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She got out of the car and smiled. “Caught you this time.”
“Sorry you missed me before,” I said. “But I gather you had lots to talk about with Jayne.”
Hardy closed her door and approached. “We had a good chat.”
“You never get tired of trying to ruin my life. My old one, and now my new one.”
“You make it sound like it’s personal, Mr. Mason. Oh, sorry, Mr. Carville.” She smiled. “It’s hard to get used to that.”
“Am I going to have to change it again?” I asked. “Have you already leaked a few juicy tidbits to the media? Am I going to have CNN on my doorstep by tomorrow?”
Hardy feigned hurt feelings. “I can’t control what the press chooses to cover. It’s a free country, you know.”
“I get this sense you’d like to make it a little less free for me.”
“There are matters still unresolved,” she acknowledged. “Brie’s still missing.”
“And I wish you would find her, or find out what happened to her. There’s nothing I want more in the world than that.”
Hardy nodded slowly. “Of course. I guess that’s why you hired your own private investigator to look for Brie, or started some big media campaign to get the public’s help to find her.”
I had done neither of those things, which of course was her point.
“You have no idea what I did trying to find Brie,” I said. “Maybe it didn’t include hiring my own detective, or mounting some social media blitz, but you know why? Because I was stupid enough, naïve enough, to believe you would do it because that was your job.”
Hardy winced, as though maybe I’d landed a glancing blow.
“It was your job—it’s always been your job—to find Brie, bring some kind of resolution for those who love her. And maybe if you hadn’t zeroed in on me as your number-one suspect from the very first day, you’d have opened your eyes to what else might have happened to her. But no, you make up for your ineptitude by accusing me of not being an amateur detective.”
I shook my head in disgust. “You have no idea what I did or didn’t do, no idea of the sleepless nights, no idea how many times I drove the streets at all hours, night and day, and wandered the malls and walked along creeks and searched everywhere I could think of. You have no idea how much I’ve tortured myself over this. I’ve wondered, could she be dead, and if so, how did it happen? Who killed her? But then I’d think, maybe she isn’t dead, maybe there’s hope, but then, if she’s alive, why hasn’t she been in touch? Why did she leave me? Why has she put me through this? What did I do that would make her want to hurt me this much? I mean, which would be worse? To find out she’s dead, or that she’s left me without so much as a goodbye. Answer me that.”
I was out of breath.
The silence between us lasted several seconds.
“Which brings us to today,” the detective said.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” I said, knowing what she had to be referring to.
“I’ve been doing a little digging,” she said. “You know, like, doing my job. The groceries she dropped were from the Stop & Shop in Milford’s east end. You ever shop there?”
“No.”
“Did you and Brie ever shop there?”
“Maybe occasionally.”
“Anyway, talked to the employees there, the folks working the checkouts, and no one remembered seeing her this morning. Of course, it’s pretty busy on a Saturday, and what with all that scanning and beeping, maybe no one noticed her.”
“Can’t you check the credit card receipt?” I asked.
“Saw the receipt from the bags she dropped. She paid cash. And then there’s the matter of the car.”
“It was a Volvo,” I said. “A station wagon.”
She smiled. “You know your cars. A wagon. A 2012 model, we think. Black. With what looked like a dimple in the hood, a little dent. Like if, you know, a baseball landed on it or something.”
I listened.
