Page 56 of Hanging and Burning

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“Is there someone you know that might have some idea of her whereabouts?”

While Mara pondered the question, Aurilia started up her last song.

After the performance was over Mara was still thinking.

I turned to her, and she said, “She—she had a friend named David Blass, Randolph David Blass. He was in trouble most of the time, and when he was, he would come to her. He was what you’d call good-for-nothing, but they were the best of friends. If she had any trouble, anything at all, David would sure try to help.”

“He live in New York?” I asked, knowing that the old friend of Twyla’s was not alive, anywhere.

“A few years ago, I heard he had moved to Brooklyn somewhere.”

13.

I WAS ONE of the last people sitting in the big round room. My father went off with Gert Lample to eat reheated hog maws and turnip greens over white rice. Mara kissed me good-bye on the lips. And even Mrs. Person smiled.

“You made her very happy,” Estelle said to me. “You know, all she has is me and this music. It’s nice when somebody else wants to share her pleasures.”

I sat alone at the stage-side table wondering why the singer wanted me to take her home. This request was related to and yet had nothing in common with the young women handing me their cards in California.

“Hi,” Aurilia said. She was now wearing an autumnal brown pantsuit and a blouse the red color of maple leaves ready to fall from their sap-bearing trees.

“Hey.” I stood up immediately.

She smiled at me and asked, “Have you been drinking?”

“Only coffee.”

“This place has terrible coffee.”

“The dive I was in, in Queens was worse.”

She laughed without me having to explain and said, “I have to warn you that I don’t live in the city.”

“Where?”

“Mount Kisco,” she said through an apologetic sneer.

“Oh. On the way to Carmel.”

“You know it?”

“Yeah. I just found out within the last year that my mother lives in that area. I go up now and again. It’s an easy drive.”

I walked the lady to my car, parked on Fifty-First Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

“You weren’t kidding,” Ms. Fox exclaimed. “This car looks almost like a child’s toy.”

Opening her door, I said, “It’s a great car for a private detective in the city. You can find a parking place almost anywhere. and for some reason people don’t pay that much attention to little cars.”

When I got in behind the wheel, she asked, “So, you really are a PI?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I guess I really am a ma’am at this age,” she said, figuratively casting her line…

… and catching me with the hook.