She thanked me for returning her call, then said, “Reggie was no angel, and nobody knows that better’n me. His daddy was trouble, too-got killed in a bar fight. He passed his drinking along to Reggie, I guess. And his ability to charm the ladies. That boy was in trouble one way or another most of his life.”

“You speak of him using the past tense…”

“That’s exactly my point. Reggie was dead a week before that little girl went missing.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Absolutely no need to be. I loved him, I was his mama, and I wished he’d straightened out. But I would be a liar if I didn’t tell you that he made life miserable for me and Mr. Hayes and my children from my second marriage.”

“How did he die?”

“No certain answer to that. His body was found in Arizona.”

I was silent, thumbing through the photocopies I had from Blake Ives. When I found what I was looking for, I said, “Mr. Ives hired a private investigator, who was able to trace Reggie to a Nevada trailer park around the time Mr. Ives’s daughter disappeared. And your son and a female companion disappeared from the trailer park around that same time.”

“I know all about that PI-he come by here asking about Reggie, told me he thought Reggie and Bonnie had that little girl.” She laughed. “I told him that I could no more picture Reggie wantin’ to live with a little kid than I could picture him flyin’ to the moon, and that’s the truth.” She paused. “I even told him that Reggie and Bonnie wasn’t together, but I seen he didn’t believe me. I don’t know who that-what’d you call her?”

“The PI called her a ‘female companion.’”

“Yeah, well, I know some cops who’d like to know who she was. Anyway, back then I didn’t know Reggie was dead.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Reggie was left for dead out in the desert. He might have been murdered, but it wasn’t a sure thing-he was at the bottom of some cliff out there, and it was a question whether he fell or was pushed. Nobody saw him fall, or even ever saw him out there or knew why he was there. Didn’t have no wallet or anything on him to say who he was.”

“And you say he was found before Carla Ives went missing?”

“The date they give me for the body being brought in was a week before that little girl went missing, if she went missing when you said she did.”

“What’s your theory about what happened to him?”

“I tend to think he pissed somebody off and got himself killed, because he wasn’t exactly the type to go hikin’ in the desert. Anyway, I don’t think whoever it was left him there expected he’d ever be found, but as it happened, some rock hunter out looking for gems come across the body and called the sheriff. Well, they didn’t have nothin’ to go by, because Reggie wasn’t missed by no one.”

“There was no missing-persons report.”

“No. You see, Reggie disappearin’ for long periods of time wasn’t exactly anything new to me. And then I have this PI come along and tell me he’s run off with this Bonnie, that I know left him some time back, and her little girl. But back then I thought maybe they got back together. And when I didn’t hear nothin’ from Reggie, I just thought maybe he’d decided to become a family man, and well, leave it to him to do it such a lousy way.”

She paused, then said, “I did him wrong, thinking of him like that.”

“You say you were contacted by an Arizona medical examiner’s office?”

“Yes. Just about two years ago, I got a call from Arizona. Somebody down there was goin’ through cold cases, John Does in the morgue. A trainee or something, and they give him this job to do. Decided to run the fingerprints. That’s the one time I guess I was lucky Reggie had a prison record. He was in the FBI system, and so they matched him up that way. And my husband, Mr. Hayes, he paid so I could go down there and bring Reggie’s ashes home.”

By that time, she said, she had forgotten about the PI who had been asking about Reggie. My story had reminded her of him.

“I’m not mad at you or Mr. Ives for what’s in the story,” she assured me, “but I started to think about it and figured Reggie got blamed enough for things he did do, maybe I’d set the record straight for him. I mean, I know you don’t come out and say he took that girl, but people will suppose it, just like Mr. Ives does. And maybe if Mr. Ives stops looking in the wrong place, he’ll have an easier time finding her.”

She gave me the names of her contacts in Arizona. I thanked her, made some notes, and went back to retrieving messages.

I logged onto my computer and found my e-mail in-box nearly as overloaded as my voice mail, although a few of the subject lines told me I had the usual amount of déjà poo in there, too-jokes and links that had been sent to me a dozen times before. Nothing dies on the Internet.

I was deleting spam while half-listening to messages, which is why I had to replay one of them-a young girl. I wondered why she had hung up before finishing her first message, and felt relief that she had left the second one.

A scared young girl, whispering two messages. Messages left before seven in the morning. Not the usual hour for crank calls by kids.

Huntington Beach-where a man had seen a girl who matched Carla Ives’s description.

For a few seconds, I told myself that I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. But I hadn’t reached this point in my career by ignoring gut feelings. I jumped: If this wasn’t Carla Ives, I wouldn’t lose much time following one false trail.

Playa Azul and Vista del Mar. I looked up the location, printed it out, and hurried over to the City Desk. “I have to follow up on a lead,” I told Lydia. “You can reach me on my cell phone.”

I heard her surprised “What-?” and not much more as I left the newsroom.

I glanced at my watch again when I reached the car.

If I didn’t run into traffic, I could just make it on time.

CHAPTER 40

Tuesday, May 2

8:55 A.M.

A HOME IN LAS PIERNAS

CLEO posed before the mirrors on the sliding closet doors. She felt pleased. She had done a really excellent job this time. The man’s suit looked good on her. She liked the shoes. They made her look like someone who was about to take care of serious business.

Well, what could be more serious than murder?

The thought made her laugh.

She had a hat to go with this one. When she put the hat on and adopted certain mannerisms and a way of walking, she knew for a fact that no one watching from a neighboring window would be likely to identify the person they saw as a woman.

In the trunk of the BMW 325xi parked in the garage, she had carefully stored coveralls and work boots, as well as her second complete outfit. Now, that one really looked great on her.

She looked around her. She liked this little house. Only two of her neighbors on this quiet suburban street had met her, and neither knew her real name. She told them she was an international sales representative who traveled a great deal. Nothing of real value was kept in the house, but she used a security system she controlled from her laptop to monitor alarms, as well as the small cameras mounted outside the house and in the various rooms to turn lights and radios off and on. The system would page her if anyone set off an alarm. No one had done so yet, which was something of a disappointment-she planned to deal with the problem personally if it ever happened.

A lawn service came by twice a week to ensure that the yard was clean and green, and that leaflets and flyers were removed from the porch. Her mail was forwarded to a private mail drop.

She had Roy to thank for the inspiration of living invisibly in suburbia. His example taught her to be the perfect, quiet homeowner who never annoyed her neighbors and was never annoyed by them. She never held parties, and did not cause concern by bringing unsavory strangers as visitors to the neighborhood. She never brought any kind of visitor to this house.