Buried In Buttercream

unenthusiastic reply.
    Savannah gave her a sad smile. “I’d like to call you by your real name.” She held out her hand to her. “Mine’s Savannah, and this is Dirk.”
    “I’m Charlene,” she said, awkwardly shaking Savannah’s hand.
    When she turned to Dirk, he said softly, “You can put on some clothes, Charlene, if that’d make you more comfortable.”
    “Thank you,” Charlene said as she hurried to the back of the trailer and returned with an old, worn, man’s flannel shirt that reminded Savannah of the kind that her grandfather used to wear.
    She slipped it on, buttoned up the front, and then sat on the side of the bed. “You wanna have a seat?” she asked, waving toward the other side.
    Savannah and Dirk glanced around, but there were no chairs and no place else to sit.
    “No, we’re fine,” Dirk replied. “This won’t take long. I just want to ask you something about a man who visited you here last weekend.”
    Charlene shot a quick glance up toward a dusty silk plant hanging in the corner of the room. “Yeah, okay. I don’t know how much I can tell you, but ...”
    Savannah turned her back to the corner with the plant, reached into her purse and took out her note pad. She scribbled, “Camera?” on the paper, then held it against her chest so that Charlene could read it.
    The girl glanced down at the notebook and gave the faintest of nods.
    “You just do your best, Charlene,” Dirk said, glancing down at Savannah’s message. “That’s all we’re asking.”
    He took the picture from his pocket and held it up for her to see. “Does he look familiar to you?”
    “Oh, yes!” she said with far more enthusiasm than Savannah was expecting. “He was here. He came to see me on Friday, and we had such a good time that he came back again the very next day, on Saturday.”
    Okay, Savannah thought , that’s a new one ... a hooker who rats out her customers in a heartbeat.
    “All right,” Dirk replied. “Thank you.” He gave Savannah a questioning look.
    And she knew just how he felt. How strange, to have an interview go this smoothly. When did an investigator ever find out exactly what they wanted to know within a couple of minutes?
    But if everything was going so swimmingly, why did she have this nagging feeling that all wasn’t the way it appeared?
    “Honey,” Savannah said, “did he treat you right?”
    “Oh, yes. He was nice. Very nice.”
    “Did you catch his name?”
    “Ethan. He said his name is Ethan Aberline or Aber-something. He said, I just can’t remember exactly.”
    Dirk raised one eyebrow. “How many of your customers tell you their full names, Charlene?”
    She shrugged. “Some of them tell me a name, but I doubt it’s their real one, you know?”
    “Yeah,” Savannah said, “I can imagine. Did he give you a good tip?”
    Something flitted across Charlene’s face. Just a brief little something that Savannah couldn’t categorize on the spot.
    “Yes, he did,” she responded, nodding vigorously. “Like I said, he was very nice. Handsome, too.”
    “I’ll bet you don’t get a lot of guys that good-looking in here, huh?” Savannah said.
    “Guys are guys,” she replied with a tone of exhausted resignation. “You know, they are what they are.”
    “Did he say anything or do anything out of the ordinary?” Dirk asked. “Anything at all.”
    She thought it over ... or at least pretended to. Savannah wasn’t sure which.
    “No,” she said. “He was just a regular, nice guy. Except that he came back the next day and asked to see me again. I don’t get that very often. In fact, I think he might’ve been the first to do that.”
    She seemed to realize she was saying too much. She broke eye contact with them and crossed her arms over her flannel men’s shirt.
    “What time was he here?” Dirk asked.
    “I’m not sure, but sometime in the late morning. He bought a two-hour date the second day.”
    She looked down, fiddling with the buttons on the front of her shirt, and the look on her face was one that Savannah had seen many times. It was the look of a liar. Someone who wasn’t very good at it because they hadn’t had a lot of practice.
    “Sweetie,” Savannah said, “did anybody tell you to say this to us?”
    Charlene looked startled and not a little unsettled by Savannah’s question. “No, of course not,” she stammered.
    “Did this nice man, Ethan, did he pay you to say this to anybody who might come asking?”
    “No. Not at all.