Every Dead Thing by John Connolly

to keep funding minimal efforts for even smaller returns.
    “Mr. Loomax said you might say that, but only out of modesty. He told me to say he would regard it as a personal favor.”
    I smiled, despite myself. The only favor I would give Tony Loo-Loo would be not to piss on his grave when he died.
    According to Mrs. Barton, she had met Catherine Demeter through her son, who had seen the girl working at DeVries’s department store and had pestered her for a date. Mrs. Barton and her son—her stepson, to be accurate, since Jack Barton had been married once before, to a Southern woman who had divorced him after eight years and moved to Hawaii with a singer—were not close. She was aware that her son was engaged in activities that were, as she put it, “unsavory,” and had tried to get him to change his ways, “both for his own sake and the sake of the trust.” I nodded sympathetically. Sympathy was the only possible emotion to feel for anyone involved with Stephen Barton.
    When she heard he was seeing a new girlfriend she asked if they could all meet together, she said, and a date had been arranged. In the end her son had failed to appear but Catherine had turned up, and after an initial awkwardness, the two quickly struck up a friendship far more amicable than the relationship that existed between the girl and Stephen Barton. The two had continued to meet occasionally for coffee and lunch. Despite invitations, the girl had politely refused offers from Mrs. Barton to come out to the house, and Stephen Barton had never brought her.
    Then Catherine Demeter had simply dropped out of sight. She had left work early on Saturday and had failed to keep an early dinner appointment on Sunday with Mrs. Barton. That was the last anyone had heard of Catherine Demeter, said Mrs. Barton. Two days had now passed and she had heard nothing from her.
    “Because of, well, the publicity that the trust has received recently over the disappearance of that poor child, I was reluctant to cause a fuss or draw any further adverse attention down on us,” she said. “I called Mr. Loomax and he seemed to think that Catherine may simply have drifted on somewhere else. It happens a lot, I believe.”
    “Do you think there’s something more to it than that?”
    “I really don’t know, but she was so happy with her job and she appeared to be getting on well with Stephen.” She stopped for a moment at this mention of her son’s name, as if considering whether or not to proceed. Then: “Stephen has been running wild for some time—since before his father’s death, in fact. Do you know the Ferrera family, Mr. Parker?”
    “I’m aware of them.”
    “Stephen fell in with their youngest son, despite all of our efforts. I know he keeps bad company and I know he’s involved with drugs. I’m afraid he may have dragged Catherine into something. And…” She paused again, briefly. “I enjoyed her company. There was something gentle about her and she seemed so sad sometimes. She said that she was anxious to settle down here, after moving around for so long.”
    “Did she say where she had been?”
    “All over. I gather that she had worked in a number of states.”
    “Did she say anything about her past, give any indication that something might be troubling her?”
    “I think something may have happened to her family when she was young. She told me that she had a sister who died. She didn’t say any more. She said she couldn’t talk about it and I didn’t press her on it.”
    “Mr. Loomax may be right. She may simply have moved on again.”
    Mrs. Barton shook her head insistently. “No, she would have told me, I’m sure of it. Stephen hasn’t heard from her and neither have I. I’m afraid for her and I want to know that she is safe. That’s all. She doesn’t even have to know that I hired you, or that I was concerned for her. Will you take the case?”
    I was still reluctant to do Walter Cole’s dirty work and to take advantage of