I pulled a Diet Coke from the fridge, served myself from the little white carton I’d picked up at Baoding, and settled at the kitchen table. Opening my laptop, I Googled the names Cindi Gamble and Cale Lovette.
The results were useless. Most led to fan sites for Lyle Lovett.
I tried Cindi Gamble alone. The name generated links to a Face-book page, and to stories about a woman mauled to death by a tiger.
I paused to consider. And to slurp lo mein.
Local disappearance. Local paper.
I tried the online archives of
On September 27 a short article updated the case of a twelve-year-old girl missing for nine months. Nothing on Cindi Gamble.
More lo mein.
Why would the disappearance of a seventeen-year-old kid receive no coverage?
I began checking sites devoted to finding MPs and to securing names for unidentified bodies.
Neither Cindi Gamble nor Cale Lovette was registered on the Doe Network.
I switched to the North American Missing Persons Network.
Nothing.
I was logging on to NamUs.gov when thunder cracked and lightning streaked big-time. A white blur shot from beneath the sideboard and disappeared through the dining room door.
The kitchen dimmed and rain came down hard. I got up to turn on lights and check windows.
Which didn’t take long.
I live on the grounds of a nineteenth-century manor-turned-condo-complex lying just off the queens University campus. Sharon Hall. A little slice of Dixie. Red brick, white pediment, shutters, and columns.
My little outbuilding is nestled among ancient magnolias. The Annex. Annex to what? No one knows. The two- story structure appears on none of the estate’s original plans. The hall is there. The coach house. The herb and formal gardens. No annex. Clearly an afterthought.
Guesses by family and friends have included smokehouse, hothouse, outhouse, and kiln. I’m not much concerned with the architect’s original purpose. Barely twelve hundred square feet, the Annex suits my needs. Bedroom and bath up. Kitchen, dining room, parlor, and study down.
Finding myself suddenly single over a decade ago, I’d rented the place as a stopgap measure. Contentedness? Laziness? Lack of motivation? All these years down the road, I still call it home.
Hatches battened, I returned to my laptop.
For naught. Like the other sites, NamUs had nothing on Gamble or Lovette.
Frustrated, I gave up and shifted to e-mail.
Forty-seven messages. My eyes went to number twenty-four.
Flashbulb image. Andrew Ryan, Lieutenant-detective, Section des crimes contre la personne, Surete du Quebec. Tall, lanky, sandy hair, blue eyes.
I am forensic anthropologist for the Bureau du coroner in
From time to time we have also played together. And Ryan plays
Currently, Ryan’s only child, Lily, was in Ontario, enrolled in yet another drug rehab program. Daddy had taken leave to be there with daughter.
I read Ryan’s e-mail.
Though witty and charming, when it comes to correspondence, Monsieur le Detective is not Victor Hugo. He wrote that he and Lily were well. That his short-term rental apartment had crappy pipes. That he would phone.
I responded in kind. No nostalgia, no sentimentality, no personal updates.
After hitting send, I sat a moment, a tiny knot tightening in my gut.
I dialed Ryan’s cell. He answered on the second ring.
“Call a plumber.”
“
“How’s Lily?”
“Who knows?” Ryan sighed. “The kid’s saying all the right things, but she’s smart and a champ at working people. What’s new in North Carolina?”
Share? Why not? He was a cop. I could use his input.
I told Ryan about the sandpit and landfill cases. About the landfill’s proximity to the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
