When a kid goes missing, there’s really no possible way to justify the importance of a seventy thousand dollar car sale. I was elbow-deep in 240Z engine grease, replacing the ignition switch for the umpteenth time, when my sister, Renée, called to test my resolve on this matter. 

The Nokia bounced and rattled on the cowl panel of the little red coupe. Its joyous Spanish dance ricocheted off the windshield and around the shop bay. Fragrances of automotive fluids and antique rubber failed to dull my anxiety. The cellphone’s green screen revealed nothing about the caller. 

I muttered an expletive. Mental calculations told me each round lasted ten seconds followed by a two-second interval of silence. I couldn’t remember how many times the thing would ring before going to a voicemail box. Too many.

“Probably won’t answer itself,” Akira said from the next bay. His ancient Japanese frame held a Chilton manual against the fender of a 1998 Acura. The old man had been with Dad since the early 1980s—our resident voice of virtue.

“It’s just bad news trying to interrupt a perfectly good day,” I countered, irritation clipping my words. “Johnny’s due any second to check out that sparkling LX400 for his wife.”

“You think he’s going to buy the Lexus.” Akira didn’t ask questions. He stated fears out loud and let them soak in.

The Nokia ended its chorus. 

“I think if he bites, that life-saving deal for the six Tundras is a lock.” I lifted my wrench, poised to dash the little phone to bits if it rejoined with another happy dance. “Might even save this dying business of ours,” I growled, resting the tool on a fender. 

Smoke-colored skies, visible through the bay door windows, reminded me and everyone else of the dry Montana summer that followed the false threat of Y2K. Hundreds of thousands of acres burned across the state. Johnny Martin would be a reluctant shopper, banking on next year’s wheat and corn yields. A starving herd of cattle had a way of turning a rancher stingy. But the clouds promised snow, and I hoped Johnny’s mind was on a white Christmas with a new car under the tree for his beloved wife. 

The Nokia resounded with another gleeful attempt to derail my concentration. 

I took hold of the wrench.

“Doubt you’ll get much worked out with that noise pinging around the shop,” Akira said.

My teeth chattered, and vile language threatened to spill onto the polished concrete like vomit. “It’s just Mother trying to trick me into answering. How does she know when something important is about to happen?” 

“I don’t think she’s psychic,” the ancient Okinawan voice of reason said.

“Bet me.” Before the little phone had rung its first note this morning, my mind was churning through the myriad ways Mother might sideline the Martin deal. She’d done it before with her uncanny timing and disdain for Dad’s dealership. While economic gurus warned of a looming recession and gas prices refused to hold still, my mother paraded around town in her Chrysler New Yorker—a moving billboard that proclaimed to all, “Buy somewhere else!” 

I was certain the call came from her. “She’s calling from a phone booth or the diner so I won’t recognize the caller I.D.”

Akira chuckled. “You give her a lot of credit she might not deserve.” 

With an audible groan, I captured the little beast between my pinky and the crook in my thumb. If I didn’t regain control of my internal sales process, the mess I called a car dealership would come apart like the 2000 presidential election. A deep inhale pulled the scent of well-used oil and broken down rubber into my soul, soothing those jagged nerves. My finger added one more blackened smear to the keypad as I hit Answer.

“This is Connor.”

“I need your help,” Renée blurted in scratchy tones. 

Relief flooded in for a tenth of a second before my sphincter tightened again. “I’m sorry, who is this?”

“Seriously, Connor.” The refuge into which she’d escaped, high in the Montana Rockies, trapped between the panhandle of Idaho and the Canadian border, snatched bits of her inevitable plea for rescue. 

“Oh! Now it’s coming back to me.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

“I need your help.”

“Well, Sis, finally come to your senses and need someone to drive you home?” I put little effort into hiding my sarcasm. 

“No, Connor!” Her insolence boosted the signal strength a full bar. “I need you to find a little girl.”

“Cool beans,” I said, contemplating effective phrases to put her off as quickly as possible. “So happens I have one at home. Not sure her mother’s going to want you anywhere near her, though.”

“This is serious, Connor.” Her anger kicked at me through the modulation. 

“It’s always serious, Renée. It was serious when you left me hanging to run away and it’s gotten more serious since you’ve been gone.”

“I’m sorry about that, Connor. But this time I’m for real. This girl, this child, she’s missing. No older than Penny.”

I ground my teeth. “Shit, Renée. How do you do that, just use my sweet baby girl to leverage sympathy?” My eyes shut tight only to see flashes of Renée loading her car and then driving away. “You just feel the need to call every three months and stick a knife in? Give it a little twist?” 

“That’s not it, Connor.” Behind the crackle of the poor connection, a whimper. “I shouldn’t have taken off like that. I just couldn’t….”

Every word Renée spoke needed caution tape around it. She was a master at exploiting weaknesses, expecting my help whenever she cried Wolfenstein.

“I’ve got a life here, Sister run-for-the-hills.” It was cruel, and I hoped it hurt. “Can’t drop it all to play your games or calm your jitters.”

