by Jo Crow
I left my car at the curb and made my way up the driveway. Overgrown crabgrass in desperate need of trimming clustered in the crannies between the property and the sidewalk. I followed it all the way to the walkway leading from the driveway to the front door, then climbed the crumbling cement steps to stand on the stained stoop. The doorbell had once been white, but was stained yellow with time. I hesitated before I pressed it in.
The rubber was sticky.
I wiped my finger on the outside of my pant leg and shook out my hand, but the stickiness persisted. I was about to find somewhere to wipe it when a latch clicked, and the door opened. A young man peeked through a crack in the door, eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Hi,” I offered, a lot more meekly than I intended to sound. “Does Emma Hendricks live here?”
“Who’s askin’?”
If I told him the truth, I risked having the door slammed in my face. My name wasn’t exactly well-liked.
But if I didn’t tell him…? I needed to speak to Emma. With her finger on the pulse of McNair Furniture, she was the woman to ask about who was who. Without her help, I was out of luck until Jerry produced the promised stored documents.
“My father was a friend of hers, and I wanted to ask her about the times they had together.” It was the best I could come up with on short notice. “Can I please speak with her? Or, if she’s not here, do you know where I might be able to find her?”
The man on the other side of the door chewed on his bottom lip, eyes narrowed into slits. His hair was shaved close to the scalp, a singular, dark mole protruding near his left temple. A haggard look and deep creases in his brow made me think he’d turn me down but, to my surprise, I heard metal click, then slide, as he released the door chain. The door swung open, and I found myself facing the man in full.
I pegged him to be around my age—around thirtyish. Loose, gray sweatpants hid the shape of his legs, contrasted with the white wifebeater that clung to his pudgy stomach and stretched across beefy shoulders. He was barefoot.
“Do you know Mrs. Hendricks?” I asked, not yet stepping beyond the threshold. I got the feeling I wasn’t welcome, and I didn’t want to test my limits.
The man looked me over from head to foot, lingering a prolonged minute on my chest, before he turned away from me and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Grandma? Someone’s here to see you.”
Grandma?
I knew Mrs. Hendricks was old, but I hadn’t expected that.
“Um, can I come in?” I asked. “If you point me to where she is, I’ll go see her myself.”
“Suit yourself.” The man shrugged.
It was the warmest welcome I was going to get. I took my chance and stepped through the doorway, closing the door in my wake. Emma’s grandson was rude but I didn’t get a bad vibe from him. If anything, I was more likely to be ignored than I was to be attacked. As long as he didn’t piece together who I was, I figured he’d leave me alone.
“Where can I go to see her?” I looked to him for guidance, but he’d already lost interest.
With a dismissive shrug, he lurched from the entranceway into the living room and settled on a dusty, overstuffed couch. The television played a daytime reality program I almost recognized.
Beyond the house’s tiny entranceway was red carpet, its color muted by years of wear. Frayed edges bled fabric onto the wood floor. Mismatched furniture held the space together; the bent table legs and groan from the couch as Emma’s grandson shifted his weight told me what was in the room presently wouldn’t be around much longer. To the left was a kitchen, the tile old and faded, but the room otherwise in good shape. Between the two rooms was a dreary hallway. I headed for it, confident that somewhere along the way, I’d find the woman I was looking for.
The short, windowless hallway was lined with doors. Before I could go more than two steps, the door at the end of the hall opened. White hair curled tightly near her scalp, tightening her forehead. The elasticity in her cheeks was gone, and the skin there sagged and betrayed her age. Heavily lidded eyes observed me, and I looked back. She wore fuzzy pink slippers and a nightgown, and I had to wonder if I’d woken her.
“Hi, Mrs. Hendricks. I’m sorry for taking up your time. I was just wondering—”
“Clara?” Mrs. Hendricks croaked. She tilted her head to the side and squinted at me in the gloom. “Is that really you?”
