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“Yes. I used to like that name, but these days it kind of grates on me. The only ones in this picture I still roll with are Avram and Ernie Cog. Small Ball comes, but just to watch. It’s not like it used to be.”
“Nothing is,” Holly says gently.
“No? No. But it should be. And could be, if people would only take care of themselves.” He’s staring at the picture. Holly is looking at him and realizes that even the sixpack is starting to show wrinkles.
“Who is this last one?”
“That’s Vic Anderson. Slick Vic, we used to call him. He had a stroke. He’s in some care home upstate.”
“Not Rolling Hills, by any chance?”
“Yes, that’s the name.”
The fact that one of the old bowlers is in the same care home as Uncle Henry feels like a coincidence. Holly finds that a relief, because seeing a picture of Barbara Robinson in the Strike Em Out foyer felt more like… well… fate.
“His wife moved up there so she could visit him more often. Sure you don’t want a little pick-me-up, Ms. Gibney? I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“I’m fine. Really.” Holly stops recording. “Thank you so much, Mr. Clippard.”
He’s still looking at her iPad. He seems almost hypnotized. “I really didn’t realize how few of us are left.”
She swipes away the picture and he looks up, as if not entirely sure where he is.
“Thank you for your time.”
“Very welcome. If you locate Cary, ask him to drop by sometime, will you? At least give him my email address. I’ll write it down for you.”
“And the numbers of the ones that are still around?”
“You bet.”
He tears a sheet from a pad that’s headed JUST A NOTE FROM MIDGE’S KITCHEN, grabs a pen from a cup full of them, and jots, consulting the contacts on his phone as he does. Holly notes that the numbers and the e-address show the slightest tremble of the hand writing them. She folds the sheet and puts it in her pocket. She thinks again, time the avenger. Holly doesn’t mind old people; it’s something about the way Clippard is handling his old age that makes her uneasy.
She basically can’t wait to get the frack out.
3
There’s only one (and oh-so-tony) shopping center in Sugar Heights. Holly parks there, lights a cigarette, and smokes with the door open, elbows on her thighs and feet on the pavement. Her car is starting to stink of cigarettes, and not even the can of air freshener she keeps in the center console completely kills the odor. What a nasty habit it is, and yet how necessary.
Just for now, she thinks, and then thinks again of Saint Augustine praying that God should make him chaste… but not yet.
Holly checks her phone to see if Barbara has answered her message with the attached photo of Cary Dressler and the Golden Oldies. She hasn’t. Holly looks at her watch and sees it’s only quarter past two. There’s plenty of day left in the day, and she has no intention of wasting it, so what next?
Get off her ass and knock on doors, of course.
There were eight bowling Oldies in 2015, including Desmond Clark, the one not in the picture. Three of them don’t need to be checked out. Four, if she counts Hugh Clippard. He looks capable of overpowering Bonnie and the skateboard kid—about Ellen, Holly’s less sure—but for the time being she puts him aside with the two who are dead and Jim Hicks (living in Wisconsin… although that should be checked out). That leaves Roddy Harris, Avram Welch, and Ernie Coggins. There’s also Victor Anderson, but Holly doubts if a stroke victim is sneaking out of Rolling Hills to abduct people.
She knows it’s very unlikely that any of the Golden Oldies is the Red Bank Predator, but she’s more and more convinced that the presumed abductions of Dressler, Craslow, Steinman, and Bonnie Rae Dahl were planned rather than random. The Predator knew their routines, all of which seem to have Deerfield Park as their epicenter.
The bowlers knew Cary. She doesn’t need to mention the other desaparecidos, unless she gets a feeling—what Bill Hodges would have called a vibe—that questions about Cary are making someone nervous. Or defensive. Maybe even guilty. She knows the tells to look for; Bill taught her well. Better to keep Ellen, Pete, and Bonnie as hole cards. At least for the time being.
It never once crosses her mind that Penny Dahl has outed her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
4
While Holly is smoking in the parking lot of the Sugar Heights Boutique Shopping Mart, Barbara Robinson is staring uselessly into space. She’s shut off all notifications on her computer and phone, allowing only calls from her parents and Jerome to ring through. Those little red check-me-out circles by the text and mail icons are too tempting. The Penley Prize Essay—a requirement for the five finalists—has to be in the mail by the end of the month, and that’s only four days away. Make it three, actually; she wants to take her essay to the post office on Friday and make absolutely sure of that postmark. Being eliminated because of a technicality after all this would be crazy-making. So she bends to the work.
Poetry is important to me because
