Holly

July 23, 2021

Holly crosses Red Bank Avenue to the defunct auto repair shop, slips into the driver’s seat of her Prius, and slams the door. It’s been sitting in the sun and is hotter than a sauna, but even though sweat pops on her forehead and the back of her neck almost at once, Holly doesn’t start the car to get the AC working. She only stares out through the windshield, trying to get her mind around what she’s just found out. I’d put your inheritance at just over six million dollars, Emerson said. Plus another three when Uncle Henry dies.

She tries to think of herself as a millionaire, but it doesn’t work. Doesn’t come close to working. All she can see is Uncle Pennybags, the mustachioed and top-hatted avatar of the Monopoly game. She tries to think of what she might do with her new-found riches. Buy clothes? She has enough. Buy a new car? Her Prius is very reliable, and besides, it’s still under warranty. There’s no need to help with Jerome’s education, he’s all set, although she supposes she might help with Barbara’s. Travel? She’s sometimes daydreamed about going on a cruise, but with Covid running rampant…

“Oough,” she mutters. “No.”

The idea of a new apartment comes to her, but she loves the place she has now. Like Baby Bear’s chair and Baby Bear’s bed, it’s just right. Put more money into the business? Why? Just last year she fielded a $250,000 offer from Midwest Investigative Services to make them an affiliate. With Pete’s agreement, she had turned them down. The idea of moving out of the Frederick Building, with its balky elevator and lazy super, has slightly more appeal, but the downtown location is good, and the rent is right.

Not that I have to worry about that anymore, she thinks, and gives a wild little laugh.

Holly finally realizes she’s roasting and turns on the engine. She rolls down the windows until the air conditioning gets some traction and looks at her list of the people she wants to interview. That gives her some focus, because the important thing is the case. The money is just pie in the sky, and as for the more troubling implication of David Emerson’s bombshell (she remembers her mother calling in tears after Daniel Hailey supposedly robbed the three of them and ran off to St. Croix or St. Thomas or St. Wherever), she won’t think about that now. Later she won’t be able to help herself, but in the here and now there’s a missing woman to find.

Part of her insists she’s hiding from an ugly truth. The rest of her refuses that idea. She’s not hiding, she’s finding. At least trying to.

“Cherchez la femme,” Holly says, and takes out her phone. She thinks about calling Marvin Brown, who took Bonnie’s bike to the Reynolds Library, then has a better idea. Instead of Brown, she reaches out to George Rafferty, the real estate man. Holly explains that Bonnie Dahl’s mother has hired her to try and find her daughter, then asks about the day he and Mr. Brown found Bonnie’s bike.

“Oh my God, I hope she’s all right,” Rafferty says. “Hasn’t been in touch with her mom or dad?”

“I hope she is, too,” Holly says, dodging his question. “Who saw the bike first, you or Mr. Brown?”

“Me. I always get to my properties early so I can take a fresh look. That shop, used to be Bill’s Automotive and Small Engine Repair, looks like a teardown to me, but the lifts still work and the location—”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure the location is fine.” Holly thinks no such thing; since the turnpike extension was opened in 2010, traffic on Red Bank Avenue has thinned considerably. “Did you read the note taped to the seat?”

“I sure did. ‘I’ve had enough.’ If I were the girl’s parents, something like that would scare me to death. It could mean she was leaving, or it could mean, you know, something worse. Mr. Brown and I discussed what to do with the bike, and after we looked at the shop, he put it in his pickup and took it to the library.”

“Because of the sticker on the package carrier.”

“Right. That was a nice bike. I can’t remember the brand, but it was nice. All different gears and such. It’s a wonder nobody stole it. Kids hang around that part of the park, you know. The part they call the Thickets.”

“Yes, sir, I’m aware.”

“And that ice cream place down the way? Kids there, too. All the time. They play the video games inside and ride their skateboards outside. Have you been a private eye for long?”

