“Anybody down here know about her?”

Mona concentrated a long moment and then shook her head.

“No,” she said again.

“Nobody. You sure? Not no friend or cousin or ex-boyfriend.”

“Maude’s my mother’s sister, but Mama passed.”

I waited a few moments while Mona let the severity of her truths sink in.

Then I said, “Go up there right now, tonight. Tell Bo that your sister’s sick down south and you have to go to her. Tomorrow morning take a leave from school if you have to. Tell them that your grandmother died. Gimme a number to call you and I will when this is all over.”

It was a sign of how scared Mona was that she didn’t voice one complaint. Eleven minutes after my offer she was gone from the Chateau Marmont for good.

The hotel still had those fancy phone booths where you could sit down and shutter yourself in for privacy. I dialed a number and allowed it to ring at least thirty times.

“He’o?” she answered at last.

“Lola, go splash some water on your face and then come back and talk to me.”

“Ho’on,” she gasped.

Maybe three minutes passed.

“What do you want, Easy? Is it about Craig?”

It was her question that resolved the data that flitted around in my mind like confetti.

“You said that Craig used to go up to Blood Grove with that old boyfriend of yours, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he ever store stuff up there?”

I could hear her breath through the receiver; great huffs of reluctant air.

“Maybe,” she said after six or seven bellows’ worth. “It was, um, it was where they kept farm equipment.”

“Farm equipment?”

“Yeah, yeah. Not tractors and stuff but little things like pruning shears and long sticks with tin cans on the end to pick oranges with. It was like a, like a little shed. When he was little Craig used to play that it was his fort. Why? Did he leave me something there?”

“Do you know where this shed’s at?”

“I never went out exploring. The men did that.”

By the time I got out of the booth Mona was gone. Bo told me that she had a sick uncle down south and had to go help him. I don’t think he believed the story but he knew my business well enough to start practicing the lie.

I got cozy in the phone booth again and dialed a number I knew well.

46

46

“Hi, Daddy,” she said. “Where are you?”

“At the end of this case,” I said. “I’ll be home for the rest of the summer, I promise.”

“Then can we go on a vacation?”

“Sure. Where would you like to go?”

“San Francisco. Uncle Milo says that it’s just amazing up there.”

“We’ll make plans day after tomorrow.”

“Okay. Daddy, I’m tired. I think I have to go back to bed.”