"Yes… for a very long time." Stephanie sat on the sofa, knees together, and placed her hands in her lap. She was plain, with a long face and the wrong shade of makeup, but her eyes were pretty, and she had a generous mouth. Photographs of her daughter hung on one walclass="underline" pictures of her in a Brownie uniform, in a bathing suit hurtling down a water slide, in pajamas. The daughter looked just like her mother. The yellow floral-print couch was faded, but the arms were covered with bright knitted squares, and there was a knitted afghan across the back too. The house was clean and quiet, the only incongruous bit of decor the cardboard boxes stacked in the far corner of the room. No radio, no TV, no stereo-just the sound of the wind outside. "Can I get you a glass of water? It's filtered."
"Ah, sure."
She didn't move. The question had been mechanical, and his response didn't trigger any action. "I sell water-filtration systems. The unit screws right into the faucet. It's more economical than bottled."
"Mrs. Panagopolis-"
"Call me Stephanie. There's no Mr. Panagopolis anymore, there's just me and my daughter-and that stupid doorbell. I hate that song. It was my husband's idea. Only thing he ever did around the house was install that doorbell." She plucked at the collar of her blouse. "I sell Amway products. Business used to be better. If you need laundry detergent or hand cream or shaving lotion, if you need anything, you just ask me."
Jimmy glanced at the cardboard boxes.
"The bath gel, the apricot bath gel, is quite nice. I carry a full line of vitamins too. You can never get enough vitamins. Our food is dead. They don't tell you that, but it is."
"I'm here to talk to you about Heather Grimm."
"You said you wanted to talk about April."
"You'll be an unnamed source. You have my word."
Her eyes focused on him, and she saw him clearly. "An unnamed source? Oh my, that's a relief. That will fix everything."
"I talked to a man-he used to be a photographer. His name then was Willard Burton." Jimmy saw Stephanie grimace. "Burton told me about April McCoy's sideline."
"Sideline?" She tugged idly at her hair, a few strands drifting toward the carpet.
"Burton said he used to steer underage girls and boys to April."
"How is Willard Burton? Is he well? Has life been kind to him?"
"Heather Grimm was one of April's clients."
"I get a mammogram twice a year. I feel myself for lumps every day. My mother used to say that cancer was God's judgment. Do you think that's true?"
"No, I don't."
She smiled, and her relief made her pretty. "I think you must be right, Mr. Gage. If Willard Burton is alive and well… you must be right."
Jimmy moved onto the couch beside her. "Heather Grimm didn't end up at Walsh's beach house by accident-April sent her. But it wasn't April's idea. Whose idea was it?"
Stephanie shook her head.
"You worked for April McCoy for years."
"I worked at a desk." Stephanie's whole body was shaking. "I sat behind a desk. I answered the phone. I made coffee and went out for sandwiches. That's all."
"Maybe sitting at your desk you saw something. Maybe answering the phone you heard something. I'm just asking for your help. I'm not trying to blame you."
"If I had known what she was doing, if I had known for sure-"
"What did you see?"
"Willard Burton was an awful man. I knew that the first moment he showed up in the office, digging his hands into my candy dish on his way into April's office, not even waiting for me to announce him."
"When did he first start coming around?"
"It was a few years before-before Heather Grimm became a client. He didn't come in very often after that first time. I think April must have said something to him."
"So when he stopped coming by the office, he called?"
"Yes."
"You handled the incoming calls."
Stephanie fidgeted. "That was my job."
"If it was my job, I would have listened in once in a while."
"I could have gotten fired for doing that."
"A man like Burton calling my boss-I would have done it anyway. I would have worried for her, wondered what she had gotten herself into. I think you're the same way."
Stephanie stared out the picture window at an empty Bucket-o-Chicken blowing down the street. "This used to be a lovely place to live. Lots of young families, plenty of kids for my daughter to play with. Some of the fathers put up a playground in a vacant lot down the street-slides and swings. It just sits there now. When we had block parties, everyone turned out. People used to love my pasta salad. They would ask me for the recipe, and I always gave it to them. Some women don't share recipes, or they deliberately give you the wrong ingredients, but I can't do that."
Jimmy put his hand on her wrist and felt her pull back. "Pimentos, that was the secret to my pasta salad. Pimentos and Del Monte tartar sauce."
"I bet Burton flirted with you when he called. I've met him. He calls himself Felix now, Felix the Cat. He thinks he's a charmer."
"He used to call me Porkchop. Porkchop." Stephanie watched the brown grass across the street. "Burton talked in code to April. 'I've got a guppy for you,' he would say. I didn't even know what he was talking about for a long time. Not until it was too late. I had read somewhere that there was a black market for tropical fish. The article said that collectors paid big money for rare ones, fish that were endangered; sometimes for fish that weren't even pretty, just dangerous. That's what I thought he was doing."
Jimmy didn't argue with her. "So Burton supplied guppies to April; I already know that. What I'm interested in was who April sold the guppies to. Who paid her to send Heather Grimm to the beach house?"
Stephanie twisted a strand of hair between her thumb and forefinger. "Heather wasn't a guppy."
Jimmy stared at her. "What was she?"
Stephanie twirled her hair faster now. "A goose." She nodded. "A goose that laid the golden egg. There were plenty of guppies, but Heather was the only goose. She was very special."
Burton had described her the same way to Jimmy at the porn shoot.
"My daughter is seven years old now. I look at her sleeping sometimes, and I wonder how I could have been so stupid." Strands of hair floated in the quiet room. "I was stupid, wasn't I? Not something worse?"
"You just didn't put it all together until it was too late, that's all. It's happened to me before. You think you know what's going on, but you don't."
"You're a kind man."
"No, I'm not. I just know what it's like to fuck up."
Stephanie clasped her hands. She looked like she was trying to catch her breath. "I sell ozone generators that are supposed to reduce stress. I can't… I can't guarantee-"
"You never overheard April on the phone talking to someone about Heather?"
Stephanie shook her head.
"You never heard Garrett Walsh's name mentioned?"
"I left the office at six o'clock, but April always stayed late. I don't think she liked going home. Whoever you're looking for, they must have called after I left."
Jimmy sat beside her for a long time thinking. "What exactly made April special? Because she was so young, and yet so mature-"
"Heather was the only one April ever put under contract. That's why she was special."
"I don't understand."
"The other guppies, I never even met them. I would hear April and Burton talking, and a week or two later April would have a new designer outfit, something from Rodeo Drive. She was a big girl, but she was a clotheshorse. Stylish. I admired that."
"You never met the guppies. Did you meet Heather?"
"Heather was a goose." Stephanie smiled at the memory. "April was so proud. She kept telling Heather about this big part she had locked in for her, a 'star vehicle' she called it, not just a walk-on, a real break-out role."