It’s a term that always makes Holly want to grind her teeth. She’s a lot more than an eye. “Quite awhile, yes sir. Just to confirm, you saw the bike first.”

“Right, right.”

“And how long before Mr. Brown showed up?”

“Fifteen minutes, maybe a little longer. I make it a point to get to my properties early, so I can check for vandalism, plus any damages that aren’t on the sell sheet. Did I tell you that?”

“Yes, sir, you did.”

“So do you think you’ll find her? Any leads? Are you hot on the trail?”

Holly tells him it’s too early to be sure of anything. Rafferty begins telling her that if she ever has real estate needs herself, this is a prime time to buy and he has a wide selection, both business and residential. Before he can get too far into his spiel, she tells him she has another call coming in and has to take it. Actually she has to make one, to the library at Bell College.

My mother lied. Uncle Henry did, too.

She shuts that down and makes her call.

“Reynolds Library, Edith Brookings speaking.”

“Hello. My name is Holly Gibney. I’d like to speak to Lakeisha Stone, please.”

“I’m sorry, but Lakeisha has gone north to spend the weekend with some friends. Swimming and camping in Upsala Village. I should be so lucky.” Edith Brookings laughs. “Can I help you? Or take a message?”

Holly happens to know Upsala Village, a rural community that’s home to lots of Amish. It’s no more than twenty miles north of her mother’s house, where she’ll be tomorrow. She might be able to talk to Lakeisha up there. Tomorrow afternoon, if inventorying the house doesn’t take too long, Sunday if not. In the meantime, perhaps the Brookings woman will be able to help.

“I’m a private investigator, Ms. Brookings. Penelope Dahl—Penny—has hired me to look for her daughter.”

“Oh, gee!” She sounds less professional now, and even younger. “I hope you find her. We’re worried to death about Bon!”

“Could I come up to the library and talk to you? It won’t take long. Perhaps if you have an afternoon break—”

“Oh, come any time. Come now, if you want. We’re not busy at all. Most of the summer sessions have been canceled because of the, you know, the Corona.”

“That’s great,” Holly says. “Thank you.”

As she pulls out onto Red Bank Avenue, she takes another look at that big rock with its view of the street and the drive-in screen a mile or two away. She wonders if Pete Steinman, aka Stinky Steinman, sometimes visited it. It wouldn’t surprise her.

At the Reynolds Library, Holly gets both Edith Brookings (“Call me Edie”) and Margaret Brenner, another of the assistant librarians Penny mentioned. Edie is womaning the main desk, but says they can go in the reading room, where she’ll be able to see anyone who has a question or wants to check a book out.

“I wouldn’t dare if Matt Conroy was here,” Edie says, “but he’s on vacation.”

“Mad Matt,” Margaret says. She pulls a face and they both giggle into their masks.

“He’s not really mad or anything,” Edie says, “but he’s kind of a pill. If you talk to him when he comes back, please don’t tell him I said that.”

“Puh-leeze,” Margaret says, and they do their giggling thing again. When the cat’s away the mice will play, Holly thinks. But there’s no harm in these mice; they’re just a couple of nice-looking young women who have had something interesting turn up on an otherwise sleepy day at work. Unfortunately, they know very little about Bonnie Rae, except she broke up with her boyfriend, Tom Higgins.

“Anything else, you’d have to ask Keisha,” Margaret says. “They were tight.”

Holly plans to do that. She asks for Lakeisha’s phone number and Edie gives it to her.

“Did Bonnie say anything about leaving town?” Holly asks. “Maybe just in passing, like wouldn’t it be nice?”

The two young women look at each other. Margaret shrugs and shakes her head.

“Not to me she didn’t,” Edie says. “But you have to understand that Bonnie keeps pretty much to herself. She’s nice, but not what you’d call a sharing soul.”

“Except for Keisha,” Margaret says.

“Yes, except for her.”

“Let me show you something.” From her pocket Holly takes the earring and holds it out to them in the palm of her hand. The way their eyes widen tells her all she needs to know.

