Free Water from Stone - a Novel by Katherine Mariaca-Sullivan Page A

street, reaches for his ragged briefcase and heaves his large frame out of the car. The humidity makes him feel soggy and limp. Ah, shit, he thinks, and reaches for the handkerchief that isn’t in his pocket where it’s supposed to be. Frustrated, he wipes his forehead on his shirtsleeve and walks to the trailer’s door.
    The door is festooned with a plastic Christmas wreath and has little white lights stapled around its frame. They blink. When he touches the bell, a tinny version of “Winter Wonderland” begins to play. Sy rolls his eyes and tries to straighten his sweat-stained shirt.
    The woman who opens the door looks to be in her late-seventies, maybe somewhere in the hundreds. Steel-grey roots barely hidden by umber-colored, over-processed, tightly-coiled curls.  Crocodile skin tanned nut-brown by the sun. Soft, loose jowls that sway below her chins when she cocks her head to look at him. He thinks she must approve of what she sees because the smile that reveals perfectly-cast dentures in Cover Girl White goes all the way up to her faded blue eyes.
    “Hello there,” says the woman. “Can I help you?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” says Sy. “I’m looking for Mrs. Esther Burrows.”
    “Well, then, sir, today’s your lucky day. You found me. What can I do for you?”
    Sy fishes a damp business card from his shirt pocket and holds it out to her. She pushes the screen door open and reaches for it. Leaning her bulk against the screen to keep it open, she lifts the glasses that hang from a colorful paper clip chain around her neck and fits them onto her button nose. “I’ve got really good eyesight for far away things,” she explains. “Just can’t see what’s close up in front of my face.”
    “I’m Sy Colomanos,” Sy says.
    “Well, so you say you are,” she replies, examining the card. “Leastways that’s what it says here. Oh, my, it says you’re a private investigator. Now, what’s that all about? And what do you want from me? Did someone die and leave me money?”
    “I’m looking for someone, ma’am, and I thought you could help me.” Sy opens the file he is carrying and takes out a grainy black-and-white photo of a young woman dressed as a hospital candy striper. The photo, taken by a security camera, shows the woman cradling a bulky purse. He hands the photo over to Esther Burrows.
    Mrs. Burrows squints down at it. “Well now, that’s not a very good photograph, is it?”
    “It was taken by a security camera, ma’am.”
    “Yes, I can see that. Hmmm . She looks familiar, but I can’t seem to place her.” Mrs. Burrows pushes her glasses farther up her nose and squints harder, her eyes all but disappearing into the crepe-like folds surrounding them. “Why, I saw this picture on America’s Mystery Crimes , didn’t I? This girl took that baby, right? The one’s mother died? That show was last month, or maybe in May, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes you did, ma’am. But I was wondering if you’d ever seen her before the show. We think she knew your daughter.”
    “Elie? This girl’s a friend of Elie’s?” Surprise lights her face.
    “Yes, ma’am. At least we think so.”
    Esther Burrows looks into Sy’s eyes and he can see her wondering if this conversation is going to cause her pain. Finally, sighing, she pushes the screen door open wider. “You’d best come in. And please stop calling me ma’am. I can’t be much older than you.”
    Nine
    Sy.
    “Elie, my daughter, was a late child. My husband, Earl, he came back from the war in a wheelchair. The doctors said it’d be a miracle if he could ever have kids. Well, sir, a miracle happened and when I was forty-eight years old, Elie was born. Elizabeth Barrett Burrows. I named her after that poet lady. The one whose husband loved her so much?  We thought Burrows was a lot like Browning, kind of sounds the same, you know? Anyway, she was a late baby and a handful from the day she was born. Can I get you more soda?”
    Sy shakes his head.