Eerie - Crouch Blake - Страница 22

“I don’t care what it costs.”

Through the speaker, Grant heard paper ripping, the murmur of a crowd, music, a distant, mechanical grinding that could only be espresso beans on their way to a small, white cup. An image materialized—Stu at his “office.” A coffeehouse in Capital Hill.

Stu said, “What’s the address?”

“Twenty-two Crockett Street.”

“Queen Anne?”

“Correct.”

“Give me your wish list.”

“Every owner going back twenty years. Every tenant going back twenty years. Background checks all around. And finally, assuming this property was sold in the last twenty years, I want a copy of the seller’s disclosure form.”

“That last one may be impossible, Grant.”

“Just try.”

“Those aren’t public records. I can’t just go down to the clerk and recorder’s office and pull that. Now I have contacts at two of the biggest title companies in town. Assuming there was a sale, and that one of those companies issued title insurance, it’s conceivable I could get my hands on the disclosure statement. Just don’t count on it. But look, regardless, there’s no way I’ll have all this information to you in four hours. There’s only three hours left in this work week. It’s an impossib—”

“Just get me what you can get me.” Grant pulled the phone back, glanced at the time: 1:55 p.m. “I need it by six tonight. I’ll be out of pocket until then. Call me at six exactly with whatever you’ve got.”

“Grant—”

“I understand. No warranty on you delivering all of this. But please just do what you can. I’m in a jam here.”

Stu sighed heavily into the receiver.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Six p.m. exactly.”

Grant axed the call.

Battery meter in the red.

He powered off his phone and looked at Paige. Already, she was tapping at her phone.

She brought it to her ear and faced the window over the double sink, her back to Grant.

It was the voice that took him aback, his sister transforming on a dime into this other person, her voice disintegrating.

From woman to girl.

Pitch rising.

Words drawing out.

It injured his soul.

“Hey sweetie, this a good time? … Nothing much. Just thinking about you, wondering how your week’s been. Almost over, right? … Look, I’ve got some time after six tonight if you wanted to swing by.”

Chapter 21

Sophie crossed Lake Washington and Mercer Island, blasting east on 90 toward the Cascades as she followed the white Lexus that Seymour was piloting twenty car lengths ahead.

It hummed along at a rock-solid sixty miles-per-hour.

Douglas-firs streamed past.

The cloud deck dropped.

Specks of mist starring the windshield.

She was sixty percent focused on the Lexus two hundred feet ahead, forty percent elsewhere.

More specifically: Grant.

My partner.

Are you lying to me? Just the thought of it hurt her more than she was comfortable admitting. Like it was a betrayal on some level beyond partner. Beyond friend.

A blinking right turn signal on Seymour’s Lexus snapped her back into the moment. He was already on the off-ramp.

Sophie pressed the accelerator into the floorboard and followed him off the exit.

• • •

Two minutes later, she was rattling over train tracks into downtown North Bend, a slice of Americana so well-preserved she felt her very presence threatened its legitimacy. She rarely left the city. So easy to forget that places like this existed just thirty minutes outside of Seattle proper.

The Lexus pulled into the near-desolate parking lot of Swartwood’s Diner.

Sophie turned into the alley that cut behind the building and pulled her TrailBlazer to a stop beside a mural on the white concrete of the back wall.

Through the driver’s side window, she watched Seymour climb out of his Lexus and walk toward the entrance to the diner.

She couldn’t explain it exactly, but she felt jittery, like she’d just downed a quad-shot espresso concoction. Everything about Seymour felt wrong. He was uncharted territory, and it made her feel like a rookie again—those first days on the street and coming to grips with the utter inadequacy of textbook knowledge.

Sophie reached into her jacket and pulled her G22, checked the load.

More nervous tic than necessity.

She put the SUV back into gear.

Drove down the alley and around the block.

She parked at a better location in front of the entrance.

Seymour had taken a booth by the window. His back was to her.

Good visibility, lucky break.

She killed the engine, reclined the seat.

• • •

It got boring in a hurry.

A waitress appeared at Seymour’s table.

Left.

Returned with coffee.

Seymour never glanced out the window beside his booth. Never brought the steaming cup to his lips. He had cleaned himself up since their encounter at the park—presumably in his car considering she hadn’t let him out of her sight. But other than an argyle sweater, fresh pair of jeans, and immaculate hair, he was the same old catatonic Seymour.

The rain fell so lightly it took almost forty-five minutes to blur her view through the windshield.

When she could no longer see through it, she opened the car door and climbed out.

The smell of fir trees was overpowering.

A mountain loomed on the far side of town, faceless and void of detail, nothing but an ominous profile through the mist.

Sophie crossed the sidewalk and opened the door as slowly as she could.

A cluster of bells hanging from the inner handle jingled anyway.

Seymour didn’t look back.

Aside from Seymour and an old man eating pie at a table against the opposite wall, the diner stood empty.

A jukebox in back played fifties rock-and-roll at an unobtrusive volume.

Two waitresses chatted at the counter, and one of them—a short blonde no more than twenty—glanced at Sophie and said, “Sit anywhere you like.”

She slid into an empty booth just two down from Seymour’s. Didn’t like having her back to the door, but there was no way around it without facing the man.

He could have been asleep he sat so still, but his posture was rigid, on alert, staring straight ahead into nothing.

Sophie peeled the menu from the table and opened it more out of habit than hunger.

The usual suspects: variations of eggs and fried meat, a few burgers, a suspicious Cobb salad.

She looked out the window.

The rain had picked up.

At the intersection, a traffic light flashed red to green, but the road was empty.

“Have you decided?”

Sophie turned to find the young waitress standing poised with pad and pencil. She wore her hair in an impossibly tight ponytail, the brown of her roots clinging for dear life.

“Just a coffee.”

“That’s it?” she grieved.

“That’s it.”

The waitress let her pad drop, cocked her head, and popped a smile so enormous it seemed to exceed the square footage of her face.

“Haven’t seen you here before. Your first time?”

Sophie’s eyes cut to Seymour two booths up.

“Just passing through. Needed a caffeine fix.”

“Oh? Where you headed?”

The question boomed in the silence of the diner as if it had been channeled through a PA system.

“Portland.”

“Business or—”

“Just visiting family.”

The waitress held her smile, as if Sophie’s explanation needed more explanation and she had all the time in the world to wait for the rest of the story.

Across the diner, the old man looked up from his pie.

This line of questioning needed to end. Now.

“You know what, Jenny?” Sophie said, squinting at her nametag, “I think I will have a slice of your pie.”

The waitress somehow squeezed out more smile.