“When?” Sarah asked. “When was that?” Her look was eager, intense.
“Um, like day before yesterday, I think. Must’ve been. I was working the evening shift and she came in, got a Diet Coke and like a Cliff Bar or something.”
“Sure it was her?” I asked.
“Her hair was darker, dark brown, not like in that picture, but she was really pretty like that. I think it was her.”
“Was she with anyone?”
“Some lady. I didn’t notice her all that much.”
He would’ve noticed the good-looking girl about his own age, not the ancient broad pushing forty—assuming Roup’s and Waldo’s descriptions were in the ballpark. Looking back twenty-some years, I couldn’t blame the kid.
“Did you see which way they went when they left?”
“South. They went south.”
“You sure?”
He shrugged. “I was by the front window when they left.” Then he added, diffidently, “I watched ’cause she was really pretty.”
“Remember what time it was?”
“We close at ten. It was at least an hour before that. More. Probably between eight fifteen and eight thirty.”
Which matched the time Allie had phoned from Gerlach. And now we had another sighting of them going south, which made my sighting of that SUV coming in from the north even more iffy. But then, I knew what I’d seen.
“What’s your name, son?” I asked.
“Brian. Brian Jordan.”
“If you see her again, Brian, there’s a hundred dollars in it for you. Two hundred if you get a license number. Keep your eyes peeled for a green Mercedes SUV.”
“Sure thing.” He wrote down my cell number.
As Sarah and I went outside, my phone rang. It was Jeri.
“Hi, darling,” I said.
A moment of silence. “Darling? Where’s Mort? If he’s there, put him on.”
“Very funny, kiddo. What’s up?” I looked around. My Toyota was the only car in front of the store; nothing was moving on the highway. Empty damn place.
“Just thought I’d tell you I made it through the elimination round. I got a total of five hundred ten pounds up on the three lifts, no sweat.”
“Bet I could do that with a fork lift,” I told her.
“They don’t let us use those.”
“Then you’re probably in violation of a bunch of OSHA regulations. Give me a call if I need to wire bail money.”
“I’m gonna go wander around the casinos this afternoon, do the tourist thing, rest up. Final competition is tomorrow. Is Sarah still there with you?”
“Yep.”
“You two gonna stay the night in Gerlach again?”
“It’s looking that way.”
“Not likely to get carried away, are you? I mean, figuratively speaking.”
“Not gonna happen, babe.”
“Okay, then. I’m going to catch a cab. Call you later, okay?”
“I’ll be here.”
A couple of mushy “love yous” and we ended the call.
“How is she?” Sarah asked.
“Maybe a little worried. Hard to tell since she didn’t sound at all worried.” I squeezed into the car.
Sarah got in on the other side. “Next time she calls, I’ll talk to her, make certain she knows nothing’s going to happen between you and me.”
“Think that’s a good idea? Having that discussion?”
She looked at me for a moment. “Okay, you’re a little bit out there with all of this, so you probably ought to know it went something like this—yesterday in the Green Room you gave me the phone and told me to talk to her. Remember that?”
“Vaguely.”
“After a while she wanted to know how we met, and I told her how I’d been dressing up like a hooker to try to find Allie—which, by the way, she said wasn’t likely to work—then we kept talking and I ended up telling her I like it when guys look at me in the kind of clothes I’ve been wearing. She said it sounded like I had a little bit of exhibitionist in me and that she understood.”
“She did, huh? She used the word you don’t like and said she understood?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Was her understanding in an intellectual or personal sense?”
“She didn’t say, but I have the impression it was more personal than intellectual, like she really got it, like maybe she would like to vamp out once in a while, have guys check her out. I think she was a little envious, that I was able to go out and do that.”
Made sense, sort of. I could see Jeri doing that, or wishing she could but reining the impulse in. She was all business the day we met. She’d given off a pit bull vibe. Holiday might be giving her a vicarious thrill, something she couldn’t do herself, at least on anything like a regular, intentional basis. But there were hints. Early August in Myrtle Beach we were caught in a drenching downpour from Tropical Storm Beryl. Jeri’s blouse and bra went see-through. Very. She didn’t try to hide herself. She told me not to look if it bothered me. I told her it didn’t bother me in the least and she said, “So we’re all okay here?” Or words to that effect. Casual. No big deal. No further discussion. Given that, I could imagine her in a low-cut dress, guys checking her out, as long as that’s all it was. I was going to have to dump that and everything that had happened in the past two days into the magic vat in my skull that ferments information into useful knowledge and maybe learn something. Maybe. Sometimes that doesn’t work.
“So then,” Sarah said, “I told her about you wearing clothes to bed and reciting the Boy Scout oath—”
“Which I don’t remember doing.”
“—then you grabbed the phone, which was unforgivably rude, and when I finally got it back she said if I liked not wearing a lot of clothes around you, you would enjoy it and it wouldn’t bother her. That was that girl talk you said sounded underhanded—which it sort of was. Earlier, before you came back, I’d told her I like, you know, being looked at, nothing more than that, and I mean nothing more. She laughed and
