Page 15 of The Children of Eve

“Lord, I hope not,” I said. I didn’t want to think that my features might resemble Ammon Nadeau’s. Otherwise, I’d have to start covering up the mirrors in my house and walking the streets only after dark. “But weed isn’t my bag.”

“Wyatt only smokes on weekends. He’s an organized guy.”

An organized guy who worked at a weed store and was content to abandon all his possessions, including cash and a girlfriend, seemingly on a whim.

“Could he have been involved in anything illegal?” I asked.

“At BrightBlown?” Zetta snorted. “Jesus, they’re about to open a yoga studio.”

But Zetta kept her face turned away from me as she spoke.

“What about involvement in anything outside of BrightBlown?”

She didn’t answer.

“Zetta, you asked me to meet you because you’re anxious about Wyatt. If you were sufficiently upset, you’d have gone to the police. Instead, you’re here at Howie’s, where the only cops are off-duty and minding their own business.”

“This is new territory for me,” she said. “I’ve never had cause to deal with a private investigator before, or not professionally.”

“At least you admit that you might have cause,” I replied. “Look at you, making progress on talking about your feelings.”

“You have an interesting line in sarcasm. Does anyone ever hire you twice?”

“You’re in trouble if you have to hire me once. Hiring me twice means you may have a taste for it, which would make me disinclined to become involved again.”

Zetta fished around in her tote bag and seemed to locate what she was looking for, but didn’t immediately display it.

“Is everything I tell you confidential?”

“Largely, unless you tell me that you’re planning to kill someone, in which case I might feel obligated to inform the authorities. Are you planning on killing someone?”

“Not yet, but the night is young.”

“Then you’re probably in the clear. But there’s a difference between my legal and moral obligations. The latter I take more seriously than the former.”

“That’s what I was told.”

She removed her hand from the bag. She was holding a red flip phone in a Ziploc, either an old Nokia or a new one designed to look old. She placed it on the bar.

“This is Wyatt’s phone,” she said, “or one of them.”

“How many does he have?”

“Just two. This one and an Android. The Android is for daily use.”

“Where is it now?”

“With Wyatt, I suppose, but it goes straight to voicemail when I call the number. If he’s picking up his messages, he’s not replying.”

“And the Nokia?”

I held the bag up to the light. The phone, I thought, was probably the same one I’d watched Riggins opening and closing at Zetta’s show.

“It was found at Tandem Coffee Roasters on Congress five days ago.One of the staff recognized it as Wyatt’s. She recalled him using it before he left and was holding on to it until he returned, because Wyatt likes Tandem a lot. When he didn’t show, she gave it to me.”

“Are you a regular at Tandem too?”

“With Wyatt, though I don’t really drink coffee. I stopped by after he went missing, in case someone had noticed anything odd last time he was in.”

---