Inherit the Dead

didn’t follow her, either. I fell back asleep.”
    “Why didn’t you take Angel to your house in the first place?” It was the first time Perry had thought to ask this obvious question, and he realized he needed some rest more than he’d thought.
    Randy flushed. “She didn’t want to stay at my place,” he said. “I told her she could stay at the house; I got a little place on Oyster Street. But she said people were looking for her, and she needed to be somewhere she could just walk out of. I guess she was right . . . because that’s what she did.”
    “You haven’t heard from her since?”
    “Not a word.” Unexpectedly, Randy kicked the counter. The violence of the motion and the resounding thud of his boot hitting the old wood caused the other two men to jump. Uncle Dirk said, “Shit, Randy!”
    “I’m worried about Angel,” Randy said. “She’s here, then she’s not. It’s not like we see each other steady, or anything. But she’s never done something like that before. I was half asleep when she left that night, but I did ask her if she wanted me to go with her.”
    “What did she say?”
    “She kind of laughed and said she wasn’t scared, and she’d be back the next morning in time to take me to work.”
    “He called me at seven thirty,” Uncle Dirk said. He’d finished his coffee and was ready to get back to work. He stood in the doorway, shifting from side to side. “I picked him up, brought him here, watched him answer the phone all day hoping it would be her.” The older man shook his head, maybe disgusted that Randy had been blown off by a woman.
    “You were worried,” Perry said.
    “Hell, yes, I was worried.” Randy looked angry, embarrassed, and resentful all at the same time. “I shoulda gotten up to go with her, or made her stay. I shoulda . . . I don’t know what I shoulda done. Something.”
    “Did the motel desk clerk say that Angel herself had come back to get her things?”
    “No. When I went straight to the room, I found out it was locked, and her car wasn’t there. I went to the office to see if she’d checked out.”
    “Had she?”
    “He told me after he left the office for a second to go to the john, he came back and found the key on the counter. The maid told him the room had been cleaned out when she went in to make the bed.”
    “That car isn’t fixing itself,” Uncle Dirk said abruptly. Apparently, he was tired of Angel and her problems, or maybe Perry’s disruption of the shop routine. He went out into the bay after shooting a pointed glance at his nephew.
    “Yeah,” Randy said, “I gotta get to work. Listen, I hope you find Angel. She’s world class in the sack, and I . . . yeah, I feel kind of bad about her going out into the night like that. At the time I didn’t think anything of it,” he said, changing his tune, “just mysterious rich-people shit. But now . . . ” He shrugged again.
    “Thanks for your help,” Perry said.
    “Yeah, right,” Randy said heavily, and went back to work.
    Perry hunched down into his trench coat again for the short sprint to his car. The rain was still pelting down, and Perry felt cold to his bones. He sat in thought for a moment, then pulled out his cell phone to call Henry Watson. When he’d been on the force, he and Henry had been close, and after Perry had become a private eye they’d cautiously maintained a friendship.
    “Watson,” said a gruff voice. In the background, there was a lot of noise. With the pounding of the rain on the car at his end, Perry could barely make out what Henry was saying.
    “You got a minute?” Perry said loudly.
    “Let me get out of this,” Henry said, and a moment later the noiseabated to a tolerable level. “I was on the street,” Henry explained. “I’m in a lobby now.”
    Perry said, “I need a favor, and I’ll tell you why.” As briefly as possible, he explained the situation to the cop.
    “So you want me to run a check on this Randy Hyde?”
    “Yeah, if you can. I’ll owe you the best bottle of Scotch you can find.”
    “I can find a pretty good bottle.”
    “I’m counting on it. This Randy, he seems genuinely concerned about Angel, but on the other hand, he’s quick with the kicks and punches. Lots of room for something bad to have happened. And can you run her mother and father? Julia Drusilla and Norman Loki? I can’t imagine them having records, except maybe Loki for pot, but the minute you don’t check—”
    “Yeah, it’ll come