“You always knew what I was thinking, even when I didn’t have a clue myself.”
“What can I say, it’s a gift.” I looked at her hand. “Just as that was,” I said, as I gently folded her fingers around the chain. “It’s part of the past. Our history. And regardless of what a jerk I turned out to be, when I gave you that locket I loved you more than life itself. Nothing’s going to change that.”
I could see that she was clearly distressed.
“Look,” I continued, “I don’t have the right to tell you what to do. That chain and locket may hold the key to, or symbolize, everything bad that has happened in your life since graduation. So if you want to throw it in my face as a form of - what do they call it, closure? - then I’ll understand. Really. But in all honesty, I’d like you to keep it.”
Maria looked if not confused, than a little embarrassed.
“I just thought you might like it back, seeing as how it was your mother’s,” she finally said.
“She’s the one who told me to give it to you.”
The revelation brought another smile to Maria’s lips. “I know. She told me in the hospital. Just a couple of days before . . .” Maria stopped as I took a long swig from my bottle. “I never really got to talk to you after she died. Then when the funeral was over, you just . . .”
“Vanished?”
“Yeah, vanished.”
She began to look very pale and uncomfortable in my presence. “I guess I’ll keep this - for now at least,” she said, sliding the chain into her pant’s pocket as she wiped tears out of the corners of her eyes. “It’s good to see you again, Steve,” she said haltingly, “but I’ve really got to go.”
I watched helplessly as Maria ran out of the bar and out of my life. It was then I caught my reflection in the bar’s mirror.
“Could you be more of an ass?” I asked my twin.
“Are you talking to me?”
I turned to my right and saw the barkeeper eyeing me suspiciously. “Just talking to myself,” I explained sheepishly.
“Do that often?” the barkeep asked with an amused smile.
“Only when I’m alone.”
“If that scene that just played out is any indication of how you treat women, I suspect you’re by yourself quite a bit.”
I let the comment slide and threw a five dollar bill down on the bar. As I walked out into the bright afternoon sunshine, I internally berated myself for being so stupid. Since leaving Delta, I’d thought about seeing Maria again every day, but when I finally had the opportunity to straighten things out I’d blown it.
I replayed our brief encounter and dreaded the fact that I knew nothing about her current life.
Was she married?
Did she have kids?
Did she still live in town?
On the off chance she worked in the vicinity of Scooter’s Bar, I slowed my pace as I walked by the businesses that made up the downtown core and glanced in the windows.
No luck.
She had vanished into thin air, just as Barry Jones had seven years earlier. Or so the story went.
Although I figured the Jones file was a dog, I hoped I’d be able to relocate Maria before skipping town a second time.
If I couldn’t, maybe the private investigation field wasn’t for me after all.
My first task was to find the library. Make that the new library. The one I’d often frequented as a kid had been torn down in order to make room for a recently rebuilt town hall. I learned from a passing teenager that the “place where they keep the books” had been moved two streets south, and was now part of the community centre.
Entering the centre, I braced myself for an onslaught of “welcome backs” from people I’d known growing up, but no one paid attention to me. In fact, no one seemed even remotely familiar looking.
This may be a good thing, I thought, as I made my way through the lobby, past the swimming pool entrance and then into the library itself.
“May I help you?” a female voice inquired.
I turned expecting to see Mrs. Jameson, the one and only librarian from my youth. What I saw however, was an attractive young woman I guessed was nineteen, smiling in my direction.
“You’re not Mrs. Jameson,” I quipped.
“Mrs. Jameson?” the woman replied apprehensively. “Oh - Mrs. Jameson - the old librarian.”
“Yes. Is she still in charge?” I asked, taking in my spacious surroundings.
“Actually,” the woman started hesitantly, “Mrs. Jameson checked out her last book - so to speak - a couple years ago. Didn’t you see the memorial plaque as you came in?”
“Must have missed it,” I replied.
It dawned on me that a lot of people I knew as a teenager - young or old - had in the intervening years moved onto greener pastures (literally and figuratively speaking).
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I added.
“I may not know every title here, like Mrs. Jameson did,” the young librarian said with a warm sincere grin, “but I bet I can help you find whatever you’re looking for.”
I watched her for a couple seconds, studying her face and body language. She seemed so innocent. The nineteen year old females I was accustomed to dealing with were usually stoned out of their minds and selling their bodies on the streets. Then something in the way her lips curled upwards at the corners of her mouth sent a pulse of recognition to my mind.
“Your first name wouldn’t happen to be Linda, would it?” I asked.
“How’d you know that?” she replied astonished.
“I went to school with your brother Keith. Your last name’s Burkhard, right?”
Now she studied me for a few seconds. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember you,” she responded.
And why should you? I thought. You were probably all of six or seven years old the last time we were in the same room together.
“I doubt you would. I’m Steve Cassidy. My family lived on Salisbury Drive. The big yellow house at the end of the street.”
“I remember that place,” she said, her face brightening. “It had two large pillars on the front porch.”
I stood confused. “You talk as though it’s no longer there.” A pain shot through my system, with the sudden realization