“Bonnie’s!” Edie says, and touches it with the tip of her finger. Holly allows this; she knew as soon as she saw it that the earring wasn’t big enough to hope for a fingerprint, including Bonnie Rae’s. “Where was it?”

“In some bushes close to where her bike was found. By itself it means nothing. It’s a clip-on and might have just fallen off.”

“You really should talk to Lakeisha,” Margaret says. “She’ll be back on Monday.”

“I’ll do that,” Holly says, but she doesn’t think she’ll have to wait until Monday.

The library parking lot is almost dead empty and Holly had no trouble getting a shady spot, but the interior of her car is still plenty warm. She gets the AC cranking and calls Bonnie’s mom. Penny doesn’t even bother to say hello, just asks if Holly has found out anything. She sounds both eager and afraid. Holly thinks of that Volvo plastered with Bonnie Rae’s smiling pictures and wishes she had better news.

“I’m going to send you a photo of an earring I picked up near where your daughter’s bike was found. It’s been ID’d as Bonnie’s by two women who work with her at the Reynolds, but I want to be sure.”

“Send me the picture! Please!”

“I will, ASAP. While I’ve got you, do you by any chance have Bonnie’s credit card info?”

“Yes. A week or so after she went missing, I went to her apartment and looked at her last two Visa bills. It was that police detective’s suggestion. Visa is the only card she has. I thought the bills might tell me something, I don’t know what, but there was nothing that stood out. A pair of shoes, two pairs of jeans from Amazon, groceries, some meals she ordered in from DoorDash, pizza from Domino’s… that kind of thing.”

“What about her phone? Does she pay for that with her Visa?”

“Yes. Her carrier’s Verizon, same as mine.”

To Holly, it’s the credit card that matters most. “Text me the number on her card, please. Include the expiration date. Also her cell number.”

Penny says she will. Holly takes a photo of the earring and sends it off. When Penny calls back two minutes later, she’s sobbing. Holly calms her as best she can. Eventually Penny gets hold of herself, but Holly knows the woman is starting down a dark road. One that Holly herself has already traveled a bit further. Bonnie Rae might still be alive, but the chances are growing that she’s not.

Holly sits with her hands in her lap and cool air from the driver’s side vents blowing her fringe around. She needs to think, but the first thing that comes to her is a joke opening: A new millionaire walks into a bar, and…

And what? It’s a joke with no punchline. Which is somehow fitting. She pushes it away and thinks about the case. Why would Bonnie leave her bike on what’s probably the most deserted stretch of Red Bank Avenue? Answer: she wouldn’t. Why would she leave the note but take her bike helmet? Answer: she wouldn’t.

“Leave the gun, take the cannoli,” she murmurs—a line from her favorite gangster movie.

Did someone grab her? Leap out and grab her? If so, then…

She calls Marvin Brown, introduces herself, tells him who she is and what she’s doing, then asks about the bike—did it look damaged in any way? Brown tells her it looked fine, not a scratch on it. She thanks him, ends the call, and puts her thinking cap back on.

No one leaped out and knocked Bonnie off the bike. The concrete in front of the former Bill’s Automotive and Small Engine Repair is so full of cracks and frost heaves it’s probably beyond repair. Marvin Brown will have to do a repave job if he really intends to do business there. If the bike had landed on that rough surface, it almost certainly would have been banged up. She’ll have to check to be sure, but for the time being she’ll take Brown’s word. He works with vehicles for a living, after all, and isn’t that what a bicycle is, when you get right down to it?

The daughter of a liar walks into a bar. Check that, the daughter of a liar and a thief walks into a bar. She leaves the gun but takes the cannoli.

“Stop it,” Holly mutters. “The bike looked good, stay with that. Why does the bike look good?”

It seems to her that the answer is as plain as the blue eyes she sees in her rearview mirror. Because Bonnie stopped there. Stopped and got off. Why stop if she didn’t mean to head downtown to one of those fly-by-night, we-take-cash bus lines? Because she saw someone she knew? Because someone needed help? Or was pretending to need help?

