“How were her teeth?” I asked Lou.
Ma laughed. “Jeri said you were hopeless. C’mon.” She pulled me toward the three-bay garage.
“Any of you guys see that lady whose Mercedes you painted white last Thursday?” she asked in a loud voice.
All of them came over. All of them had seen her. They were a grease-stained lot, grease in their hair, paint on their clothes. Two of them could’ve used haircuts so they didn’t look so much like girls from the back, but that wasn’t my business or my problem.
“Any of you see where she went?” Ma said. “What car picked her up?”
“No car,” said a tall, skinny guy with paint-speckled glasses. “At least not right out front. She headed down the street on foot, that way.” He pointed.
“Then what?” Ma asked.
The guy shrugged. “Then nothin’. She was gone, so we got to work on her car. Rush job.”
“Was anyone with her? Waiting outside or anything?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t see anyone.”
“What was she wearing?”
“A dress, kinda summery. Day was warm enough.”
“What color dress?”
“Blue. Bluish. Had stuff printed on it, like flowers.”
“How’d her legs look?”
All three looked at each other. “Good, right?” the skinny guy asked the others. “Yeah, real good,” a chubby guy said.
“How about her chest, guys?”
The skinny one grinned. “That was pretty nice, too.”
“There, see?” Ma said to me.
“See what?”
“No eunuch switch, so I don’t look for one.”
She thanked the three guys and we left. Ma headed down the street in the direction the one guy had pointed. I kept up with her. “No eunuch switch,” I said.
“One guy in a hundred actually has one. Guys with names like Percy Milquetoast, Roger Gelding, things like that. Doesn’t get my old heart racing, lemme tell you. One problem with Thunder Down Under is half those guys are into guys, not girls. I wish they’d make them wear something like a purple sweatband so I’d know which was which. Go to something like that, all you can do is hope the one that really gets you in a lather is a guy guy, not just well-muscled eye candy dreaming about Brad.”
When we reached the corner, Ma shaded her eyes, looked west toward the main drag. “I don’t think there’s a sister up here. Let’s go get the Caddy and check some nearby motels, see if we can find out where she stayed.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WE HIT THE main street, SE Third, and looked both ways. A few blocks south was the Cascade Lodge. An Econo Lodge and a Motel 6 were up north, two blocks away.
“Might be harder to figure out where she stayed than which body shop she used,” Ma said. “Body shop with three guys versus a motel with umpteen employees and foot traffic in and out. But she dropped the car off around noon last Thursday, and it’s Wednesday now, middle of the week, so the same people might be manning the desks. We’ve got a decent shot at this. So look around, boyo. She’s on foot. Which way would she go?”
I looked both ways again. Fairly busy street. The Econo and Motel 6 were on the far side of the street, but closer. The Cascade was a block farther away, but on this side of the street. Traffic lights would make it easy to cross over. But she was in a Mercedes, and the Cascade was a step up from the Econo and the Six.
“Left,” I said. “Cascade Lodge.”
Ma smiled. “You show promise. Let’s go.”
I drove south, pulled into the registration parking area, and we went in. A girl was at the desk, late twenties, pretty, Hispanic, halo of glossy black hair around her head and shoulders, big eyes, full lips, wearing a pale blue polo shirt with the Cascade logo on it.
“Help you?” she asked in a slight Spanish accent.
Ma nudged my hip, low enough that the counter hid it. She walked a few feet away and checked out brochures for local outdoor activities—hiking, river rafting, local rodeo, horseback riding.
“Hi there, sweetheart,” I said, hoping I’d hit the right note. “I’m trying to track down a woman who might’ve checked in here about a week ago.”
“You look juss like that guy.” Her accent picked up a notch, put a little extra ooo on look, turned it into “luke.” I liked that.
“What g—oh, yeah, him. I’ve been getting that.” Sonofabitch. I’d forgotten my wig, moustache.
“Him on the TV. He good lookin’, juss like you.” She gave me a smile with some heat in it. A tag on her chest said Sophie.
Okay, this was working out, now that we’d gotten over the shy, awkward, getting-to-know-you part. “Thanks. Maybe we could get a drink later, Sophie.”
“I get off at ten.”
In my face. That old PI black magic was still alive and well, ghosts of Spade and Hammer in the corners, hooting and catcalling, slapping each other on the back.
“Great,” I said. “Where’s a good place we could meet?”
“There’s a lounge down the street. The Evergreen.” She leaned closer, lowered her voice. “It would juss be, you know, for a drink.”
“Absolutely. But, uh, I’m looking for a woman who was here, or might have been, a week ago. Alone, in her thirties, maybe in a sort of blue print dress, a few inches taller than you, dark hair.”
“You know this woman?”
“No. I’m trying to find out who she is.”
“You a cop?”
“Nope. I’m a PI. Private eye.”
“Yeah?” She smiled. “I like that.” She looked around. “I saw a woman like this, but, you know, I could like lose my job if . . . you know.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. The Evergreen was definitely in my future. Having gotten the gist of things, Ma had moved farther away. In fact, as I watched, she went out the double glass doors and stood outside, looking around.
Sophie stared at her. “That your mother?”
“Nope. She’s a PI, too. We’re working together.” And it was a good thing she was outside or, due to sudden death syndrome, this conversation with Sophie might be over right now.
Or maybe not. Maybe Ma
