I pulled over into the parking lot of a strip mall split evenly between a Subway, a consignment shop, and a mom-and-pop liquor store, and booted up the Maps app on my phone. I did a search for nearby restaurants. It was lunchtime and maybe Pam was meeting someone. There were lots of take-out places along this stretch of road, but only one proper sit-down restaurant I could spot, a place called Little Marsh Grill. I drove there and circled their small parking lot. No blue Toyotas. But I parked anyway. I needed to eat lunch.
At five o’clock I was back at the coffee shop, at my same table, laptop open in front of me, same Auden book open on my lap. And the blue Toyota was back in front of Blackburn Properties, this time on the opposite side of the street, but within my view. I never did find out where she’d gone over her lunch hour. I’d eaten a toasted ham and cheese sandwich on pumpernickel at the Little Marsh Grill, and nursed a Guinness, then I’d taken a brisk walk out behind the restaurant along a series of raised wooden pathways that actually did traverse a little marsh. I watched a pair of white egrets come in for a landing along a shallow patch of ruffled water. The air temperature had dropped since the morning, and I could see my breath. I shoved my hands into my pockets and kept walking, telling myself to stretch out my legs in preparation for another stint at the coffee shop.
The white SUV that had been blocking my view of Blackburn Properties’ entranceway was no longer there, and I watched a few people exit the office. One was a man who looked about the right age to be Joan’s husband, but he was on the heavy side, and was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, not the outfit a broker would wear. When Pam O’Neil exited the building I grabbed my things and got to my car faster than I had before. I had the engine running as she passed me going west along the road. I pulled out and did a U-turn that caused two cars to stop short, horns blaring, then I was behind her making our way through the rush-hour traffic, heading northwest. She got onto Route 2 briefly, then exited around West Concord, where she pulled into the large driveway of an apartment complex. I parked as far away from her car as I could while still keeping her in view. She got out, and I assumed she would head straight into the building. It was a Tuesday night after all, and I wasn’t sure what I had expected from my day shadowing the real estate offices.
But instead of entering through the double glass doors she kept walking across the lot and toward the intersection where we’d turned to get to her apartment building. I got out of my car to see better, and when the lights at the intersection turned red, she crossed the road. In the fading light I watched her cross the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant called the Taste of Hong Kong and enter through the front doors.
I got back into my car and drove the two hundred yards to the Chinese restaurant, parking in its nearly empty lot. The Taste of Hong Kong had a brick exterior and a steep shingled roof; there was an A-frame around its front entrance with a high peak, and on either side of the framing was the name of the restaurant in bright blue ornate script. I sat in my car for about thirty seconds before deciding to head in. Crossing the faded asphalt I could already smell the odor of Chinese food in the crisp fall air. It smelled of seared meat and brown sugar.
The interior of the restaurant was so dark it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. There was an ornate fountain by the empty hostess stand, and I was instantly transported back to a similar Chinese restaurant in a similar town when I was a child. My grandparents would take me there at least once a month and I would beg for pennies to throw into the fountain.
“Just one?” a voice said, and I looked up. A tall woman in black trousers and a white button-down shirt held a menu. She tilted her head to the left, indicating a low-ceilinged dining room with bright fluorescent lighting. To her right was the entrance to a cocktail lounge. I could make out a long bar in its dim interior.
“Just a drink,” I said, and she tilted her head in the other direction. I passed her and entered the bar. There was a large fish tank on its far wall that glowed yellow. The long, lacquered bar had a padded rim and swivel stools in red Naugahyde, and Pam, the lone patron, sat at the exact midpoint. The bartender, a young Asian man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, was mixing a drink. I sat at the nearest stool, aware of Pam, her head turned, checking me out.
I was starting to take off my jacket when she spoke. “Don’t be a stranger, hon,” she said. “You can sit closer if you like.”
Chapter 6
Joan
It was the hottest day of the summer vacation so far, and after breakfast, Joan slathered herself in sunscreen, changed into her bikini, and walked to the beach with her blanket and towel, a large water bottle, her sister’s Discman, and a copy of Gerald’s Game by Stephen King she’d taken from the library the night before.
She crossed the road, then walked up and over the worn wooden ramp that spanned the brief rise of dune that edged the beach. It was low tide, the sand and the sky almost colorless, the brightness of the sun rippling the air. Once her blanket was spread out, and free of all sand, she lay down on her front and tried to stop thinking about the conversation with Richard from the night before. She’d gone over and over it while lying in bed, and she’d barely slept, slipping in and out of strange dreams. Now, with one ear pressed into the blanket, warmed already by the sand, she listened to the gulls squawking, and the low shushing of the waves, more like a sensation than a sound. She must have fallen asleep because her neck was all of a sudden damp with sweat, and she turned herself over onto her back, confused a little about where she was.
After swallowing half the cold water in her bottle, she propped herself onto her elbows, and looked across the beach through the aqua tint of her sunglasses. Last year at high school, her best friend Madison had developed an almost obsessional crush on a senior named Eric Hall, and for at least half of the year Madison could barely even look you in the eye if she was anywhere near a place where Eric might be. She was always hunting in the distance, down school hallways, and across the cafeteria, for a possible appearance of the mythical lacrosse player. It had annoyed Joan to no end, but now, on the beach, she felt herself doing the same thing. Scanning the shimmery bodies on the wide expanse of the beach, looking for anyone who might be Richard.
And it wasn’t a crush. She had zero interest in kissing Richard or doing anything else with him. No, it was something more than that. The things he’d said last night, the matter-of-fact way he’d talked about killing his cousin, had done something entirely different to her, made her feel dangerously alive, almost intoxicated. She’d been drunk a few times in her life, mostly on warm beer snuck to an outdoor party, or else on something gross like the bottle of Frangelico she and three other gymnasts drank during a sleepover at Madison’s house.
But those times hadn’t compared to the summer before, when her parents had hosted a garden party. Her dad’s best friend, an older Canadian man named Angus, who wore white suits and had a white beard, had been making himself a martini in the kitchen when Joan wandered in to look through the kid’s cooler for more Sprite.
“You’re drinking a martini,” she’d said to Angus.
“You have a good eye. Have you had one?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not even fifteen yet.”