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“You said you’re here about Celesta Delgado.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I don’t like surprises,” he said. “So I checked. Her residency status was good. She was a good picker. Always had a permit. All our pickers do.”

Kendall followed him into a large room with about twenty massive tables. Young and middle-aged women were busy sorting the raw bundles, trimming the stems of leaves that appeared bug-eaten or torn by the move from the forest to the bag.

“That’s the moneymaker,” he said, indicating a bunch of salal, its dark green, almost leathery leaves glossy with water from a quick rinse. “Lasts for months in cold storage. Can’t keep up with the demand. Bet you’ve had your share of bouquets.”

Kendall nodded. “A few.”

“When you think about it,” he said, “we are dream makers here. Our team creates the foundation for wedding arrangements, new baby bouquets, and, yes, even memorial wreaths. Every moment marked by flowers carries a little bit of Kitsap County.”

“Was Celesta ever a processor here?”

Karl motioned for Kendall to take a seat in his office, which she did.

“She was here for about a month, until she got the restaurant job. She was a good processor. She figured she could make more waiting tables. I didn’t stand in her way. Was glad to have her out in the woods with the Penas. Good people. Good workers.”

She knew that was the bottom line for Mr. Hudson.

“Any problems that you know of between Tulio and Celesta?”

“I wouldn’t really know. They seemed happy.” He looked down at her file.

“You seem hesitant, Mr. Hudson.”

“Look, I am concerned. We’ve had some turf wars. Demand is huge, and we’ve got people coming up from Mexico and other points south canvassing the woods for any scrap of green they can find. A few years ago, it was impossible to get pickers. Now the woods are overrun with them.”

Kendall didn’t say so, but she could feel the ugly undercurrent of racism in the way the man referred to those who worked for him-those who made him enough money to buy the Lexus she saw parked out front-as them.

She noticed the CELEBRATING 50 YEARS gold sticker that was affixed to the outgoing mail on his desk.

“A lot has changed in fifty years,” she said.

“Yes. My father-in-law started this place. He’s dead now, and a good thing-he’d go apoplectic if he had to deal with what I do these days. Between you and me, these people don’t really want to work. At least, not hard. Not like they did back in the day.”

“I see,” Kendall said, deciding she’d never buy a supermarket bouquet again.

“I pay the processors a dollar more an hour than minimum wage, and benefits to boot,” he said, glancing through his office window, which overlooked the women hovering over tables, sorting salal.

“Celesta and the Delgado brothers at least had the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that made this country great. You know, when it actually was great.”

When they were finished, the Every-Greens president escorted Kendall back through the work area.

A Mexican woman of no more than twenty-five handed her a single rose flanked by a fan of huckleberry.

“Celesta is a nice girl. I hope you find her,” she said.

Before Kendall could say anything, Karl Hudson shot the young woman a cold look.

“Break time isn’t for another forty-five, Carmina. Let’s get back to work, ladies.”

Chapter Seven

March 31, 10 a.m.

Port Orchard

Instinct and intuition often play an important function in police work. Those who deny their crucial roles are likely those who don’t possess that something extra that allows an interrogator to home in on the truth when the facts don’t always add up: how the flutter of an eyelash indicates a lie, the curl of an upper lip says more than the words coming from the subject. Truth, Kendall Stark knew, was more than the sum of available facts. There was nothing to really back up the belief that Celesta Delgado simply ditched her boyfriend in the middle of cutting brush in Sunnyslope. Nor did she think that the gentle man who’d come into the Sheriff’s Office was involved with her disappearance. She drove out to Kitsap West, the ramshackle mobile home park that was best known for a dead baby that had been found the previous year on the other side of the rusted eight-foot wire fence that cordoned off the single- and double-wide mobiles, along with a smattering of travel trailers and fifth wheels.

She parked her SUV in front of space 223, a single-wide Aloha with new steps and decking, and knocked.

A woman of about sixty answered. Although it was past ten, she was still wearing slippers and a bathrobe. As she spoke, the remnants of the cigarette she’d been smoking curled in the still air. And while she had a pleasant face and reasonably warm eyes, everything else about her told Kendall that she was going to be of no help. She barely opened the door, for starters.

A sure sign that the person is hiding something inside: a messy house, maybe a dead body…

“I don’t need a vacuum or aromatherapy if that’s what you’re here for,” she said.

Kendall offered a smile. “I’m a detective with the Sheriff’s Office. I’m Kendall Stark.”

“I don’t know anything about my nephew.”

Kendall suppressed a smile. She could never begin to count the times that someone misunderstood why she was on their front doorstep and offered up a relative or a neighbor as a quick means to save themselves from some hidden concern.

“Ma’am, I’m not here about your nephew. I’m here about the missing woman who lived next door.”

The woman widened the door a bit more. “You mean the Mexican?”

“I think they are Salvadoran.”

“Same to me.” She motioned for Kendall to come inside. “I liked Celesta. Nice girl. What she was doing with those rowdies, I’ll never know.”

A four-foot patch of linoleum served as the entryway to a living room that was papered in a cheery orange poppy print. A brown sofa, two small chairs, and a TV playing a shopping channel that sold only gems completed the milieu of a person of big dreams and modest means.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Kendall said, scooting a sheaf of newspapers to one side of the sofa before taking a seat.

“Sally Todd,” she said. “Coffee?”

Kendall politely declined. “No, thanks. I’m here about Celesta. You seem to think there was trouble at home. Am I getting that right?”

Sally Todd tightened the knotted belt on her robe, a pale blue flannel garment that needed laundering, and took a seat facing her visitor.

“Look, these days there is always trouble with young people. I know the girl. I know Tulio and his brothers too. They had their music playing at all hours. I called the sheriff on them five times last summer. You can check on that, if you don’t believe me.”

“Did Celesta ever indicate to you that she wanted out of the relationship? That maybe she wanted to return to El Salvador?”

The older woman looked for her cigarette case and pulled out a More. She flicked on her lighter and pulled air through the slender dark brown cigarette.

“She said that Tulio was no good and she wanted to get away from him. He was too controlling.”

This interested Kendall, although she wasn’t sure if she believed anything this woman had to say. “Really?” she asked.

“I’m talking out of school,” she said, “but I don’t care. The girl needed to get away from the lot of them. The Pena brothers have turned this quiet mobile home park into party central. I think one of the boys stole my leaf blower. They denied it. But that’s what I think. I called the sheriff on them too.”

“I see.”

“Yes, and you can verify all of this. The girl finally got some sense. Really, picking brush? What kind of life is that? She could do better than that. Who couldn’t?”