Page 82 of Middle of the Night

TWENTY-ONE

In the evening, when Alice Van de Veer opens her front door to find me standing there, I wonder how much she knows about her husband’s job at the Hawthorne Institute. Is she aware of everything that went on there? Or would she be as surprised as I was when my mother, after much coaxing, finally uttered the name Fritz Van de Veer.

My shock stemmed from Fritz’s appearance more than anything else. I assumed he was a banker or a used-car salesman. I’d always sensed a slight slipperiness lurking just beneath his affable exterior. Now I intend to find out just how slippery he truly is.

“Well, hello, Ethan,” Alice says, beaming. “What a pleasant surprise!”

A surprise? Maybe. But my being here is anything but pleasant. In fact, the Van de Veer house is the last place I want to be.

“Is Fritz home?” I say. “I need to talk to him.”

“He is.” Alice disappears into the house, her voice echoing within its depths. “Fritz? Ethan Marsh is here. Come say hi!”

Mr. Van de Veer soon appears, dressed as if for a corporate picnic. Tommy Bahama shirt, chinos, and penny loafers, which I didn’t even know they made anymore. The clothes and the beige blandness of hishair and skin make him eerily inconspicuous. I suspect that’s the reason I missed him in those photos hanging inside the Hawthorne Institute. After ending the call with my parents, I looked through them again, finding Fritz in ones dating back to the early eighties, just another face blending in with all the others.

Seeing him now, I need all the willpower I have not to punch him square in the jaw and then start kicking him the moment he hits the floor. Both my hands have curled into fists on their own accord. I stuff them into my pockets to keep them from swinging.

If my hunch is correct, then he took Billy, possibly because he thought it was me. And while I don’t think Fritz did the actual kidnapping, I do suspect he’s the one who set it all in motion.

“Ethan, hey,” he says. “I was just going to treat myself to a scotch. You want one?”

“What I want,” I say, “is for you to tell me if Billy Barringer was your intended target or if it was me.”

Fritz freezes. The only noticeable motion comes from his eyes, which ping-pong with fear, and his mouth, which collapses into a frown.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, son,” he says.

“Yeah, you do. Just like you knew all this time that Billy’s body was on the grounds of the Hawthorne Institute.”

All the color leaves Fritz’s face. “It was?”

If his surprise is an act, it’s a very convincing one. I almost believe he really didn’t know.

“Maybe you should tell me everything—and I mean literally everything—you know about the night Billy Barringer vanished.”

“Not here,” Fritz says, sneaking a glance into the house. “Your place. I’ll tell Alice I’m going for a walk.”

Ten minutes later, he’s cutting across the cul-de-sac. I watch his approach from the bedroom window, his face blurred by the encroaching dusk but the rest of him perfectly clear. He’s adjusted his wardrobesince I left his house, wearing a gray windbreaker over his gaudily printed shirt and swapping the loafers for a pair of sneakers. They flash white in the deepening gloom as he steps purposefully into the yard.

“They found Billy at the institute?” he says when I meet him at the front door.

“Yes. In the lake.”

I open the door wider, signaling for him to enter. Fritz shakes his head and says, “Can we stay outside? I think I still need some fresh air.”

“The backyard then,” I say, certain he also doesn’t want to have this conversation in full view of the rest of Hemlock Circle.

Fritz follows me as I walk stiffly through the foyer, past the dining room, and into the kitchen. There, I open the patio door and we step into the backyard. It’s dark here, the only light a rectangle of brightness spilling through the glass of the patio door. Fritz edges away from it, stopping in a shadowy patch of grass, his hands shoved into the pockets of his windbreaker. Whether he’s aware of it or not, he’s chosen to stand on the exact spot where my tent was located the night Billy was taken.

I join him there, my senses sharpened by nervousness. I feel the grass sinking beneath my sneakers, smell the aftershave Fritz splashed onto his cheeks this morning.

“I assume your mother told you she once worked at the institute,” he says.

“She did. She also told me what she saw—and that you fired her because of it.”

“She shouldn’t have done that,” Fritz says. “There’s no expiration date on that document she signed, so it’s still binding. But since old Ezra’s been dead for more than twenty-five years, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Sounds like Mr. Hawthorne had a lot of secrets. Big ones. Big enough to maybe kill to keep hidden.”

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