“So Lucas asked if he could talk to the other student who had access to the room. Nadine Preston was her name. Lucas was about to graduate-at least, that’s what everyone thought-and so, at Dr. Selman’s request, Lucas had been training this Nadine to take his place on the project. Did you know her?”

“No,” I said.

“Pretty little red-haired gal.”

“Red-haired?”

“Yes.”

“She wear it in a bowl cut?”

“Yes! I thought you said you didn’t know her?”

“I didn’t. But I’ve seen a photograph of her. Quite recently.”

21

DID YOU MAILa set of photographs to Ben Watterson?”

“Who?”

“The president of the Bank of Las Piernas.”

Before she could answer, Frank came into the kitchen. He was dressed for work, which reminded me that I needed to get myself into gear.

“Good morning,” she greeted him.

“Good morning,” he answered, and gave my shoulder a squeeze as he walked over to the coffeemaker.

He looked between us as he poured a cup of coffee, then asked, “Are you going into work today, Irene?”

“Yes, although I might go in a little late. June, what are your plans for the day?”

“I guess the first thing I’ll need to do is rent a car.”

“If you only need to get around town-”

“No, I have things to do here, but I need to get back to Riverside to…to make arrangements for the funeral and so on.”

No one said anything.

“Charles offered to drive back down here and pick me up,” she said. “But he works so hard and was up so late last night, I just hate to make him come all the way back out here. And the bus takes twice as long as driving. Besides, what it would cost to take cabs around town and then take the Greyhound home, I’d just as soon rent a car.”

“There’s a rental place downtown,” I said. “I can drop you off on the way to work.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you have any other friends in Las Piernas?” Frank asked.

“Other friends?” She laughed softly and shook her head. “No, not now. I moved away from here just after Lucas started college. Our old neighborhood doesn’t even exist anymore. I might be able to find some of the people I knew from the church. Some of those people might still be around here somewhere. I could find out where the church moved to, see if any of my old friends are still in the congregation. But I haven’t seen any of them in so long, I wouldn’t even know who to ask for.”

“What do you mean, your old neighborhood doesn’t exist?” I asked.

“I mean, you go to look for it, you won’t find it. It’s gone. You might find a lot of empty buildings and some vacant lots. That’s all. We used to live in a big old hotel that had been turned into apartments. The landlord let it get so run-down, I hated that place. It wasn’t the worst by any means, but it wasn’t where I wanted my children to live. Lord, how I wanted to move out of that old place.”

“You worked as a teacher then?”

“Yes, but that was before I had a permanent position. We moved a lot when the children were small. My late husband was a good man, but he had trouble holding down a job. And he wasn’t the money-saving kind, if you know what I mean. We never had the ends to pay the rent, nothing. By the time we were living here in Las Piernas-must have been when Lucas was six or seven years old-my husband’s health began to fail. A man can’t drink like that and not have some kind of problem. Soon as I’d get money saved, he’d go into the hospital. Even after he died, it took me a long time to pay off all the hospital bills.” She shrugged. “About the time I got free of that, I wanted to save for Lucas’s college education. As it turned out, I was able to move sooner than I planned. Lucas got those scholarships and Charles made up the rest of it.”

“Charles?”

“Yes. I told you he was in Vietnam. Charles sent his soldier’s pay to us. Lucas used some of it, and I bought a house in Charles’s and my name. I was able to move, and Lucas was able to live on campus. When Charles came back home, he lived with me in Riverside while he started his business. Later, he got his own place. Charles even helped Lucas with his graduate school expenses.”

I began to understand Charles a little better. Investing his combat pay in a brother who was kicked out of school must have caused some bitterness between them. And I began to see Lucas differently as well. The committee had denied him more than a degree. Lucas had been the bearer of dreams, the one who was supposed to make it.

“Where was your old neighborhood?” Frank asked.

She named a set of cross streets. I looked up at her.

“Do you know where that is?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “I was just there a few weeks ago.”

I didn’t tell her that her son was there as well, sleeping on a bench.

IWAS RUNNING LATE by then, so I called the city desk. But before I could tell her what was going on, Lydia said, “John wants to talk to you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I’m not sure you’re in trouble. He seemed cheerful when he told me that I should transfer any calls from you to his office.”

“Cheerful. Lydia, cats are cheerful when they have feathers sticking out of their mouths.”

“Hmm,” was her only answer to that, and she transferred me.

Figuring I’d go for the “best defense is a good offense” strategy, I explained to John what had happened the night before and said that I’d be in late.

“You’re not punching a clock, are you, Kelly?” he said easily.

“Not until deadline.”

“Exactly,”he said. “See me when you get in.”

That didn’t sound too promising.

“IREMEMBER ONE PHOTOGRAPH, and a letter, now that you mention it,” June said as we drove downtown. I had asked her again about the letters to Ben Watterson. “The letter was addressed to someone at a bank, I believe. Lucas asked me to mail it for him. He called one day, said he had left it behind when he was visiting me. Left it in his bedroom.” She looked out the car window, then added, “I always had a room ready for him, whenever he wanted to stay with me. When he was in college, he’d come out there to see me all the time. Not so much-not so much later on.”

When I asked her about his last visit to Riverside, she told me he had made the two-hour bus trip to Riverside one weekend; that was a few days before the first envelope arrived in Las Piernas.

“He only asked me to mail one, but he had been sending out a lot of résumés that weekend.”

“Did he tell you they were résumés?”

She frowned. “Well, no, but he was down to the copy shop one day, and I guess I just assumed that was what he was doing. He had some copies made, then typed up letters and took them with him. But he forgot the one envelope. That was the only one I really saw for more than a minute or two.”

“Do you know what was in it?” I asked.

“Well, I think so,” she said. “He asked me to write something on the back of a photograph for him-that photo of him and the man from the bank, where Lucas was receiving a scholarship from them. His own handwriting was so terrible, and I don’t think he wanted to type on the photograph. He had a letter all typed up and ready to go with it.”

“Letter? Are you sure you saw a letter?”

“Of course I’m sure. I saw him put the photo in that envelope with a letter. I figured he might be looking for a job there.”

So there was more than the scholarship photo in the first envelope, which Lucas must have mailed himself, sometime before he left Riverside. June, not knowing that first letter had been mailed, would think the second envelope-the one with the photocopy-contained the photo she wrote on.

“Did Lucas show you any other photos while he was visiting?”

“No, just the one. Why do you ask?”

“I’m just trying to figure out who he was in contact with, what kinds of things he was doing during the past six weeks. Did he make any phone calls while he was in Riverside?”