She nodded and bustled over to a little secretary that was against the wall near where the living room L’d into the dining room. Three small drawers were fit across the top of the secretary, and she opened them one by one, looking through pens and pencils and note cards and small envelopes and photographs and a crushed flower and newspaper clippings that looked, from across the room, like obituary columns, and things that might’ve been forty years old. Precious things. She rustled around in it for a while, talking to me but really talking to herself, saying how she’d have to clean the place up, saying that she started to last week but then someone named Edna called and that had been that, no one ever calls until you’re about to do something. She went through the drawers and she came up with a small white envelope that had been torn along the top edge. It had been in the little drawer for so long that the ragged tears were crushed flat and smooth and the paper was dingy. She took out a single sheet of folded yellow notepaper and read it and then showed it to me. It was exactly as Miriam Dichester had said it was, Karen apologizing for leaving while still owing money, saying she hoped Miriam hadn’t experienced a hardship because of it, saying a check had been enclosed to pay Miriam back in full, including 6½% interest, and that she appreciated the kindness and friendship that Miriam had shown her and her son while they had lived with her. There was no return address and no hotel letterhead and no mention of where Karen was or where she was going. The envelope was postmarked Chelam, CT.

Miriam said, “Does it help?”

I nodded. “It’s more than I had before.”

She said, “You find them, you do right by them, hear?”

“That’s my intention.”

“Well, you know what they say about that, don’t you?”

“No. What do they say?”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

When we were in the door the tall white man and the shorter Hispanic man were walking down the street in the other direction. She said, “You see. I told you they’d be back.”

“Maybe they live down the hill. Maybe they’re just out for a walk.”

“My dying ass.” She was a pleasant old gal. “Mark my words, that little sonofabitch is out to steal something.”

I thanked her and gave her one of my cards in case she remembered anything else, and then I went out to the Corvette. A hundred yards down the street, the white guy and the Hispanic guy were using a two-foot steel shim to pop the door on a white 1991 Toyota Supra.

I yelled and ran after them, but by the time I got there they were gone.

Chapter Eight

Eight