Bill Hodges still sometimes speaks to her, and he does so now. If you go any farther out on that limb, Holly, it’s going to break off.

His voice is right, so she backs up… but not all the way. The bike’s pristine condition suggests Bonnie Rae stopped of her own accord. Whether that was because she actually meant to leave it there or for some other reason is still an open question.

But again: why leave the bike and take the helmet?

Her phone bings with a text. It’s Bonnie’s Visa info and her phone account. Holly can’t sit still anymore. She gets out of her car, calls Pete Huntley, and begins pacing around the library parking lot, sticking to the shady areas as much as she can. That sun is still like a hammer—oough.

The first thing Pete says is, “You took the case after all. Jesus, Holly, after your mother…” He starts coughing.

“Pete, are you all right?”

He gets it under control. “I’m fine. Well, not fine but no worse than I was when I got up this morning. Holly, your mother just died!”

Yes, and left me quite the fortune, Holly thinks. A new millionaire walks into a bar and… something funny happens.

“Working is good for me. And I’m going up to Meadowbrook Estates tomorrow. It seems I inherited a house I don’t want.”

“Your mother’s, right? Well, good for you. It’s a seller’s market. Assuming you want to get rid of it.”

“I do. Are you in the market?”

“Dream on, Gibney.”

“How did you know I took the case?”

“Tall, dark, and handsome has already been on the phone to me.” Pete means Jerome. “He wanted me to look up an address he was too lazy to look up himself.”

Holly finds this a trifle irritating. “We have an address-finder app, and since we pay for it, we should use it once in awhile. Besides, you need something to do as well, Pete. Besides coughing and wheezing.” Holly’s latest turn around the parking lot has brought her back to her Prius. She thinks of her cigarettes in the center console, thinks of coughing and wheezing, and walks on. “What address did he want?”

“A Vera Steinman. She lives in one of those tract houses near Cedar Rest Cemetery. What do you want?”

“I have Bonnie Dahl’s Visa and Verizon information. I need to know if there’s been any activity on either account.”

“I can get that, I have a source, but it’s not strictly legal. In fact—” There’s a honk as Pete blows his nose. “—it’s not legal at all. Which means it will cost, and itemizing it on the Dahl woman’s expense account could be risky.”

“I don’t think you need to use your source,” Holly says. “I bet Izzy will check for you.”

There’s a pause, except for the rasp of Pete’s breathing. To Holly it doesn’t sound good. “Really?”

“She practically gave me the case, and I wasn’t all that surprised. You know how it is in the PD now?”

“FUBAR. Which means—”

“I know what it means.”

“Tell you something, Gibney, when I see what’s going on with the cops now I’m so friggin glad I pulled the pin.”

“Tell Izzy that if we find out something substantive, we’ll loop her in.”

“Yeah? Will we?”

“I haven’t decided,” Holly says primly.

“What’s this Vera Steinman got to do with the Dahl girl?”

“Probably nothing.” Holly could tell Pete that at twenty-four, Bonnie Rae is hardly a girl, but it would do no good. Pete is old-school. She once heard him complaining to Jerome about the Miss America Pageant dropping the swimsuit competition, and his go-to word for breasts is either bazams or jahoobies. “Pete, I have to go.”

“If you catch the Corona running around, Holly, we’ll be shut down a lot longer.”

“I hear you, Pete. Will you call Izzy?”

“Yeah. Good luck, Hols. Really sorry about your mom.”

She walks slowly to her Prius, thinking. Suppose someone was waiting who knew Bonnie’s routine. Did the old boyfriend know it? Maybe. Probably. And the bike. She keeps coming back to the bike, out front and just begging to be stolen. If it had been, would the missing helmet bother her so much?

“No,” she says. “It would not.”

She gets in the car, re-starts the engine, then smiles. She’s thought of a punchline for her joke.