A Tap on the Window (7 page)

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Maybe he’d had enough. A woman I work with, she took a course with him ten, twelve years ago. He asked her out a few times.”

“He hit on his students?”

“So they say. Didn’t seem to trouble him that he had a wife, although I suspect it must have troubled her, given that she finally left him. And despite this failing, apparently he’s this big idealist. Believes in something called the Constitution. Doesn’t like Augie’s approach to streamlining the justice system.”

A nice way to put it. Taking a felon behind a building and breaking his nose instead of laying charges was one way to keep the court system from getting too clogged.

A ten-second silence followed as Donna stood there, staring at me.

“What?” I asked.

“This is how it used to be,” she said. “How we used to talk. I remember how, when you’d get home, you’d tell me all about the things you were working on.”

“Donna.”

“This is the most we’ve spoken in weeks.” Another pause. “You remember my friend Eileen Skyler?”

“Who?’

“She was married to Earl—he worked the border at Whirlpool Rapids before it went NEXUS only.”

“Vaguely,” I said.

“Things started to fall apart for them after their daughter, Sylvia, died in that crash at the top of the South Grand Island Bridge when she got cut off by the gas truck and there was a fire. She was thirty-two. Her husband had left her about a year earlier.”

“I remember.”

“It hit them pretty hard, which is no surprise. They were so sad, so heartbroken, that they didn’t know how to talk to each other anymore. The smallest pleasures made them feel guilty. And most of the pleasure they’d found in life had been being with each other. It got to the point where they lived on different floors of their house. Earl came in the back way, right by the stairs, and lived on the top floor, where he set up a hot plate and put in a small fridge. Eileen used the front door, and lived on the first floor. Set up a bedroom down there. They lived in the same house but could go weeks without ever having to see or talk to each other.”

I said nothing.

“So what I keep wondering is, are things going to get better around here, or should I put in a call to Gill?”

Gill Strothers was a carpenter and general handyman we’d used around the house for several small projects, although he had tackled larger ones for other people. Additions, new kitchens. All cash-under-the-table jobs. He did good work.

“Do you want me to call him and ask him if he could put in a set of stairs by the back door there? Is that what you’d like me to do? I’m not saying it’s what I want. I just wanted to get an idea if that’s what
you
want.”

“Donna,” I said, shaking my head tiredly and looking down, my eyes scanning past the multiple square facial images, “I don’t want you—”

And I saw her. There on the screen. Her head cocked a bit to one side, blond hair cascading across her forehead, tucked behind her ear. It was her. I was sure of it.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

I clicked on the name next to the picture.
.

I looked up to tell Donna I’d found her, but she’d left.

EIGHT

I
got out of Facebook, called up the online phone directory, and found a C. Rodomski at 34 Arlington Street, which was on Griffon’s west side.

I grabbed my keys. Heading out the front door, I called back into the house, “Be back in a bit.” I didn’t know where Donna was, or whether she’d even heard me.

The Rodomskis’ house was a broad bungalow, set back from the street, with an expansive, well-manicured lawn. There was an operating fountain in the center that looked like an oversized birdbath and fit in, on this street, like a Rolls hood ornament on a Kia. The Rodomskis had what looked like the nicest house on an okay street, which I’d learned long ago, from a friend who sold real estate, is not nearly as desirable as having an okay house on a very nice street. Every other home on Arlington was pulling the value of the Rodomski place down.

A white Ford Explorer and a dark blue Lexus were parked in the double driveway. I pulled in behind the Explorer, got out, crossed the flagstone walk to the front door, and rang the bell.

I could hear muffled shouting inside. A man’s voice asking if someone was going to get it, a woman saying he was closer. I waited, figuring that sooner or later someone would get here.

The door was opened by a silver-haired man in his late forties, early fifties, probably just home from work. The collar of his crisp white shirt was unbuttoned, his tie askew, the cuffs of his dress pants rested on black socks instead of shoes. The big toe of his right foot was peeking at me through a hole. In his hand was an oversized wineglass that was half full of red.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Mr. Rodomski?” I said.

“Whatever it is, we don’t want any.”

“I’m not selling. I’m here to—”

“Who is it, Chris?” a woman shouted from someplace else in the house.

He swiveled his head around, yelled, “I don’t know!” Then, back to me, he said, “What’d you say you’re selling?”

