Clouded Vision

by Linwood Barclay

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh jeez. How old was he?”

  “Seventy-nine, I think. He was in his late fifties when he had Sally.” Sheila knew the history. The man had married a woman twenty years younger than he was, and still managed to outlive her. She’d died of an aneurysm a decade ago.

  “What happened to him?”

  “Don’t know. I mean, he had diabetes, he’d been having heart trouble. Could have been a heart attack.”

  “We need to do something for her.”

  “I offered to drop by but she said she’s got a lot to deal with right now. Funeral’ll probably be in a couple of days. We can talk about it when you get back from Bridgeport.” Where Sheila took her class.

  “We’ll do something. We’ve always been there for her.” I could almost picture Sheila shaking her head. “Look,” she said, “I’m heading out. I’ll leave you and Kelly lasagna, okay? Joan’s expecting her after school today and—”

  “I got it. Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Not giving up. Not letting things get you down.”

  “Just doing the best I can,” she said.

  “I love you. I know I can be a pain in the ass, but I love you.”

  “Ditto.”

  It was after ten. Sheila should have been home by now.

  I tried her cell for the second time in ten minutes. After six rings it went to voicemail. “Hi, you’ve reached Sheila Garber. Sorry I missed you. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” Then the beep.

  “Hey, me again,” I said. “You’re freaking me out. Call me.”

  I put the cordless receiver back onto its stand and leaned up against the kitchen counter, folded my arms. As she’d promised, Sheila had left two servings of lasagna in the fridge, for Kelly and me, each hermetically sealed under plastic wrap. I’d heated Kelly’s in the microwave when we got home, and she’d come back looking for seconds, but I couldn’t find a baking dish with any more in it. I might as well have offered her mine, which a few hours later still sat on the counter. I wasn’t hungry.

  I was rattled. Running out of work. The fire. Sally’s dad.

  And even if I’d managed to recover my appetite late in the evening, the fact that Sheila still wasn’t home had put me on edge.

  Her class, which was held at the Bridgeport Business College, had ended more than an hour and a half ago, and it was only a thirty-minute drive home. Which made her an hour late. Not that long, really. There were any number of explanations.

  She could have stayed after class to have a coffee with someone. That had happened a couple of times. Maybe the traffic was bad on the turnpike. All you needed was someone with a flat tire on the shoulder to slow everything down. An accident would stop everything dead.

  That didn’t explain her not answering her cell, though. She’d been known to forget to turn it back on after class was over, but when that happened it went to voicemail right away. But the phone was ringing. Maybe it was tucked so far down in her purse she couldn’t hear it.

  I wondered whether she’d decided to go to Darien to see her mother and not made it back out to Bridgeport in time for her class. Reluctantly, I made the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Fiona, it’s Glen.”

  In the background, I heard someone whisper, “Who is it, love?” Fiona’s husband, Marcus. Technically speaking, Sheila’s stepfather, but Fiona had remarried long after Sheila had left home and settled into a life with me.

  “Yes?” she said.

  I told her Sheila was late getting back from Bridgeport, and I wondered if maybe her daughter had gotten held up at her place.

  “Sheila didn’t come see me today,” Fiona said. “I certainly wasn’t expecting her. She never said anything about coming over.”

  That struck me as odd. When Sheila mentioned maybe going to see Fiona, I’d figured she’d already bounced the idea off her.

  “Is there a problem, Glen?” Fiona asked icily. There wasn’t worry in her voice so much as suspicion. As if Sheila’s staying out late had more to do with me than it did with her.

  “No, everything’s fine,” I said. “Go back to bed.”

  I heard soft steps coming down from the second floor. Kelly, not yet in her pajamas, wandered into the kitchen. She looked at the still-wrapped lasagna on the counter and asked, “Aren’t you going to eat that?”

  “Hands off,” I said, thinking maybe I’d get my appetite back once Sheila was home. I glanced at the wall clock. Quarter past ten. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “Because you haven’t told me to go yet,” she said.

