Lily Walker’s house smelled of patchouli oil. It was located on a narrow gravel road north of the city, a few miles from West Point. There were chickens in the fenced-in back yard. Bell had knocked on the front door and the woman yelled for him to come around back, where he opened the wooden gate and waded through the hens to walk up onto the porch. She met him there and let him in.
“Front door’s got a broken hinge,” she said. “You can open it but it’s a pain in the ass to close.”
They sat at a narrow harvest table while she showed him the pictures on her laptop, but not before she went through a gallery of her paintings first. She was drinking gin in a highball glass when Bell had arrived—he could smell the gin—and she’d offered him a beer, or glass of wine, and he had declined both. He was looking at the visit as a quick side trip, one that wouldn’t produce anything but one that he had to make. After a couple dozen pictures of flowers on easels he spoke up.
“The woman in the green truck.”
“We’re getting to that,” she said. “I just thought you’d enjoy seeing some of my work.”
Bell made a show of looking at his watch. The woman, not to be outdone, made a production of searching for the pictures, even though she’d been expecting Bell’s visit. She finally brought the first one up. Bell was looking at a shot of André the sausage-maker, standing proudly in front of his display of meats, hanging from their racks. In the background Bell could see a woman, slim, dressed in khaki pants and a tan work shirt, standing up in the back of a truck. Her head was cut off in the photo.
“Okay,” he said.
Lily clicked the mouse and found the second picture. The same woman, her back turned partly to the camera, was lifting a hamper basket of acorn squash from the truck. Her face was obscured; Bell could make out a couple of strands of light brown hair beneath a navy baseball cap. He was about to ask Lily if she could print the two photos for him, even though there was very little to see of the woman in question.
Before he could speak, Lily scrolled the picture upward slightly and, in that instant, Bell lost all interest in the woman because there, clearly at the bottom of the photo, was the truck’s license plate. It was not the number the woman had given the dolphin lady.
Bell wrote it down, thanked Lily Walker and headed back to the station.