the first one to walk into the room. They all looked up at me at once, the way people in a hospital waiting room look up when a surgeon comes out to talk to them. I was no surgeon.
“They say Frank’s okay,” I said, “but they’re keeping the calls short. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him this time—”
“Will y’all forgive us if we keep you waiting for another twenty minutes?” Cassidy interrupted as he walked in the room. “I need to borrow Irene for a little while, but I’ll bring her right back. I’d love to explain, but for the moment, I can’t. You know how that goes, don’t you, Officer Bradshaw?”
“Sure, sure do — only I’m retired, so just call me Greg. That’s good enough. Mike, here, now he’s an officer. He works for the highway patrol.”
Cassidy smiled at Mike and said, “Forgive me. Irene neglected to tell me you were in law enforcement.”
“I’m sure she’s had other things on her mind,” Mike said.
“Yes, well, we’d better get going, Irene.” He handed a card to Bea. “My cell phone number’s on that card, Mrs. Harriman. Please call me immediately if Hocus makes any contact with you or if you need to reach me for any other reason.”
“We’ll be right back,” I said even as Cassidy walked toward the front door.
“Well, that didn’t go very smoothly,” I said as we headed toward the west side of town.
“I’ll try to do better next time,” he said, not even attempting sincerity. “Especially now that I have a little more information about the family.”
“Sorry. Mike was right, I’ve been distracted. But the real reason I didn’t mention it is that I think of him as Mike, not Mr. CHP.”
“No real harm done, I suppose. Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about not telling the family everything there is to tell. It’s best if they understand right away that they aren’t all going to be included in everything that goes on — much as they might like to be. They do strike me as the type of folks who might have a curious nature.”
What he said made sense. The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became. “You have the tape with you?”
He smiled. “Why? You think your in-laws will listen to it while we’re gone?”
“No, of course not,” I said, shifting a little on the car seat.
“Of course not.” He laughed.
“Cassidy—”
He reached into an inside pocket on his suit coat and pulled out a cassette. “Why tempt fate — or anybody else, for that matter?” he said, and slipped it back into his jacket.
The copy store was busy. There was a long line at the order desk, and all of the self-service copiers were in use. The place was noisy and smelled of toner. The help was all under the age of twenty-three.
Students were preparing term papers, job hunters were copying resumes, businesspeople were printing newsletters and flyers. Normal life.
Fortunately more people were placing orders than picking them up. I walked up to the cashier, who had a name tag that read SHAUN, and asked if they had a fax for Irene Kelly.
“Just a moment,” he said. “I’ll have someone check.”
He turned around and shouted, “Suzanne! Is there a fax here for Irene Kelly?”
“I don’t know,” Suzanne shouted back. “I’m with a customer.” That didn’t stop her from shouting in turn, “Heather!”
Heather, who was on the phone, shrugged when Suzanne shouted the question to her.
Cassidy hooked two fingers in his mouth and whistled like a drover. I’d swear it nearly broke the windows. All conversation ceased. Except for the soft
I don’t know how anyone found the fax, since all eyes seemed to be on us, but somehow they managed it. By the time Shaun handed me a manila envelope, the noise level was nearly its old self again, even if I hadn’t stopped feeling acutely embarrassed. I opened the envelope and saw a good number of pages. I pulled out the first one and turned to Cassidy. “Look.”
It was a cover sheet, which had the usual sort of information on it:
To: Irene Kelly
From: Hocus
Pages Including Cover: 21
It also gave my home phone number as the number to call if pages were not received. But at the very top of the page, the copy shop’s fax machine had printed the time the fax was received — eleven A.M. — and a phone number in my area code, a number that was not mine. Cassidy immediately took out his cell phone.
“That will be $11.13 with tax,” Shaun said.
Paying for the fax rankled, but I had bigger concerns.
Still the subject of a lot of attention, I decided to read the other pages outside. It was then I remembered Samuel Ryan’s exact words. “There was also supposed to be some mail here for me, too,” I said to Shaun.
“Oh, right!” he said. “You’re the one. We do have a package for you.”
“A package?”
“Well, an Express Mail envelope,” he said, reaching below the counter and handing me a brightly colored
