LITMIR.BIZ

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off against each other in a promotion they billed as “Helliday on Wheels.” It was both a fund-raiser and a chance to recruit new players, dubbed “fresh meat.” The T-shirts and ball caps and coffee mugs at the concession stand all said “Merry Crunchmas.”

      It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Round up some friends, go see Bonnie skate. Have a couple beers, eat a couple burritos. Make an outing of it. That was before I forgot the stadium seats and Kym called to ask what I was doing about our son and his failing grades. Which was a good question. One I didn’t have an answer to at that moment. Or maybe any other time.

      Bonnie—Bonnie Deckard—does what I call part-time IT consulting for me because she refuses to be labeled a hacker. In her spare time she plays roller derby, where she skates as a blocker, which is roughly the equivalent of a defensive lineman in football, although they can also be on offense. She goes by the derby name “Bonshell.” Her job is helping a player called a jammer break through a scrum of opponents and score points by passing skaters from the other team. The blockers also try to stop the opposing jammer, which was what Bonnie and her teammates were successfully doing at the moment. Ignoring the looks Anne was shooting at me, I clapped and joined the shouts of approval rising up around me in the circular Ohio Building at the State Fairgrounds.

      The referee blew her whistle, signaling a foul by one of the Tree Town Skirts. Boos filled the arena. At the break in the action, Lucy, sitting one bleacher below me, pushed her cat’s-eye glasses down her nose, leaned over, and whispered something to Roy. He shushed her.

      “What?” I said.

      “Nothing,” Roy said.

      “C’mon.”

      Lowering his voice, Roy said, “She said you and I must be in rear-end heaven, with all that Lycra out there.”

      “Watch what you say,” I said, looking around. The stands were crowded with players’ parents, younger siblings, friends, and boyfriends, including Troy, Bonnie’s own beau, sitting next to me. If he’d heard Roy, he was ignoring him.

      “Do you deny it?” Lucy said, mischief in her eyes.

      “Yes,” Anne said, glancing at her daughter, Amelia, before glaring at me. “Do you?”

      “Pleading the Fifth,” I said, and took another pull on my Bud Light.

      “Crap,” Roy said.

      “Nothing of the sort, parson,” I said. “It’s my constitutional right.”

      “Not that. This.” He held up his phone, which showed an incoming call. Roy’s phone rings a lot, which I guess happens when you’re a minister. He was mostly immune to the demands on his attention. But I knew Lucy, his long-suffering wife, wouldn’t have minded an hour off now and then. Roy listened, putting a finger in his ear to drown out the crowd and the announcer’s play-by-play, before getting up and making his way down the stands and over to an exit door. I settled back and watched the match resume, trying to placate Anne. It wasn’t easy. Mike wasn’t the only person I’d let down recently. I’d missed a long-planned date night with Anne the evening before while staking out two married Ohio State medical school professors meeting up at a Hilton out east. The catch being they weren’t married to each other. Like I said, I needed the money. When my efforts to make peace with Anne failed, I turned my attention to the track and tried to focus on the action and not on Lucy’s quip. Rear-end heaven. Once again, it wasn’t easy.

      A couple of minutes later Roy walked back inside and signaled me. Suppressing a sigh of gratitude, I hoisted myself off the bleacher and joined him on the floor.

      “What’s up?”

      “What’s up is you may need a divorce lawyer, to judge by the way Anne’s looking at you right now.”

      “Excepting the fact we’re not married, tell me something I don’t already know.”

      “As if I’ve got all day. Listen. Guy I think you should talk to,” he said, gesturing at the phone.

      “What guy?”

      “Guy might have a job for you.”

      “A job?”

      “That’s what he said.”

      “But he called you.”

      “And I’m suggesting you talk to him. You’re what, drowning in work?”

      I thought about the boy band, about the four or five notes they’d actually hit. “What kind of job?”

      “Here,” he said, handing me the phone. “I’m going back up. I don’t want to miss any Lycra.”

      “Buy me another beer?” I said to his back.

      “I don’t buy swill,” he replied.

      2

      I WALKED TO THE EXIT AND STEPPED OUTSIDE. I didn’t need my coat. It was as sunny and mild as an Indian summer afternoon, even though we weren’t that far from Christmas. The temperature had yet to dip below freezing this fall, unusual for central Ohio. It felt unnatural, whether it was global warming or El Niño or an approaching asteroid. It ought to be colder this time of year.

      I introduced myself to the caller and asked how I could help.

      “My sister’s missing,” the man said. “I was hoping you could find her.”

      “I can try. How long’s she been gone?”

      “I’m not sure, exactly. A few weeks. Maybe months.”

      “Months?”

      “Maybe.” I heard a small boy’s voice in the background. My caller said something indistinct in response.

      I said, “Have you talked to the police?”

      “Last week.”

      “Your sister’s been missing for months and you just now went to the police?”

      “She disappears a lot.”

      “Why?”

      “She’s a prostitute.”

      I paused. “That’s not good.”

      “I know. That’s why I’m calling.”

      “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

      “It’s OK.”

      “Where’s she work?”

      “Different places. In a motel for a while, but sometimes the streets, too. Bottoms now and then, but east side, mainly.”

      “OK.” Roy’s Episcopal church was in the Bottoms, an old and struggling neighborhood west of downtown officially known as Franklinton, which may have explained how he got the call. I said, “What’s her name?”

      “Jessica. Jessica Byrnes.”

      “What’s yours?”

      “Bill Byrnes.”

      “Where do you live?”

      “Whitehall. Off Yearling.”

      I thought for a moment. “You around tomorrow?” At least I was free, thanks to my screw-up the previous week.

      He was. We settled on early afternoon. He gave me his address.

      “You think you can find her?”

      “I’ll do my best. I’m sorry about what I said. The way it came out.”

      “It’s OK. I know it’s not good. That’s why I called your friend. I saw him quoted in that article. I figured I should try to find her. Even though—”

      I waited for him to finish the sentence, but the line went quiet again, the only noise the sound of the child in the background.

      “I’ll

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