Creep

by Jennifer Hillier

  “Are you kidding me? Why the hell wouldn’t she be?”

  Torrance raised a hand. “Just doing my job, Mr. Gardener.”

  Morris seethed in silence.

  “So you said you got Ms. Tao’s message—sorry, Dr. Tao’s message—on Sunday while you were waiting for her at the hotel. What time did she leave the message?”

  “I told you I don’t remember the exact time she called.” Morris was exasperated. “I can check my call display when I get home. And if you’re gonna ask me every question three different ways, Detective, we’re gonna be here awhile.” Morris glared at them.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” Torrance was unfazed.

  “Of course.”

  “Why wouldn’t she call you on your cell? Didn’t you think it was strange that she called you on your home phone knowing you weren’t going to be there?”

  “It was strange, yes. But she might have pressed the wrong button on her phone. Or she didn’t want to actually speak to me. Considering what she told me, I can’t blame her.”

  “But when you got the message, you weren’t alarmed. You didn’t go looking for her?”

  “Of course I did,” Morris said, the heat building in his neck. “I came here first thing, she wasn’t home. I called, she didn’t answer. What else could I have done?”

  “Is it a normal pattern of behavior for her to just take off?”

  “No. We’ve been dating for a year and nothing like this has ever happened.”

  “You must have been pretty angry with her for dumping you over voice mail a week before your wedding day. Must’ve been pretty embarrassing for you to have to make all those phone calls to your guests.”

  “It was the worst day of my life, yes.” Morris hated how defiant he sounded.

  “So you still have that message on your answering machine?”

  “For God’s sake, Detectives. Yes. I will bring it by tonight.”

  “It would be good if you could,” Kellogg piped in sweetly.

  Morris felt like ripping her ponytail from her pretty little head.

  “All right then, I think we have everything we need for now.” Torrance nodded to his partner, who was still writing in her notebook. “Thanks for calling us, Mr. Gardener. We’ll get her missing person’s report on file.”

  “And then what?” Morris was relieved that the questioning was over, but he was still pissed off. “What’s your plan?”

  “Our plan?” Torrance was barely able to keep the condescension out of his voice. “Well, we’ll pop around the university and see if her colleagues know anything. We’ll chat up her neighbors. Does she have close friends? Family?”

  Morris thought of giving them Marianne Chang’s name, but then he shook his head. Sheila’s therapist obviously didn’t think anything was wrong, and he didn’t want the detectives contacting her and deciding they agreed before they conducted a thorough investigation. “Both parents are dead and she’s an only child. The only friends she ever talked about are from work.”

  Torrance nodded, then glanced at Kellogg again. They seemed to have a wordless way of communicating with each other. It was irritating. “Listen, Mr. Gardener—”

  “Call me Morris.”

  “Morris. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t sound to me like anything bad’s happened to your fiancée. What she did may be unusual, maybe even out of character, but it’s not necessarily cause for concern. She’s an adult, and she left a very specific message telling you that she was leaving town. If we don’t find evidence of foul play, we won’t be able to pursue this. People have the right to up and walk out of their lives.” Torrance paused. “It’s shitty, but it happens every day.”

  “She wouldn’t have let her fish die,” Morris said stubbornly. “How long can a goldfish go without being fed?”

  “Five days,” Kellogg answered. She smiled, sheepish, when the men turned to stare at her. “I had one when I was a kid. Never remembered to feed it on time.”

  Torrance gave her a look and her grin faded.

  “Okay then.” Torrance stuck out his hand. Morris shook it halfheartedly. “We’ll be in touch. Don’t forget to bring that tape. And also the time of the call and the number she called from.”

  “Got it,” Morris said, tired. He couldn’t have forgotten if he’d wanted to.

  “You leaving with us?”

  Morris shook his head. “I need to lock up.”

  He saw them back to the door and watched them drive away, just as his BlackBerry rang. Private name, Seattle number. He answered the call.

