“Syd,” I said. “Syd.”

I put the car in gear, took my foot off the brake, and got back on the road.

MINUTES LATER, I PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY of what I believed to be Patty Swain’s mother’s house. It was in one of Milford’s older neighborhoods, west and inland from the harbor, where the homes have a beach house feel about them even if they aren’t right on the Sound.

There was no car in the driveway, so I wasn’t surprised when no one answered my knock. I thought about leaving a note inside the screen door, with my name and number, but just as I was slipping one of my business cards out of my wallet, a rusted mid-nineties Ford Taurus pulled in next to my Beetle.

I stood on the doorstep and watched a fortyish woman get out. She grabbed a couple of bags of groceries and a purse from the passenger seat, dragging everything with one hand, her keys in the other, teetering on high-heeled sandals. “Can I help you?” she called out. She had on oversized sunglasses and pulled them off as she approached.

“Are you Patty’s mom?” I asked.

“Yes, why-” She stopped in mid-sentence when it seemed that she had a good look at me. I’d never met this woman before, but I felt she recognized me. Or maybe she was looking at my bandaged nose and bruised cheek.

“I’m Tim Blake,” I said.

“I’ll bet that hurts,” she said.

“You should see the other guy,” I said. “Actually, he looks fine.”

I came off the step and offered to take her bags. She let me. She was probably a knockout, once. She still had an impressive figure, but her legs, exposed in her white shorts, were bony, the skin weathered from too much time in the sun. Her cheeks were pale, her blonde hair dry and stringy. I could see Patty in her face: the strong cheekbones, the dark eyes.

I could hear bottles jangling against each other in one of the bags I’d taken from her.

She still hadn’t said anything, so I continued. “Patty’s good friends with my daughter Sydney. You probably know all about her being missing. And now, I understand Patty hasn’t been seen in a couple of days.” I sensed that my voice was shaking slightly, maybe not enough for this woman to notice, but it was there. “I’m sorry, I don’t recall your first name.”

“It’s Carol,” she said. “Um, I thought, at first, maybe you were from the police, until I got a good look at you.”

I took that to mean that, even in plain clothes, I didn’t look like a cop, but asked, “We’ve never met, have we?”

“No, we haven’t,” she said. “Listen, why don’t you come in.”

She got her key into the door and scurried ahead of me into the house, picking up several empty bottles in the front room and taking her bags into the kitchen. “I haven’t had a chance to clean up in the last couple of days,” she said. It looked more like the last couple of years. “What with all that’s been going on.”

“Have you heard from Patty?” I asked. “Has there been any sign of her?”

“Huh?” she said from the kitchen, where I could hear bottles being tossed into a recycling container. “No.” She came back into the living room. “I guess you’ve heard all about that?”

“Patty and Syd being friends, yeah, the police have talked to me about it,” I said.

“I didn’t even know, until Patty didn’t come home, and the police told me they were friends, that they even knew each other,” Carol Swain said.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “They’ve been friends over a year now. Patty didn’t talk about her?”

“Patty doesn’t talk to me about what she does or who she sees, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t talk to any of her friends about me,” Carol said. “At least if she does, she doesn’t have anything good to say.”

“You and Patty aren’t close,” I said.

“Not exactly the Gilmore Girls, I’ll tell you that,” she said and laughed. “Can I get you a beer or anything?”

“No, thanks,” I said. I almost reconsidered. Maybe a drink was what I needed. My nerves could use some calming. But I also wanted a clear head. “Patty didn’t tell you one of her friends was missing?”

“She said something about it, yeah,” Carol said. “But I don’t remember her saying her name, exactly. I hope you won’t think me a terrible host if I pour myself something?”

“Go ahead,” I said. I had a feeling that anything Patty might have told her mother would not necessarily have registered.

Carol Swain went back into the kitchen, opened and closed the fridge, and returned with a Sam Adams in her hand. It didn’t take long for beads of sweat to form on the bottle.

“So Patty’s been hanging around with your daughter for how long?” she asked.

I had to focus. “Over a year,” I said after thinking a second or two.

She was shaking her head puzzledly over this. “Son of a bitch.”

“Why should that be a surprise?” I asked.

“Hmm? No reason. That girl of mine… she’s a pistol, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said. “She is. A pistol. Pretty independent-minded.”

“Gets that from her father,” Carol said. “The fucker.”

“I take it he’s not in the picture,” I said.

“He pops in now and then, but not long enough to make an impression, thank Christ. Not since Patty was a little one. It’s kind of amazing, her hooking up with your kid. A year, you say?”

“Yeah.” The word came out short and clipped.

“You okay?” she asked.

“It’s been a… Yeah, I’m okay.”

She looked at me skeptically, then put our conversation back on track. Her eyes rolled up slightly into her head, like she was counting off months, circling dates on a calendar mentally. “So how exactly did they meet?”

“In summer school,” I said. “A math class.”

“Summer school?” Carol said, shaking her head. “Math?”

I nodded.

“Patty’s always been pretty good at math,” she said.

“Syd’s not bad at math, either, but if they don’t do the homework, they don’t get the marks,” I said.

“Ain’t that the truth. So you’re telling me they hit it off?”

“Yes,” I said.

She nodded, thinking about it. “I guess that does kinda make sense,” she said. I had no idea what she meant by that. “That girl, I swear.”

“I like Patty,” I said. “She’s a good kid.”

“Clearly you need more than a year to get to know her,” Carol Swain said. “The time and energy I’ve put into that child, and what does she do? Cause me nothing but grief, that’s what.” She sighed. “The cops came to see me today. Jennings? She said she’d been talking to you. She told me you were the last one to see Patty.”

“It seems that way,” I admitted.

“She tell you where she was running off to?” she asked, taking a pull on the beer.

“No. If I knew that, I’d have told the police. I’d tell you.”

“It’s not like she hasn’t run off before. A day here, maybe two. But when she didn’t show for work, that seemed strange. She doesn’t give a flying fuck about a lot of things, but she always turned up for work, even if she didn’t manage to get there on time, even if she’d gotten hammered the night before. Where I work, if you’re late, they dock you. Even if you’ve got a good excuse. Like if you’re sick, or hung-over, or something.”

“Patty hasn’t called you.”

“Nope.”

“Are you worried?”

“Aren’t you? About your daughter?”

“Yes. Very.”

“There you go. You and I don’t look like we’d have much in common, but there’s something right there.” She took another drink. “Maybe we have more in common than you think.”

“Maybe,” I said, not really thinking about it. “I wanted to talk to you because I thought if you had some idea what might have happened to Patty, it might be the same thing that’s happened to Sydney.”

“I can tell you this much,” she said, flopping down onto the couch. “I’ll bet it’s something bad.”

I set aside some discarded newspapers and took a chair opposite her. “What do you mean?”

“My girl, sometimes she doesn’t always do the smartest things.”

“What do you mean?” I asked again.