“Can I get you anything?” Marilyn crooning birthday wishes to the prez. “Water? A soft drink?”
Gamble shook his head. “No, ma’am.”
Mrs. Flowers remained fixed in the hall.
“Perhaps it’s best if you close the door,” I said gently.
Cheeks flaming, Mrs. Flowers did as requested.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Gamble?”
For a moment the man just stared at his hands. Reconsidering? Choosing his words?
I wondered at his reticence. After all, he’d come to me. Why such caution?
“I’m the jackman for Stupak’s fifty-nine car.”
My confusion must have been obvious.
“The Sprint Cup Series? Sandy Stupak?” he said.
“He’s a NASCAR driver.”
“Sorry. Yeah. Stupak drives the fifty-nine Chevy for Hilderman Motorsports. I’m on his pit crew.”
“Thus your photo in
Gamble gave a self-deprecating grin. “They did a spread on racing and I got caught in some of the shots. The photographer was aiming at Sandy.”
“You’re in town for the Coca-Cola 600?” Flaunting my minuscule knowledge of NASCAR.
“Yeah. Actually, I live in Kannapolis, just down the road. Raised there.” Again Gamble hesitated, obviously uncomfortable. “My sister, Cindi, was two years older than me.”
The verb tense clued me where this was going.
“Cindi went missing her senior year of high school.”
I waited out another pause.
“I read in the paper you found a body in the dump out by the Speedway. I’m wondering if it could be her.”
“When did your sister disappear?”
“1998.”
Molene thought the drum holding our John/Jane Doe had eroded from an area of the landfill active at that time. I kept this fact to myself. “Tell me about her.”
Gamble pulled a snapshot from his pocket and flipped it onto my desk. “That was taken just a couple of weeks before she went missing.”
Cindi Gamble looked like she could have modeled for yogurt ads. Her teeth were perfect, her skin flawless and lousy with health. She had a blond pixie bob and wore a silver loop in each ear.
“Are those cars on her earrings?” Returning the photo.
“Cindi wanted to be a NASCAR driver in the worst way. Drove go-karts from the time she was twelve, moved up to legends.”
Again, I must have looked lost.
“Little single-seat cars for beginners. Legends driving trains kids so they can advance to real short-course racing.”
I nodded, not really understanding.
Gamble didn’t see. His eyes were on the photo still in his hand. “Funny how life turns out. In high school I was all about football and beer. Cindi hung with the science geeks. Loved cars and engines. NASCAR was her dream, not mine.”
Though anxious for Gamble to get on with his story, I didn’t interrupt.
“The summer before her senior year, Cindi started dating another wannabe driver, a guy named Cale Lovette. That fall, Cindi and Cale both vanished. Bang. Gone without a trace. No one’s seen them since.”
Gamble’s eyes met mine. In them I saw apprehension. And resurrected pain.
“My folks went crazy. Posted flyers all over town. Handed them out in malls. Nothing.” Gamble wiped his palms on his jeans. “I’ve got to know. Could that body be my sister?”
“What makes you think Cindi is dead?”
“The police said the two of them left town together. But Cindi’s whole life was NASCAR. I mean, she was on fire to drive. What better place to do that than Charlotte? Why would she just pick up and leave? And she’s never turned up anywhere else.”
“There was an investigation?”
Gamble snorted in disgust. “The cops poked around for a while, decided Cindi and Cale took off to get married. She was too young to do that without parental approval.”
“You doubt that theory?”
Gamble’s shoulders rose, fell. “Hell, I don’t know what to believe. Cindi didn’t confide in me. But I’m sure my
