Wrecker

by Dave Conifer

  “I do now. Not all of it. I could have gone through it to see what I could dig up. But it’s too late now,” he lamented. “I’ll never see that file. If only I’d known, I could have slipped it out beforehand.”

  “I think you should just drop the whole thing,” Jane said. “Even if you found something it wouldn’t get your job back.”

  “But she might end up out on the street where she belongs. That would be bigger to me than any job in the world.”

  “I think you should just concentrate on finding another job. Losing a job for her doesn’t do us any good.” Knowing he would never concede the point, she walked back into the living room and worked on cleaning up Allie’s toys.

  Chapter 14

  “I wish you’d stop worrying about your secret files and start looking for a job,” Jane told Steve two nights later after he had again brought it up. “I mean, I’d like to see her get what’s coming to her too, if she really did this. But we don’t exactly have a giant nest egg to fall back on. This could really hurt us.” Careful not to look him in the eye, she grabbed another plate and rinsed ketchup from it before sliding it into the dishwasher rack.

  “Relax. Can’t you give me a little credit once in a while?” he fired back. “I’m calling a headhunter in the morning.” He brought the rest of the dishes from the table and dropped them into the sink. “He’s the guy who emailed me practically every week for the past five years. We’ll get something going.”

  “I hope so. I’m kind of worried,” she admitted.

  “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m on it. But see, I’m not giving up on nailing Cindy,” he explained. “It’s all I think about. I went through everything I have here this morning. Nada. There wasn’t anything I could use. That’s why I’m so pissed about leaving that stuff at work. If only I’d known.”

  She wanted to slap him and tell him to knock it off. This wasn’t some silly movie where he was going to stumble across an incriminating memo or photograph in some mysterious file. Real life didn’t work that way. Regardless of how it had come about, and Jane had no idea if Cindy had actually done the things Steve accused her of, the job was hers and it was going to stay that way. But now wasn’t the time for that. “I’m just worried,” she said again. “We can’t go on for very long if it’s just my paycheck coming in.”

  “Don’t forget, they gave me six weeks of severance pay,” he reminded her. “That’s like vacation time. I may as well take advantage of it.”

  “That’s true, I guess. But you might have to pick up where Rob left off around here.”

  “You don’t think he’s coming back?”

  Jane had given this a lot of thought. Not only did she think he wasn’t coming back, she was going to do everything in her power to make sure he didn’t. True, she’d grown to like the man, but there was just too much about him she didn’t understand. It just wasn’t smart to have him around the house, especially with Allie there. Eventually something would go badly. Not only that, the sooner she forgot about him the sooner she’d stop recalling the image of the lumpy, blood-weeping landscape on his butt that she couldn’t seem to shake.

  “I have a feeling we’ve seen the last of him,” she said without elaborating. Steve had no idea how much she knew about Manteo and she thought it was best to keep it that way.

  “I can take over for the caveman. The first thing I’ll do is paint the extra bedroom,” Steve said. “You’ll have to tell me what color you want it since he stole the paint.”

  ~~~

  Steve’s plans for heading out to the driving range or going out for a few beers that evening were foiled when none of his friends could make it. Instead, he took a shower, watched some baseball and went to bed early. After a bath and bedtime for Allie, Jane found herself with nothing to do. She looked in vain for Mike Albemarle on Facebook and spent a few minutes exchanging wall posts with friends before shutting down.

  There was a lot going on and she didn’t want to slow Steve’s job search down, but finding out for sure about what Albemarle had told her wasn’t something she was prepared to give up on. She was willing to take chances to find out the truth but there weren’t many places to look for it. She’d already examined his phone and computer and found no traces of an affair. Maybe he’d inadvertently kept something that would give her a clue, even if it was an accident. If so, the best place she could think of to look was in his desk in the den. Since he was up in bed, and she’d hear him on the stairs if he came back down, it was as good a time as any to check it out.

  The search didn’t take very long and it wasn’t very productive. For somebody who wasn’t particularly neat Steve kept his desk somewhat orderly, something that Jane, of course, already knew. The top two drawers contained nothing but a few pens and some office supplies. The middle drawer held an old radio and some computer cables.

  The bottom drawer was crammed with files. It was where all the important household information was kept and she’d been in that drawer a thousand times. There were files for the mortgage, insurance policies, bank statements, auto maintenance records and countless other bundles of paper documenting the minutiae of the lives of a small suburban family. She thumbed through these files without bothering to pull them out to check their contents because she already knew what was in them.

  At the back was a file that she’d never noticed before. Labeled “Narvatek,” it presumably was the one that Steve had checked earlier that day. Knowing that Narvatek was the project that had gone so badly a few years earlier, and that Cindy had been heavily involved, she pulled it out and closed the drawer before plopping herself onto the loveseat behind the desk. Over three inches thick, the file appeared to contain more computer printouts than anything else. Even without leafing through it she could see that there were newspaper clippings mixed in. It was unlikely that there would be anything about a girlfriend in there, but there was only one way to be sure.

  She looked at the clock, which occupied a space on the wall near the gash caused by Steve’s hammer toss. Did she feel like tearing the file apart at this time of day? No, she decided. It was after ten and she’d have to be up early the next morning. Steve wouldn’t miss the file if she held onto it. He’d said himself that he’d already checked it. It could wait until the next day. She carried the file into the kitchen where she slipped it into her day bag. It would be something to do during her break at work.