  “Morris?” a voice said.

  His heart deflated. It wasn’t Sheila. “Yes?”

  “This is Dr. Chang.” Her voice was more anxious than the last time they’d spoken. “I tried you at home first. I thought I would let you know that I called the treatment facility I thought Sheila might have checked into. They have no record of her. Neither do a dozen other places I’ve tried.” The therapist paused. “It was an in-patient program?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “I thought so.” Dr. Chang was quiet for a moment. “Listen, I’m concerned.”

  “I am, too. I’m at Sheila’s place now and the police were just here. I’ve filed a missing person’s report.”

  “That’s good.” The therapist sounded relieved. “I think that’s best. Not that I think anything’s wrong,” she added quickly. “But it would be good to know she hasn’t been in an accident of some kind.”

  “That’s pretty much what the police said. Should I give them your name?”

  Dr. Chang was silent for a moment. “There’s really nothing I can tell them. If I knew something that could help, I would say so, but only if I thought she were a danger to herself or others. She’s not.”

  “That’s what I figured.” Morris hesitated. “Listen, the detective on the case thinks Sheila probably flipped out. He said that people walk away from their lives all the time. Do you think that’s what she did?”

  Dr. Chang answered carefully. “In my experience, I’ve seen people walk away for all kinds of reasons.”

  His heart sank.

  Finally, the therapist sighed. “I shouldn’t say this, but she loved you very much, Morris. You mean the world to her. Once she’s worked through everything she needs to, I really believe she’ll come back.”

  He closed his eyes. “Thank you. You don’t know how badly I needed to hear that.”

  CHAPTER : 24

  It wasn’t even twenty-four hours before Detective Torrance called.

  Morris was working late at the bank, running numbers for a new deal he was working on. He’d been at it all afternoon and was irritated to be interrupted, but the minute Darcy told him who was on the line, he forgot about his spreadsheets.

  “Yes, Detective.” He didn’t know what he was expecting to hear, and his stomach had that acidic feeling again, now a daily occurrence. He reached for the bottle of antacid in his top drawer.

  Was Sheila dead? Or had they found her, shacked up with some guy on the other side of the country?

  “Hello, Mr. Gardener,” Torrance said. “I have an update for you.”

  “I’m listening.” Morris shook out three antacid tablets and popped them into his mouth. They tasted like sweetened chalk. He took a sip of the coffee that Darcy had brought in an hour before and grimaced. It was cold.

  “Thought you’d like to know we conducted a thorough investigation into the disappearance of your fiancée. The good news is, we found no evidence or sign of foul play.”

  “That is good news,” Morris said, relief washing over him. “What’s the bad news?”

  “We have no idea where she is.”

  “Okay. But you’re gonna keep looking, right? She’s still missing.”

  “Yeah.” Torrance cleared his throat. “But the thing is, sir, she wants to be. So we’re closing her file.”

  “You’re kidding.” Morris’s mouth hung open in shock. “I only filed the report yesterday. What about her fish?
She wouldn’t have let the goddamned thing die.”

  “Goldfish die all the time, sir.” Morris could practically hear the detective’s smirk right through the phone line. “Perhaps it died before she left, and she was in a hurry to get out of town and didn’t think to . . . flush it.”

  Asshole. “What if she leaves the country? Couldn’t you flag her passport?”

  “Sure we could,” Torrance replied, “but it was sitting on the kitchen counter. I saw it when I was there the other night.” The detective lowered his voice. “Look, I know this is hard for you. But as I said before, this isn’t that uncommon. She’s taking a break from her life. It happens. It’s not what you want to hear, but you’re going to have to accept it one way or another.”

  “I still think this is wrong.” Morris’s stomach churned. “The woman had a life here, Detective. She had a job. Responsibilities. I can deal with the fact that she changed her mind about me, but you don’t know Sheila. I’m telling you. None of this makes sense.”