“This is not a game and it’s not jitters, Connor. Vicky didn’t want me to ask.” She paused for a breath. “I’m doing it for her little sister. You’re the only detective I know who can find her.” 

Aw, of course. Vicky at the center. Convinced my sister to bolt for the mountains with a conveniently pocketed baby sister to raise the stakes. Pure catnip for a wounded soul like Renée.

“Not much I can do, sis.” That dangerous urge bubbled in my gut. An impulse designed to get me into trouble. The idea of solving a riddle spun fantastic webs of intrigue in my mind. “I’ve got to close this deal with Johnny Martin. He’s buying seven brand new Tundras.” 

She whinnied into the mouthpiece. “What am I going to do if you don’t help, Connor?”

I trapped the Nokia in the crook of my neck to free my hands. Filth from the Datsun’s engine covered them. The shop rag scraped dry skin. I scrubbed at the memory of the last time I put off the urge to solve a mystery. It ended with one dead horse and an enraged client. 

“How long?” I asked.

“What?”

“How long has the child been missing?”

“Oh. Since last night I guess. We were out—me and Vicky. Her mother says Kayla’s bed was made when she got up this morning at six.” Her voice shook the words out.

“Anyone call the cops?”

“They won’t do anything.” 

That didn’t sound right. Since when did law enforcement ignore missing children?

“Well, dammit Renée, I can’t be there and here at the same time. I need to close this deal with Johnny.” 

“A couple of days, Connor. That’s all I’m asking.”

“It’s a day’s drive one way, Sis!” The grease wasn’t coming off with the puny little shop rag. “What are you selling me? This kid’s just going to bob to the surface just because I drove six hundred miles?”

“My God, Connor! Don’t talk that way. What if she’s drowned in a lake?”

Her retort zapped my heart. The image of a girl floated across my mind’s eye, one as young as my own precious angel, face down in a lake…. Oh, my gawd! Why would Renée do this to me? I scoured the grime until a burning itch covered my fingers and erased the horrifying mental picture. “Well what are her parents doing about it?”

“Her mother’s turned inside out with fear and the child’s father is crazy.” 

“Not helpful, Renée. Your father was crazy and you turned out just fine.” A total lie. My sister was as neurotic as they come. 

“This guy is ten times the crazy Dixon ever was!” she yelled. I swear her spit hit me in the ear.

“You have to tell the cops, Renée. The cops are there in the mountains with you. I’m not. I’m six hundred miles away, in the middle of the biggest sale we’ve ever had. You need someone right next door to help you, not some patsy on the other side of the state.” Examination of my pinky revealed some missing skin. I shook it in the air which did little to ease the sting. “Besides, I’ve got no time for PI work. Nansi’d smack me with a frying pan for even talking to you, let alone jumping into a missing person case in the mountains just before Thanksgiving.” A small breeze through the cracks in the bay doors tickled the hair on my neck. Any conversation about solving crime stirred me to a froth. Give me a day of traipsing the untamed Rockies in search of truth and justice with a missing child as the bonus—my heart was pumping. Hard. Add a dose of redemption for the dead horse from my last failure as a private eye. Renée had definitely found the perfect nerve to pluck. 

It wasn’t helping one bit. 

I inhaled deeply and grounded my feet. “You left me to manage the family business all alone, little sis. And by that I mean deserted our family. You expected me to handle things. I’m handling things. If I can lock this sale up, it saves Pierce Toyota from bankruptcy. You get that, right?” Splash as much blame and shame as it took to end this argument. 

She let out a wail that deadened the line.

I waited, half hopeful we’d lost the connection. Vivid images of a small child stumbling through a forest with tears streaming down her dirty face filled the vacuum. I tightened my grip on the cellphone.

“Renée?” 

“I’m here.” She said at last, wispy.

“I’d help if I could,” I said, squeezing my eyes tight against the scary mental pictures.

“Then help,” she replied, steam running low. The gears of her mind ground with a nearly audible gnawing. “These local yokels aren’t even looking. The mother believes the father is hiding the girl. And the father is a blatant liar.”

Concentrate on the deal in front of me the voice of reason cried. Concerns for a child that no one was looking for, according to Renée’s own account, had no place in my business plan. She was rattled, and I didn’t have time to sort the details. Renée always got facts and dramatic tension confused. 

Still, the grain of truth that seeds a rumor niggled. 

“You talked to the father?”

“He’s a liar, Connor!” Her voice shifted back toward outrage. “He won’t admit to anything, talks in circles. Nobody knows what’s going on with him. You have to come and prove he’s lying and find the girl before something bad happens to her.”

The irrational accusations pushed my resentment buttons. “Let me think on it. I’ve got to close this critical deal.”

“There’s no time,” she shouted. Crackles of tiny lightning singed my ear. “How many hours does a five-year-old have before she’s… I can’t even say it. What if it was Penelope?” 

The line went flat.

“Renée?” I thought I heard a horse snort. “Renée!” 

Nothing. Only the desolate sound of a preschool child in a shadowy mountain forest, snowfall fluttering down around her.