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Computer.”

  “Go to bed,” I said.

  “It was homework,” she said.

  “Look at me.”

  “In the beginning it was,” she said defensively. “And when I got it done, I was talking to my friends.” She stuck out her lower lip and blew away some blonde curls that were falling over her eyes. “Why isn’t Mom home?”

  “Her thing must have run late,” I said. “I’ll send her up to give you a kiss when she gets home.”

  “If I’m asleep, how will I know if I get it?”

  “She’ll tell you in the morning.”

  Kelly eyed me with suspicion. “So I might never get a kiss, but you guys would say I did.”

  “You figured it out,” I said. “It’s a scam we’ve been running.”

  “Whatever.” She turned, shuffled out of the kitchen, and padded back upstairs.

  I picked up the receiver and tried Sheila’s cell again. When her greeting cut in, I muttered “Shit” before it started recording and hit the off button.

  I went down the stairs to my basement office. The walls were wood-paneled, giving the place a dark, oppressive feel. And the mountains of paper on the desk only added to the gloominess. For years I’d been intending to either redo this room—get rid of the paneling and go for dry-wall painted off-white so it wouldn’t feel so small, for starters—or put an addition onto the back of the house with lots of windows and a skylight. But as is often the case with people whose work is building and renovating houses, it’s your own place that never gets done.

  I dropped myself into the chair behind the desk and shuffled some papers around. Bills from various suppliers, plans for the new kitchen we were doing in a house up in Derby, some notes about a freestanding double garage we were building for a guy in Devon who wanted a place to park his two vintage Corvettes.

  There was also a very preliminary report from the Milford Fire Department about what may have caused the house we’d been building for Arnett and Leanne Wilson on Shelter Cove Road to burn down a week ago. I scanned down to the end and read, for possibly the hundredth time, Indications are fire originated in area of electrical panel.

  It was a two-story, three-bedroom, built on the site of a postwar bungalow that a strong easterly wind could have knocked down if we hadn’t taken a wrecking ball to it first. The fire had started just before one p.m. The house had been framed and sided, the roof was up, electrical was done, and the plumbing was getting roughed in. Doug Pinder, my assistant manager, and I were using the recently installed outlets to run a couple of table saws. Ken Wang, our Chinese guy with the Southern accent—his parents emigrated from Beijing to Kentucky when he was an infant, and we still cracked up whenever he said “y’all”—and Stewart Minden, our newbie from Ottawa who was living with relatives in Stratford for a few months, were upstairs sorting out where fixtures were going to go in the main bathroom.

  Doug smelled the smoke first. Then we saw it, drifting up from the basement.

  I shouted upstairs to Ken and Stewart to get the hell out. They came bounding down the carpetless stairs and flew out the front door with Doug.

  Then I did something very, very stupid.

  I ran out to my truck, grabbed a fire extinguisher from behind the driver’s seat, and ran back into the house. Halfway down the steps to the basement, the smoke
became so thick I couldn’t see. I got to the bottom step, running my hand along the makeshift two-by-four banister to guide me there, and thought if I started spraying blindly from the extinguisher, I’d hit the source of the fire and save the place.

  Really dumb.

  I immediately started to cough and my eyes began to sting. When I turned to retreat back up the stairs, I couldn’t find them. I stuck out my free hand and swept it from side to side, looking for the railing.

  I hit something softer than wood. An arm.

  “Come on, you stupid son of a bitch,” Doug growled, grabbing hold of me. He was on the bottom step, and pulled me toward it.

  We came out the front door together, coughing and hacking, as the first fire truck was coming around the corner. Minutes after that, the place was fully engulfed.

  “Don’t tell Sheila I went in,” I said to Doug, still wheezing. “She’d kill me.”

  “And so she should, Glenny,” Doug said.

