At the words private investigator, Stella Lacey loses interest in her game and becomes interested in Holly.
“Really? Who? What did she do?”
“Nothing that I know of. Do you recognize her?”
Holly offers her phone. Lacey takes it and holds it close to her face. “Sure. That’s Ellen Caslow!”
“Craslow,” Holly says. “I wonder if you remember exactly when she left.”
“Why do you care?”
“I’d like to know where she went. She worked at the college. Bell?”
“I know Bell,” Lacey says, sounding a bit resentful—the subtext being I’m not stupid. “I think Ellen was a janitor there.”
“A custodian, yes. Ms. Lacey, I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
Lacey’s resentment—if that’s what it was, not just Holly’s imagination—disappears. “Okay, I hear that. Do you know which trailer was hers?”
“11114 is the address I have.”
“Right, right, one of the ones behind the laundry, by the kiddie pool. Just let me check.” The solitaire game goes away. A spreadsheet replaces it. Lacey scrolls, peers, puts on a pair of glasses, and scrolls again. “Here we are. Ellen Craslow. She was renting by the half-year. Paid for July through December of 2018. Then gone.”
She turns to Holly and whips off her glasses.
“I remember now. Phil—my husband—held that trailer vacant through January of ’19 because she was a good tenant. No yelling, no arguments, no loud music, no cops showing up at two in the morning. That’s the kind of tenant we prefer, and the only kind we lease to long-term.”
“I’m sure.”
“We have people who’ve been here for a long time, Ms. Gibley. Why, Mr. and Mrs. Cullen have been here for I’m going to say twenty years. We like the older folks, Phil and me. Ellen was only in her twenties, but she said she was the quiet type, so we took a chance. And she was as good as her word.” She shakes her head. “We lost a month on that unit. Just standing empty. I think Phil was smit with her, not that he would have gotten anywhere even if he’d been thirty instead of sixty. I believe she batted for the other side, if you know what I mean.”
“I do.” That also agrees with Keisha’s impression.
“She’s really missing? Not just from here, I mean?”
Holly nods. “Since around Thanksgiving in 2018.”
“And someone’s just getting around to looking for her now? Why am I surprised? That’s how it goes with Black folks.”
“The thing is, nobody reported her missing,” Holly says. “Maybe she’s not. She was from Georgia and might have gone home. I’m trying to track down her relatives, but really, I just got started.”
“Well then, you go on with your bad self. And by the way, you don’t need that mask. Corona, that’s all just a big old hoax.”
“What happened to Ellen’s things, do you know?”
“You know what, I don’t. Of course the trailers are furnished, but she must have had her own stuff, right?”
“You’d think,” Holly agrees.
“Phil’s in Akron this week. At the trailer show. But if she left a bunch of stuff, he would have told me. He always does. We have a good clientele here, Ms. Gibby, but every now and then someone does kind of…” She raises her hand and makes the first two fingers trot. “Sometimes then we find leftover things, which go to the First Baptist or the Goodwill. If they’re worth saving, that is.”
“How long was she here?”
Lacey puts on her glasses and calls up a different spreadsheet. “She came in March of 2016. Two and a half years? Yeah, she must have had stuff. Want me to call Phil? Although I’m sure he would have told me.”
“That would be great,” Holly says. “Are there any neighbors around 11114 who would remember her?”
Lacey considers. “What about Mrs. McGuire, in 11110? That’s not right next door, but only across the kiddie pool. I think Ellen and Imani McGuire used to be friends. Did their laundry together, you know? Women talk plenty then. And she’ll be home. Her husband still works part-time at the city impound, but Imani’s retired from some other city job. These days she just knits and watches TV. That old girl knits up a storm. Sells it, too, at craft fairs and such. She might know where Ellen went.”
Not if Ellen got snatched in the vicinity of Deerfield Park, Holly thinks. That’s miles from here. But she’ll talk to Imani McGuire. Holly is a fan of Michael Connelly’s detective hero, Harry Bosch, and especially of Bosch’s number one maxim: get off your ass and go knock on doors.
“I’ll talk to Phil and see if he knows what happened to her stuff. I’m pretty sure her trailer was empty—you know, except for the mod cons—when we rented it in February of ’19. You could talk to the Joneses, they live there now, but they’re both working folks. And why would they know anything? Ellen was long gone when they moved in.” She shakes her head. “Missing over two years! What a shame! You come back, Ms. Gibsy, I’ll call Phil right now.”
“Thank you.”
“And ditch the mask, that’s my advice. Corona’s just make-believe to sell magic pillows on the TV news.”
4
Imani McGuire is tall and thin, with an afro so white it makes the top of her head look like a dandelion puff. Her trailer is a doublewide, painted canary yellow. There’s a beautiful rag rug on the floor of the living area, concentric circles of green and cinnamon. The walls—some composition stuff that’s supposed to look like wood and really doesn’t—are dressed in photographs showing the McGuires at various stages of their lives. The one holding pride of place is a wedding photo. The groom is in Navy dress whites. The bride, with an afro that’s black instead of white, bears a striking resemblance to Angela Davis. Imani is perfectly willing to talk, but she has a question.
“Are you vaxxed?”
“I am.”
“Double?”
“Yes. Moderna.”
“Take off your mask, then. I got my second shot in April.”
Holly takes it off and puts it in her pocket. There are his-and-hers La-Z-Boy recliners on the rag rug, facing a TV whose screen isn’t much bigger than the screen of Holly’s iPad Pro. Draped over the padded arm of one is a half-finished sweater the same bright yellow as the trailer’s exterior. Below it is a basket filled with skeins of the same yellow.
Imani picks her needlework up and drapes it over her lap. On the TV, Drew Carey is extolling prizes on The Price Is Right. Imani raises the remote and snaps the TV off.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your day.”
“Oh no, I love some company,” Imani says, “and besides, they already spun the wheel. That’s the best part. After that comes the Showcase Round, and you tell me why some fat old man on Social Security wants a couple of motorcycles and camping gear. I bet they sell those prizes if they win. I know I would.” Her needles are already flying, the sweater growing appreciably before Holly’s eyes.
“That’s going to be beautiful.”
“Hell of a thing to be knitting on a day when the temperature’s s’posed to be in the nineties, but cold weather always comes… or did, they got the climate so screwed up it’s hard to tell what’s gonna happen from one year to the next. But if the snow flies and the lake freezes, someone’ll buy this at the church sale. I have more put away, plus scarves and mittens. I get good money for these things, more than Yardley makes, but working at the impound keeps him out of my hair… and me out of his, I suppose. Works both ways. Fifty-two years is a hell of a long walk from the altar, let me tell you. And some of it’s stony. Now how can I help you?”