“She was more anxious. And quieter, too. She seemed to have a lot on her mind. I mean, she could put on a good front for people walking in the door, but she seemed pretty agitated a lot of the time.”

“Did she talk about what might be troubling her?”

“Not much, but I had a sense it was about Cory.”

“What’s your take on him?”

“I don’t know. Kind of a weirdo, really.”

“You ever hang out?”

Mike shook his head. “No. But I’ll say this about him. He’s a guy who talks himself up a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, he could have been Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. In his head, he’s a lot more important than he really is. Does that make sense?”

“I think so. Anything else?”

“He liked to watch, sometimes.”

“Liked to watch what?”

“When I worked. How I did it.”

“He watched you do tattoos?”

“Yeah. But only if it was okay with the customer.”

Duckworth made some mental notes. “Back to Dolly. Did she ever talk about Craig Pierce? Or Jeremy Pilford?”

“Who the hell are they?”

“Pierce was the guy who basically admitted he molested a mentally disabled girl, but got away with it, and Pilford was the one they called the Big Baby.”

“Oh yeah. She did mention them. Asked me what I thought.” He shrugged. “I hadn’t actually thought a whole lot about them, except to say that people usually got what was coming to them, sooner or later.”

“But she did mention them.”

Mike nodded.

“What about Carol Beakman? You ever heard that name?”

“Never. That doesn’t ring any bells at all. You know, there was one really funny thing she asked me one day.”

“What was that?”

“She wondered if the court system was easier on women than men. Like, if a man forced a woman to do a bad thing, would they punish her for it?”

“Dolly actually asked you that.”

“Yeah. I thought it was weird, but didn’t make much of it. Why would she ask that?”

“Hard to say.”

“She said there was some case in Canada she read about, where this couple kidnapped and killed some girls but the woman pretty much got off because she said she was abused and forced to participate.”

“I know the case,” Duckworth said. “Twenty years ago or more.”

“Dolly said something like, women sometimes get a pass when they don’t deserve to.”

“Interesting.” Duckworth nodded his head in gratitude. “Thanks for all your help.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You said your name’s Duckworth, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You any relation to Trevor, by any chance?”

Duckworth felt caught off guard. “Uh, yeah. He’s my son.”

Mike smiled. “I wondered, because, you know, it’s not the most common name in the world.”

“You know Trevor?”