  Other than the foundation, there wasn’t much left of the place once the fire was out. Everything was with the insurance company now, and if they didn’t come through, the thousands it would cost to rebuild would be coming out of my pocket. Little wonder I’d been staring at the ceiling for hours in the dead of night.

  I’d never been hit with anything like this before. It hadn’t just scared me, losing a project to fire. It had shaken my confidence. If I was about anything, it was getting things right, doing a quality job.

  “Shit happens,” Doug had said. “We pick ourselves up and move on.”

  I wasn’t feeling that philosophical. And it wasn’t Doug’s name on the side of the truck.

  I thought maybe I should eat something, so I slid my plate of lasagna into the microwave. I sat down at the kitchen table and picked away at it. The inside was still cold, but I couldn’t be bothered to put it back in. Lasagna was one of Sheila’s specialties, and if it weren’t for the fact that I had so much on my mind, I would have been devouring it, even cold. Whenever she made it in her browny-orange baking pan—Sheila would say it was “persimmon”—there was always enough for two or three meals, so we’d be having lasagna again in a couple of nights, maybe even for Saturday lunch. That was okay with me.

  I ate less than half, rewrapped it, and put the plate in the fridge. Kelly was under her covers, her bedside light on, when I peeked into her room. She’d been reading a Wimpy Kid book.

  “Lights out, sweetheart.”

  “Is Mom home?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I need to talk to her.”

  “About what?”

  “Nothing.”

  I nodded. When Kelly had something on her mind, it was usually her mother she talked to. Even though she was only eight, she had questions about boys, and love, and the changes she knew were coming in a few years. These were, I had to admit, not my areas of expertise.

  “Don’t be mad,” she said.

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Some things are just easier to talk to Mom about. But I love you guys the same.”

  “Good to know.”

  “I can’t get to sleep until she gets home.”

  That made two of us.

  “Put your head down on the pillow. You might nod off anyway.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Turn off the light and give it a shot.”

  Kelly reached over and turned off her lamp. I kissed her forehead and gently closed the door as I slipped out of her room.

  Another hour went by. I tried Sheila’s cell six more times. I was back and forth between my office basement and the kitchen. The trip took me past the front door, so I could keep glancing out to the driveway.

  Just after eleven, standing in the kitchen, I tried her friend Ann Slocum. Someone picked up long enough to stop the ringing, then replaced the receiver. Ann’s husband, Darren, I was guessing. That would be his style. But then again, I was calling late.

  Next I called Sheila’s other friend, Belinda. They’d worked together years ago, for the library, but stayed close even after their career paths went in different directions. Belinda was a real estate agent now. Not the greatest time to be in that line of work. A lot more people wanted to sell these days than buy. Despite Belinda’s unpredictable schedule, she and Sheila managed to get together for lunch every couple of weeks, sometimes with Ann, sometimes not.

  Her husband, George, answered sleepily, “Hello?”

  “George, Glen Garber. Sorry to call so late.”

  “Glen, jeez, what time is it?”

  “It’s late, I know. Can I talk to Belinda?”

  I heard some muffled chatter, some shifting about, then Belinda came on the line. “Glen, is everything okay?”

  “Sheila’s really late getting back from her night class thing, and she’s not answering her cell. You haven’t heard from her, have you?”

  “What? What are you talking about? Say that again?” Belinda sounded instantly panicked.

  “Has Sheila been in touch? She’s usually back from her course by now.”

  “No. When did you last talk to her?”

  “This morning,” I said. “You know Sally, at the office?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Her dad passed away and I called Sheila to let her know.”

  “So you haven’t talked to her pretty much all day?” There was an edge in Belinda’s voice. Not accusing, exactly, but something.

  “Listen, I didn’t call to get you all upset. I just wondered if you’d heard from her is all.”

  “No, no, I haven’t,” Belinda said. “Glen, please have Sheila call me the minute she gets in, okay? I mean, now that you’ve got me worrying about her, too, I need to know she got in okay.”

