“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear. Someone close?”
“My mother,” Holly says, and thinks, Who bought jewelry she didn’t wear.
“That’s awful. Was she vaxxed?”
“She didn’t believe in it.”
“Girl, that’s harsh. How are you doing with it?”
“As they always say on the TV shows, it’s complicated.” Holly stuffs her mask in her pocket. “Mostly I’m concentrating on the job, which is finding Bonnie Dahl, or finding out what happened to her. I won’t keep you from your friends for long.”
“Don’t worry about it. They’re all playing softball or swimming. I’m a lousy baller and I’ve spent most of the day in the lake. Take all the time you want.” There’s an outbreak of cheering at the softball game. Keisha looks over. Someone waves at her. She waves back, then turns to Holly. “A bunch of us have gotten together here for the last three years and I was really looking forward to it. Since Bonnie disappeared…” She shrugs. “Not so much.”
“Do you really think she’s dead?”
Keisha sighs and looks at the water. When she looks back, her brown eyes—beautiful eyes—are filled with tears. “What else could it be? It’s like she dropped off the face of the earth. I’ve called everyone I can think of, all our friends, and of course her mother called me. Nothing. She’s my best friend, and not a word?”
“The police have her down as a missing person.” Of course that’s not what Izzy Jaynes thinks. Or Pete Huntley.
“Of course they do,” Keisha says, and takes a drink from her own bottle of Snapple. “You know about Maleek Dutton, right?”
Holly nods.
“That’s a perfect example of how five-O operates in this town. Kid got killed for a busted taillight. You’d expect them to take a little more interest in a white girl, but no.”
That’s a minefield Holly doesn’t want to walk into. “May I record our talk?” Never call it an interview, Bill Hodges said. Cops do interviews. We just talk.
“Sure, but there’s not much I can tell you. She’s gone and it’s wrong. That’s the extent of what I know.”
Holly thinks Keisha knows more, and although she doesn’t expect any great breakthrough here, she has that Holly hope. And curiosity. She sets her phone on the scarred table and pushes record.
“I’m working for Bonnie’s mother, and I’m curious as to how they got along.”
Keisha starts to reply, then stops herself.
“Nothing you say will go back to Penny. You have my word on that. I’m just crossing t’s and dotting i’s.”
“Okay.” Keisha gazes down toward the lake, frowning, then sighs and looks back at Holly. “They didn’t get along, mostly because Penny was always looking over Bonnie’s shoulder, if you know what I mean.”
Holly knows, all right.
“Nothing Bonnie did was quite right with her mom. Bon said she hated to drive her mother anywhere because Penny would always tell her she knew a shorter way, or one with less traffic. She’d always be telling Bonnie to get over, get over, you want the lefthand lane. You feel me?”
“Yes.”
“Also, Bonnie said, Penny’d always be pumping the invisible brake on the passenger side or stiffening up if she felt like Bon was getting too close to the car in front of her. Irritating as hell. One time Bonnie got a red streak in her hair, very cute… at least I thought so… but her mother said it made her look slutty. And if she’d ever gotten a tattoo, like she talked about…”
Keisha rolls her eyes. Holly laughs. She can’t help it.
“They fought about her job at the library all the time. Penny wanted her to work at the bank where she worked. She said the pay and the benefits would be much better, and except for in-person meetings she wouldn’t have to wear a mask seven hours a day. But Bonnie liked working at the libe, and like I said, we have a good gang. Everybody friends. Except for Matt Conroy, that is. He’s the head librarian, and kind of a pill.”
“Grabby?” Holly’s thinking of something she’s heard from one of the other librarians, neither of whom are here today. “Touchie-feelie?”
“Yeah, but he’s actually been a little better this year, maybe because of that assistant prof in the Sociology Department. You probably didn’t hear about that, the administration kept it pretty quiet, but we hear everything in the library. It’s gossip central. This guy grabbed some grad student’s ass, there was a witness, and the prof got fired. That’s around the time Matt started to behave.” She pauses. “Although he never misses an opportunity to peek up a girl’s skirt. Not unusual, except he’s pretty fucking blatant about it.”
“Could you see him having anything to do with Bonnie’s disappearance?”
Keisha gives a delighted laugh. “Lord, no. He’s what my mama calls a stuffed string. Bonnie outweighs him by at least thirty pounds. If Matt grabbed her ass, she’d flip him over her shoulder or hip him into the wall.”
“She knows judo, or some other martial art?”
“No, nothing so serious, but she took a self-defense class. I took it with her. That was something else her mother bitched about. Called it a needless expense. Bon just couldn’t do anything right in her mother’s eyes. And when it came to Mrs. D. wanting her to work at her bank, they had a couple of real screamers.”
“No love lost.”
Keisha considers this. “You could say that, sure, but there was plenty of love left. Do you get that?”
Holly thinks of the dog-eared poetry notebooks in the drawer of her mother’s night table and says she does.
“Keisha, would Bonnie have left town to get away from her mother? All that constant carping and complaining, those arguments?”
“There was a woman police who asked me that same question,” Keisha said. “Didn’t come see me, just called on the phone. Two or three questions and then it was thanks, Ms. Stone, you’ve been a great help. Typical. The answer to your question is not a chance. If I gave you the idea that Bon and Mrs. D. were at each other’s throats, I didn’t mean to. There was arguing and sometimes yelling but no physical stuff, and they always made up. So far as I know, at least. What went on between them was more like a stone you can’t get out of your shoe.”
Holly is struck by this, wondering if that was what Charlotte was to her: a stone in her shoe. She thinks of Daniel Hailey, a thief who never was, and decides it was quite a bit more.
“Ms. Gibney? Holly? Are you still there, or are you gathering wool?” Keisha is smiling.
“I guess I was. Did she have a cash reserve that you know of? I ask because there’s been no action on her credit card.”
“Bonnie? No. What she didn’t spend went into the bank, and I think maybe she had a few investments. She liked the stock market, but she was no plunger.”
“She didn’t have any clothes at your place? Ones that are now gone?”
Keisha’s eyes narrow. “What exactly are you asking?”
Holly is a shy person as a rule, but that changes when she’s chasing a case. “I’ll be blunt. I’m asking if you’re covering for her. You’re her best friend, I can tell you’re loyal to her, and I think you’d do it if she asked.”
“Kind of resent that,” Keisha says.
Holly, who has gotten hesitant of touching since Covid, puts a hand on the young woman’s arm without even thinking about it. “Sometimes my job means asking unpleasant questions. Penny and Bonnie may not have had an ideal relationship, but the woman is paying me to find her because she’s half out of her mind.”