It was edging up on eleven a.m. I was flying up Battleground Avenue heading for the older strip of businesses that housed the Twilight Motel and the Your House Diner.
"You know why he wants you to look in the parking lot, don't you?"
Bonnie was staring at me with this curious half-smile that she seems to wear most of the time. To some folks, it might seem she was being smug. To me, it merely meant she was about to say something I wouldn't want to hear, and was trying to cushion bad news with a smile.
"No, why?"
"Baby, the Twilight Motel is centrally located to Irving Park. Them tennis ladies drop their kids at the preschool and then they're right over here taking lessons from the pro, or whoever else is the flavor of the month. Sugar, they rent these rooms by the half-day or the hour. See what I'm saying?"
I did. And so help me, I thought of Vernell in the same breath. This would've been where Vernell took his skunk of a girlfriend back when we were still married. Centrally located, all right. The Twilight Motel was also less than a mile away from the Satellite Kingdom, Vernell's newest endeavor.
I pulled into the parking lot and followed the narrow driveway around to the back. Carlucci was right. Three Volvo station wagons sat in front of motel room doors. The rest of the lot was taken up with pickup trucks and assorted other cars, but it was the upscale models that stood out.
"All right," I said, swinging back around to the front, "here's where we get creative."
I pulled right up to the motel office and stopped the car under a portico. The way I saw it, there was nothing to do but hit the situation head on. I got out of the car, with Bonnie right behind me, and walked into the fifties-time-warp of an office. A pimple-faced young man, somewhere in his early twenties, was behind the counter, his black hair slicked to the side of his head. His lips were too thick for his face, making him look somewhat like a fish.
He slid a pad across the desk to me and smirked. "You want it by the hour or the day, ladies?"
I reached into my purse, pulled out my wallet, and stuck my fingers down into a side slot. Vernell's picture, the worse for wear, and about ten years old, came sliding out.
"Do you know this man?" I asked. I stared hard at the kid, trying to look important or official, but he snickered.
"Yeah, right," he said. "Lady, we work the same as the government here: Don't ask, don't tell. Just like I'd do for you two."
He leered at Bonnie and that was all it took. She reached across the counter, snatched the boy up by his shirt collar, and yanked him halfway across the registration desk. She had a cigarette leaning out of the left side of her mouth, and for a moment, I thought the guy was in danger of being branded.
"Listen here, you little punk," she rasped, smoke billowing out into the boy's face. "This ain't the movies and we ain't playing. I've got young'uns at home older than you and I can whip their asses with one hand tied behind my back." The guy wanted to struggle, but Bonnie uses her hands and arms all day long. There was no prying loose from her grip.
I reached back into my wallet and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. I stepped behind Bonnie and waved it where the kid could see me. He coughed, eyed the money, and looked back at Bonnie.
"All right, all right," he whined, "turn loose of me!"
"Do you know that man?" Bonnie asked, drawing out each word so that it seemed to slap Junior right between the eyes.
I pulled out another bill and added it to the twenty.
"Yes, I do," he said. Bonnie released him with a shove and he fell back, grabbing at his collar.
"Start talking," Bonnie said.
"Mr. Smith's been coming in here semi-regular for the past few months. He used to come in all the time, a couple of years ago, with this knockout, but now he's got him a new one."
I slid a twenty across the counter and it was gone instantly. "Keep talking," I said.
"What do you want to know?"
"When was the last time he was in, and who was he with?"
Bonnie blew smoke across the counter and glared at the boy.
"He was here, um"-the kid looked at the ceiling, thinking-"Friday." The day Vernell vanished.
"You're sure?" I said, my heart beating hard against my chest.
"Yep," he said slowly. "It was payday. And it must've been his too, on account of he tipped me fifty bucks." The kid eyed me like maybe I was going to cough up a fifty.
"Who was the woman?" I asked.
"I don't know," the kid said, shaking his head impatiently. "They don't introduce them to me, they just rent the rooms. Ain't you never done it before? The man gets the room while the woman waits in the car."
"Don't get smart, boy," Bonnie said, stepping a little closer to the counter.
"All's I could tell was, she didn't look like the one he used to bring. This one was closer to Mr. Smith's age." I thought about Jolene the Dish Girl, twenty-four, bleached white-blond, and stacked.
"What color hair? What did she look like?"
The clerk thought a moment. "Um, brown hair, you know, dark hair. Kinda cut short, maybe curly. Had a pretty smile. That's all I could tell."
A Mercedes pulled up behind my VW under the portico. An older businessman stepped out of the driver's side door and started toward us.
"Are you done?" the clerk said.
"You ever seen that woman come in here with another guy?" Bonnie asked.
"Nah," the kid answered. "And she wasn't pro material, either."
Bonnie nodded, satisfied. "Just wondering," she muttered to me. "I just can't figure how Vernell keeps coming up with pretty women, as dog-butt ugly as he is!"
We reached the door at the same moment the businessman did. He held the door and I walked out, but Bonnie stopped, looking from him to the young woman waiting in his car.
"Go on back to work, you old fool," she said. "You got a wife and young'uns, don't you?"
The man's face reddened and he walked right on past her, into the office. Bonnie stepped out into the driveway and glared at the blonde in the Mercedes.
"Hussy," she said. "Rodney would've loved this place. Would've saved him taking his pickup out to High Rock Lake and fooling around in the broad daylight!"
I wasn't listening. I was thinking. Vernell had been coming to the Twilight Motel for the past few months with a woman. Vernell, single again, had no need of a motel. He had a mansion. For some reason, this woman wouldn't come to Vernell's stone palace. Why?
I slid into the car and cranked the engine. Bonnie was still going on about Rodney leaving her and his history of seducing women. Rodney, never too proud to show his ass when he was drinking, apparently showed it off regularly to the bass fishermen of High Rock Lake. The idea of getting sweaty on the underside of Rodney while lying on the bed-liner of a pickup truck did nothing for me, but Bonnie seemed to think Rodney never lacked for partners.
"Bonnie," I said, "Vernell's new honey must be married to someone he knows or someone who lives in the neighborhood. Why else would she come here every Friday?"
Bonnie, in the middle of her monologue about Rodney, stopped talking and stared at me.
"Guess that's why they pay you the big bucks," she said. "Of course." Bonnie looked out the window as I pulled out into traffic. "Guess we're going to the Satellite Kingdom, huh?" she said.
"Why?"
Bonnie snorted. "On account of that's where he met up with his last honey," she said. "Men ain't free thinkers, you know. They're creatures of habit. Betcha five dollars she's the new receptionist. That's how Rodney got his out at the dealership. Just you wait and see."