Rainy City Read Free

Ford. The motor coughed.
    “I only had the one
    whatever you want to call it. Just this one-time feeling that something too awful was going to happen.”
    “To Melissa?”
    Kathy cleared her throat. I could see where the white paint ended just above the hollow at the base of her neck. “I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with her little girl. But it has everything to do with her disappearance. It’s all connected somehow.”
    “You didn’t tell me she had a little girl.”
    “Angel? She’s three. She’s a darling. Gosh, I hope this costume doesn’t scare her.”
    “I have a feeling there are a lot of things you haven’t told me. Last night you started to go into something about Melissa and then you stopped yourself. What was it?”
    “You caught that?”
    I grunted. “What was it?”
    “In college Melissa was so bashful at first, you almost had to feel sorry for her.
    Then she went through a phase. It must have been about her junior year. She became a…kind of a tramp. Nothing else you could call it. Then she settled down and was quiet again. I wasn’t seeing much of her at that time, but I heard about it from mutual friends.”
    “You mean she dated a lot of different guys?”
    “She dated every guy, practically. And the way I understood it, she slept with all of them.”
    “How did people know these things?”
    “Melissa didn’t, care who knew. She’d tell you if you asked her.”
    “When did she marry this fella, Burton?”
    “I don’t know. I lost touch for a few years. Three years ago? Four years? About the time I moved into your basement. She dated him off and on ever since I knew her. But I always had the feeling there was nothing hot and heavy to it. You know, one of those guys a girl keeps on the back burner for a weekend when nothing else turns up.”
    “Just like you and me?”
    Kathy squinted at me and thrust her fingers into my ribs through my cocoa-colored ski coat. “Give me a break,” she said.
    “So what do these people do for a living?”
    “Burton’s a poet.”
    “Are you talking `poet,’ as in poetry?”
    “He’s a real poet. He’s been published in everything, even the Atlantic. He’s quite good.”
    “Does he find that puts bread and butter on the table?”
    I asked, semi-facetiously. I had written some poetry once.
    “Unless they’ve changed, they don’t have a lot of bread and butter on the table. They’re on food stamps. Burton works parttime when he can get it. Last I heard, he worked this summer for a month in Alaska doing something with crabs. But that was months ago and he hasn’t had anything since. Melissa keeps the house together. She used to work at a dime store down the street from their place. Recently, I think she was out of work.”
    “Did she graduate?”
    “About the time Angel was born. She’s got a teaching certificate. You know about how valuable they are these days. That and fifty cents will get her downtown on the bus.”
    “What’s your feeling on this? You never explained what you think will happen. The premonition.”
    “You don’t want to hear it.”
    “But I do. I trust your feelings. You may not always be right on the button, but you’ve been close enough to make a believer out of me. If you said it was time to sell my mother, I’d have to pack her up and stick an ad in the Times.”
    For several moments Kathy debated whether or not to articulate her thoughts, then decided against it. “We’ll find her and then things will work out.”
    “Okay, but if both Burton and her father don’t want me screwing around, it’s no deal. It’s tough enough locating someone when you have the family pitching for you. With the family on the other team? No deal.”
    “Are you good at finding people, Thomas?”
    “I’m good.”
    Kathy lapsed into a world of her own and I suppose I started thinking about my dog’s assassin. Perhaps someone thought the mutt was Kathy’s. Maybe some pervert was after her. I decided to break up