* * *
Boro was seething. Bentley McKeithen’s phone kept going to voicemail. Boro had been seething for days anyway, but now rage was coming out his pores, and he was actually panting when he finally reached the guy. Now he was forced to listen to a long, lame story about how nobody in the McKeithen family really knew where their aunt lived. Boro needed to find that rig and he needed to find it now and this loser was babbling. It took all the self-discipline Boro had not to lash out. He forced himself to chat with the imbecile nephew in a friendly way, digging for any information he could Google. “Was she always a nurse or what?” he asked, apropos of nothing.
“No, no. Latin teacher,” said the idiot, whose job clearly required nothing of him, because he was so willing to sit at his desk and chatter pointlessly with a total stranger.
“English as a second language?” asked Boro, misunderstanding Latin to mean Latino.
“No, you know, like Julius Caesar and Cicero. Latin. Ancient Rome.”
“I didn’t know they still taught that. And she used to teach in Pittsburgh, right?”
“Pittsburgh! Where did you get that from? No, she used to teach in Ohio. Then I don’t know, other places, and then a few years ago, she moved to Sun City. She’s into card games and pottery and, you know, all the stuff they do in those places.”
Sun City? thought Boro. Isn’t that where fat, illiterate white people in Arizona go to play rummy? How could my rig end up in a retirement center? Who brought it there? “Wow, Sun City,” he said. “What a crack-up. My grandmother lives in Arizona. I could get my glass and visit my grandmother in one trip.”
“Except there are lots of Sun Cities. My aunt’s Sun City is in Charlotte.”
“Then you do know where she lives,” said Boro, chuckling, which did not come naturally, so he sounded like a duck on drugs, but it must have sounded like laughter to the idiot because Bentley said, “Well, kind of, but we don’t have the street. We just have the post office box. I think she’s probably renting, so her name doesn’t show up in a people search.”
Or she’s married and didn’t tell her family, thought Boro, or she’s living with a boyfriend and didn’t tell them, or living with a girlfriend and didn’t tell them. While Bentley talked, Boro checked Facebook, which had nobody named Lakefield. It asked if he meant Wakefield, of whom there were about twenty. Cool. Change one letter and vanish.
So Facebook was useless. He brought up the Charlotte Sun City website, found out it was actually over the state line in South Carolina, and its resident directory open only to members, so he couldn’t access it. “But she’s retired now?” said Boro, staying warm and friendly.
“I think maybe still teaching.”
“Wow,” said Boro. “In her eighties and still teaching? You must be so proud of her.”
“I don’t think she’s that old,” said Bentley. “Early seventies, maybe.”
“You know what, Bentley? I think we just have to shrug about the stolen glass,” said Boro, trying to sound considerate and gentle, two qualities not in his personality. “I mean, these things happen. I can make another rig. What I don’t want to do is upset your poor aunt any more. I’ll just swallow the loss.”
“Gosh, that’s really great of you,” said the idiot. “I’ll call her and let her know she can stop worrying.”
“No, no, you let me do it,” said Boro graciously. “I have great-aunts, and a grandmother too, and I’m very close to them. I’ll enjoy talking to Mrs. Lakefield a second time and bringing her peace of mind.”
* * *
Clemmie fixed herself a cheese sandwich, telephoned Dom once more, and still he didn’t answer. She couldn’t imagine where he might be for so long. Had he gone on a vacation with Wilson? She couldn’t picture that. A vacation with the Coglands? She couldn’t picture that either. And there was the problem of the golf cart. If either Wilson or the Coglands had taken Dom away, his golf cart would be sitting silently in his garage, plugged into its charger.
Leaving the sandwich for later, she opened her sliders and went through the screened porch onto the little concrete slab the builders referred to as a patio. The sun attacked in the thick, humid way of a Carolina July. It was like getting hit with a skillet. She set down a tote bag in which she had placed Windex and rags and walked back through the house and out her front door. She leaned on Dom’s bell, ready to go back in, retrieve her cleaning supplies, and scrub up her fingerprints, and Johnny yelled from across the street, “What’s up, Helen?”
It was Clemmie’s rule to like everybody, especially everybody she saw frequently. Liking Dom was beyond her, although she could be civil, but liking Johnny was also a bit of a challenge. He was dictatorial in a way that Joyce seemed to enjoy, but Clemmie found hard to tolerate. Sometimes when the three of them ate out, he would order without asking what the girls wanted. If they agreed to see Movie A, Johnny might well drive to a theater where it wasn’t playing, laugh, elbow Joyce, and remind her that he had wanted to see Movie B. Joyce would giggle as if she liked his masterful behavior. Clemmie would be subjected to a movie with a level of violence that meant she sat with her eyes closed.
Clemmie waved and called across the street. The front yards being so tiny and Blue Lilac Lane so narrow, she hardly needed to raise her voice. “Hi, Johnny. I’m just checking on Dom. He texts me every day to say he’s fine, but today he didn’t, and he hasn’t answered his phone either, so I’m going in.” She didn’t imply that she’d already gone in and Johnny didn’t correct her, so he hadn’t witnessed her first foray, because if he had, he’d make a sly remark about hanky-panky.
To her dismay, Johnny loped over to join her, because although everybody at Sun City was extremely busy, nobody at Sun City actually had anything to do, and poking around the neighbor’s house was a pleasant interruption to an otherwise repetitive existence. “I’ll go in with you, Helen,” he said in his paternal voice, the one that meant Because otherwise you won’t know how to do it. “Just in case there’s anything wrong.”
“Thank you so much,” she said falsely. Johnny held out his hand for the key, but she put the key in the lock herself, stepped back so Johnny had to go in first, and pocketed the key. Johnny didn’t pause on the threshold but strode right into the living room, bellowing, “Hey! Dominic!”
No answer.
Johnny looked in the kitchen, the little guest room, the living room, the powder room, the bedroom and its bathroom, moving so fast he was like a cartoon. “He’s not dead on the floor, he’s just gone out,” said Johnny. “I’ll check for the golf cart.”
“What a good idea,” said Clemmie, her mind on the cold case in her hometown. Why were they even trying? What evidence could possibly have surfaced? And who was left to care, really?