Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

They drove past a row of McMansions, five hundred thousand dollar pseudo-Georgians so close together you’d have to mow on alternate days, looking for house numbers painted on the curb. Sean began to count by twos and started to shake his head. The houses came to a halt just short of the address for Mohammed Ben Zekri. They pulled up to the curb and looked at the hole in the ground, awaiting a foundation. Mr. Ben Zekri was gone along with ten thousand cubic feet of dirt.

Matt got out of the car and walked over to the last house and headed up the stairs to the front door. Sean pulled out the cell phone, looked at the signature page on the notice, and called the attorney.

“Klompus, Bogans, and Hess. How may I help you?”

“Jack Klompus, please.”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Sean Ellis of AAA Process Service.”

“This is Linda, Mr. Klompus’s secretary. How may I help you?”

“I’m here at the address your office provided for Mohammed Ben Zekri and what it is a hole in the ground.”

Matt stood next to him and mouthed. “Empty for six months.”

“In fact, it’s been a hole in the ground for six months. We’d appreciate it if Mr. Klompus could check his file and see if he has a more current address for Mr. Ben Zekri.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Klompus is on vacation. I’ll leave a message for him. His assistant will call you back.”

“Thank you.”

Sean put the phone back in his pocket. “You know, for three hundred dollars an hour, they could check their addresses every six months. That wouldn’t be too much to ask, would it?”

They got back in the car and plotted a course to the next address, a red-brick apartment box in Falls Church, on the edge of “Little Saigon.” There was no grass on the lawn, only dirt, rocks, and glass. The one tree was long dead. A number of windows had broken panes. The chain-link fence lacked only a razor-wire frosting to complete the detention-center look of the place. The boys walked through the graffitied door and looked at the mailboxes. There wasn’t a name on a single one.

“You take the top floor and work down. I’ll go up,” Matt said.

They met on the second floor at the only door that was opened to them. Inside was an elderly Vietnamese woman, her streaked gray hair pulled into a tight bun. She had a young child on her hip and two others behind her. All three children were in diapers with fingers in their mouths.

“Uh, ma’am, we’re looking for Mr. Vu Tran Nguyen. Can you tell us what apartment is his?” Sean asked.

Her face was utterly impassive, an appropriate reaction when assailed by gibberish.

Sean proceeded, “Do you speak English?”

Nothing.

“I thought so. So if I tell you I’m going to rip this child out of your arms and eat him, your eyes won’t widen and you won’t slam the door in my face, will you? Of course not, and so you haven’t. Have a nice day. Welcome to America.”

They turned away and trotted down the stairs. “Didn’t I tell you to take Vietnamese as your foreign-language elective, Matt? No, you had to take French. Have you noticed any place called ‘Little Paris’ around here?”

“Let me think. No, I don’t think so.”

“Me neither. Who’s next?”

“Lorelei Petty over in McLean. Good bet she speaks English.”

“Lucky you, Matt.”

They drove slowly through Falls Church towards Tysons Corner and McLean. Tysons Corner was the largest commercial center in America not located in the heart of a city. Falls Church sat between Washington D.C. and Tysons, and its one main thoroughfare was always distended with traffic, a perpetual aneurysm.

Forty-five minutes later they pulled up in front of Lorelei Petty’s townhouse on the Tysons-McLean frontier, where the proper zip code could mean a twenty thousand dollar difference from the other side of the street.

Matt read the paper. “This is a notice of deposition, so the shit’s been hitting the fan for quite a while. We don’t have the advantage of surprise here.”

“So, call her. See if she’s here. Do we have a description?”

“Yeah, five feet six inches, hundred forty-five pounds, light brown hair, wears glasses.”

Matt dialed directory assistance, got the number for an L. Petty, and then dialed that.

“Hello?”

“Lorelei Petty?”

“Yes.”

“Hi, my name is Matt Ellis. I’m a process server. I have a subpoena for you in the Wings matter. I’m on my way over. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes, is that okay with you?”

“Uh, sure, whatever.”

Matt set the phone down. “What do you think, Sean?”

“A guy, he’d be outa there three minutes tops. A woman, I’d say six.”

They looked down at their watches. The adjacent townhouse had a contractor’s sign hung from the front porch railing. It proclaimed: “Another fine project from the master craftsmen at DNT Contractors. Call Burle Hitchens at (703) 555-9400.”

Five minutes later, Matt rolled up the paper, stuck it in his back pocket, and got out of the car. He was going up the stairs when the front door opened. A woman stepped out and turned back to lock the deadbolt. Matt closed ground.

“Lorelei, is that you?” he asked, eagerly but uncertain.

“Yes,” she said and turned to face her caller.