  “She’s an adult, Mr. Gardener. She’s free to come and go as she chooses. I listened to her phone message several times and she was pretty adamant about her decision.”

  A headache started in Morris’s left temple. “So what should I do?”

  “You want my advice? Let it go. She’s probably having a midlife crisis. She freaked out, left town, needs space. Like you said yourself, she has a life here. She’ll come home eventually.”

  Morris pounded his fist into the desk, rocking his mug of cold coffee. “And in the meantime, I’m supposed to just . . . what? Sit around and wait for her?”

  “Get on with your life.”

  “Yeah? And how do I do that?”

  “There is another option. You could hire a private investigator.” Torrance’s voice was so low, Morris could barely hear him.

  “Come again?”

  “Write this number down.” It sounded as if the detective was cupping the phone to his mouth. Morris grabbed a pen and copied down the number Torrance recited. “His name is Jerry Isaac. Retired cop. Not saying it’ll go anywhere, but you want to keep digging into this, he’s the man for the job. That’s my best advice.” Torrance’s voice returned to normal. “Seattle PD can’t take it any further.”

  Morris mumbled his thanks and hung up. He rubbed his temples, trying to process what he’d just been told. By all accounts, Sheila had left him. Really and truly. Whether it made sense or not, she was gone, and he was going to have to find a way to deal with it.

  He looked at the spreadsheet he’d been working on before Torrance called and couldn’t remember a damn thing about it. Then he reached for his bottom desk drawer and pulled out the bottle of Johnnie Walker Red.

  He was surprised to find it was almost empty.

  CHAPTER : 25

  Morris hated Fremont.

  Jerry Isaac’s office was located in the heart of the quirky Seattle neighborhood, made popular by the young professionals who wanted to stay in the city and didn’t mind living in old houses that needed work. Fremont was filled with independently owned coffee shops, secondhand clothing stores, and ethnic restaurants Morris had never heard of. Its residents were environmentally conscious, and most of them had no need for a car.

  In other words, it was hip. And he could count on two fingers the number of times he’d been here.

  He trudged up the sidewalk, the black leather bag on his shoulder getting heavier by the second. He was sweating profusely. The Cadillac was parked three blocks down in the only spot he could find. For a neighborhood that prided itself on its nondependence on automobiles, it was interesting how every available parking space within a two-block radius was taken.

  He consulted the slip of paper in his hand where he’d written down Jerry Isaac’s address, finally stopping in front of a store called Bead World. Confused for a moment, he looked straight up and was relieved to see a sign in the second-floor window that read ISAAC AND ASSOCIATES, PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS.

  He looked around but saw no entrance to the second level of the building. Dismayed, he pushed open the doors to the bead store. The bells that were attached to the door’s frame chimed his entrance. Loudly.

  Four ladies were sitting around a large, square white table, all working on projects of some kind—necklaces, bracelets, God knew what else—and they all glanced up as he entered. The room reeked of musky sweetness and he tried not to gag. The only thing he hated more than beads was incense. Plinky New Age music played in the background to complete the experience.

  This was Morris’s version of hell.

  “Can I help you?” the oldest lady said in a singsong voice. In her hands was a long rope of red and silver beads that matched the sari she wore.

  Morris was afraid to venture in farther. Beads of all colors, shapes, and sizes surrounded him, in boxes, in bins, in little plastic bags hooked onto the walls. The smell of patchouli assailed his nostrils. His eyes began to water.

  “Uh, yeah, can you tell me how I can get up to the second floor?” His throat was getting sore.

  Four pairs of eyes scrutinized him from his tie to his shoes. He was much too dressed up for Bead World, and for Fremont in general.

  “The entrance is at the back,” the lady said, the space between her eyebrows wrinkling in disapproval. “If I’ve told Jerry once, I’ve told him a thousand times, put something on that darn sign that tells people to go around back. Is that so hard?”

  Morris didn’t think she wanted an answer, so he didn’t offer one.

