“We’re experts,” Trix said. She looked as if she thought the whole thing was highly amusing.
The assignment was to slap turkey sandwiches together, plop down a dollop of potato salad, and finish off with a handful of chips and a pickle spear. I was wedged in next to one of the old men, who introduced himself as Bernie and showed me the routine. Compared to the old ladies, who were real masters, he was pretty slow. Obviously, this was more of a social thing for him. He made the typical old-guy comment about how I was lucky to be the escort of two lovely ladies and kept up a running conversation about where I went to school and where he went to school and how things had changed since his day. I liked him. I also figured he might be a good source of information.
When the chance finally opened up to throw in a question of my own, I asked if he knew Ashton, and his eyes lit up. When Ashton first started working for FOKC, she had been teamed up with him to make deliveries, and he got to know her pretty well. Then her brother got involved too, at least in the delivery part. He didn’t come in to help fix sandwiches because of some kind of school activity, but Ashton would go pick him up so she wouldn’t be on the route alone, which was an FOKC no-no.
“Ashton Browning,” Bernie concluded. “She’s a real corker.”
I didn’t know what a corker was, but it sounded positive.
“They have to find that girl.” A look of concern washed his smile away. “If they can find that Mormon girl in Utah, they can find Ashton.”
I knew about the Mormon girl from one of my true-crime shows. She was abducted by a nut who thought he was some kind of prophet. It was quite a while back. The nut brainwashed her with his crazy-prophet act, but she finally got away. Things hadn’t been good for her while he held her captive, but she seemed to deal with the whole thing in a heroic way. I admired her. Maybe she was a corker too.
I asked Bernie if he thought Ashton might’ve been kidnapped by some nut too, and he’s like, “No, no, I wouldn’t ever say that. But I just don’t see how that girl could have any enemies. I pray she just ran away for a little while and that she’ll come back as soon as she sees how much her parents really love her.”
“Really? She didn’t think her parents loved her?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Young people—they can get on the outs with their families every now and then. It’s normal. I tried to run away once, but I ended up down at the pool hall, playing pool all day long. When I got over being mad, I went back home, ate green beans and meat loaf for dinner, just like nothing ever happened.”
“So, what was Ashton on the outs with her family about?”
Bernie picked up a slice of bread and scattered a healthy layer of turkey across it. “The usual thing, you know—didn’t think her parents understood her. She had a boyfriend they didn’t like. Or maybe they hadn’t met him, but she just knew they wouldn’t approve of him. Something like that.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Did this boyfriend happen to be named Rowan Adams?”
“She never did say. Why? You don’t think the boyfriend had something to do with her going missing, do you?”
“I don’t know.” I snapped the lid shut on another meal. “But anything’s possible.”
CHAPTER 22
When we finished fixing the meals, it was time to load them up, which wasn’t that easy. They don’t really make BMWs like Trix’s with hauling stuff around in mind. We figured the trunk would be too hot, so I ended up having to share the backseat with a whole pile of meal boxes. Linda explained our route, along with a few rules such as how we should greet the people, what we should do if they weren’t home, and what topics of conversation to avoid. “Don’t mention the word charity,” she said. “Don’t comment on their homes, no matter how bad they might be, and always smile.” She supplied us with an example of the kind of smile she was talking about—cheery and wholesome. “We’re not just in the business of feeding people,” she added. “We’re also in the business of spreading good cheer.”
Ashton’s route ran through a mostly Hispanic area south of the river. It wasn’t really what I would call a bad neighborhood. Audrey and I had driven around there a couple of times before, checking out the cool flavor of the place—green buildings, orange buildings, lowriders, vendors pushing their tamale carts down the streets. It was a place where people sat on their front porches by the dozen. They even cooked out in the front yards. None of that hiding behind a stockade fence with the grill so neighbors couldn’t horn in.
As we started handing out meals, though, it was strange—none of the folks on our route were actually Hispanic. Mostly they were ancient white people—old ladies or old men who lived alone. They’d probably bought their houses way before the Mexicans migrated in and just stayed, unlike the younger set. Maybe they liked their houses too much to move, or maybe they were too set in their ways for a change, or maybe they just weren’t bigots. Of course, I didn’t ask. Linda hadn’t told us not to, but I figured she would have if she’d thought of it.
Another question was, Why didn’t any Hispanics want meals? I thought it could be because they didn’t like turkey sandwiches, but Audrey suggested they might be too proud to accept charity.
“Or maybe they just don’t trust us,” Trix said.
And I’m like, “Why wouldn’t they trust us?”
“Because they might be here illegally,” she said. “And they don’t want us to turn them in.”