Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

“I’ve discovered that no one in Boulder has to pay a great deal.” She smiled. “Fine. Yes, I’d be delighted to have lunch with you. My name is Margaret Detweiler.”

“Paul Honecker.” He was relieved she hadn’t taken offense at his calling Mac his “girl.” He knew Mac would have savaged him for doing so. He wondered how many other violations of EEOC he could pile up over lunch. He wasn’t used to interviewing people. Fortunately, he didn’t have to very often. He just sent them to Mac, who took care of replacing what little turnover they had at the plant.

He took her to lunch at Tom’s Tavern, which he assured her had the best hamburgers in Boulder. Over lunch she told him she was recently divorced and was just coming back into the job market after not working for several years. She had no children. She had some letters of reference but they testified more to her character, she was afraid, than her capabilities in the office. Her experience was limited to having helped her husband for a few years when he had first set up his practice. He was a CPA, and she had some familiarity with tax problems and the various forms required by the government to operate a small business.

She spoke slowly and carefully, as though she were unused to speaking about herself. She accepted his offer of a beer, but she didn’t finish it. She ate, however, with great enthusiasm and readily accepted his offer of coffee and dessert.

He asked her to come to the plant on Monday to meet Mary MacPherson, “Mac,” whom everyone who worked there, he most of all, was afraid of being without for the next six weeks. Mac would have the final say on her replacement since it was she who would have to do the training.

He drew her a map. The plant was on the Foothills Highway to Lyons about five miles north of Boulder on the right-hand side of the road. She could see the piles of concrete products from the road, mostly the cisterns. She couldn’t miss it. If it was a clear day, she could follow the cyclists. The hilly stretch of highway between Boulder and Lyons was popular for both racers in training and recreational riders.

“What do you think?” he asked Mac after her interview of Margaret Detweiler on the following Monday.

Mac shifted uncomfortably in the chair behind the metal desk in the trailer that functioned as an office for them both. She was a very large woman who was also very pregnant.

“I liked her. She has a degree in history from the University of Texas, fat lot of good it’ll do her. She seems intelligent, and hopefully that means she can learn quickly. On the down side, she doesn’t have much experience, is an awful typist, but not too bad on the ten-key. I don’t think she’d know double-entry bookkeeping if she fell over it, but then neither do I. Anyway, that’s what you pay Ron for every week. She’s a helluva lot better than most of those bimbos who’ve been dragging in here for the past two weeks. I say, let’s give her a chance but not dwell on it if she’s a mistake.”

She shoved a single sheet of paper at him.

“Here’s her application.”

He took it and glanced over it.

“It doesn’t even say how old she is,” he complained.

“You’re not allowed to ask.” Mac glared at him with that look that said, You don’t know anything. He was fairly accustomed to it.

He helped himself to the lotion from the bottle she kept on her desk. The skin of his hands was always cracked and sometimes bleeding from the work and the cold. This was no white-collar job he had fashioned for himself. Fortunately, the plant was now in its slow period; the timing of Mac’s pregnancy was miraculous. By the time business picked up in the spring, Mac should be ready to come back to work.

He tossed the application back on her desk.

“You’re the boss,” he said, feeling as pleased with himself as Willie looked when he brought an especially succulent field mouse through the cat door and into the living room.

“She doesn’t have a phone, but I told her to call me back late this afternoon. Let’s get her started right away. I don’t know how long this kid is going to stay in the oven, and if Maggie doesn’t work out, we’re going to have to scramble for a replacement.”

Paul thought that Mac should know. She was experienced in these matters. She was Catholic and already had two at home.

“Maggie?”

“That’s what I call her. She said she answers to almost anything.”

He left Maggie in Mac’s capable hands and drove to Texas. It was his mother’s birthday, and she was attaining an age that required the obeisance of her only child. He drove because he hated to fly and liked to drive. Actually, flying terrified him. And he liked driving at speed. He had been a downhill racer after a stint in Nam, qualifying for CU’s ski team before he wrecked his knees.

His mother lived in the hill country north of Austin, and if he really pushed the Porsche he could make it in just under fifteen hours. Mile after mile of land lying hard and dry beneath the cold sky slipped by until the ground began to roll under scrub brush and cactus. At this time of year it was a long barren haul, but he had long ago ceased much to notice the country through which he was driving. He found his thoughts going back to Maggie Detweiler, his new hire.

What kind of life had she had that had disappointed her enough to abandon it?

At some point in his dash across west Texas he was almost surprised to see the city limits sign of San Angelo. Yet this was the route he always took when he drove to his mother’s. He tried to remember what was on Maggie’s application. What was the street?

Rialto. That was it. And the number?

He tried to concentrate. He was curious to see the place that she had fled. He supposed her ex-husband still lived there.

403. It was the last three digits of his matriculation number at the University of Colorado, where he had collected a degree in mechanical engineering when he wasn’t spending his time on the ski slopes.

He slowed the car through the old town, which lay tiredly under a pale sun. This was the place she said had been her home for so many years. He turned on Rialto and drifted down it until he found the number.

It was a street of large old houses that had once reflected the pride and prosperity of their owners. No longer. Paint was peeling, porches were sagging. Some windows were boarded.

403 Rialto did look more prosperous than the rest. The paint was good, the yard was neat. There was a sign in the window: Rooms by the month or by the week.

There was a woman in the yard, bundled up against the cold, frowning at some plants with plastic sacks over them. She stared at him when he rolled down the window to get a better look.

“Help you?” she asked.

He switched off the engine, got out of the car, and stretched. It seemed as cold as Colorado with the wind blowing as hard as it was, though there was no snow whitening the stiff grass.

“I think I must be mistaken. I thought someone I know used to live here. Maggie Detweiler?”

“Might have lived here. She do something she shouldn’t?”

He saw now that the woman’s face wore its lines with borderline hostility, her cheeks blotched pink with the cold.

“Not that I know of. She’s just gone to work for me in Boulder. She said she used to live here. I’m on my way to Austin. I thought I’d stop by.”

She nodded as though that were a perfectly normal thing for him to do. She spoke as if she were used to giving references. “Did live here. For almost two months. Nice woman. Glad she found work. Seemed real respectable. Very quiet.”

The woman shivered against the bitter wind. She said she didn’t think Mrs. Detweiler could find work in San Angelo. Things were really tight there since the oil bust. One day she just picked up her mail, packed up, and left. Didn’t owe any rent though. No, she had no idea where she was from. Mrs. Detweiler didn’t talk about herself.