“I’ll win them over with my charm.”
On their way out of Oakdale, they had to pass Anna McCaig’s place, where Deputy Clayton was parked out front. Eve told Duncan to pull up alongside the patrol car and roll down his window so she could speak across him to the deputy.
“How is it going, Eddie?”
“Dandy.” Clayton held up a Jack Reacher paperback. “I’m getting paid to catch up on my reading.”
“Could I ask you to do us a favor?”
“As long as it’s police work and not picking up your dry cleaning.”
“Has anybody ever asked you to do that?”
“I choose to remain silent on that,” he said. “I don’t need more enemies.”
“I’d like you to run the plates of every vehicle that left Oakdale between Tuesday at one thirty p.m. and Wednesday at seven a.m. and let me know who owns them. I’d do it myself, but we’re going to be tied up in the field for a few hours and we’re racing the clock on this case.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A pregnant maid who walked into this community on Tuesday morning and never walked out.”
“I’m on it,” he said. “You have the plates?”
Eve asked for his email address, then forwarded him the Oakdale gate log. “I owe you one.”
“You owe me a lot more than one.”
“I’ll pick up your dry cleaning,” she said.
He laughed and they drove off.
Duncan gave her a look. “Do you really think Priscilla got a ride out or that her body was in somebody’s trunk?”
“You’re the one who said to keep an open mind.”
“I’m glad to see you’re taking my hard-earned wisdom to heart.”
“Besides, if Anna McCaig got a dead body out of her house, she didn’t do it in her car. It would have to be in one of the vehicles on the list.”
“I’m also glad to see you don’t give up easily.”
“I don’t give up at all,” she said.
They hit one dreary motel after another for two hours. The places were low-slung cinder-block motor courts with rusty window air conditioners that whined in mechanical agony as they desperately sucked in air and wheezed it out again. The instant Duncan and Eve arrived at each place, the tenants would rush away or dash inside their rooms. Drapes would close and cars would peel out. None of the resident managers recognized the photo of Priscilla, or at least they claimed they didn’t. But on the eighth or ninth motel, the half-drunk desk clerk’s eyes widened with recognition and he told them where they could find her distraught husband, Alejandro Alvarez, in his room.
“He hasn’t left in days,” the manager said. “In case she comes back.”
Duncan and Eve walked back outside to the last unit in the building, where a dazed, unshaven man sat in a chair outside his door, wrapped in a blanket. Eve wondered how long he’d been sitting there, waiting. He looked up with bloodshot eyes as they approached. Eve’s heart ached for him.
“Alejandro Alvarez?” Duncan asked.
He nodded. “Who is asking?”
“We’re detectives with the Los Angeles sheriff’s department. We’re looking for Priscilla.”
Alejandro sat up a little straighter in his chair and drew the blanket tighter around himself. “Why are you looking for her?”
Eve said, “We think she might be able to help us with a case we’re working on in Calabasas. Do you know where she is?”
Alejandro shook his head and began to softly cry. Duncan found another chair, pulled it over, and sat down facing him. Eve had to look away, afraid his tears would provoke her own.
“How long has she been missing?”
“She went to work on Tuesday and didn’t come back. I tried calling her but got no answer.” Alejandro looked pleadingly at Duncan, then up at Eve. “I don’t know what to do. My children, they are crying for their mother. So am I.”
“Did you try calling the Grayles? The people she works for?”
“I don’t have their number. It’s on Priscilla’s phone. I don’t even know where the house is in Calabasas. Do you know what happened to her? Is she all right?”
“That’s what we are trying to find out,” Duncan said. “But first, we’ll need to file a formal missing person report.”
Alejandro hesitated and Eve had a good idea why.
“We don’t care whether you are here legally or not,” she said. “All we care about is finding your wife. Could you get us a better photo of her?”
Alejandro nodded, got up from the chair, and went inside the motel room. Duncan got up, too, and stepped into the motor court with Eve, who said, “This is heartbreaking.”
“You will get calluses on your heart working homicide,” he said. “But the moment you begin to feel them, Eve, you’ve got to get the hell out.”
“How do you feel them?”
“It’s what you don’t feel.” He tipped his head toward the empty chair. “It’s when you stop feeling their pain.”