Free Tangled Thing Called Love by Juliet Rosetti

appliances were new and shiny, Mazie noticed, studying her reflection in a chrome toaster. Her face glowed radioactive red from her bike ride today.
    “Where do you work, Mr. Fanchon?” she asked.
    “It’s Gil , honey. Don’t ask me where I work. Say, ‘What do you work for?’ Go on, ask.”
    “Okay. What do you work for?”
    “Chicken feed.” He guffawed. “Birdseed of all kinds. I work at the Chik-K-D birdseed factory out on the highway. Fifteen years I been there. Funny thing how even when they don’t have food to put on their table, folks still shell out money for the birds. Fawn used to have a pet parakeet. Died after she went missing. The younger ones didn’t take care of it.”
    “Fawn’s little brothers. Are they still—”
    “All out on their own these days. Fawn, now—she was my brightest. Wanted to go to college. Got accepted to a bunch of ’em, only I wouldn’t sign the loan papers for her. That’s how come she went in for that Miss Quail Hollow foolishness—she wanted the scholarship money.”
    Gil scooped ice cubes into three tumblers and took a pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator. He poured tea into the tumblers with a practiced twist of the wrist. “I didn’t want Fawn going off to college, see? Wanted her to stay here and take care of the rugrats so’s I could keep on with my barhoppin’.”
    Mazie leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping her tea, eying Gil’s bow on its wall hook. It looked like a traditional Indian bow turned inside out. It was stainless steel with space-age string and all sorts of complicated gadgets affixed to it. It looked capable of not just bringing down a deer, but skinning and dressing it, too. A weapon like that couldn’t come cheap. How did a guy who worked for birdseed get the money for a bow like that?
    “When Fawn comes back I’m going to show her the money I got saved up for her,” Gil said. “Tell her now she can go to any damn college in the country if she wants.”
    Ben shot Mazie a look, and she was sure he was thinking the same thing she was: Gil Fanchon was in free fall from reality. If she were alive, Fawn would be almost thirty-one, maybe with kids of her own.
    Ben cleared his throat. “Gil,” he said. “I work as a cameraman for a Milwaukee television station, but I also do independent film projects.”
    “That right?” Gil was a twitcher, jiggling his feet, scratching his arms, cracking his knuckles. Probably an ex-smoker whose fingers still itched for a cigarette. “You mean like the History Channel? I watch them shows a lot, especially the World War Two stuff.”
    “I think people would be interested in an investigative journalism story about your daughter.”
    Gil’s eyes widened. “Abso-damn-lutely. You investigate the hell out of my baby girl’s disappearance. Show it on that Great Unsolved Mysteries program. I bet folks would be poppin’ out of the woodwork saying they seen Fawn. Hell, she might see it herself and come home.”
    “I can’t guarantee a cable network would pick this up,” Labeck said. “But if you’d allow it, we could do some preliminary filming this week—right now, in fact. I’d like to get some background on your daughter.”
    “What do you mean, background?”
    “Photos, diaries, home video—anything that gives a sense of Fawn’s personality.”
    “Dunno.” Gil waggled a finger into his right ear. “Them things are sort of sacred. Would I get paid for this? It’s kind of like … invading my baby’s privacy.”
    Ben fished out his wallet and thrust a fifty-dollar bill into Gil’s hand. “If we get financial backing, there’ll be more down the line.”
    Gil stuffed the money in his shirt pocket. “This ain’t for myself, understand. It’ll go toward the Fawn Foundation.”
    “The Fawn Foundation?” Ben said.
    “Some folks hereabouts set up a fund to help find my daughter. Five bucks here, ten bucks there—people far away as China and Japan send money. Okay,