Free A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay Page A

usually turn out,” she shot back.
    “May I come in?” I asked, nodding toward the living room.
    “Just tell me if it’s about Hanna,” Glynis Rodomski said. “I have to know if this is about Hanna.”
    “It is,” I conceded. “At least, in part. Is she here?”
    “No,” her husband said quickly. “She’s not.” Which immediately made me wonder whether she was.
    We sat down in the adjoining living room. I caught a glimpse of the kitchen through a doorway. Dishes piled by the sink, a leaning stack of newspapers, an uncorked bottle of wine, an open box of Cheerios. Unless they were having cereal for dinner, that box had to have been sitting there all day. By contrast, the living room was pure Martha Stewart. Two matching couches, two matching chairs, with perfectly positioned throw pillows on all of them.
    Chris Rodomski tossed a pillow aside before taking one of the chairs, and it hit the broadloomed floor silently. Glynis scowled at him, ever so briefly, but I was guessing my presence was more disconcerting to her than his contempt for her decorating touches. She sat on one of the couches and I took the other empty chair.
    “Do you know where Hanna is now?” I asked.
    They exchanged looks. “Not right this second,” he said. “There are a number of places she could be.” He tried to be offhand about it. “With her friends, probably.” He adopted a look of grave concern toward me. “We really need to know what this is about before we start answering your questions.”
    “It’s about that little business she has with her boyfriend, isn’t it?” Glynis blurted. “I told her that would end up biting her in the ass.”
    Chris Rodomski shot her a look. “We don’t know that Mr. Weaver’s visit has anything to do with that.”
    “Business?” I asked.
    He waved his hand dismissively at me. “Tell us why you’re here.”
    I took a breath. “Hanna has a friend named Claire Sanders, doesn’t she?”
    “Yes,” Glynis said.
    “Claire hasn’t been seen since last night, and I’m trying to find her. I figured Hanna might be able to help me.”
    “What do you mean, she hasn’t been seen?” she asked. “She’s missing?”
    I hesitated. There was a difference between not knowing where someone was and categorizing them as missing. “She needs to be found,” I said, and left it that.
    “I have no idea where she is,” Glynis said. “Claire, I mean. She comes around here once in a while, but she’s only going to come here if Hanna’s home, and she’s not home all that much.”
    “But she lives here,” I said, making a statement more than asking.
    “Well, sure,
technically
,” Hanna’s mother said, “but she spends pretty much every waking moment with her boyfriend.”
    “Not just waking,” her husband sneered.
    “Who’s that?” I asked, getting out my small notebook.
    “Sean,” Hanna’s mother said.
    “Sean what?”
    “Skilling,” Chris Rodomski interjected, putting the wineglass to his lips and taking a long sip.
    “That’s right,” Glynis said suddenly. “Sean Skilling. Every time I try to think of the name, I come up with ‘skillet.’”
    I asked, “Does Hanna carry a cell phone?”
    Glynis rolled her eyes. She seemed less tense, now that she realized I was here more about Claire than her own daughter. “Are you kidding? It’s surgically attached to her hand.” She rethought that. “Or her head. I don’t know which.”
    “Could you call her, tell her to come home?”
    “What will I tell her?”
    “I don’t know. Something’s come up. A family matter. You need her to come home.”
    Glynis looked skeptical. “I can try.” She picked up the receiver on a landline phone that was sitting on a table next to the couch.
    She held the phone to her ear and waited. She nodded almost imperceptibly with each ring, then said, “Oh, hi, sweetheart. It’s your
mother
. Could you please come over? There’s something your father and I need to discuss with you.