I didn’t know what to make of it. Was the name on the flash drive supposed to mean lily-white Shanna was ebony-skinned Celine? Maybe it was body paint. How good was the best body paint these days? Good enough to fool a nation of TV viewers? Maybe. I’d read the book Black Like Me years ago in a college sociology class, but the country had moved on and this was an entirely different era. No comparison.
I played both clips again but couldn’t make anything more out of them. They had no sound, so that didn’t help.
I watched the café video again, looking at the surroundings. The table had the kind of napkin holder you’d see in a small café or roadside diner. The tablecloth was cheap checkered plastic. A ceramic coffee cup was in front of her, still upside down, flatware wrapped in a napkin, salt and pepper shakers off to one side. Across the highway the land looked like flat desert scrub, the day hot and bright, low mountains miles away.
Collectively, the matchbook covers I’d seen at the girls’ house had a theme that sang southern Nevada—Las Vegas, Hiko, Caliente, Searchlight, Indian Springs, a few no-name places I’d never heard of. Most of them had addresses on US 93 or 95. One was for a tourist trap on the strangely named Extraterrestrial Highway, State Route 375 between Rachel and Crystal Springs.
But, Caliente. I had matchbooks for the Double Down Motel and the Pahranagai Inn, and a Pahranagai room receipt in the name of Nathan Williams.
The SD card I’d pulled from Ignacio’s camera held pictures of the girls’ house, yard, and inside the house, nothing else.
So—flash drive, a note demanding a million bucks, a motel receipt, matchbook covers. Good stuff, illegally removed from a crime scene that was getting national attention, and I had been at said crime scene, a PI who also got national attention. I thought Police Chief Menteer, Russell’s boss, might eventually think to get a warrant to search my place. Russ probably couldn’t block something like that. He might not even try, so I put everything in a paper bag and drove over to Velma’s place, which took a while due to my fame and the media wolves—three vans had camped out on the street, hoping for a shot of North America’s premier finder of missing famous people who turn up dead. I’ve gotten better at shaking the media, but it still requires effort and finesse. Turns out it’s easier to lose them on foot, down one-way streets and alleyways, but today, after twenty minutes of amusing and provocative driving, I was free.
Velma’s house backs up to my old place on Ralston Street. I used to go through or over the fence to get there, but this time I parked off the street, on a driveway that runs beside her house, and knocked on her back door.
Velma Knapp is four foot ten, eighty-six years old, a terror for juicy gossip, especially when the conversation gets anywhere near the possibility that I might be getting laid. As a result, she likes Holiday a lot, not that she gets details. She’s utterly reliable when I have to duck the media and hide stuff from the police. Last summer she was delighted that I was having an affair—which I wasn’t—with a stunningly beautiful woman thirty-four years old, Kayla, ducking her husband—who, thankfully, didn’t exist—and the two of us were using the fence between Velma’s property and mine as an escape route to avoid trouble—which was true, but not the kind of trouble Velma was rooting for. From time to time, even though I’ve moved, I mow her lawn and do odd chores and repairs around her place since she’s been widowed for fourteen years.
She answered the door in a hair net, a flowery housedress, and a yellow cardigan with toasted tea cake crumbs down the front. Her feet were in huge fuzzy slippers that I’d given her last Christmas.
“Mortimer! Great timing! I have a drain that’s plugged.”
Yep, great timing.
But the world plays ping-pong with our priorities on a regular basis, so I went in and got right to it after handing her the bag of goodies. I knew right where she kept the drain snake. She looked in the bag as I went to work on the bathroom sink.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“Stuff to keep safe for me.”
“From the cops?” she said hopefully.
“From anyone. Including the cops.”
“Good. That include Maude?”
“Well, no. You should give it to her if she asks for it.”
She sniffed the bag, as if its scent would tell her something she hadn’t seen by looking.
“It’s about this thing with Jo-X,” I told her.
“Who the hell is Jones?”
Her hearing aid isn’t always up to par. Batteries are an issue. She hadn’t heard a word about Jo-X. She doesn’t have television or a computer. No Internet, no iPhone. Just the morning paper, which I’d seen on her front porch as I drove up. Nor would Jo-X have held any interest for her, and I didn’t want to explain my latest coup. I especially didn’t want to mention his rapper lyrics, which were toxic as a cloud of powdered plutonium. I asked her about her kids to throw her off. Alex and Beth were both older than me by fifteen and seventeen years, respectively, and I had two tea cakes while she caught me up on the latest.
I left Velma with a drain so free of obstructions it could suck down a possum. At eleven twenty-five, I rolled by Danya and Shanna’s house, wondering if I’d missed a clue or two in my rush yesterday, but Fairchild and Day were in the backyard, standing at the entrance to the garage. I caught a glimpse of them as I went by. A patrol car was at the curb in front, an unmarked car in the driveway, two vans across the street. The front door of the house was open. I saw three crime scene techs milling around.
I parked