  ~~~

  Steve didn’t like it when Jane poked at him until he got out of bed the next morning and he made no secret of it. Jane was already worried that to him, the next six weeks were supposed to be a time for sleeping late, playing golf, and whenever there was nothing else to do, looking for a job. Feeding, dressing and transporting his daughter around town wasn’t on his list of activities, at least not until Jane had put it there the night before.

  “You can just give her cereal,” she said as she packed up to leave for work. “Don’t worry about toast or anything.” He mumbled something as he ransacked the cabinets. “The coffee’s in the pantry, bottom shelf,” she told him.

  “Thanks,” he said after extricating the can.

  “You know where the pre-school is, right? You have to walk all the way inside with her. Make sure they see you or they won’t let you pick her up.”

  “What, I’m picking her up too?”

  “Yeah, do you mind?”

  “No, I guess not. I might go get some paint for the spare bedroom, too. I’ll just bring her with me.”

  “Are you calling the headhunter today?” Jane asked.

  “Yeah, something like that,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  “Good luck,” she told him from across the kitchen near the door. “See you later.” She slipped outside without waiting for an answer.

  ~~~

  “So we’re a one income family,” Jane told Kristie as they sat in the break room later that morning after telling her how Steve had been fired. “Just like that.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Kristie sa
id. “He was high up in management, wasn’t he?”

  “More like the middle.”

  “I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it,” Kristie said. “Steve’s smart. He’ll find something fast.”

  “I’m sure he will, once he starts looking. He doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. At least it’ll give me a break with some of the stuff around the house. He’s taking Allie to school and picking her up today. After he wakes her up and makes breakfast.”

  “How nice! You know what they say about fathers and their daughters. I’ll bet they’ll turn into best friends. They never really had a chance to hang out together.”

  “I doubt it,” Jane said. “Steve just isn’t like that. Allie will never be more than a chore to him. It’s kind of sad to watch. Allie’s getting to be old enough to see what’s going on.”

  “Maybe it’ll turn out better than that,” Kristie said hopefully.

  “He doesn’t know it yet but he’s going to be watching her for part of the afternoon, too,” Jane said. “I have something I want to do.”

  “Ooh, mysterious!” Kristie crooned.

  “It’s no big deal. I just want to spend a few hours on the computer trying to figure out what happened out at that house this weekend,” Jane explained. “The Creedmoor place. I’m still worried that Rob might be up to something. Maybe I can find something about the Creedmoors. Or about Rob.” She shrugged. “It didn’t work last time but I’ll try again.”

  “What were you doing, Googling? I have something better. Google on steroids.”

  “Don’t say steroids, please,” Jane said with a smirk. “It brings back an unpleasant memory. Rob’s butt.”

  “What—“

  “Don’t ask. It’s not what you think.”

  “I hope not. Anyway, I have this special account I log onto when I do research for my grad classes.” Jane knew Kristie was working on a Masters degree in Medical Information Systems at Stockton State College in her free time, although they didn’t talk about it much. “It’s called NetReach. It’s connected to a lot of databases and periodicals that you can’t get to from Google. You can log onto it from the media center downstairs. I’ll give you my password. You’ll find more stuff than you ever wanted to know.”

  ~~~

  For all its bells and whistles, NetReach worked a lot like Google. That was a good thing as far as Jane was concerned because she didn’t have to spend any time learning how to use it. For the first few minutes after logging in she dutifully typed in various combinations of keywords like ‘Robert,’ Manteo,’ ‘handyman,’ ‘sprinkler systems’ and everything else she could think of. She knew Manteo had told her the name of his daughter but she couldn’t recall it. The searches ran fast enough, but paging through the results was time consuming and unproductive. Who knew that Manteo was such a common name? After she’d initiated about a dozen searches she was discouraged because she was coming up with nothing. An hour later she concluded that Robert Manteo didn’t exist.

  Steve was probably waiting impatiently at home. She probably shouldn’t push her luck by wasting any more time. Then she thought of Richard Creedmoor. She had an address for him. Maybe that would help and something would turn up. Part of the mission was to find out everything she could about whatever it was that was going on at that house. Steve could wait a few more minutes.

  NetReach crunched for a few seconds on ‘Creedmoor 621 Falling Run Road’ before returning several screens of results. Halfway down the screen was one that instantly piqued her interest. It was an article from The Hammonton Bulletin. The title of the article gave her pause because it somehow sounded familiar. Then, as she clicked the icon to see the complete article, she remembered why.

  Local Woman, Daughter Suffer Serious Injuries in Icy Maine Crash

  -- By John Burgaw, Bulletin Staff Writer, Posted November 17, 2005.

  A Chesilhurst woman and her daughter were seriously injured Wednesday in a one-vehicle crash on Route 4, also known as Narragansett St., about three miles Southwest of Gorham, Maine, the Maine State Patrol has reported.

