Blanche marched up to her. Today she was wearing a purple velour track suit with sequined sneakers.
She plopped herself into the seat at an empty desk next to Coral. “So, I hear the bear stood you up this morning,” she announced. “What are we going to do about it?”
“What? Oh, good God. My sister warned me about this town. She told me that if a mosquito sneezed on the north end of town, everyone on the south end of the town would know about it before it finished wiping its nose. Or something like that.”
“I offered to help take her mind off it, but she turned me down,” Frederick volunteered.
Blanche gave him a dismissive glance. “I would too,” she said, and suddenly Coral felt considerably warmer towards her.
Maybelle, who was sitting at her desk nearby clipping out articles to file, arched an eyebrow. “That would be a first,” she said tartly.
Before the two dueling spinsters could get into it again, Coral said quickly, “Anyway, it’s no big deal. It would have been a boring interview anyway. What? Why are you staring at me?”
Maybelle and Blanche glanced at each other and shook their heads.
“Ah, youth! They’re so na?ve. Clearly, the bear has the hots for you, but he’s too scared to act on it,” Blanche said. “I’m not sure why, but I plan to get to the bottom of it. He shouldn’t have stood you up, though. We should get back at him. I could sneak into his house and put itching powder in his undershorts.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Coral said hastily. Fun, and well-deserved, but not necessary.
“I could leave a box of brownies laced with ex-lax on his porch,” Maybelle offered.
“Ladies! I am shocked!” Coral protested. “Shocked, I tell you!”
“The itching powder is a good plan,” Maybelle said to Blanche, ignoring Coral completely. “However, I think-oh, there’s someone to see you, Coral.”
A wan-looking woman with circles under her eyes was making her way towards Coral’s desk. She looked to be in her fifties, with bedraggled brown hair yanked back into a ponytail. She wore a t-shirt and jeans that were clearly too big for her, as if she’d recently lost weight.
“Can I help you?” Coral asked.
“You’re the new reporter, right? I wanted to know if anyone had heard anything more about Adrian,” the woman said.
Adrian Freidman was the reporter who she was replacing. He’d apparently taken off abruptly several weeks earlier, which was why the internship had opened up.
“Not that I know of,” she said, puzzled. “Have you checked with the sheriff’s department?”
The woman burst into tears. “They’re giving me the runaround,” she sniffled. “You have to understand, I know my son, and he simply would not disappear like that. The note was fake. Why do you think it was typewritten? Because he didn’t write it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know anything about a note. Have a seat.” She pulled up an empty chair for the woman, and sat down to face her.
“My name is Molly Freidman,” the woman said dolefully. She pulled a crumpled up handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at her eyes.
“Coral Colby,” she said. “Tell me what you know so far.”
“My son had worked here for several months when he just disappeared. didn’t come in to work one day, and he always shows up on time, so by mid morning, when he didn’t answer his phone, your boss went by the house he was renting to check on him. When nobody answered the door, your boss called the sheriff’s office.” Tears welled in the woman’s eyes. Coral grabbed a box of tissues from her desk and handed it to her, and the woman blew her nose noisily and tossed the wadded up tissue into the trash can.
“Thank you,” she said shakily. “They got the landlord to let them in, and the place was empty. His clothing and suitcase were gone. There was a typewritten note saying that he needed to travel for a while to figure out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.”