I looked over my shoulder to see if her grandson was listening, but he was engrossed in his show. He scratched his thigh, then adjusted himself through his pants.
He’d forgotten all about me.
“It’s me,” I said, returning my gaze to Mrs. Hendricks. “And I’m sorry to intrude, I really am. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Nonsense.” Mrs. Hendricks waved me off. “You know, the people in town may not think very highly of you but, as far as I’m concerned, they don’t think very highly of anyone. As long as you’re in this household, you don’t need to apologize. I don’t believe for a second you’re the one to blame. No matter what anyone says, no matter how troubled you were, I know you wouldn’t do that to your family—to your mother. I know rotten, and you are not it.”
Without waiting for a response, Mrs. Hendricks raised a crooked, knobby finger in my direction as if to warn me. “And before you go saying you aren’t apologizing because you think everyone hates you, you can stop right there. I know for a fact how they’ve been treating you, and I know you must be reeling from it. Well, don’t you think anything of it.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. I hadn’t come here expecting a pep talk.
“You’re welcome. Now, let’s get you into the kitchen and settled at the table. Do you drink coffee?”
“Not this late.” It was almost six. “If I want to get to sleep tonight, I need to stay away from caffeine.”
“Herbal tea, then. Come, dear. Go on. Go settle.” Mrs. Hendricks swept her hands forward to shoo me, then hobbled down the hallway. “You go sit yourself down while I put the kettle on. Go now.”
I listened, taking the turn for the kitchen.
The countertops were crowded with things. Trinkets and baubles and junk, all left to sit. I spotted old mail, rolled newspapers still bound by elastic bands, and a broken wind chime. There were dishes, dirty, clean, and questionable, piled at random along the counters. They flooded the sinks, stacked precariously one atop another. The walls were stained yellow, and the smell on the air revealed the source—tobacco smoke.
Suddenly, my sticky finger didn’t seem so out of place.
Mrs. Hendricks filled an old kettle from the tap and set it on the stove to boil. As the burner clicked and struggled to light, I sat in one of the rickety kitchen chairs at the cluttered kitchen table.
“So, dear, you must have come to talk about something.” Mrs. Hendricks fetched two mugs from an overhead cabinet. I was surprised she still had dishes left. “Why don’t you go on and start that talk while the kettle boils?”
“Right.” My eyes traced the stacks of bills left on the table. The one closest to me was three years old. “I wanted to know if you had anything of my father’s—anything at all that might help me figure out who he was talking to before he went missing. Or if you don’t, if there’s anyone else who might know more about the events around his disappearance.”
Mrs. Hendricks clicked her tongue three times, each hollow sound sharp, despite the noise filtering through from the TV. She turned away from the kettle and set her hands on her hips, then shook her head. “I worked with your father a long time ago. It’s been so long I barely remember what he looked like.”
The hope I’d had for an easy resolution shrank. Nothing was going to be simple. I realized, if it had been, the police would have handled it when the incident occurred. Who was I to think I could figure this out now?
I lowered my head. “I know it was a long shot, but I figured it didn’t hurt to ask.”
“And you were right.” Mrs. Hendricks hobbled to the chair
across from me. Her hands curled over the top of the chair, long fingers dipping down to tap against the wood. Her nails were thick and yellow. “If my memory isn’t playing tricks on me, I still have a box of your father’s possessions I recovered from the investigation. I figured, if he ever came back, he was going to want them. I’ve held onto them for all these years, but I doubt it’s going to do him much use now, is it?”
“No, ma’am.” I swallowed to try to keep my emotions at bay. “I don’t think he’s coming back for them any time soon.”
Mrs. Hendricks sighed regretfully, then shook her head and hobbled to the kitchen door. When she was in the doorway, she came to a stop. “If the kettle boils, why don’t you be a dear and pour us some tea? I’ll see if Patrick won’t get off the couch for a few minutes to help me move your father’s box of belongings out of my closet. It shouldn’t be long.”
