Chapter 31
Suzie had walked into the pharmacy that morning, and instead of getting the shop ready for the day, she’d spent fifteen minutes going through Abigail’s social media pages, clicking on each photo in turn even though she’d seen them all a hundred times before.
She’d dreamed about her last night, just as the wind had started soughing through the pines.
Abigail had been wearing her prom dress and standing in a fog of smoke that concealed her lower half from view.
Her flower corsage was withered and dead, browned petals drooping on rotting stems. She had opened her mouth, and smoke had poured from it, as if the long column of her throat was a chimney and somewhere inside her, in the spaces between her ribs maybe, or in the caverns of her lungs, a fire was raging.
“I know what you did,” Abigail told Suzie in a blackened, brittle voice, “and I won’t ever let you forget it.”
Now Suzie’s fingers are white and wrinkled from being submerged so long in hot soapy water.
Her cuticles are bright pink from the scrubbing and if she lifts her hand to her nose, she can smell the astringent carbolic soap.
But the urge to scrub away a layer of skin persists, like a bell ringing in Suzie’s brain.
Since Hazel came back, it’s like we’ve all gone crazy, she thinks, remembering walking in Belle Vue yesterday, the tart, clinical smell of the place, bleach and ammonia.
The receptionist had been an older woman with short gray hair cut closely to her head.
She’d worn a necklace of big red beads that had made Suzie think of blood blisters.
“I can’t give you specific information about clients,” she’d told Suzie with a frown, taking the sherbet lemons and peering into the little paper bag studiously, “but what I can tell you is that she left here three weeks ago, and she won’t be back.”
The bell over the door chimes and Suzie lifts her head.
It’s Cathy. Suzie frowns. She wasn’t expecting her this early, and Cathy looks like she’s just rolled out of bed.
Her cowboy boots are pulled over a pair of baggy black tracksuit bottoms, hair dragged up into a topknot.
Kohl smudges form crescents beneath bloodshot eyes that are not still.
“Didn’t think you’d turn up till after lunch.”
“I’ve taken an early shift.” Cathy’s heels clack across the floor. “I just cried handing Scout over to the childminder. Normally I can’t get rid of him quick enough.”
Suzie studies her, offering a weak smile. “Have you heard from the police?”
Cathy spits a mean little laugh. “Of course not. I’m headed over to the station now. Got a reference number and the note in my pocket. Just wish I could shake this feeling that…” She tails off.
“What?”
“This morning, my littlest, Scout. He wasn’t in his bed. I found him in the sitting room, mostly undressed. That was weird, but what was worse was how he felt when I picked him up.”
Suzie leans forward, forgetting all about her dream of Abigail, wreathed in smoke and grinning.
“He was damp, like he’d been running a fever, only he smelled different too. I don’t know how to explain it—it was as if he’d been swapped in the night. A changeling. Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing, Cathy,” Suzie tells her soberly. She means it too. She has never felt less like laughing in her life. Her hands are raw and pink and her fears chew at her all the time.
“I hope I can keep it together at the police station. I feel like I’m coming undone. Ugh. What did you want to show me?”
Suzie folds her arms and leans over the counter, starched white coat rustling.
“I went over the shop CCTV. It doesn’t give a good angle on the man who brought the receipt in, unfortunately—he kept his hood up and because it was raining, I didn’t really query it—but there’s a pretty good view of his truck outside. ”
“It’s a start, right? You mind if I take a look?”
Suzie hesitates. It’s not just how wary she is of Cathy, that mean streak in her a mile wide that has a tendency to surface when you least expect it; it’s how Teddy had looked at her over breakfast that morning, his brow deeply furrowed.
“You don’t want to get mixed up in things that don’t concern you, Suzie-Q,” he’d said.
He’d still been mad as all hell that Suzie had shut up the pharmacy yesterday, even more so when she’d told him about the trip to Belle Vue.
“Well, I don’t know, Cathy. I’m not meant to bring anyone back here. I could lose my job. Maybe we should wait on it until the police reach out.”