  Sara Creedmoor, 4, was a passenger in a sport utility vehicle driven by her mother, Jessica Creedmoor, 29. The driver and passenger were removed from the car at the site of the 11:36 a.m. crash and taken to the Medical Center at the University of Southern Maine at Gorham, where they remain in the intensive care unit. Details of the injuries were not released. Jessica Creedmoor is the wife of Richard Creedmoor of 621 Falling Run Road in Chesilhurst.

  The accident was one of several reported in Wednesday’s snowstorm that dumped five to six inches of snow on Gorham and surrounding areas. A witness in another vehicle reported that the vehicle was traveling at an excessive rate of speed given the dangerous conditions when it went out of control and off the right side of the road, where it struck a tree and rolled onto its side.

  Jane knew this wasn’t her first time hearing this story. The details didn’t quite match up but she vividly remembered how Manteo had told her that his wife and daughter had been killed in a traffic accident. She recalled him saying that it had happened somewhere up north. She had taken that to mean somewhere in northern New Jersey, but perhaps he’d meant Maine. The clincher was the daughter’s name. Jane remembered as soon as she read it that Manteo had told her that his daughter’s name had been Sara. There was no doubt in her mind about that. Now, as she stared at the words on the screen, she was more afraid than ever about what she’d seen at the Creedmoor house. Her thoughts went back to the eerie scene in that room in the Creedmoor house where she’d finally caught up with Manteo. Had that been Sara’s room? Had Manteo done something with Richard Creedmoor and then assumed his personal history?

  If that was the case, where were the wife and daughter? Or maybe they hadn’t survived the car wreck. They were in ICU the next day, after all. If they hadn’t lived, then the pattern of events in Creedmoor’s life fit Manteo’s fantasy even more closely.

  If it hadn’t been pushing three o’clock she’d have stayed to find out, but she knew she’d be in enough trouble with Steve already so she reluctantly packed up and left the hospital. In the car on the way home she considered calling Sergeant Rockingham again, to tell him what she’d discovered. After thinking it through she realized that if it mattered, he was most likely already aware of it. The only new element was that it looked like Rob Manteo was pretending to live the life of Richard Creedmoor, whatever that meant. That might be twisted but it wasn’t a crime. Rockingham had sent a car out to the house and confirmed that Creedmoor was alive and nothing was amiss. So the only parts of the story Jane couldn’t explain were Manteo’s fantasy life, and of course his presence in the Creedmoor house. It wasn’t enough to take to the police.

  It’s not just that, she told herself as she waited at the light at route 9, the one she seemed to spend half her waking hours at. What does it have to do with me? Nothing, that’s what. If Manteo is so dangerous then what am I doing poking around looking for problems? He was out of her life now, and that was turning out to be a good thing. The last thing she wanted to do was bring him back in.

  ~~~

  As expected, Steve was grumpy about the domestic responsibility he’d shouldered that day. Jane tried to listen to his griping, but her mind was firmly focused on the Creedmoor crash in Maine. Suspicion that Manteo had done something horrible was already giving way to skepticism. It just didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would he do it? And really, if he had, was he bright enough to keep it a secret?

  “Hello! Did you hear a word I said?” Steve was yelling at her.

  “Uh, no,” Jane answered. “I was thinking about something at work.”

  “I was saying that tomorrow I can’t do all this,” he repeated. “I need time to look for a job, remember?”

  “All you did was drive her to school,” she said. “You had the rest of the day to yourself. Did you even call anybody?”

  “Get off my back. I can’t concentrate on it when I know I have to be going back and forth all day
driving her around. I know what I’m doing. With my experience I’ll get hired in two seconds once I’m on the market. That’s how the pharmaceutical industry works. But it takes time to get it started.”

  “I need tomorrow afternoon,” she told him. She was already thinking about another NetReach session. “I already committed. After that I’ll take over the driving again. I promise.”

  He walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a pack of saltines without answering. After jamming several into his mouth he chewed slowly. Jane wondered if he was about to explode, but he didn’t. “I was thinking about getting some of the guys together and going on an overnighter this weekend,” he finally said. “I could use a quick trip. I really need to get away. Especially with all this extra stuff I’m doing around here all day.”

  “An overnighter? Or are you meeting your girlfriend again?” Jane heard herself asking. Darn it, she thought immediately. The plan had been to hold back from revealing what she knew. Not yet.

  He appeared to choke on the crackers. “What?” he said, pasty wet crumbs flying from his mouth. “What the fuck did you just say?”

  “I know all about it,” she said, exaggerating.

  “Know all about what?” he demanded. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Steve, I saw pictures of you with her in Atlantic City.”

  He stared. His mouth dropped open again. “Pictures of me with who? What are you talking about?” he asked again. “You’re saying I’m cheating on you? Where the fuck did this come from?”

  “You tell me,” Jane replied.

  “It’s bullshit. Let me see the pictures. I think you’re making shit up. Did one of your bitch friends put you up to this? Let’s see the pictures.”

  “Well, I don’t exactly have them now, but I saw them,” she said.

  “Oh,” he bellowed sarcastically. “So much for ‘having’ pictures. Who gave them to you?”