Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

I’m so sorry
smile. Giant brown pony eyes, her
pink shirt ending just above crisp white shorts. High-heeled
sandals, curled hair, gold hoops. 
This
, I thought, 
is how you
not 
dress for a search
.
Please don’t talk to me, lady
.
‘Hi, Nick, I’m Shawna Kelly. 
I’m so sorry
.’ She had an
unnecessarily loud voice, a bit of a bray, like some
enchanted, hot donkey. She held out her hand, and I felt a
flick of alarm as Shawna’s friends started ambling down the
trail, casting girl-clique glances back toward us, the couple.
I offered what I had: my thanks, my water, my lip-
swallowing awkwardness. Shawna didn’t make any move
to leave, even though I was staring ahead, toward the trail
where her friends had disappeared.
‘I hope you have friends, relatives, who are looking out
for you during this, Nick,’ she said, swatting a horsefly. ‘Men
forget to take care of themselves. Comfort food is what you

---

need.’
‘We’ve been eating mostly cold cuts – you know, fast,
easy.’ I could still taste the salami in the back of my throat,
the fumes floating up from my belly. I became aware that I
hadn’t brushed my teeth since the morning.
‘Oh, you poor man. Well, cold cuts, that won’t do it.’
She shook her head, the gold hoops flickering sunlight.
‘You need to keep up your strength. Now, you are lucky,
because 
I
make a mean chicken Frito pie. You know what?
I am going to put that together and drop it by the volunteer
center tomorrow. You can just microwave it whenever you
want a nice warm dinner.’
‘Oh, that sounds like too much trouble, really. We’re
fine. We really are.’
‘You’ll be more fine after you eat a good meal,’ she
said, patting my arm.
Silence. She tried another angle.
‘I really hope it doesn’t end up having anything to do …
with our homeless problem,’ she said. ‘I swear, I have filed
complaint after complaint. One broke into my garden last
month. My motion sensor went off, so I peeked outside and
there he was, kneeling in the dirt, just guzzling tomatoes.
Gnawing at them like apples, his face and shirt were
covered in juice and seeds. I tried to scare him off, but he
loaded up at least twenty before he ran off. They were on
the edge anyway, those Blue Book guys. No other skills.’
I felt a sudden affinity for the troop of Blue Book men,
pictured myself walking into their bitter encampment,
waving a white flag: 
I am your brother, I used to work in
print too. The computers stole my job too
.
‘Don’t tell me you’re too young to remember Blue

---

Books, Nick,’ Shawna was saying. She poked me in the
ribs, making me jump more than I should have.
‘I’m so old, I’d forgotten about Blue Books until you
reminded me.’
She laughed: ‘What are you, thirty-one, thirty-two?’
‘Try thirty-four.’
‘A baby.’
The trio of energetic elderly ladies arrived just then,
tromping toward us, one working her cell phone, all wearing
sturdy canvas garden skirts, Keds, and sleeveless golf tops
revealing wobbly arms. They nodded at me respectfully,
then flicked a glance of disapproval when they saw
Shawna. We looked like a couple hosting a backyard
barbecue. We looked inappropriate.
Please go away, Shawna
, I thought.
‘So anyway, the homeless guys, they can be really
aggressive, like, threatening, toward women,’ Shawna
said. ‘I mentioned it to Detective Boney, but I get the feeling
she doesn’t like me very much.’
‘Why do you say that?’ I already knew what she was
going to say, the mantra of all attractive women.
‘Women don’t like me all that much.’ She shrugged.
‘Just one of those things. Did – does Amy have a lot of
friends in town?’
A number of women – friends of my mom’s, friends of
Go’s – had invited Amy to book clubs and Amway parties
and girls’ nights at Chili’s. Amy had predictably declined all
but a few, which she attended and hated: ‘We ordered a
million little fried things and drank cocktails made from 
ice
cream
.’
Shawna was watching me, wanting to know about

---

Amy, wanting to be grouped together with my wife, who
would hate her.
‘I think she may have the same problem you do,’ I said
in a clipped voice.
She smiled.
Leave, Shawna
.
‘It’s hard to come to a new town,’ she said. ‘Hard to
make friends, the older you get. Is she your age?’
‘Thirty-eight.’
That seemed to please her too.
Go the fuck away
.
‘Smart man, likes them older women.’
She pulled a cell phone out of her giant chartreuse
handbag, laughing. ‘Come here,’ she said, and pulled an
arm around me. ‘Give me a big chicken-Frito casserole
smile.’
I wanted to smack her, right then, the obliviousness,
the 
girliness
, of her: trying to get an ego stroke from the
husband of a missing woman. I swallowed my rage, tried to
hit reverse, tried to overcompensate and 
be nice
, so I
smiled robotically as she pressed her face against my
cheek and took a photo with her phone, the fake camera-
click sound waking me.
She turned the phone around, and I saw our two
sunburned faces pressed together, smiling as if we were
on a date at the baseball game. Looking at my smarmy
grin, my hooded eyes, I thought, 
I would hate this guy
.

---