“Alva called. Why are you coming to see me, Mr. Rawlins?”
While inhaling I considered lying. I held the breath for a beat and then let it go.
“I think Philomena Cargill is in trouble. Some people hired me to find her up in Frisco, and even though I didn’t, what I did find makes me think that she might need some help.”
“Why are these people looking for Cindy?” Lena asked.
“Her boss walked off with something that didn’t belong to him. At least that’s what they told me. He disappeared and then, a little while later, she did too.”
“And why are you coming to me?”
“I found a postcard from you in Philomena’s apartment.”
“You broke into her place?”
“No. As a matter of fact that’s one of the reasons I’m worried about her. They had her place up for rent. She’d left everything behind.”
I let these words sink in. Lena lifted her gaze above the glasses as if to get a better view of my heart. I have no idea what her nearly blind eyes saw.
“I don’t know where she is, Easy,” Lena said. “The last I heard she was in San Francisco working for a man named Bowers.”
“Are her parents here?”
“When her father died her mother moved to Chicago to live with a sister.”
1 3 9
W a lt e r M o s l e y
“Brothers? Sisters?”
“Her brothers are both in the service, Vietnam. Her sister married a Chinese man and they moved to Jamaica.”
There was something Lena wasn’t telling me.
“What’s she like — Cinnamon?”
“Reach over in that drawer in the end table,” she said, waving in that general direction.
The drawer was filled with papers, ballpoint pens, and pencils.
“Under all that,” she said. “It’s a frame.”
The small gilded frame held a three-by-five photo of a pretty young woman in a graduation cap and gown. She was smiling like I would have liked my daughter to do on her graduation day.
The photograph was black-and-white but you could almost see the reddish hue to her skin through the shading. There was a certainty in her eyes. She knew what she was seeing.
“She’s the kind of woman that men hate because she’s not afraid to be out there in a man’s world. Broke all’a the records at Jordan High School. Made it to the top of her class at University of California at Berkeley. Ready to fly, that child is . . .”
“She honest?”
“Let me tell you something, young man,” Lena said. “The reason I know her is that she worked in my restaurant in the last two years. She was just a girl but sharp and true. She loved to work and learn. I wished my own son had her wits. After the restaurant closed she came to see me every week to learn from what I knew. She was no crook.”
“Did she have any close friends down here?”
“I didn’t know her friends. She saw boys but they were never serious. The young men around here don’t value a woman with brains and talent.”
“Do you know how I can find her?” I asked, giving up subtlety.
1 4 0
C i n n a m o n K i s s
“No.”
Maybe I thought she was lying because all I could see was the opaque reflective surface of her glasses.
“If you hear from her will you tell her that I’m looking for the documents Bowers took?”
“What documents?”
“All I know is that he took some papers that have red seals on them. But I’m not worried about them as much as I’m worried about Miss Cargill’s safety.”
Lena nodded. If she did know where Philomena was she’d be sure to give her the message. I wrote down my home and office numbers. And then I helped Lena put away the groceries.
Her refrigerator was empty except for two hard-boiled eggs.
“With my legs the way they are it’s hard for me to get out shopping very much,” she said, apologizing for her meager fare.
I nodded and smiled.
“I come down to my office at least twice a week, Lena. I can always make a supermarket run for you.”
She patted my forearm and said, “Bless you.”
