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Next, Holly calls Jerome. Before she can even say hello, he asks if she’s talked to Barbara.

“No—should I?”

“Well, she’s got some pretty amazing news, but I want her to tell you. Spoiler alert, she’s also been writing, and just happens to be in the running for a literary prize with big bucks attached. Twenty-five K.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I’m not. And don’t you tell Mom and Dad. She may not have told them yet. But that’s not why I called. I finally figured out what was bugging me about that van. The one in the security footage from the store?”

“What was it?”

“The body is too high. It’s not jacked like one of those monster trucks, but it’s noticeable—two or three feet more than normal. I looked online and the only vans like that are custom jobs for people with disabilities. The chassis gets raised to allow for a wheelchair ramp.”

4

Holly calls Pete from beside the ice machine, where she’s having a smoke. He has come to the same conclusion about the van as Jerome, only he calls that kind of vehicle “a crip wagon.” Holly winces, thanks him, and asks him how he’s doing. He says he’s like the guy in that Chicago song, feeling stronger every day. It crosses her mind that he’s trying to convince himself.

She puts out her cigarette and sits on the stairs to think. Now she has one almost-concrete thing to tell Penny tomorrow night: it seems more and more likely that Bonnie was taken by someone pretending to be disabled. Maybe all of them were. Or maybe not just pretending? Holly thinks of something Imani said: Poor old lady looked like she was in pain. She said she wasn’t, but I know sciatica when I see it.

She wishes now she had gotten eyes on Emily Harris. She should check at the college to see if anyone knows anything about her physical condition, and will be sure to get a good look at Ernie Coggins’s wife when she talks to him tomorrow.

Back in her room, she lies on the bed and calls Barbara. Her call goes straight to voicemail. Holly asks for a callback before ten-thirty, when she’ll shut off her phone, say her evening prayer, and go to sleep. Then she calls Jerome back. “I can’t get Barbara, and my curiosity is killing me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s really Barbara’s news, Holly…”

“Pretty please? With sugar on it? Vanilla sugar?”

“Okay, but only if you promise to act surprised when Barb tells you.”

“I promise.”

So Jerome tells Holly how Barbara has been writing poetry in secret for a long time and met with Olivia Kingsbury—

“Olivia Kingsbury?” Holly exclaims, sitting up straight. “Holy frijoles!”

“You know her, I take it.”

“Not personally, but my God, Jerome, she’s one of America’s greatest poets! I’m amazed that Barbara got up the courage to approach her, but good for her!”

“Barb’s never been short on guts.”

“When I was a teenager trying to write my own poems, I read everything of Kingsbury’s I could get my hands on! I didn’t know she was still alive!”

“Almost a hundred, Barb says. Anyway, this Kingsbury checked out Barbara’s poetry and agreed to mentor her. I don’t know how long that went on, but the end result was Barb got put up for this prize, the Penworth or something—”

“The Penley Prize,” Holly says. She’s awestruck and delighted for her friend, who has done all of this and managed to keep it a dead secret.

“Yeah, that sounds right. But don’t bother asking what I’ve been up to, Hollyberry, my hundred thousand dollars and all. Not to mention my glitzy weekend in Montauk coming up. You wouldn’t want to hear about the party where Spielberg might show up, or any of that boring old stuff.”

Holly does, of course, and they talk for almost half an hour. He tells her about his lunch at the Blarney Stone, the advance check hand-over, discussions about his book’s launch and plans for promotion, plus a possible interview with The American Historical Review, a prospect that excites and terrifies him in equal measure.

When they have exhausted what he calls Jerome’s Excellent New York Adventure, he asks her to update him on the case. She does, finishing by confessing that her investigation of the bowling team is probably a one-way trip down a blind alley. Jerome disagrees.

“Valid line of investigation, Hol. Dressler worked there. He was targeted. I think they all were. No, I’m sure.”

“Maybe,” Holly says, “but I doubt if it was by an elderly bowler. The one I’m seeing tomorrow is actually a stroke victim. I guess I was hoping one of them is protecting a younger relative or friend. Protecting or enabling.”