I found a gun. A spare, probably. She wouldn’t have taken her suitcases with her unless she was going off on a job. That was my guess, anyway, and it came from experience. Also, the gun was just a little purse thing, a pearl-handled. 22 automatic, and I imagined she used something a little heavier than that in her work. A. 38, at least. Speaking of which, I did find a box of. 38 shells behind some lacy panties in a drawer, and that substantiated my guesswork, as there was no gun here that went with these shells.

What I didn’t find was evidence of where she’d gone. I went through the wastebaskets, and I even went through a bag of garbage in her kitchen, and found nothing, no plane or bus reservation notice, no nothing. I even played the rubbing a pencil against the top blank sheet of a note pad trick, and while it seems to work on television, all I got for my trouble was dirty fingers.

I sat on an uncomfortable-looking comfortable couch in her living room and wondered what to do next.

That was when her boyfriend came in.

4

I said,“Who the hell are you?”

His mouth dropped open like a trap door.

“So who the hell are you?” I demanded again.

He cocked his head like a dog trying to comprehend its master, narrowing his eyes, making them seem more close-set than they really were.

“Well?” I said.

That’s the only way I know to handle a situation like that: turn the tables, put the shoe on the other foot, or whatever other cliche you want to use to describe what I was doing to him. It was the only way I knew that might avoid immediate violence. I don’t care for physical violence myself, and try to duck it whenever possible.