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Thirty-Eight

“Erin, hey,” I say, putting her on speaker as I turn left at the only stoplight in town.

“Lydia! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Her voice cracks as it wavers between laughing and crying, her emotions blasting across the spectrum with just those seven words. I pull up next to the huge green recycling container and put the car in park, flicking my wipers on as a light mist starts to fall.

“Thirty years, I’ve thought about her,” Erin goes on. “And you come in like an angel and put all those pieces together. Your mom is over here and showed me how to sign up for Facebook, and I asked Denise to be my friend right away! I just can’t . . . I don’t even know how to thank you!”

“You don’t have to thank me,” I tell her, but there’s a swell of pride in my chest. “It’s just such a relief to know she’s okay. I really . . .” I fade out, unsure how much to share. “I think I was assuming the worst.”

“That’s easy to do in Henley,” Erin says. “Good news can be in short supply sometimes, and it makes the bad hit you all the harder.”

“Like a brick from the old Fairlawn Hotel,” I say, thinking of Dover and his bloody bandage. “Or maybe I should say Fairlawn cathouse.”

Erin goes silent on the other end, and I realize that my youth minister might not be ready to talk about sex trafficking just yet.

“Sorry,” I say, reaching for my door handle. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s not that,” Erin says. “Gosh, everyone knows about that. It just set me back because the Fairlawn wasn’t brick. It was old timbers.”

“You sure?” I ask.

“Yes,” Erin says. “The firehouse was brick, and the old police station. I think maybe the library, too. But the Fairlawn was made out of timber. Helen Gurtz might like to talk about everything that the tornado destroyed, the truth is that the Fairlawn wouldn’t have been standing much longer, regardless. The society was looking into having it declared a historical site, and applying for some grants for restoration money, but then the tornado took out most of Henley and, well . . . that was that.”

The rain kicks in harder, the mist developing into a spray.

“Oh, I’ve left my upstairs windows open. We had to fumigate on account of some carpenter ants,” Erin says, indulging in the long Midwestern tradition of explaining her actions before she performs them. “I suppose I should— Rebecca! You don’t have to . . . Well, now your mother has gone up the stairs and—”

“I’ll let you go,” I say. I crack my door, the cold pellets of rain smacking against my face as I raise the hatch and pull the box of neuter-and-slay pamphlets out of the car. A gust flaps the box open, grabbing the first seven or eight papers and scattering them across the parking lot.

“Shit!” I cry, tossing the box back into the car and taking off after them. Most are long gone, but a straggler is snagged at the bottom of the sign reminding people that K-cups aren’t recyclable. I stomp on it right before a shift in the breeze can free it, my sneaker coming down hard on the face of a well-groomed, nearly smiling golden retriever. The end of his left ear peeks out from under my shoe, the front door of his suburban home now sprayed with mud and rainwater.

Wait.

I snatch the flyer and wipe it as clean as I can, the corners flipping madly as the wind tries to tear it from my hands. My hair whips in my face, and I claw at it, trying to clear my vision, hoping to see something else.

The dog on the flyer is Denise Chivington’s dog.

Linda Chance didn’t put a lot of effort in designing the pamphlets. The picture is badly cropped; half of the smiling face of a brunette woman hovers next to her pet.

“Fuck,” I say as I turn, running back toward my car. I dive into the driver’s seat and slam the door behind me just as a stiff wind rocks my car. I pull up Facebook on my phone and find Denise Chivington, comparing her profile photo to the flyer.

“Fuck,” I say again, my heart racing, my throat closing. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

I copy the photo, and—as a last grasp at hope—drop it into a Google Image search. An exact match comes back at the top of the returns, from a stock photo site.

My phone vibrates with a call from Bristal.

“Hey,” she says as soon as I accept the call. “My mom said if I really like the snappy little terrier down at the pound that Ash Park can eat her uterus, and I should see if Linda will let me volunteer and waive the fee—”

“Bristal,” I cut her off, my hand tight around my phone. “You need to get over to my house, right now.”

“Um, okay. Why? Did you just figure that The Great Gatsby isn’t actually that great and you need emotional support?”

“No,” I tell her. “But Denise Halverson is dead, and I’m pretty sure she was murdered.”

Thirty-Nine

Bristal bounds into my room, her hair plastered to her skull by the rain. She takes one glance at the papers and notes I have fanned around myself on the floor and sits down facing me, crossing her legs.