“How long do you want to wait? Another week? Two? How long does my sister have to be missing before someone actually fucking does something?” Cathy’s hands are gripping the counter tightly, but now she pushes herself away, throwing them into the air in exasperation.
“I just want to see for myself. See if I recognize this man or his truck. Fuck, even the way he walks might give me some clue. Please, Suzie. Please. Just five minutes and I’ll be out your hair. ”
Suzie considers, her mouth dry.
“Please, sweetie. For Hazel.”
“We call that guilt-tripping round here,” Suzie says, but she lifts the flap of the counter anyway, ushering Cathy through before she changes her mind.
In the small back room, stacked with pill boxes and charts and carousels of plastic dispensers there is a desk with a monitor on it.
Suzie switches it on, one eye on the small TV screen above that shows the shop floor.
“See the angle?” She nods toward it. “That’s where the camera is, behind me. Normally you should be able to get a look at his face that way, but like I said—”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. He had his hood up. Just go ahead and play the tape.”
It’s a file now, Cathy, Suzie thinks as she leans over and moves the cursor to the dated footage. We haven’t used tapes in here since 1990.
“Here. Just click to view it. He’s the first customer, so you’ll see him right at the start.”
Behind her, the door chimes. She looks up at the screen to see Mrs. Scott edging carefully into the store, pushing her walker ahead of her.
“Go ahead and watch, Cathy. I’ll just deal with Mrs. Scott.”
“Thanks, Suzie. For everything, I mean. I won’t ever let you forget it.”
“What?” Suzie turns cold, her skin rippling with goose bumps. Suddenly she is right back in the dream, the smell of smoke rich and thick in the air, Abigail with her dread, accusatory gaze. “What did you just say to me?”
Cathy blinks. “I said I won’t ever forget this. Are you okay? Suzie? You’ve gone white.”
But Suzie is already backing away with her heart hammering in her throat. I’m imagining things, she tells herself as she approaches the counter, either that or I’m losing my mind, but aren’t they both the same thing, really?
She returns Mrs. Scott’s smile, but it takes her a moment to fix it into place. “How are you doing, Mrs. Scott?”
“Been looking at my weather app.” Mrs. Scott shuffles forward on slippered feet.
“Did you know you can see storms anywhere in the world on this thing? My grandson downloaded it for me. Now I can watch real-time lightning strikes from Istanbul to Ecuador. It’s telling me there’s blizzards heading toward us over the Atlantic. Been threatening for a while.”
“My mother used to say she could feel snow coming in her joints.”
“Reckon I’ll stick to my app.”
Suzie widens her smile, but she still feels jumpy. She thinks that if a car backfired out on the street, she’d leap right out of her skin.
Mrs. Scott doesn’t seem to notice, because she just keeps right on talking. “You know I saw that Maddon girl last week? The one you used to pal around with.”
“Hazel?”
“That’s right. Is she home for good, then?”
Suzie swallows. There is a dry clicking sound in her throat. “No, she’s just house-sitting for her parents. You want me to put all this in your bag?”
Mrs. Scott nods as she hands a cotton tote to Suzie, her smile revealing a mouthful of long teeth. “It’s funny. I saw the other Maddon girl yesterday too. The older one. Must be the first time those two have been in the same town in over six years. I’d give anything to have my girls come visit.”
Suzie nods. Mrs. Scott had lost both adult daughters within the space of a year. Their graves are side by side up on the Hill, the old cemetery on the other side of town.
“I heard that Hazel got divorced. It’s a shame. I never met Joe, but her mother showed me the wedding pictures. He was a fine-looking man.”
Mrs. Scott has a face deeply netted with wrinkles and a shrewd expression which often reminds Suzie of a rodent. Something in it is ferrety and inquisitive.
She leans forward over her walker. “But that wasn’t Joe she jumped into that truck with the other day. So who was he?”
“Wait. When was this?” Suzie’s head lifts. She can feel her interest—no, excitement—snapping inside her like a series of electric shocks. “What man?”
“Well, let’s see now. It was the truck I noticed first. You don’t see many of them, do you?
Pickups, they’re called. He had a tarp pulled over the back, and the whole thing reminded me of the trucks we’d see in the war when they brought the soldiers home, all sat in the back, shell-shocked and hollow.
