Rubbed Out by Barbara Block

that.”
    â€œYes, you did.”
    Janet Wilcox was her husband’s opposite. Neat to a fault. In the picture her hair had been teased and shellacked into something that resembled a blond helmet. I didn’t know women wore their hair that way anymore. It reminded me of photos I’d seen from the fifties.
    Her face was perfectly made up, but that couldn’t hide the nondescriptness of her features. She wasn’t pretty. She wasn’t ugly. She was plain. The frilly white blouse with ruffles around the neck that she was wearing belonged on someone younger and cuter.
    I reflected that her daughter couldn’t have been more different from her.
    As I studied the photo, I thought about the comment George had made last night about Janet Wilcox running off to Cancun. He was one hundred percent wrong, I decided. Janet Wilcox did not look like the type of person who would ever shack up with a beachboy. Or anyone else for that matter. She looked like someone who wouldn’t even buy a brand of toilet paper she wasn’t familiar with, let alone go in for a romantic fling.
    â€œI couldn’t find another photograph. Janet didn’t like having her picture taken.”
    â€œThis will be fine.” I laid the picture aside and looked at Wilcox. “Does your wife have an e-mail account?”
    â€œShe doesn’t even know how to turn on a computer. We don’t have one in the house.”
    â€œI notice you didn’t include a list of her friends in here.”
    â€œI already told you. She doesn’t have any”
    I raised an eyebrow. “None?”
    Wilcox relented. “Well, there are the women in her book group, but I don’t know their names. She was a stay-at-home kind of person,” Wilcox added. “I know that’s unusual today, but it’s true.” He sounded defensive.
    â€œWhat did she do at home?”
    â€œCleaned house, cooked. She watched a lot of TV Especially those women’s shows in the afternoon, the ones where everyone always has something wrong with themselves.” That jibed with what the daughter said. “I was trying to encourage her to get her real estate license. At least it would get her out of the house.”
    I picked up Janet Wilcox’s appointment calendar and leafed through it. Apparently Wilcox spoke the truth. It was mostly bare.
    â€œDo you know where the book group met?”
    â€œAt Barnes & Noble on Thursday nights. But she stopped going a month ago. She said she didn’t like the books they were choosing now. Too violent.”
    It wasn’t much, but it was something. I made a note, then went back to rummaging through the box.
    â€œHow long is locating her going to take?” Wilcox asked.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou have to have some idea.” Wilcox’s tone was querulous.
    â€œNot really.” Zsa Zsa leaned against my leg. I bent down and scratched her rump. “Depending on what I come up with, it could take me two days, a couple of weeks, or six months.”
    â€œSix months?” he yelped “That’s ridiculous. Paul said you’d do this fast.”
    Or maybe I’ll never find her, I wanted to say as I picked a piece of packing tape off the fur on Zsa Zsa’s leg. Sometimes people don’t want to be found. Sometimes they just disappear into the ether. Sometimes they start a new life. Sometimes they die on the road and are buried in pauper’s graves. Sometimes they’re killed and buried in forests and bogs.
    But mostly they come back. They go away and decide it was a mistake. The new lover turns out to be like the old husband or wife, or the freedom to do what they want turns into boredom and loneliness. Only their pride won’t let them call home, so they start doing things like using their old credit cards, signaling to the people they left behind to come and get them. Sometimes the people they’ve left behind do. Other times they