Cockatiels at Seven by Donna Andrews

125 Hawthorne Street?”
    I glanced back at the mailbox, and then at the house again. It was the house I remembered visiting, and this wasn’t the kind of cookie cutter neighborhood where you could be one street over and not notice the difference. I even remembered the little planter beside the front door. The impatiens Karen had planted in it the last time I’d visited had given way to some plastic sweet peas.
    “Yes,” the woman said.
    “I was looking for Karen Walker—” I began.
    The woman’s face changed dramatically the minute I said Karen’s name, and she drew back a step.
    “Just leave me alone!” she shouted. “She hasn’t lived here for two years, and I already told you people whereshe went, so just leave me alone! I’ll call the police on you if you don’t go away.”
    She slammed the door.
    “Not s’posed to slam doors,” Timmy said, shaking his head as if to imply that he, of course, had never been guilty of such heinous behavior.
    I stood, stunned for a moment. Yes, I was a little vexed with Karen for dumping Timmy on me so long, but I couldn’t imagine why the woman would react to her name with such anger. Or was it fear?
    After standing there in stunned silence for a few moments—well, silence except for the Timmy’s soft chanting of “Moo moo here; moo moo there”—I rang the bell again.
    “I said go away,” the woman shouted through the door.
    “I’m going!” I said. “Just tell me where to go!”
    “I have the phone in my hand!”
    “Fine, call the police if you like,” I said. “But first, please tell me where Karen went.”
    “I told you already!”
    “You told someone,” I said. “Not me.”
    “Why do you need to know?” she said. Less loudly. It sounded as if she might be calming down a bit.
    “Because she dumped her toddler on me last night and I want to give him back!”
    The door opened a crack and she peered out.
    “Her toddler?”
    I pointed down at Timmy, who was talking to Kiki in a low tone, with a very earnest look on his face—in short, looking very cute.
    “I hadn’t seen her since shortly after Timmy wasborn,” I said. “Then yesterday morning she showed up, asked me to watch the kid for a little while, and that’s the last I’ve seen of her. I’m worried. Do you know where she moved to?”
    The woman studied me for a few moments. She glanced back at Timmy. I thought I saw her face soften slightly.
    And there was a toy dump truck on the lawn. If this woman had kids of her own . . .
    “He’s distracted right now,” I said, shaking my head and frowning sadly. “But being without his mother all day yesterday—and then overnight; going to bed without a goodnight kiss from Mommy—you can imagine! I have to at least try to find Karen. For Timmy’s sake.”
    It sounded over the top to me—I’d put a small quiver in my voice, and you could practically hear violins playing in the background. But it worked.
    “Wait here a minute,” she said.
    She closed the door and disappeared. Timmy tired of “Old McDonald’s Farm” and began singing “The Eensy Weensy Spider” again.
    The door opened again, and the woman handed me a sheet of paper. I glanced at it. An address. 1415 Stone Street, apartment 12.
    “It’s those apartments over behind the bus station,” she said. “Those kind-of run-down ones.”
    “The College Arms?”
    “Yeah, the Armpits,” she said, snickering. “That’s what most people in town call them, you know.”
    I knew the place. So did anyone who regularly read the police blotter column in the
Caerphilly Clarion
. If I were one of Caerphilly’s finest and found myself runninga little short of my monthly arrest quota, I’d just mosey over to the College Arms and keep my eyes open until a few of the part-time burglars or small-time drug dealers in residence did something blatantly illegal so I could haul them in.
    “What on earth is Karen doing living there?” I said.
    “They’re cheap,” the woman said. “And