CHAPTER 37.

“Sleep well, Mr. Elstrom?” Marge Herself asked when I came into the motel office the next morning, looking for coffee. She stood illuminated in the sunlight coming in through the window. I hoped she wouldn’t open her mouth to give me a full smile; I was afraid I’d see pink on her teeth.

“Very well.” There was no need to say that I’d mumbled a few incantations before I’d climbed into bed, or that I’d thought to leave the bathroom light on all night.

She nodded her head in short little bobs, prompting me to go on.

“Your daughter certainly has a knack for painting things in new ways,” I said, pouring coffee into a foam cup.

Her face flushed with pride. I took my coffee out to the micro-Ford before she could offer a tour of the galleries in the other rooms.

*   *   *

Miss Logsdon at the Fairbairn plant had given me good directions. I got to Linda Coombs’s place in just a few minutes.

It had been years since the house had been touched with paint and brush, but the windows were clean, and the yard had been carefully mowed. I parked on what was left of the asphalt drive and walked up. A gray-haired woman opened the door a crack.

“Ms. Linda Coombs?”

She nodded.

“My name’s Elstrom. I was told you might have worked with the woman who became Silas Fairbairn’s wife.”

“Now why in the hell would someone tell you that?”

“Because Sweetie Fairbairn has gone missing.”

“That’s the name: ‘Sweetie’?”

“May I come in?”

“You may not. I’ll come out.”

Come out she did, in worn jeans, a man’s red knit shirt, and lavender flip-flops.

I handed her a photo of Sweetie Fairbairn I’d printed off the Internet. “Do you know her?”

She held it out and studied it for a long minute. Then she nodded. “Older, but yeah.”

“What do you know about her?”

“First thing you got to know, mister, is I’m broke. Damned broke. Second thing is I know that any woman who married Silas Fairbairn isn’t broke. Third thing, anybody who is sent looking for her must be getting paid, and isn’t broke, either.” She stopped, so I could consider the meaning of her words.

I gave her a twenty-dollar bill. “Another will follow when we’re done, if your information goes beyond what I already know.” I knew nothing about Sweetie’s background, but I didn’t want the woman to start lying for money.

She put the twenty in her jeans. “First off, Kathy didn’t work at the plant. She waitressed at a diner that used to be in town. My sister and I ate there ham night, which was Tuesdays. That’s how we got to know her. We liked the ham.”

“Do you remember Kathy’s last name?”

“Don’t know that I ever knew it. Kathy wasn’t much for talking, at least not at first. Nervous, rabbitty-like, she was always looking out the front window like she was expecting bad news. Cautious with the customers, too; took our orders, hustled them back, so she wouldn’t have to talk again until the food came out. But over time, she relaxed a bit, leastways around Agnes and me, and took to jawing with us when nothing else demanded her attention. We got to be quite conversational, if not friends exactly, those Tuesday nights.”

“Silas Fairbairn would come to the diner?”

“No sir, not Mr. Fairbairn, least not so I ever saw. He used to come to town once every month or so, meet with the people at the plant. Usually, he’d stay over one night, sometimes two, probably ate with the big shots somewheres away. There wasn’t much going on in Whitaker Springs, cuisine-wise, then as now.”

She made a small laugh at that and went on. “Twice, maybe three times, me and Agnes, leaving as we did at closing time, noticed somebody sitting in a car a few stores down. Anybody waiting for anything in this town, especially in the dark, was cause for our curiosity. We got interested in who was sitting in that car. So one night, instead of heading right home after our dinner, we ducked between two buildings and waited. Ten, fifteen minutes later, out came Kathy, and got into that waiting car. As it passed under the streetlight, we could see who was driving. Could have knocked me over with a pincushion. It was Mr. Silas Fairbairn himself.”

“You ever learn where they were went?”

She winked, made a circle with her left thumb and forefinger, and put her right forefinger through it. “A rich man on the road’s got needs, same as any man. I figured they were off to the woods or something, to take care of things.”

“Kathy ever say anything about him?”

“She was supposed to announce she was screwing some rich guy, maybe for money?”

“How long did this go on?”

“Most likely until she left, a few months later. Up and out without so much as a see-you-later, the woman who owned the diner said. No one knew where she took off to.”

“But you did? Or at least who she went with?”

“No. I never did connect her leaving to Mr. Fairbairn.”

“You never tried to find out?”

“She was gone; we were here. End of story.”

“Did she ever say where she was from?”

Linda Coombs paused, looking down the ruts at the tiny Ford I’d driven up in.

“That ain’t yours, is it?”

“It’s a rental.”

“How much?”

“Fifty bucks, with taxes.” I didn’t tell her that was a day rate, worried she’d think I was an idiot.

It didn’t work. “I’ll need a total of fifty before I say anything more.”

I handed her a ten and another twenty. “Where was she from?”

“She never said direct, but she implied it was the same kind of rinky-dink town as Whitaker Springs, except hers was up somewhere on the Mississippi River, in Minnesota or Wisconsin. Biggest thing in town was a statue of an Indian, Chief Runamuck, or Whackamock, or some damned thing. They lit it up all to hell at dusk. Folks came up to it most nights, leastways in the summer, because they didn’t have anything else to do.” She laughed. “We ever build such a thing around here, folks will go to that nights, too.”

*   *   *

I called Leo’s cell phone.

“Are you at home?” I asked. An electric bass thumped in his background.

“Of course.” His voice was barely audible above the bass.

“That noise?”

“Ma and her friends.”

I checked my watch. It was ten o’clock. “They’re doing mornings now?”

“Mrs. Roshiska bought a shoe box full of videos after bingo. They started at one in the morning. I’ve been in here all night.”

The electric bass thumped faster.

“You’re in your office?”

“Ma had the guy who’s doing the basement put in a door. A thick door. It didn’t help.” He dropped his voice. “Did you hear that?”

“All I can hear is bass.”

“There it is again. Hear it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Things, hitting my new door.”

“Leo, you need to get some sleep.”

“Ma says I can’t come out once they’ve started exercising.”

“But it’s been nine hours.”

“They take breaks, for vodka.”

“Go see Endora at the Newberry. Have lunch in the park across the street.”

“I told you: Ma says once they start up, I have to stay in until they’re done.” His voice dropped again. He was struggling for control. “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of the future.”

“You need to sleep. But first, I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything. Anything, so long as it keeps me from wondering what Ma, the other ladies, Mrs. Roshiska, leaning on her walker…”

I told him to find a town in Wisconsin or Minnesota, near the Mississippi River, that had a statue of an Indian chief. “Womack, or someone like that.”

“I’ll do it, right now. Just please, please, stay on the line. I need someone to talk to.”

I couldn’t hear him tapping on his keyboard, for the pounding of the bass, but he was back on the line in two minutes. “Chief Winnemac. Hadlow, Minnesota. Just west of the Mississippi River.”

He begged me to stay on the line, but there was no time.