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“Agreed,” she said. She reached into the backseat, pulled open her backpack, and retrieved her Glock. She snapped the holster onto the right side of her jeans. Then she slipp
ed an extra magazine into her left pocket. Then she covered it all with her jacket. She said, “Is it better if I check alone while you wait here?”
“You think she remembers me after all these years?” I asked.
“I think you’re unforgettable.”
“Pardon the unprofessional behavior,” I said, leaning over to kiss her. Her lips were warm. “I think I’ll go with you.” I opened the door to the cold street.
Thirty paces up the sidewalk and five knocks on the door, and there she was. The young blond girl from Guadalupe, right down to her tie-dyed top and tight bell-bottoms. I just looked at her, feeling an odd, out-of-place disorientation.
“We’re looking for Beth Proudfoot,” Lindsey said.
The girl cocked her head and fixed a look on us with her fine, wholesome features. She said, “And who the fuck are you?”
“Sheriff’s deputies,” Lindsey said in her hard voice, flashing her badge with a swing that made the girl involuntarily have to follow her hand.
“You got a warrant?”
“Do we need one?” I asked.
The girl gave a heavy sigh and fell into bad posture.
“She’s not here,” she said. “She’s never here.”
“She’s your mom?” Lindsey asked. She received a semi-affirmative shrug.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She mumbled something that sounded like “Paige.” I looked past her into the house. It was fashionably spare, with a few colorful objets d’art, large plants, and a Navajo rug. A highly polished string bass sat against one wall, positioned with just the right savoir faire. No books.
“When do you expect your mom to be back?” Lindsey asked.
“How the fuck would I know that?” Paige said, with a heaviness as if we had asked why war is a constant of the human condition.
“You and your mom don’t get along?” I asked. She looked at me with a contempt that only beautiful young women can bestow on the mortal world. She didn’t have to say anything. I was as vanquished as if I were a pimply seventeen-year-old asking for a date. I tried again, “Where does your mom work?”
Paige looked down at the sidewalk. We were at a standstill and I was freezing. Finally, Lindsey handed her a business card. “Let her know we came by. We’ll be back.”
We started down the sidewalk when we heard the girl’s voice again.
“You’re from Phoenix. What’s in Phoenix?”
“Your mom used to live there,” I said. She just stared at us and shook her head, an older person’s shake, sad and knowing, Then she closed the door.
In the car, we ran the heater on high and didn’t speak. Lindsey stared back at the house. I ran the zipper of my leather jacket all the way up and still shivered. “What?” I asked finally.
“She reminds me of me at that age,” Lindsey said, and she unconsciously gave the same shake of the head.
Chapter Twenty-four
We were just about to pull away from the curb, when the door to the cottage opened and Paige stepped out, now wearing a heavy forest green parka. She waved to us and walked deliberately to the street. She silently held out a card. I rolled down the window, froze anew, and took it. It read: “Beth Proudfoot…Artist” and gave an address I knew was in the Lower Downtown district.
“Thanks,” I said.
Her eyes almost seemed to fill with tears. But maybe it was the cold. She said, “If she asks about me, tell her I went to stay with Aunt Amy. But she won’t ask about me.” Paige spun on the balls of her feet and walked north up the street, then she ran, her hair a bouncing flaxen halo against the fading afternoon light.
I gave Lindsey directions and we drove down Speer Boulevard into downtown. We went almost to Union Station, with its grand beaux arts front and neon roof sign inviting us to “Travel by Train.” Then we made a couple of turns and found the address on Beth’s business card. When I was teaching in Denver a decade before, these old four- and five-story brick warehouses and offices from the late nineteenth century were close to being torn down. Now LoDo, as it was called, was the hottest neighborhood in the city, a wonderful combination of nostalgia, yuppification, and the desire for dot-com office space. Two blocks away, the facade of Coors Field loomed over the street as if it had always been there. There was nothing like this neighborhood in Phoenix.