“Thank you.” I meant it more truly than Mrs. Hendricks could ever know. More than likely, what was inside the box wouldn’t be of any use to me, but the glimmer of hope remained that there was some clue—some overlooked, under-appreciated tidbit—I’d be able to use to find the killer and prove my innocence.
Information I could use to keep my family safe.
The cardboard box Patrick Hendricks brought into the kitchen was worn. Its cardboard flaps flopped to the sides as though wet but, as far as I could see, there was no water damage. Inside, papers were poorly fitted to the confines. I glimpsed them as Patrick brought the box to the kitchen table, pushing the junk accumulated on its surface until it toppled to the floor. From the little I saw before the box was pushed out of the way, it was my father’s handwriting.
It looked like I had a lot of material to go through.
When the box was settled, Patrick brushed off his hands and exited the kitchen, leaving Mrs. Hendricks and I on our own. Mrs. Hendricks lifted a stack of loose papers from the box and set them aside, then hemmed and hawed as she sifted through the rest of its contents.
“Let’s see,” she mumbled, “there are the investment details from 2002. The audit from ‘04. Ah.”
She lifted out a dog-eared Moleskin journal. She handed it to me.
“This is your father’s agenda for 2007. The police seized it during their investigation, but it was eventually returned, and I stashed it away in here for safekeeping. The rest of this? Business. Figures and statements, mostly.”
The Moleskin was loose against its binding, and it glided like silk along my fingertips. The pages were dry and brittle, aged to an off-white color, but a quick flip through the book revealed the ink was smudge-free.
“Can I take this?” I looked to Mrs. Hendricks for permission. The agenda belonged to the McNair family, but it had been in her possession for so many years that inheritance was a moot point.
“Dear, you can take the whole box. It’s just cluttering up this house anyway.” Mrs. Hendricks shook her head. “Now, I’ve heard about the upset at the morgue. Word’s been all around town, you know, if you’re willing to listen. I know your father isn’t coming back; I’d rather it go to you. Most of it’s junk—but maybe, just maybe, you can find something in there that gives you comfort. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” I looked to the box, then met Mrs. Hendricks’s eye. “I’ll leave my phone number. If there’s anything you ever need from me, or if you find anything else of my father’s you want removed from your house, give me a call and I’ll be happy to come over.”
“You sure are a different girl than I remember.” Mrs. Hendricks sighed. “The Clara who used to black out days in my agenda and throw my stapler in the fish tank? How times change.”
It was my cue to leave. With a bow of my head, I collected the box, balancing it on my hip. The worn cardboard barely held the heavy stacks of papers within it, and I knew if I stood around for too long, my arm would start to get sore.
“Thank you for your help today, Mrs. Hendricks.” I offered her a smile, which she returned in kind. “I really appreciate it.”
“A girl deserves her father’s things, even if most of them aren’t worth keeping.” Mrs. Hendricks led me from the kitchen to the front door. “Take care, dear. Whatever it is you’re looking for in there, I hope you find it.”
“I hope so, too.” The Moleskin notebook sat on top of the stack, promising either hope or heartbreak. “Do you want my phone number? I was serious. If there’s anything you need—”
“No, dear. Patrick is here to care for me. We’ll be just fine.” Mrs. Hendricks held the door open for me. I stepped out onto the stoop. “If there’s anything comes up, I’ll come to you. I hear you’re staying at one of the staff houses on your father’s land?”
The shock must have showed on my face because Mrs. Hendricks chuckled.
“Oh, dear, there’s no need to be surprised. News travels fast.”
Too fast for my tastes.
I said my goodbyes and made my way to the car, setting the box on the passenger seat. Down the street, well out of eyesight of the Hendricks’ house, I pulled over and took the Moleskin journal from the top of the stack.
Inside would be the keys I needed to unlock the past, or yet another disappointment.
