Read Online No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay - Free Book Online Page B

flashed with an idea. “Maybe we should call the phone company. They might have a record of the call, maybe they’d even have a recording of it.”
    “They don’t keep recordings of everybody’s phone calls,” I said, “no matter what some people may think. And what are we going to tell them? It was one isolated call, from a nut who probably saw the show. He didn’t threaten you, he didn’t even use obscene language.”
    I slipped an arm around Cynthia’s shoulder. “Just…don’t worry about it. Too many people know about what happened to you. It can make you a target. You know what we should look into?”
    “What?”
    “An unlisted number. We could get an unlisted number, then we wouldn’t get calls like this.”
    Cynthia shook her head. “No, we’re not doing that.”
    “I don’t think it costs that much more, and besides—”
    “No, we’re not doing it.”
    “Why not?”
    She swallowed. “Because when they are ready to call, when my family finally decides to get in touch, they have to be able to reach me.”

    I had a free period after lunch, so I slipped out of the school, drove across town to Pamela’s, and went inside the store with four takeout cups of coffee.
    It’s not what you’d call a high-end clothing store, and Pamela Forster, who at one time was Cynthia’s best friend in high school, was not aiming for a young, hip clientele. The racks were filled with fairly conservative apparel, the kind of clothes, I liked to joke with Cynthia, preferred by women who wear sensible shoes.
    “Okay, so it’s not exactly Abercrombie & Fitch,” Cynthia would concede. “But A&F wouldn’t let me work whatever hours I want so I can pick up Grace after school, and Pam will.”
    There was that.
    Cyn was standing at the back of the shop, outside a changing room, talking to a customer through the curtain. “Do you want to try that in a twelve?” she asked.
    She hadn’t spotted me, but Pam, standing behind the register, had, and she smiled. “Hey.” Pam, tall, thin, and small-chested, carried herself well on three-inch heels. Her knee-length turquoise dress was stylish enough to suggest that it had not come from her own stock. Just because she was appealing to a clientele unfamiliar with the pages of
Vogue
didn’t mean she had to completely tone it down herself.
    “You’re too kind,” she said, looking at the four cups of coffee. “But it’s just me and Cyn holding down the fort at the moment. Ann’s on a break.”
    “Maybe it’ll still be warm by the time she gets back.”
    Pam pried off the plastic lid, sprinkled in a packet of Splenda. “So how’s things?”
    “Good.”
    “Cynthia says still nothing. From the show.”
    Was this what everyone wanted to talk about? Lauren Wells, my own daughter, now Pamela Forster.
    “That’s right,” I said.
    “I told her not to do it,” Pam said, shaking her head.
    “You did?” This was news to me.
    “Long time ago. When they first called about doing it. I told her, honey, let sleeping dogs lie. No sense stirring up that shit.”
    “Yeah, well,” I said.
    “I said, look, it’s been twenty-five years, right? Whatever happened, it happened. If you can’t move on with your life after this much water’s gone under the bridge, well, where are you going to be in another five years, or ten?”
    “She never mentioned this,” I said. Cynthia had caught sight of us talking and waved, but didn’t move from her post outside the changing-room curtain.
    “The lady in there, trying shit on she can’t hope to fit into?” Pamela whispered. “She’s walked out of here before with stuff she didn’t pay for, so we keep an eye on her when she’s here. Lots of personal service.”
    “She shoplifted?” I said, and Pamela nodded.
    “If she stole, why don’t you charge her? Why do you let her back in?”
    “Can’t prove it. We just have our suspicions. We kind of let her know we know, without saying it, never let her out of our sight.”
    I