You take care of your family. However you want to spin this horror, that was the plain fact: Ted hadn't done his job. Had someone broken in and snatched his Haley away? Well, that would be on him, wouldn't it? A father protects. That's job one. And if Haley had left the house on her own that night, sneaked out somehow? That was on him too. Because he hadn't been the kind of father his daughter could go to and tell what was wrong or what was going on in her life.

The rehashing never stopped. He wanted to go back, change one thing, alter the universal time structure or whatever. Haley had always been the strong child, the independent one, the competent one. He had marveled at her resourcefulness, which definitely came from her mother. Had that been part of it? Had he figured, well, Haley doesn't need as much parenting, as much supervision, as Patricia and Ryan?

Useless, constant rehashing.

He was not a depressive type, not at all, but there were days, dark, bleak days, when Ted remembered exactly where his dad kept his pistol. He pictured the whole scene now--making sure no one was home; walking into his childhood house where his parents still lived; taking the pistol from the shoebox on the top of the closet; walking down to the basement where he had first made out with Amy Stein in seventh grade; moving into the washer-dryer room because the floor there was cement, not carpet, and easier to clean. He would sit on the floor, lean against the old washer, put the pistol in his mouth--and the pain would end.

Ted would never do it. He wouldn't do that to his family, add to their suffering in any way. A father didn't do that. He took it on himself. But in his more honest, more frightening moments, he wondered what it meant that thinking about that release, that end, sounded so damn sweet.

Ryan was in the game now. Ted tried to concentrate on that, on his boy's face through the protective cage, mouth distorted by the guard, tried to find some joy in this rather pure childhood moment. He still didn't get the boys' lacrosse rules--the boys' game seemed entirely different from the girls'--but he knew that his son was playing attack. That was the position where you had the best chance of scoring a goal.

Ted cupped his hands around his mouth, forming a flesh megaphone. "Go, Ryan!"

He heard his voice echo dully. For the past hour, other parents had called out constantly, of course, but Ted's voice sounded so awkward, so out of place. It made him cringe. He tried to clap instead, but that, too, felt awkward, as if his hands were the wrong size. He turned away for just a second, and that was when he saw him.

Frank Tremont trudged toward him as though through deep snow. A big black man, definitely another cop, walked with him. For a moment, hope spread its wings and took flight. Ted felt something inside him soar. But only for a moment.

Frank's head was down. As he drew closer, Ted could see that the body language was all wrong. Ted felt the quake begin in his knees. One buckled but he held himself upright. He started crossing the sidelines to meet up with him faster.

When they were close enough, Frank said, "Where's Marcia?"

"She's visiting her mother."

"We need to find her," Frank said. "Now."

CHAPTER 14

A GIANT SMILE spread across Pops's face when they entered the Blend bar.

"What?" Wendy asked.

"More cougars on those bar stools than on the Discovery Channel."

The bar had low lights and smoky mirrors, and everyone was dressed in black. He was right about the clientele. In a way.

"By definition," Wendy said, "a cougar is an older woman who frequents clubs to score with
younger
men."

Pops frowned. "Some of them still gotta have Daddy issues, right?"

"At your age, you should hope for a Daddy
complex
. Check that--Grandpa complex."

Pops looked at her, disappointed, as though the line was super lame. She nodded an apology because, yeah, it was.

"Mind if I mingle?" Pops asked.

"I cramp your style?"

"You're the hottest cougar here. So, yes. Though some chicks dig that. Like they're stealing me away."

"Just don't bring any of them home. I have an impressionable teenage son at home."

"I always go to her place," Pops said. "I don't like her knowing how to find me. Plus I save her the morning walk of shame."

"Thoughtful."

Blend had a bar up front, restaurant in the middle, club in the back. The club was holding the open-mike night. Wendy paid the cover charge--five bucks including a drink for men, one buck including a drink for the ladies--and ducked inside. She could hear Norm, aka Ten-A-Fly, rapping:

Hotties, listen up,
You may not be in Tenafly
But Ten-A-Fly gonna be deep in you. . . .

Oy, she thought. There were forty, fifty people gathered around the stage, cheering. Ten-A-Fly wore enough gold bling to make Mr. T envious and a trucker hat with a flat brim and forty-five-degree tilt. He held up his droopy trousers with one hand--might have been because they were too big, might have been because the guy had absolutely no ass--while the other gripped the microphone.

