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Brown curls lay so snug that her scalp looked bald in patches. She sized me up while I introduced myself. She spoke in bursts the way a lot of people with pent-up energy do.
    Though I was an exceptional liar, I decided the direct approach would be the most efficient.
    “My name is Thomas Black. I’m a detective. Some friends of your niece asked me to find her.”
    “I didn’t realize she needed finding,” said Mary Crowell, abruptly plunking into a wooden armchair smothered in cushions. The apartment was crowded with wooden furniture, all of it meticulously polished.
    She motioned for me to sit opposite her on a cushioned love seat. “Would you happen to know where she might be?” I asked.
    “Don’t know. Haven’t seen Melissa for a spell. Don’t get along with her father, Angus—he’s my older brother. What’s the matter with that husband of hers? Doesn’t he know where she is?”
    I shook my head. “When was the last time you heard from her?”
    “Last time I talked with Melissa was Tuesday.”
    “What’d she say?”
    “She telephoned and asked if she could stay with me for a few days. Said something was bothering her, something that had been bothering her for a long time. Something from her childhood. I told her of course she could stay. She’s been up before, don’t you know.”
    “Has she? When was the last time?”
    Mary Crowell mulled it over and her eyes grew distant. I shifted on the love seat. My trousers were wet all down the back from splashing through the rain in the parking lot.
    “Maybe six months ago?’ I suggested.
    “Yes, about six months ago. How did you figure that?”
    “She turns up missing every once in a while. Generally, it’s just a day or two at a time. I gather she was up here each of those times.”
    “I don’t know when she was missing, as you call it. She’s visited me a few times.”
    “Have you heard from her since this week’s phone call?”
    “No. Said she’d be up the next morning, which would have been Wednesday, but she never appeared. Greyhound, she said.”
    “And she didn’t let on where she was phoning from?”
    “Matter of fact, she did.”
    “Seattle?”
    “Tacoma. Said she was calling from someplace in Tacoma. Why she’d be clean down there, I have no notion. Course, what do I know? I’m just old aunty Mary. I don’t rate much more than a nickel card every other year when they can afford one.”
    “She tell you why she wanted to stay with you?”
    “Just that something from her childhood was bothering her.”
    “Nothing else?”
    “Melissa isn’t much of a conversationalist. I had the feeling somebody was waiting on her, the way she tried to rush-rush everything along. Said she’d bring Angel along. Asked would it be all right if they stayed a few days. I said it would. Even stocked some butter brickle ice cream for her. That was always her favorite when she was a little tyke. Used to come up and spend a week with me every summer. That was back when Harry was still alive…”
    “Harry, your husband?”
    “Nah. Although we were going to get married. He was Angus’s business partner, the brains of the company. Things were swell in those days. Me and Harry. And Melissa coming up every summer.” The old woman’s voice grew sorrowful and her mind seemed to retreat to another dimension.
    “
    till she got older,” she said, snapping out of it, completing a sentence I hadn’t heard the first half of. It’s still okay. You locate her, you tell her she can stay with her old aunty anytime she wants. Can bring her baby, too. I’m not anxious to have that piker husband of hers here, though.”
    “They tell me he’s quite the poet.”
    “You listen to that claptrap? Poetry won’t put that baby into shoes.”
    “I understand Melissa spent most of a summer up here while she was in high school. If she was in the habit of spending -one week up here each season, why did she suddenly come up and stay most of the summer?”
    “Who told you