May Erdich leaned forward and smiled the wide smile and said, “Are you serious?” like maybe I was pulling her leg.

I said, “What?”

“That’s Karen Lloyd. She works at the bank.”

I looked at the picture as if it might’ve changed. “She works at the bank?” We exciting L.A. detectives are quick on the uptake.

“She’s got a twelve-year-old boy named Toby. I see her in the market. We used to be in PTA together.”

“This woman lives here, this woman and her son, Toby.” Swift, we are.

“That’s right.”

I folded the picture and put it back in my pocket. Sonofagun. “Karen Lloyd.”

May Erdich nodded. “That’s right. She works at the First Chelam. I think she’s the manager or something.”

I finished the tea and stood up and May Erdich stood up with me. “Why are you trying to find her? Did she do something bad?” Her eyes were bright and mischievous, thinking how great it would be if someone in town had done something bad.

I said, “It involves family business, and you won’t be doing her a favor if you tell people that a private cop has been asking about her. Do you understand that?”

May Erdich gave me some Groucho and squeezed my arm. “Secrecy is our motto.”

“Right.”

She led me to the door. “You must be a pretty good detective, all the way from Los Angeles to find somebody here in Chelam.”

I put on the G-2 and went out into the cold. “That’s right. I am. In another life I could have been Batman.”

Chapter Nine

Nine

The First Chelam National Bank was a small redbrick building across from the grocery store and next to a place called Zoot’s Hardware. There was a single drive-through window for their customers’ convenience on the west side of the bank and a small L-shaped parking lot wrapping around the east. Someone had planted a couple of young elms at the edge of the parking lot and their leaves were scattered over the cement. The drive-through window was closed.

I parked in the lot and went in. A teenage boy was filling out a deposit slip at a long table, and a heavy woman in stretch pants was talking to a teller at a blond-wood counter. An old guy in a gray security guard’s uniform was reading Tom Clancy. He didn’t look up. There were four windows built into the tellers’ counter, but only one teller was on duty. Another woman sat at a desk behind the counter, and behind her were a couple of offices, but the offices looked empty. Neither the teller nor the woman at the desk appeared to be Karen Shipley.