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I heard the dumping was the other way around, Holly doesn’t say.
“Does it seem likely to you that she’d leave without telling anyone?”
“According to you, she told everyone,” Tom says. “She left a note, didn’t she?”
“Yes, but on the spur of the moment? Leaving her bike for anyone to steal? Was she that impulsive?”
“Sometimes…” This careful answer suggests to Holly that he’s saying what he thinks she wants to hear.
“Without taking any clothes? And without using a credit card or her phone for the last three weeks?”
“So what? She probably got sick of her mother. Bonnie hated her like poison.”
Not according to Keisha. According to Keisha, there was love lost between them but plenty of love left. Penny is driving around with her daughter’s picture plastered on her car, after all.
“She probably hasn’t called anybody because then her mother would send out the Royal Canadian Mounties. Or someone like you. Can’t wait to get her back there and start running her life again.”
Holly decides to change the subject. “Are you enjoying Las Vegas, Mr. Higgins?”
“Yeah, it’s great.” Animation replaces caution. “It’s a happening town.”
“It sounds like you’re in a casino.”
“Yeah, Binion’s. I’m just waiting tables right now, but I’m working my way up. And the tips are fantastic. Speaking of work, my break’s almost over. Good talking to you, Miz Gibley. I’d say I hope you find Bonnie, but since you’re working for the Queen Bitch, I can’t really do that. My bad, I guess.”
“One more thing before you go, please?”
“Make it quick. My asshole boss is waving.”
“I spoke with Randy Holsten. You owe five hundred dollars of back rent.”
Tom laughs. “He can whistle for it.”
“I’m the one who’s whistling,” Holly says. “I know where you work. I can have my lawyer call the management and ask that your wages be attached in that amount.” She doesn’t know if she can actually do that, but it certainly sounds good. She’s always been more inventive on the phone. More assertive, too.
Neither caution nor animation this time. Injury. “Why would you do that? You’re not working for Randy!”
“Because,” Holly says in the same prim voice she used with Jerome, “you don’t strike me as a good person. For all sorts of reasons.”
A moment’s silence, except for the boops and beeps. Then: “Right back atcha, bitch.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Higgins. Have a nice day.”
7
Holly drives across town to the Red Bank Avenue Jet Mart, feeling strangely happy, strangely light. She thinks, A bitch walks into a bar and orders a mai-tai.
Not even discovering that the clerk she wants isn’t on duty can put a dent in her good mood. She should have expected it, anyway; if the guy has enough seniority to know Bonnie as a regular, it’s not surprising that he’d have Sundays off. She describes the man she’s looking for to the current clerk, a young man with an unfortunate wall eye.
“That’s Emilio,” the young man says. “Emilio Herrera. He’ll be on tomorrow, three to eleven. Eleven’s when this dump closes up.”
“Thank you.”
Holly considers driving up to the college and asking some questions about Ellen Craslow at the Belfry and the Life Sciences building, but what would be the point? It’s not just a Sunday in midsummer but a Sunday in Covid midsummer. Bell College of Arts and Sciences will be as dead as Abe Lincoln. Better to go home, put her feet up, and think. About why she felt hesitant about getting in touch with the Craslows she found on Twitter. About whether the van on the security footage means anything. Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a van is just a van. About whether or not she actually has stumbled across the track of a serial killer.
Her phone rings. It’s Pete Huntley. Once she’s back in her apartment building garage, she lights a cigarette and calls him back.
“I don’t know what kind of van that is,” he says, “but there’s something funny about it.”
