Free Everything but the Squeal by Timothy Hallinan

smoke,” she said. “Just honing the skills I picked up at home.”
    Her mother swatted away some invisible gnats in front of her. “Well,” she said, “go into the other room.”
    “Hey, don't worry,” Rory said, glancing at me. “I've got potatoes in my ears.”
    “Is that supposed to be funny, miss?” Mrs. Sorrell said. “Don't you think I've got enough troubles without my own daughter turning into Henny Youngman?”
    “Henny who ?” Rory asked in honest bewilderment.
    “Never you mind. Just make yourself scarce.”
    “Oink,” Rory said, looking back at me as she stood up. Her elegant legs, brown below the white shorts, twinkled at me as though they had been dusted with Tinker Bell's goofus sparkles as she walked away. “Oink, oink,” she said. “Everything but the squeal.”
    “What have you been telling him?” her mother demanded.
    “Oh, Mother,” Rory said. “The truth will out.” She gave me another glance, walked very slowly to the door to what I supposed was the bedroom, and pulled it shut softly behind her. Mrs. Sorrell watched the door for a moment as though she expected it to open again, and then shook her head.
    “We shouldn't have brought her,” she said, “but we were afraid to leave her alone, after, well, after Aimee. And it's Easter vacation and she wanted to see L.A. And, I don't know, I thought if we found Aimee she might be more willing to come home if Rory were with us. If we found Aimee,” she added bitterly. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose, stretching the skin tight over the fine bones of her face, and I could see Rory's face peeking out at me through her mother's. “So I'm drinking,” she said. “The one thing I shouldn't be doing.”
    She was wearing a white blouse with little red cherries embroidered on the collar and a pair of navy-blue slacks with big safari-style pockets. There were three long scratches on her forehead from where she'd raked it with her nails, red, angry parallel lines. Hers wasn't the kind of face that should have had scratches on it. They made her look younger and softer than her daughter.
    “Well,” I said, hoisting the bottle, “at least you're not drinking alone.”
    “Put it down,” she said in a tone that brooked no discussion. “One of us has to be clear-headed. I have something to show you, but first I have to know if you've learned anything.”
    “Not much,” I said. I wasn't going to tell her about the girl on the slab and the burn in her navel. Not until I had to, at any rate. “I've been on the street for four days but I haven't found anyone who can put her there with certainty. That's where she was, though. There's a whole community of them out there.”
    “She's not there anymore,” she said. “Come out on the terrace. I don't want Rory listening through the door.”
    I put down the bottle as she crossed the room to a big sliding glass door and pushed it open. I couldn't figure out what to do with the cigarette, so I carried it out onto the terrace and crushed it underfoot.
    The terrace was enclosed by ten-foot pink walls and overgrown vegetation. A hummingbird that had been feeding on a big leathery copa de oro gave us an indignant midair stare and thrummed off over the wall.
    “I hate those things,” she said vaguely. “They're neither birds nor insects. They're like leftovers from some time when lizards flew and snakes swam. I always think they'll have dandruff.”
    I like hummingbirds, but I kept quiet. Mrs. Sorrell fished in the pocket of her slacks and pulled out a piece of paper. “We have to go home,” she said wearily. “I guess I knew this was going to happen. I just hoped we'd find her before it did.” I put out a hand and she put the paper into it. Then she sank onto a chaise and crossed her ankles, looking down at her hands resting in her lap. I opened the paper.
    Same kind of paper, same dot-matrix printer as before. GET $20,000, it said, all in caps. BE HOME TUESDAY AFTERNOON. I'LL CALL.
    I felt