pork products ever made.'
'Of course, Esskay.' She laughed, but shakily. 'Tess Monaghan. I feel as if I conjured you up in a way. Because I've been sitting here, thinking I should call you.'
Some organ-heart, stomach, intestines-lurched inside Tess. 'Has something happened-I mean, do you have news of Crow? I tried to call him tonight-'
'But his phone is disconnected. I know, I know. It was turned off six weeks ago. A week later, our last check came back from Texas, marked return to sender. I was hoping you might have heard from him, or know something more.'
'Not really.' The clipping didn't count, for it only deepened the mystery. Besides, it surely would cause this kind woman more concern, and that couldn't have been Crow's intent. 'So you haven't heard anything for more than a month?'
'Three weeks ago he called and left a message on our machine, at a time when he knew we'd be out. ‘Don't worry,' he said, and we've been out of minds with worry ever since. Are you sure he hasn't tried to get in touch with you?'
Tess studied the clipping. Less than a week in her possession and it already had a worn look, as if it had been handled many, many times. 'I had something in the mail recently, a photo of him, nothing more…He's cut his hair.' An idiotic segue, but it was all she could think of.
'I knew he would reach out to you. You were such a good influence.'
'I was?' As Tess recalled, Crow had committed at least one felony under her tutelage. Then again, that was before they started dating, and it had not been her idea.
'He finished school at last. Even the breakup had its positive aspects. He went to Texas, decided to get serious about his music.'
The conversation seemed increasingly surreal, and Tess found herself conscious of the wine she had been drinking all evening. But perhaps Mrs. Ransome had been sitting by her phone, dialing the same number that no longer rang in Texas, sipping her own drink?
'Well, it was nice to talk to you at last,' she offered lamely. Mrs. Ransome seemed to know so much about her, while Tess couldn't remember anything more about Crow's parents other than a few scraps of details. Had she not been paying attention? Sometimes she had tuned out Crow's happy prattling. It hadn't seemed to require close attention.
'I'm sure you'll hear from him soon,' she said. 'Crow's always been responsible.'
'That's my point,' Mrs. Ransome said. 'He's too responsible to do this to us, unless something is horribly wrong. We were thinking of hiring someone-'
'I'd be glad to help you,' Tess interrupted. 'Make some inquiries, hook you up with someone in Texas.'
'-but your call seems providential, I realize now. Not to sound too Celestine Prophecy-ish, because I'm not that kind of person. Usually. But things do happen for a reason, don't you think? I need a private investigator and here's one calling me, one I know to be a fine, trustworthy person.'
'I'm really not-' Tess stopped. It wasn't that she didn't consider herself fine and trustworthy, it was just that Mrs. Ransome's exalted opinion sounded suspiciously like one shoe dropping.
Mrs. Ransome wasn't listening. It was possible that she had never really listened. From the moment she heard Tess's voice on the line, she had been working toward just this, focusing on a single goal in her own gracious way, intent on throwing down this second shoe.
'Tess Monaghan, would you find my son?'
Chapter 3
Thirty-six hours later, Tess was en route to Charlottesville. She owed Crow's parents the courtesy of a face-to-face rejection, or so she had rationalized, only then could she make them see the sense of finding an investigator who knew the territory. There were worse ways to spend a crisp Sunday in October than driving along the edge of the Shenandoahs.
Strangely, Tyner had wanted to come along, claiming she was too nice, that she was just a girl who couldn't say no. But it seemed to Tess that he was desperate for a distraction. He was restless lately, bored with his job and his routines, which surprised her. She had thought such feelings belonged exclusively to the young.
'Don't worry, I'm not going to take the work,' she had assured him. 'I just want to make sure they hire someone reputable, someone who won't run up a huge bill and never do anything more than place a classified ad.'
'Your Toyota can't make Charlottesville,' Tyner had said. 'We'll have to take my van.'
'As Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, what's this ‘we' shit, Kemo Sabe? Besides, a car with 130,000 miles on it can easily go 400 miles more.'
'But maybe not all in one day. And if you should decide to take the case-'
'It would be a disservice to them to take their money. The only thing I know about Texas is ‘Remember the Maine.''
'‘Remember the
'See? That's how little I know.'
Tyner gave her a sour look. 'I remember when the public school education in Baltimore was something to brag about.'
'It still is. I only got beaten up once in four years. It was a school record.'
So it was that Tess's Toyota headed out of Baltimore on Route 40 on Sunday morning, bound for Charlottesville, with Esskay the only passenger on board. Although it was slightly out of their way, she went west, then south along the Shenandoah Parkway. That kept them out of Washington traffic and gave Esskay a chance to see the fall leaves.
Tess knew the first part of the route well enough, from the dozens of school trips to Skyline Drive and Luray Caverns, where she always had to relearn the difference between stalactites and stalagmites. 'C for ceiling, stalactites hang down.' Another brain cell wasted.
But once south of the Natural Bridge, it was all new to her. She wasn't much of a traveler. There had been the road trips for crew in college, a few trips to New York, a wedding in Chicago, one spring break on the Outer Banks. When there had been time, there had been no money, and now that there was money, at least a little of it, there was no time. Or maybe she just wasn't inclined to make the time.
The truth was, she had never really understood the lure of travel. Strange faces, strange sheets, upset routines. And for what? To look at some scenery, as she was doing now. Pretty enough, but nothing to leave home for. Tess remembered Kitty making a present of her childhood Viewfinder. Tess would have been around six or seven at the time, so Kitty was the glamorous young-old aunt, not even out of college yet. Tess had dutifully held the Viewfinder to her face and depressed the switch, taking in the Golden Gate and Hoover Dam, Mesa Verde and the Four Corners, the Astrodome and the Alamo. (Of course she knew the Alamo.)
The only places that touched her were close to home. Poe's grave, for example-she swore she had felt an icy breeze on her cheek, as if he had just passed by. GreenMount Cemetery, home to John Wilkes Booth.
Maybe it wasn't local places after all, but a perverse fondness for graveyards.
Once in Charlottesville, Mrs. Ransome's careful directions led her past the university and into the heart of an old residential neighborhood with mature trees and substantial houses. Tess had expected something a little more ramshackle, a run-down bungalow with a 'Property Is Theft' sign on the unlocked front door. But the Ransomes' house sat far back on a well-kept lawn, an Arts and Crafts bungalow at odds with its more traditional neighbors, but undeniably pretty and charming.
A small woman in baggy print pants and bright purple sweatshirt, her dark hair an uncontrollable mass of curls, opened the front door. She looked just as Tess had imagined her-a casual refugee from the sixties, indifferent to fashion and appearance.
