I stared at the screen. I didn’t want to lie to protect Gertrude Perec’s feelings. I didn’t want to break personal news to Cady myself. I finally wrote, you’re not related to the child whose bones doris mckinnon dug up. the risk of plague out there is high: stay away from it.

I started rolling up my newsprint notes when my phone rang. A second unknown caller with a Kansas area code. When I answered, it was a woman with a soft voice and a Kansas twang.

“Are you the lady who advertised about Matthew Chastain?”

I dropped the papers. “Yes. I’m V.I. Warshawski. Who is this?”

“Charmaine Long. I’m Matt’s sister.”

52
Good Country People

Charmaine had driven in from Belleville, Kansas, the town where she and Matt had grown up. It was a neighbor who had pointed out the Facebook post. “We haven’t heard anything in so long, I’d almost forgotten him. Where is he? How do you know him?”

“I don’t,” I said as gently as possible. “I was trying to find him because I think he was an important witness to something that happened in Lawrence thirty-five years ago.”

Charmaine and her friend were staying at a motel west of town. I offered to meet her there, but she wanted to come into “the city,” as she referred to downtown Lawrence.

I gave her directions to the Hippo. While I waited, I answered e-mails from Chicago, which was beginning to feel like a place I had known only vaguely, like a city where you spent a summer as a child but now can’t quite remember.

I recognized Charmaine as soon as she came into the Decadent Hippo, not because she resembled Sonia’s sketches of her brother, but because she looked around eagerly, as if Matt himself might appear at one of the tables.

She was an angular woman in her fifties, her salt-and-pepper hair cut in a straight line that didn’t quite reach her shoulders. Her face was freckled from long hours in the sun.

When I stood to greet her, the light died from her eyes: she had hoped against all hope that her brother would be with me. I offered her something to drink; her eyes widened at the array of bottles behind the bar.

“I’m not much for alcohol in the morning. Not often ever, really, just Christmas and birthdays.” Her tanned skin turned darker with embarrassment. “Does that make my small-town life obvious?”

I smiled. “I’m not much for alcohol in the morning either, but they make good coffee here. I’m having coffee. There’s tea, and soft drinks.”

When Charmaine ordered coffee, Simone, sensing either drama or Charmaine’s need for care, brought it to her at a small table in the corner.