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Holly thanks him, says she’ll take it under consideration, and extracts herself from the call. She finishes her prayer on autopilot.
An elf. She said she was a Christmas elf. It’s probably not important, but as Yoda might also say: Interesting, it is.
Penny might know what Bonnie was talking about, but Holly doesn’t want to talk to Penny again until she has to. What she wants, now that she’s wide awake, is a cigarette. She dresses and goes down to the ice machine. On the way she has an idea. After she lights up she looks in her contacts for Lakeisha Stone and calls.
“If this is another church donation pitch—”
“It’s not. It’s Holly Gibney, Keisha. Can I ask you a quick question?”
“Sure, if it will help you find Bonnie. I mean, you haven’t, have you?”
Holly, who is ever more sure that Bonnie is no longer alive, says, “Not yet. Did she ever say anything to you about being… this will probably sound crazy… a Christmas elf?”
Keisha laughs. “It ain’t crazy a bit, girlfriend. She was a Christmas elf. If Santa’s elves dress up like Santa, that is, with the beard and the red hat. But she did have elf shoes, cute green ones with curly toes. Scored em at the Goodwill, she said. Why would you ask that?”
“Was it at a mall? A seasonal thing?”
“No, for a Christmas party. The party was on Zoom because of Covid, but the elves—I don’t know how many besides Bonnie, maybe a dozen—went around to the party people with snacks and sixpacks of beer. Or maybe some of them got champagne. Faculty, you know—they gotta represent.”
Holly can feel something warm working up her back from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck. There’s still nothing real here, but she’s rarely had a stronger intuition.
“Whose party was it, do you know?”
“These old retired professors. He was Life Sciences, she’s English. The Harrises.”
2
Holly lights another cigarette and walks around the Days Inn parking lot, too deep in her own thoughts to bother policing up the butt of her last one. She just steps on it and keeps walking, head down, brow furrowed. She’s having trouble keeping up with her own suppositions and has to remind herself that they’re only suppositions. Bill talked about how a case was like an egg. He also talked about Blue Chevrolet Syndrome: as soon as you bought a blue Chevrolet, you saw blue Chevies everywhere.
Supposition, she keeps telling herself as she lights yet another cigarette. Not fact, only supposition. True enough.
But.
Cary Dressler worked at the Strike Em Out Lanes; Roddy Harris, aka Small Ball, bowled at the Strike Em Out. Not only that, Cary sometimes bowled on Roddy’s team. Bonnie Dahl worked for the Harrises over Christmas, although—slow down, girl!—it was only a one-night gig. As for Ellen Craslow—
She calls Keisha back. “Me again. I’m sorry to bother you if you were getting ready for bed.”
Keisha laughs. “Not me, I like to read late when the house is quiet. What’s up, pussycat?”
“Do you know if Bonnie had any further association with the Harrises? After the Christmas party gig, I mean.”
“Actually, yeah. Bonnie worked for the Mrs. Professor for awhile early this year, writing thank-you letters and putting her contacts in order. Shit like that. Showed her some computer stuff, too, although she thought Mrs. Professor knew a little more about computer stuff than she let on.” Keisha hesitated. “She said that maybe the old lady had a little bit of a letch for her. Why do you ask?”
“I’m just trying to trace her contacts and what she was doing between the end of 2020 and when she disappeared,” Holly says. This is only a kissing cousin to the truth. “Can I ask you one more question, not about Bonnie but about the other woman you mentioned? Ellen Craslow?”
“Sure.”
“You said you guys used to talk with her in the Belfry, but didn’t you say she also worked in the Life Sciences building?”
“Yes. It’s right next door to the Union. Does it matter?”
“Probably not.” But maybe it does. Rodney Harris might still have an office in Life Sciences. College profs never really retire, do they? Even if he doesn’t, he could have had one when Ellen went missing.
3
Holly is out of cigarettes, but there’s a 7-Eleven adjacent to the motel. She’s walking there along the service road when her phone lights up again. It’s Tanya Robinson. Holly says hello and sits on a bench outside the convenience store. Dew has fallen and the seat of her pants gets wet. Ordinarily, this would bother her a great deal, since she doesn’t have another pair. Now she barely notices.
“I wanted to fill you in on Barbara,” Tanya says.