“I said I wasn’t. My name is Cal Weaver. I’m a private investigator.” I extended a hand.

Chris Rodomski shook my hand, which was clammy enough to make me sorry I’d offered it. “Really?” he said.

I took out my wallet and displayed my license for half a second. I could have allowed him a closer look, but his eyes were glassy and I didn’t see the point.

A woman I presumed was his wife appeared at the bottom of the stairs and turned toward the door. Big hair, auburn in color, and a little too much lipstick, suggesting to me that when she was little, she had a hard time coloring within the lines. Her cheeks were overly rouged, almost clownlike. She had a glass of red wine in her hand as well, but it was just about ready for a refill.

“Who’s this?” she said to her husband. There was a hint of slurring. She hadn’t reached total inebriation, although I had a sense it was her destination.

“It’s a detective, Glynis.”

“The police?” she said, and the skin beyond the red circles on her cheeks instantly paled. She set the glass down on the closest surface, a side table.

I told her my name. “I’m not with the police. I’m private.”

“What’s this about?” She’d put one hand to her chest, as though checking to see how quickly her heart was beating.

“I’m sure everything is fine,” her husband said. He looked at me apologetically. “Glynis always assumes the worst.”

“That’s because that’s how things usually turn out,” she shot back.

“May I come in?” I asked, nodding toward the living room.

“Just tell me if it’s about Hanna,” Glynis Rodomski said. “I have to know if this is about Hanna.”

“It is,” I conceded. “At least, in part. Is she here?”

“No,” her husband said quickly. “She’s not.” Which immediately made me wonder whether she was.

We sat down in the adjoining living room. I caught a glimpse of the kitchen through a doorway. Dishes piled by the sink, a leaning stack of newspapers, an uncorked bottle of wine, an open box of Cheerios. Unless they were having cereal for dinner, that box had to have been sitting there all day. By contrast, the living room was pure Martha Stewart. Two matching couches, two matching chairs, with perfectly positioned throw pillows on all of them.

Chris Rodomski tossed a pillow aside before taking one of the chairs, and it hit the broadloomed floor silently. Glynis scowled at him, ever so briefly, but I was guessing my presence was more disconcerting to her than his contempt for her decorating touches. She sat on one of the couches and I took the other empty chair.

“Do you know where Hanna is now?” I asked.

They exchanged looks. “Not right this second,” he said. “There are a number of places she could be.” He tried to be offhand about it. “With her friends, probably.” He adopted a look of grave concern toward me. “We really need to know what this is about before we start answering your questions.”

“It’s about that little business she has with her boyfriend, isn’t it?” Glynis blurted. “I told her that would end up biting her in the ass.”

Chris Rodomski shot her a look. “We don’t know that Mr. Weaver’s visit has anything to do with that.”

“Business?” I asked.

He waved his hand dismissively at me. “Tell us why you’re here.”

I took a breath. “Hanna has a friend named Claire Sanders, doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” Glynis said.

“Claire hasn’t been seen since last night, and I’m trying to find her. I figured Hanna might be able to help me.”

“What do you mean, she hasn’t been seen?” she asked. “She’s missing?”

I hesitated. There was a difference between not knowing where someone was and categorizing them as missing. “She needs to be found,” I said, and left it that.

“I have no idea where she is,” Glynis said. “Claire, I mean. She comes around here once in a while, but she’s only going to come here if Hanna’s home, and she’s not home all that much.”

“But she lives here,” I said, making a statement more than asking.

“Well, sure,
technically
,” Hanna’s mother said, “but she spends pretty much every waking moment with her boyfriend.”

“Not just waking,” her husband sneered.

“Who’s that?” I asked, getting out my small notebook.

“Sean,” Hanna’s mother said.

“Sean what?”

“Skilling,” Chris Rodomski interjected, putting the wineglass to his lips and taking a long sip.

“That’s right,” Glynis said suddenly. “Sean Skilling. Every time I try to think of the name, I come up with ‘skillet.’”

I asked, “Does Hanna carry a cell phone?”

Glynis rolled her eyes. She seemed less tense, now that she realized I was here more about Claire than her own daughter. “Are you kidding? It’s surgically attached to her hand.” She rethought that. “Or her head. I don’t know which.”

“Could you call her, tell her to come home?”

“What will I tell her?”

“I don’t know. Something’s come up. A family matter. You need her to come home.”

