don’t let him stop you from finding whoever… I find it so damn hard to say it.”
“I won’t let it stop me,” I said. “You didn’t tell me you had a daughter.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was important.”
I didn’t say it, but I thought it. Not important that she had a daughter? Not important that I talk to her? Both?
When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “Was it?” Yolanda Root had told me about her brother’s and Andy Goines’s vandalism. I had used what she told me to get Andy Goines to open up. In the scheme of things, yes, it was important.
“I may have something for you in the next few days,” I said. “No promises.”
“You know who did it?”
“Give me a few more days.”
“But… yes, all right. Richard called me. He said you’d seen him.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
I wondered what she was sorry for. For going to see her ex-husband? For how he might have behaved?
“It’s okay. I’ll call you when I have something.”
“Can you meet us later?” she said. “Richard and me.”
“I’ve got-”
Someone took the phone from her and said, “Fonesca, how soon can you get to my office?”
It was Richard Tycinker.
“One-thirty,” I said.
“Good.” He hung up.
I took my list of names and forwarding addresses of those four escapees from Seaside, went down the stairs with my gym bag, picked up a coffee to go and an Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s and drove down Bahia Vista to the YMCA, where I did four miles on the treadmill, did the round of machines, nodded to a few of the regulars, who nodded back at me. We didn’t know one another’s names. I didn’t want to know their names.
When I finished, I showered, shaved, used the rollon deodorant, got dressed and went back out into the fog. I had coaxed and sweated myself back into a state resembling life.
I drove up Lockwood Ridge to University Parkway, turned right and found University Gardens, beflowered, gated and nowhere near a university.
The sheet on the seat next to me said Ellen Gallagher now lived here with her grandson and his wife, Ralph and Julie Church.
I told the guard at the gate, a woman of more than average weight and less than average height, that I was there to see the Churches.
“Sorry, no churches in University Gardens,” she said. “You must be looking for St. Thomas’s a few miles east.”
“No,” I said, “I mean Julie and Ralph Church.”
“Ah,” she said with a smile.
Her brown eyes met mine.
“I knew that,” she said. “Couldn’t resist. You can go nuts here alone and I’ve been on since five this morning.”
“It was a good joke,” I said.
“You’re not smiling.”
“I don’t smile.”
“Your name?”
I told her and she checked the list on her clipboard.
“Don’t see your name here. They expecting you, the Churches?”
“Tell them I’m from Seaside.”
“Check,” she said, moving back into the shack and picking up the phone. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but she was back out again in a few seconds.
“You know how to get there?” she asked.
I said I didn’t so she gave me directions to 4851 Tangerine Drive Circle. The gate went up and I passed Tangerine Drive, Tangerine Parkway, Tangerine Drive Street, Tangerine Drive Avenue and made a right turn onto Tangerine Drive Circle.
The house was small with a finely manicured lawn of something that resembled but wasn’t grass. There were no cars in the driveway so I pulled in and walked up the narrow brick path to the front door, which opened before I could push the button.
An old woman in a flowery dress and a necklace of colorful beads stood before me. Her hair was white, neatly frizzled, her skin unblemished but slightly wrinkled.
“Ellen Gallagher?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“You were at Seaside Assisted Living?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask why you left?”
“Who are you?”
“Miles Archer,” I said. “Assisted Living Quality of Care Office.”
She pursed her lips, thought for a moment and said, “Let’s see. The food is mediocre. The conversation inane. The staff patronizing. The lure of twice-a-week bingo resistible. The complaints of my fellow inmates repetitious. I doubt if I was much better but I didn’t have to listen to me. Reasons enough?”
“Why now? I mean, why did you pick that day to leave?”
“Because my grandson and his wife invited me, as my own children had not,” she said. “They just moved here from Buffalo. Want a sandwich? Some coffee? My grandson and his wife are at work.”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Foggy,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I was a high school English teacher for more years than you’ve been on earth,” she said. “Now I have the run of the house, my own television with cable.”
“That’s great.”
“I told you that because I thought I was beginning to see the I-feel-sorry-for-the-old-lady look on your face.”
“No,” I said. “I always look like this.”
“Any more questions?”
“No,” I said.
“Then have a foggy day. I’ve got an Ann Rule book I want to get back to.”
She closed the door. I turned and took a few steps. The door opened behind me.
“Here,” she said. “Take this.”
She handed me a very large chocolate chip cookie and went back into the house, closing the door.
I ate the cookie as I drove east on University to 1-75 and then went south, getting off about ten minutes later at the first exit to Venice. The new address of Mark Anthony Katz, the second name on my list, was a low-rise apartment complex in Osprey, which was still under construction; piles of dirt dotted the landscape. There was no gate. There were no guards. There were plenty of trucks rumbling in and out.
Mark Anthony Katz’s name was on Apartment 4, Building 2, first floor. I knocked. The building smelled like fresh wood and concrete. I knocked again and was about to give up when the door opened.
A lean old man with a wisp of hair on his speckled head stood in front of me. He wore a long-sleeved orange cardigan buttoned to the neck and held on to a walker. Across the walker was a bumper sticker that read: I CAN’T REMEMBER SHIT!
“Mr. Katz?”
“No soliciting,” he said. “You see the signs?”
“I’m not selling anything,” I said.
