Fear the Worst: A Thriller by Linwood Barclay Read Free Book Online Page B

disapprovingly. “She can’t do this all alone, Tim. She needs help.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You have to pick up some of the slack. Syd’s your daughter, too, you know.”
    “Are you fucking kidding me?”
    “I know you’re not a detail guy, Tim, that you kind of let things slip a bit, that that’s how you lost the business and all, but you gotta pick up the ball and run with it this time, you know what I’m saying?”
    I wanted to slam his head into the Hummer.
    “Suze can’t do it all,” Bob said. “The other day, she wanted me to drop her off at the Stamford Town Center so she could wander around, look at all the kids who were there in case she spotted Syd. You know how huge that place is, and with that pitlike thing in the middle with the tiered seating? And her on a cane, likely to fall over half the time if she’s not careful.”
    I turned away for a moment, forcing the anger down, like trying to swallow a brussels sprout as a kid. I took a few steps down the driveway, motioning Bob to follow me.
    “This van on your street,” I said.
    “Yeah?”
    “You think it’s watching the house?”
    “I don’t know. It seems pretty crazy to me.”
    “Any reason why anyone would want to be watching you?”
    “You mean us?”
    “I mean you. If there really was someone watching your house, maybe they were watching you, maybe it’s got nothing to do with Suze, or Syd.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Did you sell somebody another Katrina?” I asked him. “They might be coming around looking for payback.”
    “Oh, for crying out loud, Tim, you really never let anything go. I sell one car, a car I bought in good faith three years ago from a wholesaler who swore it was clean, and okay, it turned out to have been underwater for a while in New Orleans, and it made the news. I’m not happy it happened, but sometimes in this business you get jerked around. Maybe, if you’d hung in running a business instead of just working at one, you’d have a better understanding of that.”
    My neck felt like it was on fire.
    “I run an honest business, Tim,” he added.
    I didn’t bother to mention the Honda S2000 sports car he’d tried to wholesale to me once, arguing it would sell faster off an authorized Honda lot than any of his. Said he wanted to do me a favor, that the car was pristine, low miles, still loads of warranty left. Almost got me, too. I checked the car out, top to bottom, and it wasn’t until I looked at the washers under the bolts that held the fenders to the frame that I noticed they weren’t original Honda parts. So then I took down the VIN number, made some calls, traced the car back to a dealership in Oregon that had reported it stolen ten months before. The car was finally recovered, at least what was left of it. It had been stripped of wheels and seats and airbags and enough other parts to make half a car. The insurance company paid off on the vehicle, acquired its remains, and auctioned them off. The buyer replaced the missing parts, sold the Honda to Bob, who then tried to fob it off on me as an original.
    Bob hadn’t gotten to where he was today without cutting the occasional corner.
    “Find another sucker,” I’d told him at the time.
    Today, he said, “I’m clean, Tim. I’ve got nothing to hide. You want to come in and see my books, check the history of the cars on my lot, be my guest.”
    Neck still prickling, I said, “A jealous husband, then.”
    Bob was briefly speechless. Then, “How dare you even suggest I’d be seeing another woman.”
    The thing was, I had no reason to suspect Bob of stepping out. The words were out of my mouth before I’d given much thought to them.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “I love Susanne,” he said, and after a couple seconds added, “And I love Syd, too. I’m sick to death about this. She’s a great kid. I want to do anything I can to help.”
    I didn’t want to hear him say he loved my daughter, no matter how much he meant it. I