  “I’ll tell her. Tell George I’m sorry about waking you guys up.”

  “For sure you’ll have her call me.”

  “Promise,” I said.

  I hung up, went upstairs to Kelly’s door and opened it a crack. “You asleep?” I asked, poking my head in.

  From the darkness, a chirpy “Nope.”

  “Throw on some clothes. I’m going to look for Mom. And I can’t leave you alone in the house.”

  She flicked on her bedside lamp. I thought she’d argue, tell me she was old enough to stay in the house, but instead she asked, “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know. Probably nothing. My guess is your mom’s having a coffee and can’t hear her phone. But maybe she got a flat tire or something. I want to drive the route she usually takes.”

  “Okay,” she said instantly, throwing her feet onto the floor. She wasn’t worried. This was an adventure. She pulled some jeans on over her pajamas. “I need two secs.”

  I went back downstairs and got my coat, made sure I had my cell. If Sheila did call the house once we were gone, my cell would be next. Kelly hopped into the truck, did up her belt, and said, “Is Mom going to be in trouble?”

  I glanced over at her as I turned the ignition. “Yeah. She’s going to be grounded.”

  Kelly giggled. “As if,” she said.

  Once we were out of the driveway and going down the street, I asked Kelly, “Did your mom say anything about what she was going to do today? Was she going to see her parents and then changed her mind? Did she mention anything at all?”

  Kelly frowned. “I don’t think so. She might have gone to the drugstore.”

  That was only a trip around the corner. “Why do you think she was going there?”

  “I heard her talking to someone on the phone the other day about paying for some.”

  “Some what?”

  “Drugstore stuff.”

  That made no sense to me and I dismissed it.

  We weren’t on the road five minutes before Kelly was out cold, her head resting on her shoulder. If my head was in that position for more than a minute, it would leave me with a crick in my neck for a month.

  I drove up Schoolhouse Road and got on the ramp to 95 West. It was the quickest route between Milford and B
ridgeport, especially at this time of the night, and the most likely one for Sheila to have taken. I kept glancing over at the eastbound highway, looking for a Subaru wagon pulled off to the side of the road.

  This was a long shot, at best. But doing something, anything, seemed preferable to sitting at home and worrying.

  I continued to scan the other side of the highway, but not only didn’t I see Sheila’s car, I didn’t see any cars pulled over to the shoulder at all.

  I was almost through Stratford, about to enter the Bridgeport city limits, when I saw some lights flashing on the other side. Not on the road, but maybe down an off-ramp. I leaned on the gas, wanting to hurry to the next exit so I could turn around and head back on the eastbound lanes.

  Kelly continued to sleep.

  I exited 95, crossed the highway and got back on. As I approached the exit where I thought I’d seen lights, I spotted a police car, lights flashing, blocking the way. I slowed, but the cop waved me on. I wasn’t able to see far enough down the ramp to see what the problem was, and with Kelly in the truck, pulling over to the side of a busy highway did not seem wise.

  So I got off at the next exit, figuring I could work my way back on local streets, get to the ramp from the bottom end. It took me about ten minutes. The cops hadn’t set up a barricade at the bottom of the ramp, since no one would turn up there anyway. I pulled the car over to the shoulder at the base of the ramp and got my first real look at what had happened.

  It was an accident. A bad one. Two cars. So badly mangled it was difficult to tell what they were or what might have happened. Closer to me was a car that appeared to be a station wagon, and the other one, a sedan of some kind, was off to the side. It looked as though the wagon had been broadsided by the sedan.

  Sheila drove a wagon.

  Kelly was still sound asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her. I got out of the truck, closed the door without slamming it, and approached the ramp. There were three police cars at the scene, a couple of tow trucks and a fire engine.

  As I got closer, I was able to get a better look at the cars involved in the accident. I began to feel shaky. I glanced back at my truck, made sure I could see Kelly in the passenger window.

  Before I could take another step, however, a police officer stood in my way.