get to a friend of mine but I forgot her apartment number. I was wondering if you guys could get this to her on my behalf.”
I handed over the letter with her last known address.
Shelly Jones
901 New Frankfort Road
Lawrenceburg, KY
40342
The clerk studied the envelope, squinted a little, and said, “Umm, one second.” And as he walked out of sight, he yelled, “Hey, Ron?”
The clerk disappeared for a minute, then returned with my empty envelope.
“I can put it on her stack, f’ya like.”
“Stack?”
“Box at her building filled up a month ago. We’ve been ’cumulating her mail here in back.”
“Why aren’t you forwarding it?”
“Got no forwarding address. She just stopped picking it up. Soon we’ll have to start sending back any new mail f’her.”
I started cracking my knuckles. “You guys call the police?”
The clerk paused before answering, like he was waiting for me to deliver a punch line. “Not picking up your mail ain’t no crime.” He shrugged a little. “Should be.”
I leaned on the counter, pointed at him. “Not to have her arrested. To see if she’s okay. She could be dead in there.”
“F’real? People stop picking up their mail all the time for who knows why. Folks leave the country, take extended trips out of town, get called for military service. Sometimes they just leave and don’t worry about having their mail forwarded. Cops don’t care about that.” He shrugged again. “Should, though.”
As I drove back to New York, I tried with all the ingenuity my mind could offer to come up with more than two scenarios, but the only possibilities to emerge were the obvious ones: Melody had been killed or Melody had been relocated. And if she’d been relocated… why?
I didn’t drive back to my apartment. I did not go see my father and my brothers. Sylvia? Not on my mind. The doorbell I was ringing at seven-thirty that Saturday evening belonged to Randall Gardner.
His wife answered the door of their stately colonial in an apron, looked at me like the stranger I was.
“Randy around?”
She paused, wiped her hands slowly on her apron. “What’s this in reference to?”
I sighed, pinched my nose as I conjured up an answer. “It’s got to do with work. We’re having a problem at Justice that only Randy can fix.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh! One sec.”
Randall came to the door with a near-empty glass of red wine, all dim-eyed and flushed as though that glass had not been his first. When he recognized me he cursed under his breath, glanced around the house checking for family, then pulled the door behind him as he stepped out onto the stoop.
“Come on, man. You come to my house with no warning? You lost your freaking mind? We’ve got friends coming over in an hour and—”
“Go back in, put the glass down, explain there’s a problem with the computers.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see a couple walking their Pomeranian.
“You sound like an imbecile, Bovaro. You know nothing about what I do! My work is serious stuff, man. Guy like you could never understand the first thing—”
Blah, blah, blah was all I heard. As the couple looked our way, I nodded and laughed like I loved the story Randall was telling. I let him continue his inebriated tirade, then as the couple disappeared around the corner, I slapped his face like the woman he was.
“You think I’m gonna ask again?” I grabbed him by his collar and shoved him into his door, nailed the back of his head on the hub of the knocker. “Go back inside, make up whatever excuse you like, and be back out here in sixty seconds, or I’m coming in armed and angry, capice?”
“All right!” He waited a second, rubbed his head. “I hate you freaking people.”
Got to hand it to Randall: He returned in under twenty seconds, his jacket half on already. We walked to my Mustang in silence. I started the car and backed out of his driveway. I drove two blocks, still not a word between us. Then just as I approached the fringe of his neighborhood, I pulled over to the side of the road under a pair of massive sycamores and grabbed him by the back of the neck, twisted his head so we were eye to eye.
“Don’t ever make the mistake of doing that to me again, Gardner. Next time I stop by you invite me in, treat me with respect, offer me a glass of your boxed wine, and introduce me as