‘Sure, sure, some.’
‘Would you mind looking at a photo and telling me if you recognise him at all?’
A photo? This was a new one on me. The plot was thickening. Why wouldn’t Stephen have told me he had a photo of the man and who he had gotten it from?
‘Show me.’ She wrapped up her knitting tightly and pulled some wire-frame glasses from a case resting on top of a newspaper by her feet.
Stephen slipped a photo from his pocket and crouched down in front of her, showing her the picture. I tilted my head, trying to get a look myself, but she took it from him and held it up to her nose. Then she nodded and handed it back.
‘I remember. He was English like you, yes?’
Stephen nodded and slid the photo away quickly again in the back pocket of his pants as he stood up.
‘Peanut butter and plums,’ she continued. ‘He came in every week for them. Tried to ask my daughter out once or twice. She wasn’t interested, more sense than that. Always polite though. Very polite.’
Stephen smiled again but it was tighter. ‘Thank you. I really appreciate your help.’
I caught hold of the side of his shirt because for some reason I thought he was getting ready to walk. The heat of his ribs through his clothes against my knuckles made my stomach flutter. ‘When did the apartments get turned into a parking lot?’
‘About ten years ago. But he left before that.’
‘Any idea where he went?’
‘Oh, sure, he left me a forwarding address.’ She rolled her eyes as she removed her reading glasses. ‘No, of course not. But he used to work for an Italian restaurant around here, delivering food. Might still be there.’ She shrugged. ‘All I know is, he doesn’t shop in our market anymore.’
‘That’s great, thank you so much.’
‘If you’re grateful, why not go buy something from my family’s market?’
We both nodded obediently, and I herded Stephen towards the double doors on the corner of the building.
‘Good luck, young man,’ she called after us. ‘I hope he’s worth finding.’
‘I doubt it,’ Stephen muttered under his breath, but he smiled again and waved his thanks to the woman.
‘Why d’you doubt it?’ I asked as we got inside the blessedly air-conditioned market.
He rubbed his hand along his jaw, his short beard making a soft rasp and turned quickly down the fruit and vegetable aisle. ‘After all this effort, it’s likely to be a two-minute conversation.’
‘You want more than that?’ I pretended to be focused on picking a carton of strawberries, while watching him from the corner of my eye, but he was pretending just as hard to be interested in the peaches.
‘No.’ He grabbed a punnet, took my strawberries, and we headed to the cash desk, the squeak of his shoes on the shiny tiles making the pause in his answer all the more apparent. ‘I just want it sorted.’
‘Well, so far so good. One conversation and we already have two – no three – important bits of information.’ I got out my notebook and started scribbling in it as we queued.
‘And what would they be? He liked peanut butter and chatting up women?’
‘Not where my mind was going but no information should be discounted. You never know when it might become helpful.’
‘Should we need to bait a trap?’
I laughed, then bit my lip to stop myself. I wasn’t sure if finding him funny was permissible in our dynamic. Did that mean he’d scored a point or, worse, that we were moving away from point scoring? I couldn’t let myself be beguiled by his charms. Looks weren’t the only tactic he deployed to get women into bed.
‘We’ll keep that idea as a back-up plan, yeah?’ I retorted.
‘To have a back-up plan, surely we need an initial plan.’
‘Which I am formulating. Once you’ve paid, I’ll tell you all about it.’
