Five Days in Summer

all be over. In one way or another it would be over. Then he thought of Charlie and Val and in minutes it was all arranged: they would drive to the Cape overnight and take all three children back to New York first thing in the morning.

Chapter 12
    Amy kicked aside the old take-out wrappers that crunched at her feet. She didn’t like the passenger seat, especially this one. Al Snow was at the wheel of the department-issued Chrysler he’d been driving for years. He had a green pine-tree air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror and a picture of his teenage daughter taped to the dash. He kept his spare change in a nook between the two front seats.
    They drove in silence through the back roads of Mashpee to Popponesset Beach. Amy had been here before, but the back-Cape roads got mazelike and she would have needed her map to find Squaws Lane. Snow didn’t use a map; he knew all the turns. He brought them up Uncle Percy’s Road, down Clover, and up Uncle Hank’s Road, back to Kim’s Path and straight onto Squaws. Amy made a mental note to check her map later; she had a gut feeling he’d driven them in circles just to prove he knew the way better than she.
    According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, Mr. White number one lived at two Squaws Lane. His name was Robert R. Robertson, a dirty trick for any parent to perpetrate on his own child; it went rightinto the What Were They Thinking? file. Amy seriously hoped his middle name wasn’t Robert, too.
    There were only five houses on Squaws Lane, modest cabins planted close together, their tiny yards separated by rusty chain-link fences. Whoever had developed these small lots had maximized on income potential by building so close to the sea but had minimized on amenities. Like they said, location, location, location.
    “Summer houses,” Amy said.
    Snow kept his eyes fixed on the road. “Mostly.”
    Number two was at the end of the short street, a gray clapboard bungalow with a small wooden deck built onto the crest of a dune. Sea grass glazed the dune as it spilled onto a wide, pristine beach facing Nantucket Sound. Far in the distance, the slate green ocean blended with a clear sky.
    The silver Skylark sat in the driveway.
    Snow parked the car and they got out.
    “Funny,” Amy said, looking at the meager house and the million-dollar location.
    Snow didn’t see it, or wouldn’t admit that he did. “What do you mean?”
    “Nothing.”
    They walked up a series of rotted wooden steps that ended in a concrete slab and a half-screen exterior door. The door squealed when Snow pulled it open. Amy rang the bell and they heard a single, muted ding . They waited. Maybe it was the sea air, but the interior door hadn’t held its paint job, which flaked white amidst a mass of wood slivers. A metal trash can by the fence overflowed with corn husks and their long, golden hairs.
    Finally, the door cracked open, and half a face stared out at them. The man was so white he could have been albino. Hair, skin and eyes blurred into a muted, gauzy color. He closed the door, then crackedit open again. He repeated the procedure one more time. That was three times in all, and Amy knew they had a winner.
    “I’m Detective Cardoza from the Mashpee PD. This is Detective Snow. Are you Robert Robertson?”
    Robertson looked from Amy to Snow, and again, and again. The final beat of his eyes rested on Snow.
    “Bob?” Snow said.
    The pale eyes blinked. “Bobby.”
    “Mind if we ask you a few questions?”
    Bobby opened the door only enough to press his body out. Clearly, he didn’t want them inside. In the moment before it snapped shut behind him, Amy glimpsed a neat row of shoes on a white carpet and a tall shelf of paperback books with their spines perfectly aligned.
    Sweat quickly gathered on Bobby’s forehead. According to his DMV records, he was fifty-two, but he looked closer to sixty.
    “We’re investigating a missing persons claim. Emily Parker.” She showed Bobby Emily’s picture. “Do you know her?”
    Bobby’s eyes flicked three times to the picture, then raced across the detectives’ faces, and landed back on Emily’s picture. He shook his head.
    He was lying.
    “You like corn.” Amy nodded to the trash by the fence.
    Bobby was silent.
    “It was on sale yesterday at the Stop and Shop by the Mashpee Commons. You shop there often?”
    “On Mondays,” Bobby said, “they have double coupons.”
    “You bought an awful lot of corn yesterday. Do you live