Page 152 of After Anna

“PG might be able to help you. She’s one smart girl. Makes friends where’er she goes.”

“That’s nice.” Maggie sensed it made it more likely that PG would have information about Anna.

“She lives with her granny. Elma.”

“Where are her parents?”

“Her mother was never worth a damn. Never even met her father. You know how it is, with the pills.”

“They were addicts?”

“And drunks. Goes hand-in-hand, far as I can tell.” He shook his head. “PG, she’s a good girl. The tips she made here, she give to Elma. Always nice to me, the customers, tourists. She’d ask after my wife and she’d buy a Powerball, ever’day. She even baked me a chocolate cake for my birthday.”

“Doesn’t she work here anymore?” Maggie felt confused, noticing that he’d starting using the past tense.

“No, she don’t. Hang on a minute. Lemme show you the cake she made me. Wrote my name on it and everything.” The man swiveled around on his stool, shuffled through a pile of papers, then turned back with a photo, showing it to Maggie. “Here we go.”

Maggie looked down at the photo. She froze at the image.

“You see, there’s me, and PG, and the cake, and she wrote ‘Happy Birthday, Sammy’ in red, so it shows up on the chocolate.”

Maggie couldn’t speak. She felt her heart hammer. She recognized the girl in the photo. PG had short hair, big blue eyes, and a pretty smile that brought out her dimples. She looked a lot like Anna except for her haircut. The truth stared back at Maggie. PG was the girl she’d taken home, who’d impersonated Anna.

“Ain’t that a nice cake?”

Chapter Seventy-five

Noah, After

Noah went up to the nearest CO, who was standing against the wall under the first tier. He was a huge forty-year-old with a brushy mustache, and his name tag readBOCANEGRA. “Mr. Bocanegra, I’m Noah Alderman and I’d like to speak with Deputy Warden McLaughlin.”

“Pardon me?”

“I’d like to speak with Deputy Warden McLaughlin. I met with him last night.” Noah was kicking himself. If he had known about Drover before, he would have dealt with it last night. But then again, now he had a bargaining chip.

“Uh, he’s busy. Please, move along, Dr. Alderman.”

“It’s important. Can you contact him right away?”

“I’ll make a note of it. We’ll get back to you.” CO Bocanegra half-smiled.

“This is very important. Can you take me to his office, and I’ll wait there until he’s available?”

“Like I said, I’ll inform him of your request. We’ll get back to you about an appointment.”

“This can’t wait.” Noah knew the inmates were straining to hear the conversation. He was blowing his cover, but he had nothing to lose. On the contrary, the more public he went, the safer he’d be.

“It will have to wait, Dr. Alderman. We just got out of lockdown. There was a murder on this block last night, as you well know.” CO Bocanegra glanced upward to Noah’s cell. “You see the bigwigs up there. We have our hands full. So please, move along.”

“Okay, fair enough, thanks.” Noah turned on his heel, walked through the inmates, and strode to the staircase. He climbed to the second-tier stair in full view of the entire cellblock, heading to his cell. The inmates were beginning to look up, pausing their conversations and their card games.

Noah strode toward his cell, until his path was blocked by a big CO with a name tag that readKELLY. “Excuse me, Mr. Kelly—”

“Your cell isn’t ready yet.”

“I know that, I want to see the bigwigs.”

“What do you mean?”