I heard some padding toward the door, and then it opened only a crack.
"Yeah?" I saw a sliver of a woman's face. One eye, a cheek, half a mouth.
"Uh, hi. I was looking for Stefanie?"
"Stef? You're looking for Stef?"
Stef. Now that rang a bell.
"Yes," I said. "Would she be in?"
"I'm gonna invite you in," the woman said. "But when I open the door, you have to come in real fast. Y'understand?"
Hesitantly, I said, "Sure."
And then the door swung open wide, the woman grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me inside, then closed the door forcefully. I was going to have to be fitted with a whiplash collar.
"I don't want Quincy to get out," she said. I glanced around the floor, looking for a little dog or cat, but saw nothing.
This woman might have been fifty, but it had been a hard fifty. Her hair was gray and pinned back, and she wore a white short-sleeved blouse with enough grease stains to qualify it as a Jackson Pollock. Her short sleeves revealed meaty shoulders and upper arms.
"So you want Stef?" The woman cocked her head just a little, looked me up and down, and her eyes danced darkly.
From upstairs: "Is it for me, Mom?"
"No!" Not taking her eyes off me. "Just keep looking!" She sighed. "She don't live here," she said coolly, glancing down at the plastic bag that hung from my wrist.
"Oh. Okay. See, I had this address for her, but if I've got the wrong house ..."
"You got the right house. But she don't live here no more. She hant lived here for a couple years at least. What's your business with her?"
I wasn't sure whether to say. So instead I asked, "Would you happen to be Stefanie's mother?"
"Yeah."
"I had something I had to return to her, and was going to drop it off here, but if she doesn't live here, maybe you could tell me where I might find her."
"Is it whatever you got in the bag there?"
"Maybe if you had an address?"
The woman jerked her head to motion me further inside. I followed her into a narrow kitchen where the sink was stacked with dishes and a cigarette sat burning in an ashtray on a table that was part of an aging aluminum and formica set that couldn't have been original to this house. The table surface, what you could see of it, given the number of empty beer and wine bottles, was pockmarked with cigarette burns. "Just follow me," she said.
There were more burns on the cracked linoleum floor and several places where it had been gouged, revealing plywood underneath. The counter next to the overloaded sink was littered with more dishes and more empty beer bottles and crumpled Big Mac cartons flecked with shreds of lettuce and smears of Special Sauce.
"Like I said, she hasn't lived here for, I don't know, a couple years now."
She'd never notified the DMV of a change of address, I figured. It occurred to me that maybe she didn't come from a home where a high priority was placed on attending to such details.
"Whaddya say your name was?"
"Walker," I said. "Zack Walker."
"You look a bit old for Stef."
Well, I thought, not necessarily. Just how old did she think I looked? I mean, surely it was not unheard-of for some men in their early forties to attract a woman who appeared to be in her mid-to late twenties. Maybe I didn't work out a lot, and perhaps I could stand to lose a few pounds, but -
Shut up, I told myself.
"We're not, you know, going out or anything," I said. "I just needed to give her something. Maybe I could leave it with you."
"I dunno. Like I said, she don't live here, and she does drop by occasionally but I don't know when. She's so busy, you know, buying her fancy clothes and working for her fancy boss. Hasn't got time to come by here, unless she needs some money, of course. And I'm betting she's making enough that she could pay me back some, because I've got my own expenses, raising her little brother here on my own after Victor left us high and dry, don't you know."
That's when I decided I couldn't leave the purse here. I didn't know the history between this woman and her daughter, but it was a safe bet that as soon as I handed that purse over, this woman was going to take whatever cash was in it, and I didn't want that to be my fault.
I said, "You know, I'll probably be running into her again soon, so I won't bother you with this."
"You work with Stef? You one of those realtor people?"
"Realtor? No. Where does Stef work?"
"Over at one of them new developments. In the office. Forest Estates it's called."
"Valley Forest Estates?"
"I think."
And then I remembered. The receptionist who didn't want me to see Greenway. Small frickin' world.
"Well then, I'll just pop into the sales office," I said. "It's not far from where I live. You see, we were in the checkout line at Mindy's, and she was going through her wallet and I didn't notice until she was gone that she had dropped her driver's license, so I grabbed it, and this was the address that was on it, which was why I just dropped by here, you know, to give it back to her."