Блейк Крауч: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, No. 5. Whole No. 813, May 2009

“Can you show me some identification, Mrs. Holloway?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, putting a hand to her lank hair and looking away. “I come down here in such a rush I must have forgot it.”

“That can happen,” I said. Her body language and her eyes both told me she was lying. “Do you have a picture of Megan?”

That she had remembered to bring. She hooked a finger into a vest pocket and extracted a snapshot of a dark-haired teenager leaning over a picnic table in the desert, looking up as she reached into a cooler for something. She was wearing a pink T-shirt and a denim mini that showed off long, well-tanned legs. Even so, I could see some family resemblance. The daughter was delicate-boned like the mother, but her expression was full of independent spirit that had yet to be extinguished. Pretty, smart, and her own person. No wonder she was out of there.

One more thing about that picture: I immediately recognized the girl as the one I’d sent to the church less than a month before. I’d seen her on the sidewalk in front of the library, she panhandled me, and before I gave her my five-dollar contribution I talked to her long enough to tell that she wasn’t a druggie or a crazy that needed other kinds of help. On the contrary, she seemed like a nice kid. I told her about the church, and she smiled happily, thanked me three times, and took off straight up the hill. I hadn’t seen her since.

I looked back up at Ruth, thinking that with such a weird family, Megan could be running away for good reason. I heard myself say, “Tell you what, Mrs. Holloway. I don’t see how I can take you on as a client, because I just don’t have enough to go on, but let me tell you what I can do. I’ll go see if someone at the church will talk to me. For that I’d charge one hundred dollars as a flat fee, but if I get information and we decide to work together, that would be a deposit. That work for you?”

“Oh yes, that would be fine.”

“How did you want to take care of that?”

“Oh, we only use cash,” she said, picking around in an inside vest pocket. She wasn’t carrying a purse. “We’re sure not rich,” she said more loudly than necessary. “Rich man’s got less chance of gettin’ into heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle.” She glared out the window as though hoping that there were rich men around to hear her. “We’re gettin’ our reward, though — we’re rich enough in faith to know we’re chosen.”

Well, didn’t that sound smug.

She pulled two fifties out of a vest pocket and put them on my desk.

I took them and said, “I’ll also need a number where I can reach you.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow or call you tonight,” she said, taking a business card.

“No, that won’t work. I’m not in the office and I’m in the process of changing my cellular service,” I lied. “Why don’t I leave a message on your home phone?”

“Don’t have no phone.” She sounded smug about that too.

“How about a motel number or something local, then? Where are you staying?”

“With an old friend in Anaheim,” she said reluctantly. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to take a message for me.” She got out and unfolded a piece of paper from some grinning realtor’s giveaway pad and pushed it across for me to copy the friend’s number penciled across it.

I gave back the original, noting that the phone number was in the 714 area code, which would be right for Anaheim. A little nugget of truth? Who knew? I stood up and told her I’d call her that evening or the next day. “You have transportation, Mrs. Holloway?”

She nodded and said, “You can call me Ruth. I left my girlfriend waiting in her car.” She pointed up the hill.

You don’t generally get all breathless walking downhill.

I gave her a good lead and put on my uncolorful jacket before I tailed her — downhill — to a public coin lot where she got into a mud-spattered old pickup with Texas plates. No girlfriend, either. A man was at the wheel, and I watched them stop at the bottom of the hill and turn left on Pacific Coast Highway. South, the direction opposite Anaheim.

I returned to my office, called in a chip to Ron Walker, a really nice but unfortunately married acquaintance in a slightly shady netherworld of employment, to see if he could find out who owned the truck. I put the hundred dollars into my floor safe to protect it from me. Maybe I’d give it to the kid if I found her. In the combination break/conference/quick-change dressing room, I put on a dress, sandals, hoop earrings, and a jacket, grabbed my leather tote, and hiked up to The Little Church on the Hill.

According to the glass-front announcement board in the foyer, there was a youth-group meeting in session, and I decided to wait until it let out. There was a pretty little meditation garden which had not been sacrificed for more parking area, which made me like the place even more. I tried to keep my imagination in check while I picked up messages. One from my mother inviting me to see Medea with her that weekend, assuring me, “It’s entirely modern. I understand the whole cast is only going to meet on the one night of the performance. No rehearsals. Thought you’d like it, baby. Let me know.”

They really shouldn’t let schoolteachers retire early. I decided to call her back later.

I’m not religious myself, but it was a meditation garden, so I meditated on how lucky I was to have great parents, even if my mother was a bit ethereal at times, my dad a bit too analytical all the time. This kid Megan had run away from her parents, and one of them had just been lying to me. I connected the dots to create dramatic links from Texas to a mousy housewife who talked in religious references to a family that hung out at gun shows. Then I reminded myself not to get ahead of the information I had.

I scanned the cloud-sponged sky to its shimmering horizon, then closed my eyes to smell the ocean, wet earth, sage, and eucalyptus. Maybe yesterday’s would be the last rain of the season.

A minute later, a group of teens came out of the church with a middle-aged woman. She wore her salt-and-pepper hair like a helmet, and her short, stocky build, made shorter and stockier by a thick brown sweater and wide tweed slacks, resembled a mother bear. When she caught sight of me, her expression turned wary. She finished her conversation with a couple of lingering boys with a gentle shoulder-punch for each, and they left looking happy, one with a book-bag slung carelessly over his shoulder, their running shoes scuffling along. I approached her with a business card held out, explaining that I was looking for a runaway named Megan Doyle. Could she help?

“I doubt it,” she said, the welcome dimming in her eyes as she read the card, adding, “You didn’t think she was in our little group here, did you? Because—”

“No, I was just waiting to talk to you. Nice little garden. Very Zen.”

“—because you’re no doubt aware the place to report missing persons is the police. Have you contacted them?”

“Not yet. I have a picture. Would you mind?” I dug for it in my leather tote.

“Don’t bother. I already saw it,” she said, shaking her head. “So you’re working for the mother. I already told her I don’t know the child. Even if I did...” She let her voice trail off, and the downward cast of her eyes told me worlds about why she wasn’t always eager to send runaways back home.

“Just so you know,” I said, “I met Megan on the street and sent her up here to you. And Ruth Holloway isn’t really a client. I only said I’d see if you’d talk to me. That’s the extent of the deal.”

She took another look at me, and waited, maybe for more information.

I said, “I took off myself once,” not entirely lying but stealing a glance upward for incoming bolts of lightning. “I know some kids have good reasons for leaving and don’t want to be found. But I understand that a friend heard from Megan and she said she was here, at least she was a few days ago—”