Gone for Good

32

Squares arrived at my apartment with bagels and spreads from a place cleverly christened La Bagel on 15th and First. It was ten A.M." and Katy was sleeping on the couch. Squares lit up a cigarette. I noticed that he was still wearing the same clothes from last night. This was not easy to discern it was not as though Squares was a leading figure in the haut monde community but this morning he looked extra disheveled. We sat at the stools by the kitchen counter.

"Hey," I said, "I know you want to blend in with the street people but…"

He took a plate out of a cabinet. "You going to keep wowing me with the funny lines, or are you going to tell me what happened?"

"Is there a reason I can't do both?"

He lowered his head and again looked at me over the sunglasses. "That bad?"

"Worse," I said.

Katy stirred on the couch. I heard her say "Ouch." I had the extra-strength Tylenol at the ready. I handed her two with a glass of water. She downed them and stumbled toward the shower. I returned to the stool.

"How does your nose feel?" Squares asked.

"Like my heart moved up there and is trying to thump its way out."

He nodded and took a bite out of a bagel with lox spread. He chewed slowly. His shoulders drooped. I knew that he had not stayed home that night. I knew that something had happened between him and Wanda. And mostly, I knew that he did not want me to ask about it.

"You were saying about worse?" he prompted.

"Sheila lied to me," I said.

"We knew that already."

"Not like this."

He kept chewing.

"She knew Julie Miller. They were sorority sisters in college. Roommates even."

He stopped chewing. "Come again?"

I told him what I'd learned. The shower stayed on the whole time. I imagined that Katy would ache from the alcohol aftereflects for some time yet. Then again, the young recuperate faster than the rest of us.

When I finished filling him in, Squares leaned back, crossed his arms, and grinned. "Styling," he said.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's the word that came to my mind too."

"I don't get it, man." He started spreading another bagel. "Your old girlfriend, who was murdered eleven years ago, was college roommates with your most recent girlfriend, who was also murdered."

"Yes."

"And your brother was blamed for the first murder."

"Yes again."

"Okay, yeah." Squares nodded confidently. Then: "I still don't get it."

"It had to be a setup somehow," I said.

"What was a setup?"

"Sheila and me." I tried to shrug. "It must have all been a setup. A lie."

He made a yes-and-no gesture with his head. His long hair fell onto his face. He pushed it back. "To what end?"

"I don't know."

"Think about it."

"I have, "I said. "All night."

"Okay, suppose you're right. Suppose Sheila did lie to you or, I don't know, set you up somehow. You with me?"

"With you."

He raised both palms. "To what end?"

"Again I don't know."

"Then let's go through the possibilities," Squares said. He raised his finger. "One, it could be a giant coincidence." I just looked at him.

"Hold up, you dated Julie Miller, what, more than twelve years ago?"

"Yes."

"So maybe Sheila didn't remember. I mean, do you remember the name of every friend's ex? Maybe Julie never talked about you. Or maybe Sheila just forgot your name. And then years later you two meet…"

I just looked at him some more.

"Yeah, okay, that's pretty begging," he agreed. "Let's forget that. Possibility two" Squares raised another finger, paused, looked up in the air "hell, I'm lost here."

"Right."

We ate. He mulled it over some more. "Okay, let's assume that Sheila knew exactly who you were from the beginning."

"Let's."

"I still don't get it, man. What are we left with here?"

"Styling," I replied.

The shower stopped. I picked up a poppy-seed bagel. The seeds stuck to my hand.

"I've been thinking about it all night," I said.

"And?"

"And I keep coming back to New Mexico."

"How so?"

"The FBI wanted to question Sheila about an unsolved double murder in Albuquerque."

"So?"

"Years earlier, Julie Miller was also murdered."

"Also unsolved," Squares said, "though they suspect your brother."

"Yes."

"You see a connection between the two," Squares said. "There has to be."

Squares nodded. "Okay, I see point A and I see point B. But I don't see how you get from one to the other."

"Neither,"Isaid, "doI."

We grew silent. Katy peeked her head through the doorway. Her face had that morning-after pallor. She groaned and said, "I just upchucked again."

"Appreciate the update," I said.

"Where's my clothes?"

"The bedroom closet," I said.

