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“I just want to know where it was found. Do you happen to know that?”
“Oh yeah,” Holt says. “It was on the worksheet. Deerfield Park. In that overgrown part they call the Thickets.”
“Near Red Bank Avenue,” Holly says. More to herself than to Jerry Holt.
“That’s right. One of the groundskeepers found it.”
4
There are two signs on the bowling alley doors. One says OPEN. The other says NO MASK? NO PROBLEM! Holly pulls hers up and goes in. The foyer is decorated with dozens of framed group shots of children. Above them is a sign reading KIDS BOWL FOR HEALTH! Holly can think of healthier activities—swimming, running, volleyball—but she supposes every little bit helps.
There are twenty lanes, all but three dark. The sound of the few balls is loud. The crash of the pins when the balls hit is even louder, like the part of a Hollywood action movie when a disposable character cuts the red wire instead of the blue one.
A lanky longhair in an orange-striped Strike Em Out shirt is at the counter, pulling an early afternoon beer for one of the bowlers. For a wild moment Holly thinks she’s found Cory-or-Cameron—alive, well, and undisappeared—but when he turns to her, she sees the nametag pinned to his shirt says DARREN.
“Want shoes? What size?”
“No thank you. My name is Holly Gibney. I’m a private investigator—”
His eyes widen. “Shut up!”
Holly takes this as an expression of surprised respect rather than an actual command and pushes on. “I’m looking for information about someone who used to work here a few years ago. A young man. His name might have been—”
“Can’t help you. I’ve only been here since June. Summer job. You want to talk to Althea Haverty. Owns the place. She’s in the office.” He points.
Holly walks to the office as more pins explode and a woman gives an exultant whoop. She knocks. Someone inside says “Yow,” which Holly takes as an invitation and opens the door. She would have opened it even if the person inside had said go away. She’s chasing the case, and when she’s doing that her natural timidity disappears.
Althea Haverty is an extremely large woman who sits behind a cluttered desk like a meditating lady Buddha. She’s got a handful of papers in one hand. A laptop is open in front of her. Holly’s pretty sure from the sour way she’s looking at the papers that they’re bills.
“What’s the problem? Pinsetter on Eleven shit the bed again? I told Darren to shut that lane down until Brock comes to fix it. I swear that kid has popcorn for brains.”
“I didn’t come to bowl.”
Holly introduces herself and explains what she wants. Althea listens and puts her papers aside. “You’re talking about Cary Dressler. He was the best worker I ever had in here since my son moved to California. Got along with the customers and had a way of cutting off the day-drinkers when they’d had enough without getting them all pissed off. And scheduling? A champ! He was a doper, but these days aren’t they all? And it never got in the way. Never late, never called in sick. Then one day he’s just gone. Boom. Like that. You’re looking for him, huh?”
“Yes.” Penny Dahl is the client, but Holly is now looking for all of them. The missing. What they call desaparecidos in South America.
“Well, it ain’t his folks paying your bills, I don’t have to be a detective to know that.” Althea puts her hands behind her head and stretches, jutting out a truly mammoth bosom that shades half her desk.
“Why do you say that?”
“He came here from some little shitpot town in Minnesota. Stepfather tuned up on him a lot, he said. Mother turned a blind eye. He finally got sick of it and put on his traveling shoes. No sob story, Cary was matter-of-fact about it. Good attitude. All that young man cared about was movies and working here. Plus dope, probably, but I’m the original don’t-ask-don’t-tell mama. Besides, it was just the bud. Do you think something happened to him? Something bad?”
“I think it’s possible. Can you help me pinpoint when he left? I talked to a Jet Mart clerk where Cary used to stop on his way home… to some apartment, I’m guessing… but the only thing the clerk seemed sure of is that it happened around the time when Trump was running for president the first time.”
“Fucking Democrats fucking stole his second term, pardon my Spanglish. Wait a minute, wait a minute.” She opens the top drawer of her desk and begins pawing through it. “I hate to think something happened to Cary, the league situation just isn’t the same without him.”
Rummage, rummage, rummage.
“I mean, fucking Covid has killed a lot of the leagues—it would be ridiculous if it wasn’t also killing my business—but without Cary here the matches and seedings were getting jumbled up even before Covid hit. Cary was just so fucking good at… ah. I think this is it.”
She plugs a flash drive into her laptop, puts on a pair of glasses, hunts and pecks, shakes her head, hunts and pecks some more. Holly has to restrain herself from going around the desk and finding whatever the woman’s looking for herself.
Althea peers at the screen. Reflected in her spectacles Holly sees what looks like a spreadsheet. She says, “Okay. Cary started here in 2012. Too young to serve alcohol until his birthday, but I hired him anyway. Glad I did. He got his last paycheck on September 4th, 2015. Six years ago, almost! Time sure does zip by, doesn’t it? Then he was gone.” She whips off her glasses and looks at Holly. “My husband had to take over for him. That was before Alfie had his heart attack.”
“Do you have a picture of Cary?”
“Come out to the Bowlaroo with me.”
