“So,” I said. “See you at the Evergreen? A little after ten?”
“Okay. Uh, what your name?” Name came out “nem.” Nice.
“Steve,” I said. Steve sounded like a safe name, unlike Bubba or Spike, or even Jack—ever since that awkward Ripper business in London a while back. I wasn’t going to learn anything about the SUV lady until after ten, and I didn’t want to scare Sophie off.
Little did I know.
“Got me a hot date, Ma,” I said.
“Attaboy.”
“Evergreen tonight at ten. Bar down the street. I think maybe Sophie saw the woman we’re looking for, but I can’t be sure. She might just want a nightcap.”
“Sophie, huh? Cute little thing, too.”
“Yup.”
“Good work. Except I don’t expect a lot outta her unless you can get a charge slip or a license plate number, which I don’t think is gonna happen tonight at the Evergreen unless she’s got one hell of a memory. Anyway, right now we could use us a place to stay.”
I looked back at the desk through the glass doors. Sophie was watching us. She smiled at me. “We’re at a place now, Ma. It looks like the kind of place that might have rooms.”
“Uh-huh. It also has a hot Latin number at the desk who would check us in—so she’d know what room you’re in and she’d have access to a room key.”
“All very true and interesting, but what’s your point?”
“Figger it out.”
“I am trusted, Ma. Around naked women, too. Ask Jeri. I am a rock, I am a freakin’ islan—”
She grabbed my arm and hustled me toward the Caddy. We got in and Ma said, “Motel 6, boyo. We’ll get a couple of rooms then check out this Evergreen place. Then we’ll find us a place to eat. So are you gonna drive this thing or do I gotta push?”
“Go ahead. I want to see how fast you can get ’er going. Ten miles an hour and I’ll buy you dinner, including appetizer.”
“Drive.”
We ended up in rooms fourteen and fifteen at Motel 6, fifty-two bucks each, two queen beds in the rooms, Wi-Fi, comfortable but generic, with mints on the pillows. A knock on the door roused me from my enchantment with the accommodations.
“Didn’t order room service,” I called out.
A bark of laughter came from outside. “Let’s get goin’, boyo.”
I opened the door, then looked back inside. “Look, Ma. Mints on the pillows. We landed in paradise.”
She pulled me out the door. “Evergreen,” she said. “Let’s see what kinda place it is.”
Every bit as generic as Motel 6, the Evergreen Lounge was a dim dive a couple blocks south of the Cascade. Radioactive green lighting under the bar reflected off rows of bottles along the wall below mirror tiles marbled with gold streaks. Dark red Naugahyde booths along one wall, a few tables in the middle, eight stools at a twenty-foot bar, soft jazz, no jukebox, dark blue indirect lighting, restrooms in back. Not one surprise in the place.
Ma and I sat at the bar and downed beers, ate pretzels and beer nuts. We were the only customers, so the place wasn’t exactly doing a land office business. The bartender was a woman about my age with a tattoo of a railroad spike imbedded high on her left breast, a devil with a pitchfork on her right shoulder, and boredom flattening the look in her eyes.
At Lou’s Body Shop Ma had put the VIN number of the SUV into her phone. She pulled it out and stared at the number as if it would tell her something.
“Mary Odermann,” she said after a while. “Green SUV painted white. Means it’s likely we’re on the right track, even if Mary is pushing daisies. I think it puts us on Leland Bye, big-time—Mary’s brother and a lawyer to boot. Right now I don’t see Bob Odermann anywhere near that SUV.”
“I thought he looked startled when I mentioned that I wanted to sell one just like it.”
“Uh-huh. There’s that. Still don’t see him near it. Mary’s not driving it. Don’t think Bob is, either. But if we don’t get anywhere with Leland, we’ll pin a tail on Bob for a while.”
We finished our beers. I wondered if one more would look unprofessional when Ma said, “Go check out the men’s room, doll.”
“Doll. I like that, Ma.”
“Men’s room?”
“Don’t have to go, but thanks for takin’ care of me.”
She gave me an exasperated look. “See if there’s a back way out, like a window.”
“Oh, right. Good to know in case of fire. I’m on it.”
She rolled her eyes.
The bathroom had a window a dwarf could go through. I went back to the bar. “Small window,” I told her. “I could maybe cut off my head, toss it out.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
Back outside, I checked my watch: 6:10 p.m.
“Let’s eat,” Ma said. “Drive around. First place we come to that looks like it might have a half-decent steak, let’s go in.”
Which was Buck’s Chuckwagon. Posters of New York steaks and curly fries in the windows pulled us in.
I had mushroom sirloin tips and a cold-water lobster tail from the North Atlantic. Ma got a steak on cilantro lime rice. Steaks and beer—I told her she was my kind of woman. She patted her stomach and said, “I’ve given up the fight, doll. I’m no one’s kind of woman anymore. Screw both Jennifers and the Kardashians, and a shitload of others who’ve set impossible standards.”
Which put a little damper on the evening. Read between the lines, Ma wouldn’t mind being somebody’s type. I could only guess
