“That beat-up old thing? I didn’t pay any mind to it.”

“It was black? Red?”

Mrs. O’Dell shrugged. “Dirty is what it was. Might have been brown. Might have been green, under all that grime.”

Mel took a leap of faith. “Out-of-state plates, I imagine.”

After a moment’s consideration, Mrs. O’Dell shook her head. “Nope. I guess I might have wondered why he was just sitting down there. Sometimes your mind wanders when you’re working, and I was thinking he might have been visiting someone, waiting for them to get home. Then I was figuring he hadn’t come all that far ’cause he had state plates.”

Mel banked down her excitement and mentally crossed her fingers. “I always used to play this game when I was a kid. My mom and I traveled a lot, and she tried to give me things to do. I guess you know how car trips are with kids.”

Mrs. O’Dell rolled her eyes. For the first time, there was a trace of humor in them. “Oh, do I.”

“I always tried to make words out of the letters on plates. Or come up with funny names for what the initials stood for.”

“We do the same thing with Billy. He’s old enough. But the baby …”

“Maybe you noticed the license number, casually, while you were working. Without even thinking about it, if you know what I mean.”

And Mel could see that she did try for a minute. Her lips pursed, her eyes narrowed. Then she made an impatient movement with her dust rag and closed down. “I’ve got a lot of more important things on my mind. I saw it was a California plate, like I said, but I didn’t stand there and play games with it.”

“No, of course not, but sometimes you pick up things without even knowing it. Then, when you think back—”

“Miss—”

“Sutherland,” Mel told her.

“I’d like to help you. Really. My heart goes out to that poor woman and her husband. But I make a habit of minding my own business and keeping to my own. Now there’s nothing else I can tell you, and I’m falling behind schedule.”

Recognizing the wall she’d just hit, Mel took out a business card. “If you remember anything about the plate, anything at all, would you call me?”

Billy piped up. “Said cat.”

“Billy, don’t interrupt when people are talking.”

He shrugged and drove his fire truck up his sister’s leg to make her giggle.

“What said cat?” Mel asked.

“The car did.” Billy made engine noises. “K-a-t, that spells cat,” he chanted, and had his mother sighing.

“You don’t spell cat with a k. It’s c-a-t. I can’t believe you’ll be going into the second grade and—”