Thankless in Death

chilly, Mal. If he says to meet him somewhere, say you will, then contact me. If he comes here, don’t let him in. Don’t let him know you’re here, and contact me.” She set a card on the table as she rose.
    “Give me some names. Other friends. And this Lori Nuccio’s contact information.”
    “Okay.”
    He listed names, and Eve keyed them into her notebook.
    “She dumped him, you know. Lori. He lost his job, stopped paying his share of the rent.”
    “A habit of his.”
    “Yeah, I guess. He went to Vegas with some friends a couple months back. Joe and Dave from the names I gave you. I couldn’t make it. My sister’s birthday, and man, did I carp about that. He dropped a pile, I heard, and Lori kicked him. So he was living back home.”
    Mal rubbed his hands over his face. “I’ve gotta go see my mother.”
    “I can drive you.”
    “No, that’s okay. Thanks. I think I need to walk. I think I want to walk. He’s practically my brother, you know? They just had him, and I’ve got a sister, so we were like brothers coming up. He’s a screwup, okay? I don’t like to say it, but he’s a screwup. But to do what you say he did … I need to go home.”
    “Okay, Mal.” She picked up her card, handed it to him. “Put those numbers in your ’link. You contact me if you see him, hear from him, or anyone you know does. You got that?”
    “Yeah, I got it.”
    A fter tagging Peabody, dumping the two other friends Sylvia Guntersen gave them on her partner, she tried for the ex. And wasn’t as lucky as she’d been with Mal Golde. When no one responded, Eve tried knocking on neighbors’ doors until one creaked open.
    “Not buying,” the woman said.
    “Not selling.” Eve held up her badge. “I’m looking for Lori Nuccio.”
    “You don’t tell
me
that sweet girl did a crime.”
    “No, ma’am. I’d like to talk to her about something, but she’s not in trouble.”
    The door cracked wider, and the woman gave Eve a hard stare over a beak of a nose. “It’s her day off. Mine, too. She went out a couple hours ago, I think. Going shopping, maybe she said, having lunch with a girlfriend, maybe getting her hair done. Stuff girls that age do.”
    “Ms. …”
    “Crabtree. Sela Crabtree.”
    Eve took out her PPC, brought up Jerry’s picture. “Ms. Crabtree, have you seen him around here?”
    The woman snorted, opened the door fully, shoved an absent hand through spikes of brassy blond. “That one? Not since she kicked him out, and good riddance. Now you tell me he done a crime, I’m believing you. Didn’t treat that sweet girl right, if you ask me. I told her the same myself, and how she’d find better. I had one like him at that age. Best thing I did was kick him.”
    No one liked Jerry, Eve thought, but nodded. “If she should come back, would you give her my card, ask her to contact me?”
    “I’ll do that.”
    “And if he comes around, Ms. Crabtree? You contact me.”
    The woman spread her lips in a snarling smile. “You can bet on it, sister.”
    “Don’t confront him.”
    “He hurt somebody, didn’t he?”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Had it in his eyes. I’ve tended bar for thirty-three years. I know eyes, and those that got mean in them.”
    “He hurt somebody,” Eve confirmed. “Don’t confront him, and tell Lori to contact me as soon as possible.”
    “I’ll look out for her—and for him. But he hasn’t come around here in a good month now. Hey!” She shot up a finger. “I’ve got Lori’s pocket ’link number.”
    “I’ve got it. I’ll try that next. Thanks.”
    She keyed in the number as she headed out and down, and got dead air. Puzzled, she keyed in the data again, checked the number, tried it again with the same result.
    Changed it, didn’t you?
    Eve hauled herself back, checked with the neighbor, but the number was the same as Eve’s data.
    “You know, she said something about getting a new ’link,” Crabtree remembered. “A new number, the works. Said how she was going for fresh wherever she could get it.”
    Eve thought,
Crap
, but nodded. “As soon as you see her, tell her to contact me.”
    She headed down again, decided to start on the list of names she got from Mal via ’link on the way to the morgue.
    By the time she got there, she’d managed to contact three on the list, and leave word with the manager of the restaurant where Lori Nuccio worked, in case.
    Maybe she didn’t need this stop—at least she didn’t need to confirm cause