I said, “Are you May Erdich?”

“That’s right.”

“My name is Elvis Cole. I’m a private detective from Los Angeles. I’m trying to find someone who may or may not have stayed here about eight years ago.”

She smiled. The smile was where the lines came from. “A private detective.”

“Pretty hokey, huh?”

The smile got wider and she nodded.

I showed her one of my cards and gave her a little Groucho Marx. “Sam Grunion, private eye. Secrecy is our motto. We never tell.”

She laughed and slapped the towel against her thigh and said, “No shit.” I was going to like May Erdich just fine.

She opened the door wider, let me come in, took the G-2, then had me sit on a big overstuffed couch in a room she called the parlor. “Would you like a cup of hot tea? I just put some up fresh.”

“That’d be great. Thank you.”

She went out through a swinging door. The parlor was neat and clean, with a hardwood floor that showed neither dust nor scuff marks.

She came back with two glass cups of honey-colored tea on a beaten-pewter tray. There was a bowl of sugar with a little gold spoon in it and a few packets of Sweet’n Low and a saucer of sliced lemons and two glass spoons for stirring the tea and another saucer mounded with what looked like homemade blueberry cookies. The apron was gone and the wisps of hair were now neatly under the pins. I took one of the cookies. “Delicious.”

“Would you like sugar or lemon?”

“I take it plain.”

She made a face. “Ugh. It’s so bitter that way.”

“Private detectives are pretty tough.” I had some of the tea. It was mellow and sweet with mint. Sugar would’ve ruined it.

She said, “Is it exciting to be a detective in Los Angeles?”

“Sometimes. Most of the time it’s doing things that people never think of when they think of private investigators.”

“Like what?”

“Like looking through phone bills and credit card receipts and being put on hold when you’re talking to people at utility companies and the DMV and that kind of thing.”

She nodded, trying to imagine Tom Selleck on hold.

“But sometimes you get to help people and that feels pretty good.”

“Who are you trying to find?”

“A woman named Karen Nelsen. She might’ve been using the name Karen Shipley. Eight years ago, she would’ve had a toddler with her. A little boy, maybe three or four years old.”

She sipped more of the tea and thought about it, then shook her head, a little half shake. “No. No, that doesn’t ring a bell.”

I took out the 8 × 10 and showed it to her. The photo had been folded and there were creases that I tried to smooth.