He was hunkered down in the driver’s seat like he didn’t want to be seen.
That’s what made me notice him, funnily enough.
He didn’t have a beard or a mustache, but just a lot of”—Mrs. Scott waves her hand over her jawline to indicate stubble—“mess here, like he didn’t know what a razor was. ”
“When was this?”
“Last week. Hazel was walking toward the packhorse bridge and went right past my window while I was watching for the rainstorm. Then I saw the truck pull up and she jumped right on in.”
Suzie pulls the bag away even as Mrs. Scott is reaching for it. Her blood is moving through her, hot and fast and urgent.
“Would you know him if you saw him again?”
“I suppose I might.”
For the second time that morning and in as many days, Suzie does something against company protocol. She lifts the hatch and beckons Mrs. Scott through to the back room.
Suzie thinks that Cathy must have been listening to that whole conversation, because she immediately steps away from the monitor as the two women enter the small office, Mrs. Scott in front, stooped low over her walker.
She doesn’t register much surprise at seeing Cathy there, only giving her another of those toothy smiles, pale eyes glinting in the small, dim room.
“Mrs. Scott is going to review the footage,” Suzie tells her, fighting to keep her voice steady. “She saw Hazel get into a truck with a man the other day.”
The three women crowd round the desk, prompting a strange, rogue thought to pop in Suzie’s overwrought brain. Look at us, we’re Macbeth’s three witches.
“By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes,” Suzie whispers as she presses Play. Cathy casts her a puzzled glance, which she ignores. Her stomach is churning.
“That’s him,” Mrs. Scott says almost immediately.
Too quick, Suzie thinks. The cameras are old and the footage grainy, making it difficult to decipher more than the shadowed face of a man trying not to be seen.
But Mrs. Scott is nodding with absolute certainty, looking first to Cathy, then back at Suzie.
“That’s the truck that Hazel climbed into.
It’s even got that tarp on the back, look! ”
Suzie leans closer and plays the footage over again, her heart in her mouth. When it is finished, she looks over at Cathy, raising her eyebrows. “What do you think? Enough to take it to the police?”
Cathy shrugs. Suzie is disappointed in her reaction.
She feels like they’ve made a breakthrough here, a big one, but it’s as if Cathy can barely muster a response.
Behind them, the bell chimes softly. More customers, Suzie thinks.
She ushers both women back into the pharmacy and holds the door open for Mrs. Scott, who glances up at the sky as she leaves.
Her tote bag swings from the handles of her walker. “See that sky? Those are nimbostratus clouds. That’s a blizzard coming, you mark my words.”
Back inside, Suzie finds Cathy in the makeup aisle. She watches as Cathy picks up a lipstick and mascara from the rack and puts them straight into her handbag.
“You don’t think it’s the guy?” Suzie draws level with her, keeping her voice down.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t say anything. What is it? What’s wrong?”
Cathy pushes her hair away from her face.
“You know, I thought I recognized him too, the first time I watched it. He looked like the man driving the bus into Truro the other day. I could’ve sworn to it.
Then I thought he looked like that caretaker who came to fix Scout’s window, the one from Belle Vue.
Then I realized he looked almost identical to one of my ex-boyfriends who lives up on Deltham Avenue—”
“I don’t get your point.”
“What I mean is, he looks like an anybody. Dark hair, a bit scruffy. You can’t see his face properly, you can’t even hear his voice. It isn’t enough to go on.”
Cathy must see the disappointment on Suzie’s face because she shifts her tone, just slightly.
“Ah, look, ignore me. I’m just cranky after a weird morning. Save the footage, yeah? Maybe the police will want to see it.”
To Suzie’s profound amazement, Cathy leans forward and hugs her; a brief squeeze but tight enough to almost knock the air out of her.
As she pulls away, Suzie finds herself on the verge of tears.
She watches Cathy leave, not caring that she slipped those items into her bag, deciding never to mention it.
Teddy would be horrified, she thinks to herself, and is surprised to find that that thought doesn’t bother her too much either.