Chapter 20
Thad
Dean never calls.
I don’t know if he somehow got wind of me being here, or if plans just changed, but Pam’s cell phone remains silent for the rest of the night. As for the dinner itself, it’s pleasant enough, after Helen and Pam duke it out in the kitchen. Afterward I can tell Pam is making a marked effort to be cordial, though it’s obvious she still thinks I’m not good enough to be mud stuck to the bottom of her daughter’s shoe.
Well, won’t she be pleased when she finds out she’ll never have to see me again? The thought is irritating enough that I almost want to press Ken on his offer to go see the Red Sox sometime, just to really rub Pam’s face in my sparkling personality.
We all part ways with vague promises to do it again sometime, and Helen and I get in the car to make the drive back into the city. I’m feeling kind of discombobulated, most likely because of Dean never calling, and Pam disliking me so very much.
And knowing that, after today, I won’t have any reason to see Helen again.
She tried. I have to give her that much. She took me to her aunt’s home for a family dinner and lied straight to her parents’ faces about who I am and let me paw at her, all for the sake of trying to help Dean. And she was sort of alarmingly good at all that deception, frankly. If I hadn’t already had ideas about her being some incognito femme fatale, I might be second-guessing myself. But that’s stupid. She was a nun, for Christ’s sake. Nice women who used to be nuns are not liars and schemers—right?
“Pull the car over,” Helen says after we’ve driven about ten minutes.
I’m too surprised to argue much. Once the car’s off the road, I see Helen studying my face intently, and for one stupid, irrational moment, I think she’s about to kiss me.
Instead, she blurts out something that takes me completely by surprise: “I know where Dean is.”
I gape at her for a moment, flabbergasted, before getting my wits back. “How d’you know that? Did your mom tell you—is that what you were talking about so long in the kitchen?”
Helen shakes her head. “No, I…I found my aunt’s credit card bill. Dean’s been using it to make charges.”
“That’s…brilliant.” No kind of criminal investigative training and this woman somehow knows to go through credit card charges. She might really be more of a natural at this than I thought. “So where’s he at?”
Helen bites her lip, and it’s then that the other shoe falls.
Ah. Yes. I see. She’s not going to tell me. She’s going to double-cross me.
Lana Frickin’ Turner, this one.
She’s usually the one with a face like an open book, but something of what I’m thinking must be playing out acrossmyface because Helen holds up a peremptory hand, as if to stop any negative thoughts. “I’m willing to tell you, I am. I’m not going back on our deal. But I want to amend it.” She squares her shoulders, taking in a deep breath. “I want to come with you.”
“Come with me?” I echo, frowning at her. “You mean to whatever hotel he’s been holing up in? Where is it—downtown?”
She shakes her head. “It’s far from here—a few states away.” She holds up her phone to me. “I have all the info we need in here. But I want to come with you, to make sure Dean is okay.”
I’m already shaking my head before she’s even finished. “I don’t bring along groupies. And especially not women.”
“Because of what Vera did to you?”
What was merely irritating behavior before has now become outright infuriating. I glare at her. “Someone’s been doing a little digging into the past, I see.”
“I’m good at researching things.” Helen looks, and sounds, a little pleased with herself. “I might even be able to help you, if you’d let me.”
“This isn’t some fun road trip with a bus full of nuns and tambourines—I told you, there are dangerous people after Dean. I need to get to him before they do, and I can’t have anyone slowing me down.”
Helen sets her jaw defiantly. “Explain to me, exactly, how I’d be slowing you down when I’m the only one who knows where Dean is? Seems to me like you need my help.”
She looks so smug that I don’t think—I just act. One minute she’s smirking at me, and the next I’ve snatched her phone right out of her hands. “Seems to me like I don’t, since you already told me all the proof’s on here.”
Helen’s jaw drops. She looks so genuinely shocked that I might laugh, if she weren’t such a nuisance. “You can’t just take my phone!”
“Can.” I shrug. “Did.”
“Well, you won’t be able to log in without my passcode.”
