DIVA by Susan Fleet

stool, a cork bulletin board held a list of emergency numbers, his included. Tacked beside it was a chore schedule—Take out trash, Clean bathrooms, Do laundry—mapped out in a time-grid with penciled-in names.
    “What about the other girls? Do they know anything?”
    “They do, they ain’t telling me.” She came over and gave him a slip of paper with her cell phone information, then leaned against the counter and sipped from a mug of coffee. “Ramona might give you something. She’s young, pregnant and scared. The other two girls got, you know, at-ti-tude.”
    “Tell me about Chantelle. How did she act while she was here?”
    “That’s the thing, Detective Frank. I thought we were gettin’ on okay. Chantelle seemed like a nice girl. Polite, you know, please and thank you, no backtalk like some of ‘em. When I asked about her family, she said her moms was in Houston, last she heard.”
    “Last she heard. Sad.”
    “You got no idea the sad stories I hear.” She went to the stove and lifted the lid on the big pot, releasing a steamy aroma. After stirring the contents with a wooden spoon, she replaced the lid.
    “Something smells good,” he said.
    “Creole gumbo. Want some?” Mama grinned. “Nah, you’re too busy. The attitude twins are in their room watching TV or listening to the crap that passes for music these days. Ramona was bunking with Chantelle in the back bedroom. Come on, I’ll take you.”
    As they walked down the hall he heard television voices. Mama stopped at the first door on the left and opened it without knocking. “Shut off the TV, girls. Detective Renzi wants to talk to you, so be polite and speak up.”
    He stepped into a large square room with two neatly-made twin beds, the corners of their blue bedspreads squarely tucked. The whole room was shipshape, no clutter on the dresser, no dust on the mirror above it. An older-model TV sat on a metal stand. Slouched on blue-plastic armchairs facing the now-dark television screen were two girls, one dark-skinned, the other lighter. Neither looked happy to see him.
    He gave them a reassuring smile. “Hello, ladies. Let’s start with names.”
    “Tameka,” said the dark-skinned girl with the dreadlocks and the round chubby face.
    “Linyatta,” said the other, gazing at him with mistrustful eyes.
    “What time was lights out last night?”
    “Midnight,” Tameka said. “Mama came in and tol’ us shut off the TV and go to sleep.”
    “Uh-huh. Did you?”
    An insolent smile appeared on Linyatta’s face, quickly suppressed.
    “What’d you do, hit the mute button and stay up all night watching a silent movie?”
    “Not all night,” Linyatta said. “Just till the movie was over.”
    “What time was that?”
    “Around one-thirty,” Tameka said.
    “What happened after that? Did you hear anything?”
    “We went to sleep, woke up when the alarm went off.”
    “Did Chantelle talk to you about running away?”
    “Didn’t talk to us ‘bout nuthin,” Linyatta said. “Snotty bitch.”
    He believed it. These girls had rap sheets. Chantelle wasn’t likely to have confided in them. “Thank you, ladies,” he said. “Don’t get any ideas about going AWOL like Chantelle.”
    Linyatta waved the TV remote at him. “Can we watch TV now?”
    “Sure.” He left the room, depressed beyond measure. Both girls were high-school dropouts, nothing to look forward to but lives of crime and dope and making babies with gangbangers.
    And that’s how Chantelle would wind up if he didn’t find her.
    At the far end of the wood-paneled hall Mama stood outside another door. “Told you nothing, right? Hard cases, those two, but you might get something from Ramona.”
    Mama opened the door and they entered the room. A Hispanic girl with an angelic face and large dark eyes lay in bed, propped against two pillows, wearing an over-sized cotton shirt with a big bulge, clearly pregnant.
    “This is Detective Renzi,” Mama said, “here about Chantelle. If