“Oh, Looocy.” Nicholas shook his finger at her and gave her another wink.

And it was just that easy. Vivian had gotten exactly what she needed, and more. That poor Mrs. Ada M. Carr was going to have her hands full when she got back to the office, though. Who knows what other mistakes and messes Nicholas made?

Vivian sat in her hotel room in the armchair next to the window, eating her Italian take-out ravioli with the fork she’d had to borrow from the hotel’s kitchen. She supposed the restaurant just assumed she’d be taking her food home to eat in her own kitchen because the bag held only the food and a paper napkin, and what kind of respectable lady stayed by herself in a hotel? She wondered if the cooks in the restaurant were authentic Italians, and if they were, were they using the good sauce recipe?

She put the ravioli and fork down on the little side table and got up to push the window open, brushing garlic bread crumbs from her skirt, which did have faint paw prints on it, thank you very much, Brucie. She’d also gotten a run in her stockings. They’d caught on the corner of the Buick’s door as she was making her escape from Mildred.

Vivian settled back into the chair with an eye roll, a heavy sigh, and a cigarette, which she smoked out the open window as the water filled in the bathtub. It’d been the kind of day that required a cigarette and a proper relaxing soak in the claw-foot tub, where she tried not to think about the birdhouse or her driver’s license, and just focus on the hot water soothing her muscles. Edward—she sighed to herself—you make my ass tired.

With her dentures soaking in a glass next to the sink, she slathered on her face cream, inhaling the familiar scent that almost made her feel like she was at home, but then she heard footsteps in the hallway outside her door that made her tense up until she heard, “Laundry!” yelled at the door of one of the other rooms. Oh, shut up. Vivian stomped over to the door, kicking out the bottom of her nightgown, and shook her fist at the voice in the hallway. She couldn’t get more than a few minutes of quiet in this place. Couples laughing in the hallway, or the man in the room next to her coughing all through the night. What kind of person spent more than a few days here and needed to have his laundry done? Criminals. Gangsters. Husbands who’d been kicked out of their homes for lying to their wives.

Vivian’s eyes rolled up and around and right over to the foot of the armchair where she’d eaten her ravioli and smoked her Lucky Strike. When she’d first gotten back to the room she’d plopped her pocketbook and clipboard there on the floor. The photostat of the second birth record Nicholas had copied for her at the clerk’s office was sticking out of the clipboard. It was the one she’d been looking for, and shouldn’t really have surprised her.