Glynis looked skeptical. “I can try.” She picked up the receiver on a landline phone that was sitting on a table next to the couch.

She held the phone to her ear and waited. She nodded almost imperceptibly with each ring, then said, “Oh, hi, sweetheart. It’s your
mother
. Could you please come over? There’s something your father and I need to discuss with you. But”—she looked at me—“it’s not the sort of thing I can talk to you about on the phone.” A pause, then, with forced cheerfulness, “Hope you’re having fun.”

Glynis ended the call. “She’ll either call back or she won’t. She probably saw it was me and didn’t answer. She sees our name and generally ignores it. I could text her, but it wouldn’t make any difference.”

Rodomski shook his head. “Which is really a pain in the ass when you need to get in touch with her. You got kids?”

I hesitated. “A son.”

Rodomski nodded enviously. “You’re better off, believe me. Girls can get into so much more trouble.”

“Have Hanna and Claire been friends a long time?” I asked.

“Since around seventh grade, I think,” Glynis said. “They’re inseparable. Sleeping over at each other’s houses, trading clothes, going on school trips.”

“What do you know about Claire?” I asked.

Glynis shrugged. “She’s a nice girl.”

Her husband said, “She’s the mayor’s daughter, you know.” A pause. “That horse’s ass.”

“You’re not a fan?”

Chris shook his head. “You watch the news? You see the kind of things going on half an hour’s drive south of here? You want that kind of thing happening in Griffon? Far as I’m concerned, the cops here do what they have to do, and I’m okay with it. Bert Sanders is more worried about some troublemaker’s rights than he is about our right to be able to be safe in our beds at night. I signed that petition. Signed it more than once. Every store I go into, I sign it. How about you?”

“I never seem to have a pen on me,” I said.

“You either support Chief Perry or you don’t, that’s how I feel.”

“The chief and I have a complicated relationship,” I said. I wasn’t interested in talking politics any longer. I turned to his wife and asked, “When’s the last time you saw Hanna?”

She glanced at her husband and then back at me. “I didn’t hear her come in last night, and I guess she was off to school pretty early this—”

“Hanna didn’t come home last night,” Chris said. “For God’s sake, Glynis, stop fooling yourself.”

“If she didn’t come home, where was she?”

“With that boy. Sean. She’s over at his house most nights.”

“He lives with his parents?”

Rodomski nodded. “I guess they don’t see anything wrong with it. A girl shacked up in their house with their son.”

“Shacked up,” Glynis said mockingly. “What century are you from?”

“I need Hanna’s cell phone number,” I said to both of them, “and an address for Sean Skilling.”

“I can give you the number, but I don’t know exactly where the Skillings live,” Glynis said. “I’m sure they’re in the book, though.”

She recited the number, which I scribbled into my notebook. “They go to school together?”

Glynis nodded. “And Sean has a car.”

“What kind?”

She looked hopelessly at her husband. “It’s a pickup,” he said. “Probably a Ford. You know Skilling Ford, just outside of town?”

I did.

“That’s them.”

“What kind of work do you do, Mr. Rodomski?”

“I’m a financial adviser,” he said.

“Here in Griffon?”

“No, we have an office down on Military Road.” He pronounced it “milltree,” like everyone else around here did.

“I work, too,” Glynis said indignantly. “Looking after him and our daughter. That’s a full-time job.”

“One of Glynis’ little jokes,” Chris Rodomski said wearily. “She thinks if it’s funny once, it’s funny a hundred times.”

I handed them each a business card. “If Hanna comes home before I run into her, give me a call. Maybe by then I’ll have found Claire anyway.”

They each took a card without looking at it.

“One last question. What’s this business you mentioned?”

“Hmm?” Glynis said, playing dumb.

“When I came in, you asked if this was about that business they’ve been running. You said you told Hanna it could come back and bite her in the ass.”

“It has nothing to do with Claire Sanders,” Chris Rodomski said. “I think we’ve helped you out as much as we can.”

They showed me to the door.

As I walked back to my car, I took a small detour down the side of the house to get a look at the backyard. Even in the darkness, I could make out several garbage cans and an old rusted swing set. It had to have been years since Hanna had played on that. I thought of Chris Rodomski’s nice suit, the hole in his sock. Perfect living room, messy kitchen. Beautiful front yard, a jungle out back.

The Rodomskis liked to make a good first impression, but didn’t give a damn what you thought once you got to know them.