The Last Word (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

a nice, ripe bimbo I’d be glad to toss their way,” Millay murmured and then ordered a bacon cheeseburger with onion straws and slaw.
    Once Dixie had zipped off to place Millay’s order, but not before slipping Haviland a sausage link hidden in her apron pocket, Olivia waved aside the subject of Estelle. “She’s only temporary. He’ll tire of her soon enough. In any case, Harris has more significant problems at the moment. How did your research go?”
    “Laurel had some luck with the newspaper’s archives,” Millay answered, rummaging around in a black messenger bag covered with Japanime characters. “She didn’t have a ton of time because she had to finish an article, pick up groceries, and be home in time to clean the whole house. Man, how I’d like to shove her husband’s dental drill up his chauvinistic—”
    “Not very hygienic, I’m afraid,” Olivia interrupted and gestured at Millay’s bag. “Show me the goods.”
    Millay withdrew a notebook covered with pirate skulls and flipped open to a page covered with her angular scrawl. “We can forget about the families who lived there after the house was moved. They’re squeaky-clean, law-abiding, church-going drones. No criminal records, no tax evasion, no outstanding debts, nothing. Trust me, they’re a dead end.”
    “Interesting word choice,” Olivia said with a sigh. “And the White family?”
    Millay unfolded a sheet of paper showing a black-and-white photograph of a teenage girl standing on the porch of Harris’s house. In the background, the heavy machinery required to lift the home onto a trailer hovered over the roof, throwing shadows across the ruined lawn and crushed flowerbeds no doubt once lovingly maintained by the girl’s mother.
    Olivia removed the magnifying glass she kept in her purse and placed the circle over the girl’s face.
    “Forget that. I enlarged this copy on Laurel’s Xerox machine. It’s a little blurry, but I want to see if you’d react the way I did when I really looked at her.” Millay’s expression was unreadable, so Olivia merely accepted the paper she offered.
    Immediately, Olivia was struck by the girl’s eyes. They were the eyes of an old woman, filled with resignation and sorrow, yet still clinging to a delicate thread of hope. The knowledge emanating from those depths was a contradiction to her plain dress, ankle socks, and the corkscrew curls pulled off her forehead and secured with a large silk bow. She looked as though she should be clutching a lollipop or a bouquet of wildflowers with both hands. Instead, she had her arms wrapped around the porch post, as though the moving of the house was something she greatly dreaded.
    “It’s like this is too big a change for her,” Olivia whispered, noticing the girl’s name in the caption. “Evelyn White, age sixteen. What else happened to you? Why are you so filled with fear?”
    Millay put a finger on the photograph. “The country was at war, but I think kids her age are pretty adaptable. Her father didn’t enlist and she was an only child, so no brothers were sent off to fight. Friends, maybe. Or possibly a boyfriend. She was pretty.”
    “If she had a boyfriend, then something must have happened to him,” Olivia remarked softly. “I know that look. That’s grief. She’s lost something precious to her and now her house is being torn from the ground right in front of her. Nothing is stable. She feels totally lost.”
    The two women stared at the young girl, this beautiful, fresh-faced stranger in a checkered dress, and found they no longer felt like talking. Millay drank her coffee as she watched strangers parade past the diner window, but Olivia couldn’t take her eyes from Evelyn’s face.
    She didn’t even hear Dixie skate over with Millay’s cheeseburger.
    “Could I get that in a takeout box?” Millay asked sheepishly. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
    Dixie gave her a maternal pat on the cheek. “’Course you can, sugar. Your schedule’s not the same as most folks, now is it?” She handed Olivia the check and then caught sight of the photograph. “Good Lord, who is that child?”
    “A girl who used to live in Harris’s house,” Olivia replied.
    With a sympathetic shake of her head, Dixie whispered, “She’d make a helluva ghost. There she is, a livin’ and breathin’ young girl, but she already looks like she’s got a foot in the next world. She’s grabbin’ on to that porch post like her life depends on it. Her