Chasing a Blond Moon(144)

He called the pet casket company in Gladstone and asked for Mae Loireleux, the manager. She was well known in the local business community and reviled by employees who called her “Mae Not” because she insisted on doing things her way, and wasn’t open to innovation unless the idea came from her. He knew the woman enough to exchange greetings and not much more. She had a loud voice and an in-your-face style that kept most people at bay. Her husband had bailed years ago and as near as Service knew, she was alone and likely to stay that way.

“Mae?” he said when the receptionist got her. “Grady Service, DNR.”

“How’s your business?” she asked. To Loireleux all life was reduced to business.

“Steady,” he said.

“Wish ours was. Little dips in the economy we can get past, but this economy is like the bloody Grand Canyon, eh? You’d think people would be consistent in their affection and concern for their pets, but it isn’t so. Times get tough, people cut back. I can understand that; I mean, we do it with our kids, right? Are you a father? No, you’re the bachelor with the trail of broken hearts. I have a daughter, she’s sixteen and not sweet. She’s been bugging me for a cell phone. I said, ‘We live in Gladstone, your friends aren’t but two blocks away, why do you need a phone, eh?’ I told her times are tough and we have to cut back, and my ex, of course, he’s no bloody help. He said it’s up to me, so I told her no more talk about cell phones, end of subject, we don’t need surprise bills at the end of the month. The girl can’t pick up her room or keep gas in the car, eh. So that’s a week or so ago and she gets quiet and yesterday she pipes up at breakfast, and she’s got the solution—a prepaid cell phone, like those cards you can buy at the convenience store. She said she’ll make the payments with her babysitting money and it won’t cost me anything. I told her I’d think on it.”

“That’s nice,” Service said, wishing she would shut up.

“Sorry,” she said, “I guess my daughter’s got me all worked up. You called me.”

Finally, he thought. “Do you have an employee named . . . Grace Thundergiver?” He’d almost said Honeypat Allerdyce.

“I wish I still had her,” Mae Loireleux said.

“Still?”

“She worked here for a week and left, no explanation. Just disappeared and never come back, not even to pick up her paycheck.”

“She was a bookkeeper?”

“At night. Said she didn’t want a public job, insisted she’d be happy with numbers. You don’t find many people that good with numbers, but she was one of them.”

The woman sounded impressed. “She left, but you’d still like to have her back?”

“Well, I wouldn’t hire her again based on the way she left, but she knew all about phones and computers. She used one of the prepaid kinds and talked several of the girls here into doing the same. With her mind for numbers, I figured she could tell me if it was a good deal.”

“When did Ms. Thundergiver leave?”

“Musta been coupla weeks ago. I can check if you want. Why?”

“I’m just doing some follow-up on a case. How did she come to HPC?”

“Just walked in one morning and started talking. The woman has the charm for sure, especially with the men, but the women thought she was nice too.”

“Did she leave a number?”

“Just her cell phone. Said she didn’t have a phone where she was staying, that the cell was all anybody needed.”

“Do you have record of it?”

“You betcha.”

She left the phone, came back and gave him the number, and he wrote it down.

The area code was in Colorado. He dialed the number, got a no-longer-in-service recording.

He looked in the phone book and found the name of a business in Marquette that sold prepaid phones and asked the clerk who answered if all prepaid numbers were in Colorado.

“No,” she said, “Georgia and some other states too, because the tariffs are lower there, which is why the businesses are there. In the telecom business you look for any advantage you can find.”

“So you could live in Michigan and have a number from one of those other states?”

“Of course. Everything is managed by computers,” the woman said, not sounding particularly happy about the reality.

“Is it possible to get a record of all calls to and from a prepaid number?”

“Not without a subpoena, and the rules on that vary by state. Most of these businesses run out of states that are pretty protective of privacy. That’s another reason they’re there.”