I knew the place. So did anyone who regularly read the police blotter column in the Caerphilly Clarion. If I were one of Caerphilly’s finest and found myself running a little short of my monthly arrest quota, I’d just mosey over to the College Arms and keep my eyes open until a few of the part-time burglars or small-time drug dealers in residence did something blatantly illegal so I could haul them in.

“What on earth is Karen doing living there?” I said.

“They’re cheap,” the woman said. “And maybe she was hoping to shake all the people who’re after her.”

“What people? Bill collectors?”

“Yeah, I guess they could be bill collectors,” she said. “Me, I don’t run up bills with people like that. Look, I’m sorry about your friend, but I don’t know anything else about her. She doesn’t live here anymore. I told them where she went. I just want all those thugs to leave me alone.”

With that she shut the door.

I picked up Timmy’s car seat and hauled it back to the car. As I was buckling the seat in place again, Timmy’s mood shifted from cheerful into miserable.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Na mimo!” he said. Actually, he said a great deal, but none of it was any more intelligible than “na mimo” had been. I experimented with various solutions. No, he didn’t want a train or a ball. The relatively limited investigation of his Pampers that I could make without unstrapping him did not reveal any serious cause for concern. I handed him the bag of Cheerios and a sippy cup of milk from the cooler and that did the trick.

With Timmy contently swigging milk and munching Cheerios, I drove over to the College Arms.

Karen must have fallen on hard times to have moved there. Was this before or after her husband left? And what the hell did the woman mean about not running up bills with “people like that?” People like what—drug dealers? Loan sharks? The woman had said thugs. None of that sounded like Karen. Maybe the woman was mistaken about her forwarding address. Maybe someone else far less respectable had lived in the house briefly between Karen’s departure and the woman’s arrival.

At least I knew why Timmy hadn’t shown any sign of recognition when we’d driven up. He wouldn’t remember the bungalow on Hawthorne Street since he was probably less than a year old when they left.

He began getting excited as we pulled up in front of the College Arms, but I couldn’t be sure it was the joy of homecoming.

“Fire engine!” he shouted, banging his sippy cup on the arm of the car seat and waving the Cheerios bag in the air with such enthusiasm that its contents scattered about like confetti. “Fire engine! Fire engine!”

“No, Timmy,” I said. “Those aren’t fire engines. Those are police cars.”

Eight

The Caerphilly Police Department didn’t have that many police cruisers, and I suspected all of them were on the scene, lights flashing. And there were a lot more civilian vehicles than usual in the lot and up and down both sides of the street. Vehicles that didn’t really look as if they belonged at the Arms, whose residents drove either junkers or old trucks, if they were poor but honest, or brand-new high-end cars and SUVs if they were successful in their chosen felonies. So evidently something had happened here at the Arms to attract the attention of local law enforcement. Not an unusual occurrence. Possibly not even the first time the whole force had turned up here—but given Karen’s apparent disappearance, finding them on site today seemed ominous.