still pretty tight, you know? So that’s why if one of us has a guy, we usually go to his place.”
“She have a guy?” Eve asked as Peabody walked toward the bedroom.
“She’s been seeing somebody a couple of weeks. His name’s Bobby.”
“Bobby got a last name?”
“Probably.” Essie shrugged. “I don’t know it. She’s with him, probably. Tina’s got this real romantic heart. She falls for a guy, she falls hard.”
Eve scanned the bedroom. One narrow bed, neatly made, one child-sized dresser, likely brought from home. There was a pretty little decorative box on it and a cheap vase with fake roses. Eve lifted the top of the box, heard the tinkling tune it played and saw a few pieces of inexpensive jewelry inside.
“We share the closet,” Essie said as Peabody poked inside the tiny closet.
“Where’d she meet this Bobby?” Peabody asked her, and moved from the closet into the bathroom.
“I don’t know. We live in this box together, but we try to stay out of each other’s faces, you know? She just says she met this guy, and he’s really cute and sweet and smart. Said he knew all about books and art and shit. She goes for that. She went out to meet him like at an art gallery or something one night.”
“You never met him?” Eve asked.
“No. She was always meeting him somewhere. We don’t bring guys here much. Jeez, look at this place.” She looked around it with the forlorn and resigned expression of a woman who knew it was the best she was going to do. “She was going out to meet him Saturday night, after work and shit. To a play or something. When she didn’t come home, I figured she’d stayed at his place. No big. But she doesn’t miss work, and she hasn’t ever stayed out of touch this long, so I’m starting to worry, you know?”
“Why don’t we file a report?” Peabody stepped back out of the bath. “A missing person’s report.”
“Oh man, you think?” Essie scratched at her bicolored hair. “She comes waltzing in here and finds out I did that, she’ll be on my case for a month. We don’t have to tell my parents, do we? They’ll get all twisted inside out and come running over here hysterical and whatever.”
“Have you checked with them? Maybe she went home for a couple days.”
“Nah. I mean yeah, I checked. I buzzed my mom and did the hey, how’re things, la la la. She said to have Tina call ’cause she likes to hear from her girls. So I know she hasn’t seen her. My mom would flip sideways if she thought Tina’s shacked up with some guy.”
“We’ll take care of it. Why don’t you give the information to Detective Peabody?” Eve looked at the tidily made bed.
“She’s not off with some guy for extended nooky,” Eve said when they were back in the car. “Girls like that don’t take off without a change of clothes, without taking earrings and their toothbrush. She doesn’t miss a day of work in eight months, but she just happens to miss the Gannon job?”
“You think she was in on it?”
Eve thought of the tiny, tidy apartment. The little music box of trinkets. “Not on purpose. I doubt the same can be said for Bobby.”
“It’s going to be tough to track down some guy named Bobby. No full name, no description.”
“He left footprints somewhere. Do a check on Jane Does, any that came in since Saturday night. We’re heading down to the morgue anyway. Let’s just hope we don’t find her there.”
“Want your taco?”
Eve unwrapped it on her lap, then decided eating it while she drove was just asking to go through the rest of the day with taco juice on her shirt. She switched to auto, clicked back a couple inches and chowed down.
When the in-dash ’link signaled, she shook her head. “Screen it,” she said with a mouthful of mystery meat by-product and sinus-clearing sauce.
“Nadine Furst,” Peabody announced.
“Too bad I’m on lunch break.” She slurped up Pepsi and ignored the call. “So, a maid from the projects somehow hooks up with some guy named Bobby, who takes her to art galleries and the theater, but he never comes to her place and meets her sister. She’s out of touch, missing work, among the missing for three days, but her new boyfriend doesn’t call, leave a message, scoot by to see what’s up. Nothing.”