10
My father was not an organized man. As I scoured his notes, tracing his life from the time of his disappearance back to the earliest entries, I struggled to bridge one segment of his agenda to the next. The blank pages of the Moleskin journal allowed him to record his thoughts one page, then detail his month the next. Some of the passages I read didn’t make sense. To my father’s business-oriented mind, details that didn’t make a difference to me were of utmost importance to him. But nothing about the passages I read were out of the ordinary…
Until I noticed mention of Gino Hunt.
With the journal laid open upon my steering wheel, I flipped through the last few entries and tracked each occurrence of the name. Unlike the other appointments my father detailed in his journal, Gino’s name wasn’t accompanied by a phone number or email address. There wasn’t even a single sentence descriptor beneath each scheduled meeting that would give any clue to what the meetings were about.
For the last several months before his disappearance, my father had been meeting with a man whose information he was anxious about disclosing—even to his private journal.
Could Gino Hunt be responsible for my parents’ disappearance and deaths? Did he have a hand in it? What did he know?
There were other documents tied to my father left to be examined, but I didn’t want to let this potential lead get away from me. If Gino Hunt turned out to be a dead-end, I’d scour the box.
Moleskin journal closed and set atop the papers in the box, phone in hand, I pulled up a web browser and searched for Gino Hunt. Facebook and LinkedIn connected me to Gino Hunts across the country but none of them had ever claimed North Carolina as their home. That in itself wouldn’t have been surprising—my father worked with associates from all across the nation—but the frequency of Gino’s visits, according to my father’s scattered agenda pages, made me think he was local. And I knew my father: if Gino were visiting from afar, he would have invited him at least once to the McNair estate. I’d never heard of—or met—anyone called Gino Hunt.
“Gino Hunt NC” brought up fewer results—just as frustrating. I scrolled through the top search results, my eyes glazing over as I read the few same parent sites over and over again.
Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn… all for Gino Hunts outside of North Carolina.
Then a link stopped me in my tracks.
I squinted at the screen, reading the tiny text in the site preview. Hunt Industries in Charlotte, North Carolina listed a Gino Hunt as its director of operations, but what those operations were was unstated. I clicked the link and entered the website; it was bare-bones. There was no indication what Hunt Industries really did.
If it did anything at all.
Curiosity and dread melded into one conflicted emotion and I clicked through
each of the tabs. Every page read the same way.
[Under construction. Check back soon for more info!]
But when I scrolled down to the bottom to check when the website was published, I discovered it had last been updated fifteen years before. Searching the address on Street View, no data was recorded for the location.
The police couldn’t have missed a lead so obvious, could they? They’d confiscated my father’s belongings and combed through them, if what Mrs. Hendricks told me could be believed. If their investigation was as thorough as Elkins claimed, they would have investigated Gino Hunt’s connection to my father.
I knew all that. But I needed to know for myself.
Although it pained me to do it, I knew if I wanted the truth, I needed to be willing to pay the price. Biting my tongue, I called a number I thought I’d never call of my own volition.
The phone rang, and rang, and I rechecked I’d located the correct number but, right as I was about to hang up, it connected. A smooth male voice said: “Hello?”
Detective Elkins sounded like he was in desperate need of a shot of something strong.
“Hello, detective. This is Clara McNair.”
“McNair. Of course. Just who I was dying to hear from.” The sarcasm dripped from his voice. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”
The man got under my skin in the worst way, but I pushed through my initial impulse to lash back. I wanted answers, not arguments. “I need to know if you’ve looked into Gino Hunt.”
The line was silent. I took the phone from my ear to see if it was still connected. It was. Worried, I returned the phone to my ear and waited for his response. In our brief, uneasy acquaintanceship, I couldn’t remember Detective Elkins ever having been lost for words.
“I’m not at leisure to discuss active investigations, McNair.”
“I didn’t mention any investigation.”
Silence crackled in the phone speaker. From Detective Elkins’s end of the call, I heard another phone ringing and the distant murmur of conversation. We hadn’t been disconnected—he was dodging my response.
