“Imagine my surprise when you called and asked me to lunch,” O’Malley said, unfolding his napkin. “And here.”
It came as something of a surprise to me, too. But Babe kept telling me I should talk to the cops about the tipster who’d informed on Caroline. O’Malley might share some information in a friendly, nonthreatening setting.
He ordered the linguine with clam sauce, and I went with the orrechiette. At the same time, we motioned for the waiter to remove the bread basket.
“So you are watching your weight,” I said, starting with a safe subject. He did look a bit slimmer since we’d first met, but I wasn’t sure if that was weight loss or my own revised notion of what an average body type was since my move from the city.
“Just a bit. It’s mostly an increase in exercise. My dad’s doing better, so we’ve been trying to get out for the odd walk after I get home from work.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
We chatted so pleasantly all during lunch that when the waiter came to clear our plates, I realized I hadn’t surreptitiously slipped in any of the questions I’d wanted to ask.
I let Mike babble on with mildly amusing anecdotes about the new guys on the force, particularly the one who had nearly shot himself with his own gun. It was going well. I hadn’t gotten to my agenda yet, but I was getting there. I persuaded him to stay for espresso.
“I guess things have cooled off for you in Springfield,” he said, twisting a strip of lemon.
The phrasing was strange. “What do you mean?”
“If you’re reduced to having lunch with me, the rest of the natives must be giving you the cold shoulder.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. I’m fine. In fact, Becka Reynolds and I have actually gotten closer since this whole unfortunate business with Caroline. I may work on her garden next season. She’s got bamboo-challenging but beautiful. She also warned me to watch out for the speed trap on Chesterfield.” Now I was babbling, but gently steering the conversation in the direction I’d wanted it to go.
“She said you sent the rookies there to write their first tickets-that way they were no longer virgins. Is that true?” Inwardly, I was beaming, proud of the smooth transition I was making to the first question on my list. “I got a speeding ticket once in Virginia. I was driving to Florida with a pal on my birthday. The road was so wide and empty, I didn’t realize how fast I was going. I was certain the cop would let me slide when he looked at my license and saw what day it was. He didn’t. What do you guys really do with all that information when you check someone driver’s license, anyway?” The speeding ticket was the first thing to go wrong for Caroline. Maybe Mike would reveal information that I could use.
I was feeling pretty clever about how I’d slipped that in so naturally. Mike was less impressed with my subtlety. He gunned his espresso, his smile vanishing with the hot liquid.
“You could have been honest and just asked me outright. You didn’t need to spend eighty dollars on lunch-because I am going to leave you here with the check.” Clearly it was not as subtle as I’d thought. O’Malley was pissed. He thought we were picking up on his food-as-foreplay conversation from the diner and instead I was pumping him for information like one of the reporters we’d all been avoiding.
He pushed away from the table and stood up, wiping his mouth with the cloth napkin and tossing it on the table. The waiter rushed over to see what was wrong.
“She’ll take the check. Will you excuse us for a minute?” The waiter backed away. He’d witnessed scenes in the restaurant before.
“If we have any suspicions, we run it through the system to see if the driver has any history-frequent violations, arrests, outstanding warrants, convictions. We can even see if the person has done time anywhere. In Caroline’s case, she would have just gotten a ticket. Since officially there is no record of a Caroline Sturgis before her marriage. Had we looked, we would have found nothing. Which in and of itself might have sent up a flare. But we didn’t look. Any other questions or have I earned my lunch?”
With that, he pointedly said good-bye to the maître d’ and not to me. The waiter brought the faux leather folder with the check. O’Malley was right. Seventy-eight fifty, not including the tip. I pocketed the receipt and shook my head, wondering how my strategy for a nonconfrontational exchange with O’Malley had gone so horribly wrong. Unlike real estate, location had nothing to do with it.
Unless I could talk to Caroline herself-if she’d even agree to it-my plan to help the Sturgises and clear my name would be hopeless. The scraps of information I was picking up seemed to be leading nowhere. May be the newcomers were involved, but may be not. Chances are I was playing P.I. and investigating a man of the cloth and an Eagle Scout, neither of whom had anything to do with Caroline Sturgis. But Caroline was scheduled to be extradited to Michigan some time today; for all I knew, she’d already left.
I’d dropped the data plan on my phone to save a few bucks, so I needed a computer and the latest Caroline news ASAP to help me decide whether to drive to Bridgeport or just go home, where I’d console myself with a large tumbler of cheap but cheerful wine.
The Paradise was the closest place I knew of with a computer I could use, twenty minutes closer than my house and near the highway if I did decide to make the trek to Bridgeport. Two long semis blocked most of the parking spots but I was able to slide in between them, trusting that the drivers were so skilled they wouldn’t squish my Jeep when pulling out.
Babe wasn’t there. Eyebrow Girl told me she was on a break, and motioned to Babe’s den behind the diner. I sprinted around to the back door and knocked.
“Babe, you in there?” I called.
“Over here.”
She stood, arms folded, wearing elbow-length rubber gloves, behind a lattice fence near the Dumpster. She was up to her knees in garbage and papers. “This better not be Countertop Man again. Otherwise, when I find him I’m going to douse him with waste vegetable oil, strap him down, and let the raccoons get him.” Babe had a vindictive side-or at the very least a vivid imagination.
I offered to help clean up but told her I needed to use her computer first.
“This isn’t a home-shopping jones, is it?” she asked, unlocking the door, peeling off her gloves, and flopping down on one of the sofas. “Because there are support groups for that.”
I assured Babe it wasn’t.
She logged on and then I searched both Caroline Sturgis and Monica Weithorn. Pages of the inevitable before and after pix loaded-Caroline at a charity function, Monica’s class picture. Caroline at the Historical Society gala, Monica’s mug shot. There she was, side by side with her doppelgänger. Frisky, yes, maybe even a little slutty for a teenager, but a drug kingpin?
Caroline/Monica already had a Wikipedia page. Astonishing. Who had the time to do this stuff? There was also a Free Caroline page started by a cannabis club that admitted it had nothing to do with her or her family; she’d quickly become a symbol to people on both sides of the drug issue. I scrolled through the rest of the junk items until I saw a article posted a few hours earlier on WTIC, the local news radio’s Web site: Fugitive Mom Returned to Michigan. Caroline was gone.
Eighteen
How I disappeared. The last driver took me for a runaway, escaping an abusive stepfather. She looked me up and down and decided she knew my story the way people do all the time. I’d done it myself. She assumed my gaunt face was the product of mistreatment at home, not bad prison food, and she thought my calloused hands were the result of punishing household chores, not the harsh chemicals in the prison laundry. I let her think that. For the previous two days nothing I’d said was the truth, and I was getting better at lying. She gave me a bag of trail mix, a pair of woolen gloves, and the best advice I’d gotten in my young life, certainly better than anything from that jerk lawyer.