As she’s putting on her sneakers in preparation for her morning walk—it’s when she does her best thinking—her phone trills. It’s Jerome, and he sounds excited. In a voice slightly muffled by the mask he’s wearing, he tells her he’s in an Uber, headed for the airport. He’s going to New York.
Holly is alarmed. “In a plane?”
“That’s the usual way one travels a thousand miles,” he says, and laughs. “Relax, Hollyberry, I’ve got my vax card and I’ll be wearing my mask the whole time I’m in the air. In fact I’m wearing one now, as you can probably tell.”
“Why New York?” But of course she knows. “Your book!”
“The editor called me last night. He said he could send the contract, or I could come and sign it today and he’d hand me a check for a hundred thousand dollars! He says that’s not the way it’s usually done, but he got the green light to make an exception. Is that crazy, or what?”
“It’s crazy and wonderful, as long as you don’t get sick.”
“According to the statistics, New York’s actually safer than our town, Hols. I can’t get there for lunch—too bad, publisher’s lunch is sort of a tradition—but he says we can get together this afternoon for burgers and a beer. My agent will be there—I’ve never even met her except for Zoom, also crazy. He said in the old days he would have taken us to Four Seasons, but the best he can manage now is the Blarney Stone. Which is good enough for me.”
He’s babbling, but Holly doesn’t mind. What she minds is the idea of him traveling on a plane where the air is recirculated and anyone might have Covid, but she can’t help being delighted by his over-the-moon happiness. Spur-of-the-moment trip to New York City in the summer of Covid, she thinks. It’s good to be young and today it’s good to be Jerome.
“Enjoy yourself, and whatever you do, don’t lose that check.”
“My agent will handle that,” he says. “Whoo, this is so far out! We’re almost at the terminal, Hollyberry.”
“Fly well and when you go to the restaurant, make sure to sit outsi—”
“Yes, Mom. One more thing while I’ve got you. I printed out a MapQuest of Deerfield Park and the surrounding area. Marked it in red where Bonnie and Pete Steinman were last seen. We don’t know about Ellen Craslow, but we know she worked on campus, so I marked the Union. Barbara can give it to you if you want. I left it on my desk.”
“I know the locations,” Holly says with some asperity. She thinks of Uncle Henry saying I didn’t fall off a skidder yesterday.
“Yeah, but seeing them like that is creepy. You should find out if there are more. We’re here. I gotta go.”
“When do you come back?”
“I might stay a couple of days or I might come back tomorrow.”
“If you’re thinking about Broadway, the shows are clo—”
“Gotta bounce, Hollyberry.” And boom, he’s gone.
“I hate it when you call me that.” But she’s smiling. Because she really doesn’t, and Jerome knows it.
2
She’s on her walk when her phone rings again. “Who’s your daddy?” Pete Huntley inquires.
“Not you, Pete. But you sound happy. Plus, not sick.”
“I have risen from the ashes of Covid a new man,” he says, then spoils it with a coughing fit. “Almost. I found your chick, Holly.”
She stops. “You found Ellen Craslow?”
“Well, not her, but I got her LKA.” Last known address. “Also her picture, which I will send to you ASAP. Called the personnel office at Bell as soon as they opened, so ain’t you proud of me?”
“Very proud. What’s the address?”
“11114 MLK Boulevard. That’s about as far out of Lowtown as you can get and still be in it.”
“Peter, thank you.”
“No, it’s the job.” Sounding serious now. “You think they’re related, don’t you? Dahl, Craslow, the kid Jerome was tracking?”
“I think they might be.”
“Not going to talk to Isabelle about it, are you?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. You run with it, Hol. I’ll do what I can from here. Kinda quarantined, you know?”
“Yes.”
“I can be Mycroft Holmes to your Sherlock. How are you doing with your mom?”
“Getting there,” Holly says. She ends the call.
Five seconds later her phone bings with an incoming text from Pete. She waits until she gets back to her apartment to look at the picture because she wants her iPad with its bigger screen. What he’s sent is Ellen Craslow’s Bell College ID card, which is still valid—it doesn’t expire until October. The photo shows a Black woman with a cap of dark hair. She’s neither smiling nor scowling, only looking at the camera with a calmly neutral expression. She’s pretty. Holly thinks she looks like she might be in her late twenties or early thirties, which is in line with what Keisha told her. Below her name is BELL COLLEGE ARTS & SCIENCES CUSTODIAL STAFF.
“Where are you, Ellen?” Holly murmurs, but what she’s thinking now is Who took you?
3
Half an hour later she’s cruising slowly down Martin Luther King Boulevard. She’s left the stores, churches, bars, convenience stores, and restaurants behind. Pete said the address was almost as far out of Lowtown as it was possible to get and still be in it. It’s also about as far out of the city as it’s possible to get and still be in it; soon MLK will become Route 27. Ahead of her she can see fields where cows are grazing, also a couple of silos. She’s starting to think Pete must have given her the wrong address even though her GPS claims she’s going right, but then she comes to Elm Grove Trailer Park. A stake fence surrounds it. The trailers are neat and well-kept. They are in various pastel colors, a plot of grass in front of each one. There are many flowerbeds. An asphalt lane winds among the trailers. Her GPS announces that she has arrived at her destination.
At the head of this lane is a cluster of mailboxes with numbers running from 11104 to 11126. Holly drives slowly into the trailer park, stopping when a couple of kids in bathing suits, one white and one Black, chase a bouncing beachball across the lane without so much as a look. She takes her foot off the brake, then tromps it again as a small yellow dog chases after the kids. In front of a sky-blue trailer with a picture of Barack Obama taped inside the storm door, a woman wearing a sunhat against the day’s increasing heat is watering her flowers from a can.
In the middle of the trailer park is a green building with a sign over the door reading OFFICE. Next to it is another green building with a sign reading LAUNDRY. A woman wearing a headwrap is going in with a plastic basket of clothes. Holly parks, dons her mask, and goes into the office. There’s a counter with a plaque on it reading STELLA LACEY MANAGER. Behind the counter, a stout lady is playing solitaire on her computer. She glances around at Holly and says, “If you’re looking for a vacancy, I’m sorry. We’re at full occupancy.”
“Thank you, but I’m not. My name is Holly Gibney. I’m a private investigator, and I’m trying to locate a woman.”