“My feet are killing me,” Liz sighed, plopping into a patio chair on Hazel’s porch.
“It’s my lower back,” Patrick complained. “Feels like somebody took a jackhammer to it.”
“Lemonade, or if you’re willing to wait a few minutes, Calvin is whipping up some margaritas,” Hazel announced, setting a pitcher of lemonade on the table.
Patrick yawned and stretched his legs before standing up. He pounded his fists into his back a couple times.
“It’s a bottle of Coors and a foot rub from my wife for me,” he told them.
“A foot rub?” Hazel asked. “She must be devoted.”
He grinned.
“Most likely she’ll just wash my socks and demand I hose my feet in the backyard, but if I close my eyes, it almost feels like a foot rub.”
Hazel gave him a hug and handed him the envelope of cash from the sale.
“I’ll have to ask Abe to print the new reward amount,” Patrick murmured, tucking the envelope in his back pocket.
“I’m surprised he wasn’t here today,” Hazel added.
“I’m not,” Liz admitted. “That article has people talking. I’d say the cops, the families, and other reporters are after him, not to mention the tips. I always hope not to see Abe, because it means he’s following a lead.”
She hugged Patrick goodbye.
“Give Fiona our love,” Liz told him.
He nodded and headed for his truck.
Calvin appeared on the porch with two margaritas. Bethany followed behind him with two more.
“Bethany, this is Liz Miner,” Hazel told her roommate.
Bethany put a margarita before the woman, and then shook her hand.
“Great to meet you, Liz. I’m really sorry about your daughter.”
Liz thanked her and sipped her drink.
Hazel noticed a little crease between Liz’s eyebrows, and the way her eyes shifted back to Bethany’s face again and again.
Hazel gazed at Bethany and realized why. She bore a striking resemblance to Susie Miner. Golden blonde hair in a cascade over her shoulder. Her eyes were green, her nose little and upturned, with a spray of freckles across the bridge.
Liz stood abruptly, leaving her glass half-full.
“Best get home,” she said, her voice thick.
Hazel stood and reached to hug her, but Liz had already started down the steps.
She offered a half-wave as she hurried down the driveway to her car.
Abe
It was the third sighting that put Abe on edge. Something about that number three, as if two didn’t quite validate the claim, but when you added the third…
The young man sat in the line of plastic visitor chairs just inside the office at Up North News. He held a cup of untouched water on the knee of his ripped jeans. He looked young, eighteen or nineteen, with long hair tied back by a piece of leather. His tanned face gave him a beach bum appearance, but when Abe glanced at his rough hands, he pegged the guy for an outdoor worker - lawn maintenance or construction.
“Mr. Sevett?” the young man asked as soon as Abe strode into the office.
Abe glanced toward his editor’s office, but the door stood closed and his boss was on the phone.
“Yes, how can I help you?” Abe had an armload of paperwork, his briefcase clutched beneath his armpit.
“I have a… clue.”
“A tip?” Abe asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“Yeah, yeah, a tip.”
“Follow me.” Abe led the young man to his desk and dumped his stuff on top.
The man glanced around. Other reporters sat at their desks, a stream of noise filtered from typewriters, the shuffling of papers, conversations. The guy fidgeted, shoving his hands in his pockets and shifting from one leg to the other.
“Shall we take a walk?” Abe asked.
“Yeah, sure. I could use a smoke.”
Outside, the young man took a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it.
“I didn’t catch your name,” Abe told him. “Do you mind if I tape this?”
The man licked his lips and looked at the recorder.
“No, sure, yeah, that’s fine.”
Abe smiled, hit record, and they walked.
“My name’s Ricky.”
“Have a last name?”
“Palmer.”
“Okay, Ricky Palmer. Fill me in.”
He took another drag, licked his sunburned lips, and glanced sidelong at Abe.
He let out an uncomfortable laugh and inhaled again.
“I don’t publish tips,” Abe reassured him, “and even if I did, sources are anonymous. Understand? You won’t see your name in the paper.”
The man nodded, tugged on his ponytail, and dropped the butt of his cigarette. He pulled out a second.
“I saw a girl who looked like the Susan girl from your article.”
“Looked like her, or was her?”
He croaked a shrill laugh.
A trickle of cold sweat slid down Abe’s spine; the odd, familiar sense of déjà vu nipping at his heels as they walked.
“If I hadn’t read your article and only looked at the picture, I would have said it was her, without a doubt.”
“But the article makes you question that?”
Ricky nodded.
“Tell me about seeing her. Every detail you can remember, dates, times.”
“It happened about a month ago, real late at night, about three a.m. My girl and I watched some boob tube, and then I hit the road. Joan’s dad’s real funny about me staying overnight. So long as I’m gone when the sun comes up, we’re cool.”
“Where does your girlfriend live?”
“Empire.”
Abe clenched his jaw, bracing for the story to come.
“I was driving up M-22, south of Leland. That’s where I’m staying with my cousin. We’re working on a construction site in Northport.”
Abe nodded, glancing at the little wheel turning in the tape deck.
“Dig it?”
“Yeah,” Abe muttered.
“I was cruisin’ pretty good, went peeling around a curve, and saw a girl standing on the side of the road.”
Abe took his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and squeezed.
“I pulled off, leaned over the seat, and swung the passenger door out. My girl would’a bugged out, but I wasn’t plannin’ to tell her. This girl got in my car. She had on a rad shirt - one of those Rolling Stone’s mouth shirts. Weird thing was, she had only one shoe on.”
He looked at Abe and laughed.
“I said, ‘That shirt’s bitchin’,’ and started to ask her where she was headed, but…”
Ricky scratched his head, his eyes troubled. He took another drag on his cigarette, only to realize he’d smoked it down. He dropped it on the sidewalk, stared at as if it were a mysterious insect, and ground it beneath his boot.
“She wasn’t there. The seat was empty. I was sitting on the side of the road, talking to air.”
“And what do you make of that story?” Abe asked.
Ricky laughed, groped around behind his ears and came up empty.
“I didn’t think much of it until my girlfriend showed up at the job site with a copy of your article.”
“I thought you weren’t going to tell your girlfriend?”
“I wasn’t. But then I did a few days after I saw her. It was strange, man. One minute, we were eatin’ Chinese food, and the next I’m spillin’ the whole freaky-deaky story. Joan said ‘you saw a ghost,’ like any old thing.”
“She said you saw a ghost?”