When Norm finished that particularly romantic ditty with the closer that Ten-A-Fly be so deep in you, you be begging for no Engle-Wood, the crowd--median age: early forties--gave him a huge ovation. A red-clad maybe-groupie in the front threw something onstage, and with something approaching horror, Wendy realized that they were panties.

Ten-A-Fly picked them up and took a deep sniff. "Yo, yo, love to the ladies out there, the burning shawties, Ten-A-Fly and the FC in da house!"

The maybe-groupie put her hands in the air. She wore, God help her, a T-shirt that read, "Ten-A-Fly's Main Ho!"

Pops came up behind her. He looked pained. "For the love of all that is merciful . . ."

Wendy scanned the room. She spotted the rest of the Fathers Club--FC?--near the front, including Phil. They cheered wildly for their man. Wendy's gaze traveled back and settled on a petite blonde sitting alone near the back. Her eyes were down and on her drink.

Sherry Turnball, Phil's wife.

Wendy swam through the crowd, making her way toward her. "Mrs. Turnball?"

Sherry Turnball turned from her drink slowly.

"I'm Wendy Tynes. We talked on the phone."

"The reporter."

"Yes."

"I didn't realize that you were the one who did the story on Dan Mercer."

"Did you know him?"

"I met him once."

"How?"

"He and Phil lived in the same suite at Princeton. I met him at the political fund-raiser we held for Farley last year."

"Farley?"

"Another classmate." She took a sip of her drink. On the stage, Ten-A-Fly asked for quiet. "Let me tell you about this next number." A hush fell over the room. Ten-A-Fly took off his sunglasses as if they'd angered him. His scowl aimed for intimidation but seemed more in the neighborhood of constipation.

"So one day I'm sitting at Starbucks with my homies in the FC," he began.

The Fathers Club hooted at the shout-out.

"I'm sitting there, enjoying my latte or whatnot, and this dial-nine-one-one-kickin' shawty walks by, and man-o-man she's working it up top, if you know what I'm saying."

The cheers said, We know what you're saying.

"And I'm looking for inspiration, for a new tune and whatnot, and I'm checking out this five-alarm shawty in a halter top . . . and this phrase just comes to me: 'Swing dem puppies.' Just like that. She saunters by, head up, working it up top, and I think to myself, 'Yeah, baby, swing dem puppies.' "

Ten-A-Fly paused to let that sink in. Silence. Then someone yelled: "Genius!"

"Thanks, brother, I mean that." He pointed at the "fan" in some complicated way, like his fingers were a gun turned on its side. "Anyway, my homies in the FC helped me take this rap and bring it up to the next level. So this is for you guys. And of course, all you top-heavy shawties out there. You be Ten-A-Fly's inspiration."

Applause.

Sherry Turnball said, "You think this is all pretty pathetic, don't you?"

"Not my place to judge."

Ten-A-Fly began to perform what some might consider a "dance," though medical experts would probably classify it as a "seizure" or "devastating stroke."

Yo, girl, swing dem puppies,
Swing em like you're my favorite ho,
Swing dem puppies,
Swing dem like you're Best in Show,
Swing dem puppies,
Yo, got here a bone to feed ya,
Swing dem puppies,
Take it, girl, be no protest from PETA . . .

Wendy rubbed her eyes, blinked, opened them again.

By now, the other members of the Fathers Club were standing and joining in for the "Swing Dem Puppies" chorus, letting Ten-A-Fly solo on the lines between:

Swing dem puppies,

Ten-A-Fly: "
No need to scream and holler."

Swing dem puppies.

Ten-A-Fly
: "Swing dem right, I gives you a pearl doggie collar. . . ."

Wendy made a face. The men were up now. The guy who'd been wearing the tennis whites was all prepped out in a bright green polo. Phil had khakis and a blue button-down. He was standing and clapping and seemingly lost in the rap. Sherry Turnball stared off.

"You okay?" Wendy asked.

"It's nice to see Phil smile."

The rap went on for a few more verses. Wendy spotted Pops talking up two ladies in the corner. The biker look was rare in suburbia--and some tony club hopper always wanted to take home the bad boy.