She gestured an in-pain thank-you and closed the door. I looked at the right side of the couch, the spot where Sheila liked to read. How could this be happening? The old adage "Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all" came to me. I wondered about that. But more than that, I wondered what was worse to lose the love of a lifetime or to realize that maybe she never loved you at all.

Some choice.

The phone rang. This time I did not wait for the machine. I lifted the receiver and said hello.

"Will?"

"Yes?"

"It's Yvonne Sterno," she said. " Albuquerque 's answer to Jimmy Olsen."

"What have you got?"

"I've been up all night working on this."

"And?"

"And it keeps getting weirder."

"I'm listening."

"Okay, I got my contact to go through the deeds and tax records. Now understand that my contact is a government employee, and I got her to go in during her off hours. You usually have a better chance of turning water into wine or having my uncle pick up a check than getting a government employee to show up "

"Yvonne?" I interrupted.

"Yeah?"

"Assume that I'm already impressed by your resourcefulness. Tell me what you got."

"Yeah, okay, you're right," she said. I heard papers being shuffled. "The murder-scene house was leased by a corporation called Cripco."

"And they are?"

"Untraceable. It's a shell. They don't seem to do anything."

I thought about that.

"Owen Enfield also had a car. A gray Honda Accord. Also leased by the fine folks at Cripco."

"Maybe he worked for them."

"Maybe. I'm trying to check that now."

"Where's the car now?"

"That's another interesting thing," Yvonne said. "The police found it abandoned in a mall in Lacida. That's about two hundred miles east of here."

"So where is Owen Enfield?"

"My guess? He's dead. For all we know, he was one of the victims."

"And the woman and little girl? Where are they?"

"No clue. Hell, I don't even know who they are."

"Did you talk to the neighbors?"

"Yes. It's like I said before: No one knew much about them."

"How about a physical description?"

"Ah."

"Ah what?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

Squares kept eating, but I could tell he was listening. Katy was still in my room, either dressing or making another offering to the porcelain gods.

"The descriptions were pretty vague," Yvonne continued. "The woman was in her mid-thirties, attractive, and a brunette. That's about as much as any of the neighbors could tell me. No one knew the little girl's name. She was around eleven or twelve with sandy-brown hair. One neighbor described her as cute as a button, but what kid that age isn't? Mr. Enfield was described as six feet with a gray crew cut and goatee. Forty years old, more or less."

"Then he wasn't one of the victims," I said.

"How do you know?"

"I saw a photo of the crime scene."

"When?"

"When I was questioned by the FBI about my girlfriend's whereabouts."

"You could see the victims?"

"Not clearly, but enough to know that neither had a crew cut."

"Hmm. Then the whole family has up and vanished."

"Yes."

"There's one other thing, Will."

"What's that?"

"Stonepointe is a new community. Everything is fairly self-contained."

"Meaning?"

"Are you familiar with Quick Go the convenience store chain?"

"Sure," I said. "We have QuickGos out here too."

Squares took off his sunglasses and looked a question at me. I shrugged and he moved toward me.

"Well, there's a big Quick Go at the edge of the complex," Yvonne said. "Almost all the residents use it."

"So?"

"One of the neighbors swore she saw Owen Enfield there at three o'clock on the day of the murders."

"I'm not following you, Yvonne."

"Well," she said, "the thing is, all the QuickGos have security cameras." She paused. "You following me now?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"I already checked," she went on. "They keep them for a month before they tape over them."

"So if we can get that tape," I began, "we might be able to get a good view of Mr. Enfield."

"Big if, though. The store manager was firm. There was no way he was going to turn anything over to me."

"There has to be a way," I said.

"I'm open to ideas, Will."

Squares put his hand on my shoulder. "What?"

I covered the mouthpiece and filled him in. "You know anybody connected to Quick Go I said.

"Incredible as this might sound, the answer is nope."

Damn. We mulled it over for a bit. Yvonne started humming the Quick Go jingle, one of those torturous tunes that enters through the ear canal and proceeds to ricochet around the skull in search of an escape route it will never find. I remembered the new commercial campaign, the one where they updated the old jingle by adding an electric guitar and a synthesizer and bass, and fronting the band with a big-time pop star simply known as Sonay.

Hold the phone. Sonay. Squares looked at me. "What?"

"I think you may be able to help after all," I said.