  “You are looking for Jerry, right? It’s either him or Rosemary the psychic. Not that it’s any of my business.”

  “Thanks.” Morris turned quickly back toward the door.

  “Come through this way!” the lady called. “It’ll save you from walking all the way around the building. Don’t worry, we don’t bite. Unless you ask us to.”

  The other three ladies tittered.

  Plastering on an uncomfortable smile and trying not to breathe through his nose, he made his way through the aisles of all things bead. He passed the table where the ladies sat and nodded politely.

  “He’s cute,” one of them said out loud. “And burly. I like ’em burly.”

  He felt his face turn red.

  “Straight through, exit out the back, entrance to the second floor is on your right.” The oldest lady appraised him through spectacles perched low on her nose. The glasses were, of course, attached to a long string of shiny black beads that draped around her shoulders and neck. “Stop back in afterwards if you have time. I have an introductory necklace workshop starting in half an hour.”

  Morris’s smile was strained. “I’ll try.”

  They all tittered again.

  He exited and another tinkling of chimes announced his departure. Stepping out into the dreary gray day, he found himself in the building’s parking lot. Half a dozen parking spots were free, of course. Swearing under his breath, he thought of his beloved Cadillac parked three streets away. At least the October chill was refreshing. The incense had left him with a headache.

  He took one last breath of fresh air, then headed for the back-door entrance. He was dismayed but not surprised to see that there was no elevator. Adjusting the bag on his shoulder, he started up the long, narrow staircase to Jerry Isaac’s office. And, of course, Rosemary the psychic.

  Hell, if the private investigator couldn’t get him any answers, maybe Rosemary could.

  Morris’s knees were creaking in protest by the time he reached the top step, and he had to stop and wait for the burning sensation to subside. Looking down the long corridor, he saw that quite a few offices were up here. Most seemed unoccupied, and the flowery, colorful sign to Rosemary’s office said CLOSED. No psychic reading for Morris today.

  The door to Jerry Isaac’s office was open and Morris stepped into the small, dingy waiting room. A dark-skinned young woman—presumably the one he’d spoken with the day before—looked up at him. Some type of rap music played softly through the speaker
s of her computer.

  “Can I help you?” She was pleasant enough, but after giving him a quick once-over, her eyes were back on her computer screen. Before he could answer, she was already typing.

  “Morris Gardener for Jerry Isaac.” His tone was brisk. If she’d worked at the bank, he’d have fired her ass for not telling a client about the parking lot at the back. Okay, he wouldn’t, but the thought was comforting. “I have an appointment.”

  “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  She typed something else into the computer, giggled, then typed something else. He glared into the side of her face, but she was oblivious. After a full minute, she finally yelled, “Uncle Jerry!”

  A man about the same height as Morris but with about fifty pounds less on his lanky frame popped out from the doorway just behind her. He had a close-cut Afro and ebony skin, which made his teeth look startlingly white. He saw Morris and grinned.

  “Jerry Isaac,” he said with an outstretched hand.

  “Morris Gardener.”

  “This is my receptionist, Keisha. She’s also my niece.” Jerry gave the young woman a stern look. “Keisha, you’d better not be chatting online with that old guy in Idaho. I already told you.”

  “He’s not old, he’s twenty-six.”

  “So he says.” Jerry rolled his eyes, leading Morris through another door and closing it behind them.

  “These kids today.” Jerry gestured for Morris to have a seat. “They have no sense of danger. It was hard enough staying out of trouble when we were young, but with the Internet, it’s a whole other thing. They go into these online chat rooms and they meet these people, and you have no idea who anybody really is. It’s a scary world out there, I tell you. You got kids?”

  “Three boys,” Morris said. “But they’re grown. And when they were Keisha’s age, the Internet wasn’t the juggernaut it is now.”

  The private investigator had his back to the window. Facing him, Morris was surprised to see that the office had a rather nice view of downtown Fremont. If Fremont could be considered nice.