The Widower s Two-Step Page 0,49

her. Her purple and black hair was pulled into a ponytail that swung back and forth every time she clipped.

"You're going to fall," I said.

"Well, hold the ladder, stupid."

I held the ladder, looking sideways so my face wasn't in Kelly's swim trunks. I concentrated on the house next door.

"Your neighbours are gardeners, too."

Kelly made a "sshhh" sound, though nobody could've heard me. The nextdoor neighbour's front yard consisted of dirt, ragweed, an old Chevy chassis set on cinder blocks, and a brown Frigidaire leaning against an oak tree.

"I've got this idea." Kelly stuck out the tip of her tongue as she tried to clip a vine. "Me and Georgia and Dee are thinking about quitting law school and going into the yard appliance business. You know - selling old washing machines and refrigerators that people can set in their front yards. You drive around this side of Austin you'll see there's obviously a big demand for them. What do you think?"

"I think your uncle would be proud of you."

She smiled. There aren't many times I see the likeness between Kelly Arguello and her uncle. I see it when she smiles. Though, on Kelly, thank God, the smile doesn't have the same maniacal edge.

She leaned out for one last curl of honeysuckle that hung over the window. "Okay.

Enough for now. There's a cooler on the porch. Get that Shiner Bock."

"It's tenthirty."

"You want a light beer instead?"

I took the Shiner. Kelly drank a Pecan Street Ale. We sat on her wooden porch swing while she booted up a little blue portable computer, then started copying the information I had so far on Les SaintPierre.

The laptop beeped unpleasantly. She cursed, held it aloft by the screen, resettled herself so her bare feet were pulled up under her, then put the computer back in her lap and hit the delete key several times.

"New toy?" I asked.

She wrinkled her nose, rabbit style, and kept it that way for a few seconds.

"Ralph?"

She nodded. "I told him I was saving up for one. Next thing I know he's bought it for me. He's always doing that."

"He's just upset you got all those scholarships. Had his heart set on paying your way through college."

"Probably he'd beat up my professors if they didn't give me straight A's."

"That's not true," I insisted. "He'd pay to have them beat up."

She didn't look amused. She kept typing, squinting as she tried to read Milo Chavez's handwriting.

"Lo hace porque le importas, Kelly."

She acted like she hadn't heard me.

"You want all the paperwork on this guy?" she asked. "Like last time?"

"Get his marriage certificate. DMV. Credit. He's also got an air force record. We can at least get his date and nature of discharge on that. Check the tax rolls, especially deeds, building permits - "

"Basically everything," she summed up. She flipped through some more papers, gaining confidence in the task until she hit the personnel files from Julie Kearnes'

computer, all seven pages worth. "Whoa."

She scanned a few lines, looked up at me wideeyed. "What the hell?"

"Part of our problem. This guy might be a vanisher."

She nodded slowly, trying to decide whether she should pretend she was following me or not. "Yeah?"

"Let's say you were into something dangerous."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. But you know you're going to be making some enemies and you want to leave yourself an escape hatch. Or maybe you're just unhappy with your life anyway and you've been planning to skip for a long time, then something bad comes up and you figure the time is ripe. Either way, you want to disappear off the face of the earth for a while, maybe forever. What would you do?"

Kelly thought about it. It can take law students a while to turn their training around - to look at the illegalities that are possible rather than the legalities. When they finally start thinking in reverse, though, it's scary.

"I'd start constructing a new identity," she decided. "New ID, new credit, completely clean paper trail. Maybe I'd butter up somebody who had access to employee files for some big corporations, like these."

She scanned the printouts more closely. "I'd look for somebody deceased who was about my age, somebody who died far away from their town of birth so their birth and death paperwork would've never met up. I could order their birth certificate from their home county, get a new social security number with that, then a driver's license, even a passport. That about right?"

I nodded. "A plus."

"People really do this?"

"A couple of hundred