Second Grave on the Left

She narrowed her eyes, shook her head in memory. “She seems familiar. I’m just not sure. I don’t always pay attention to people. They’re so far away.”

“When you cross, if you decide to, can I have permission to look through your memories and see if I can find her in there?”

She blinked in surprise. “Of course. Is that possible?”

“I have no idea,” I said with a chuckle.

She smiled. “So, what do I do?”

I stood up. “You walk through me. The rest just seems to happen.”

After a long intake of breath, she stood. The air around us danced with excitement. I was happy for her. She’d seemed so completely lost. Maybe this is what Rocket was always talking about. Maybe many of those who stay behind are lost and need me to find them instead of them finding me. But I didn’t know how, short of traveling around the country nonstop.

I had to concentrate, to focus on searching her memories. Just as I took a deep breath, Lori took a step forward, and I heard her whisper, “Oh, my god.”

Her life came rushing at me full-force. From the time she was a child and her mother sold her to a neighbor for the afternoon to get her fix to the time she was in high school and a group of girls pulled her hair as they walked past in the locker room. But the heartbreak was quickly overshadowed when I saw a poem of hers win a contest. It was published in a local paper along with her picture. She had never been so proud. She cleaned up and went to college a semester, but she quickly fell behind, and the heavy weight of failure took root again. She went back to the life she knew, life on the streets peddling herself for her next high, and died of an overdose in a dirty hotel room.

I had to push past the salient parts, to scan her memories before she was gone completely. I found the first time she walked into the café. She sat down and never got up again, remaining locked inside herself for years. I crawled forward, saw patron after patron, too many to look through, so I forced Mimi’s image to the forefront, and I saw a woman stumble in the front door, her face full of fear, her eyes wide and searching.

She sat down and waited, but as car after car pulled up, her nerves got the better of her, and she grabbed an unopened Sharpie off the register and hurried to the bathroom. About a minute later, another woman entered the bathroom, and Mimi rushed out the door, the darkness of night enveloping her.

With a gasp of air, I opened my eyes and clutched at my chest as if emerging from a pool. I filled my lungs and eased back into the chair, blinking in surprise. I’d done it. I’d searched her memories. It took a moment for me to absorb everything I saw. I fought down the sadness that threatened to overwhelm me. Lori’s life had been anything but easy. But she was most definitely in a better place, as hokey as that sounded.

And I found her. I found Mimi.

I glanced back at Cookie, a tiny grin tugging at my mouth. “Let me ask you a question,” I said breathlessly.

“Okay.”

“If you were the wife of a very well-off businessman with a humongoid house and gorgeous children whom you loved more than life, where is the last place anyone would look for you?”

Cookie’s expression changed to hope. “Did it work?”

“It worked.” I glanced over my shoulder and pointed across the street.

“That homeless shelter?” she asked, her voice brimming with disbelief.

I looked back at her with a shrug. “It’s perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. She was right under our noses the whole time.”

“But … oh, my god, okay, what do we do now?” She patted her palms on the table, her enthusiasm barely containable.

“We go say hi.”

Chapter Seventeen

YOU KNOW THOSE BAD THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE? I’M THAT.

—T-SHIRT

I dropped a twenty on the counter as we ran past. “Brad, can you make our orders to go?”

He stuck his head through the pass-out window, his palms raised in question.

“We’ll be right back.”

We raced across the street to a brick building with bars on the windows and a large metal door. It was starting to sprinkle.

“I don’t think they’re open,” Cookie said, panting behind me.

I pounded on the door, waited a moment, then pounded again. After a long while, a sleepy-eyed Hulk opened up.

I decided to smile. Mostly ’cause I didn’t want to incur his wrath. “Hi.” I held up my license. “My name is Charlotte Davidson, and this is Cookie Kowalski. I’m a private investigator on a case for the Albuquerque Police Department,” I half lied. “Can I talk to you?”

“No.” Hulk was grumpy when awakened in the middle of the night. The show never mentioned that aspect of his character. I’d have to write the producers.

And clearly he was not impressed with my license. I held up a twenty instead. “I just want to ask you a couple of questions. I’m looking for a missing woman.”

He snatched the twenty then waited for my Q&A session.

“Oh.” I took Mimi’s photo out of my bag. “Have you seen this woman?”

He studied it, like, forever. With a heavy sigh, I handed over another twenty. If this kept up, I’d have to find an ATM PDQ or we’d be SOL.

“Maybe,” he said. He took it from my hands and looked closer. “Oh, yeah. That’s Molly.”

“Molly?” Molly made sense, considering her name was Mimi. It would be semi-easy for her to get used to answering to as opposed to something like Guinevere or Hildegard.