Clean Burn by Karen Sandler

She wagged a finger at me. “I allus left mine in the car.”
    I wanted to break that wagging finger. I didn’t know what was worse – abandoning the kids at home to go out drinking like my dear old dad did, or dragging them along with you to shiver in the car.
    Sondra had finished her beer and her attention wandered toward the bartender. Before she could slide out of the booth, I blocked her with my chair.
    “Did you ever see a kid you didn’t know in Beck’s car?”
    “How would I know which car is his?” She gazed longingly in the direction of the bar.
    I moved into her line of sight. “Did you see a boy in any car on a night Paul Beck was working? Maybe three or four years old?”
    A moment of clarity in her brown eyes told me she was thinking. “Long time ago. Lil’ boy in a car.” She edged toward me, looking for escape.
    I planted my knee firmly in her way. “How long ago?”
    She scuffed the heel of her hand across her forehead. A little ash sifted into her blonde hair. “Can’ remember. Got in trouble tha’ night.”
    “What kind of trouble?”
    “Cop said I set the dumpster on fire. Tol’ him I put out my butt ’fore I threw it in.”
    If she was too drunk to remember the night, she was likely too out of it to remember if her cigarette was lit before she tossed it. “So you burned up the dumpster.”
    “It was jus’ a li’l fire. Tol’ the cop he should check on the kid ’stead of hasslin’ me.” She stabbed her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, extinguishing it. “’Cept the kid was gone by then.”
    Ken could search through arrest reports, find the exact date. “Was Beck working that night?”
    “He put out the fire.” She tried using her shoulder as a battering ram.
    I leaned back out of reach. “Do you remember anything about the car the kid was in?”
    But Sondra’s patience had run out. She pushed my knee out of the way and squeezed out from the booth. I grabbed her arm to keep her from tipping over. Saw the old burn scar streaking up her inner arm from wrist to elbow.
    “How’d this happen?” I asked.
    “Acciden’.”
    “What kind of accident?”
    She shrugged. “Fell asleep on the sofa.”
    With a lit cigarette, no doubt. The woman was a hazard. I would have pressed her further, but she pulled free with surprising strength. She met up with Liz at the bar.
    That was likely all I would be getting out of the blonde tonight. But she’d left her purse in the booth, her half-open wallet on top. By angling my head sideways and using a lit match for illumination, I could see her last name on her driver’s license. She was a local. If I needed to, I could track her down at a later date.
    More anxious than ever to find Paul Beck, I drove over to the mobile home park. There was still no vehicle in the carport, no lights on inside. The mailbox still overflowed with mail. I knocked on the door, more gently than I wanted to avoid rousing the neighbors.
    The temptation to employ a little B and E had me fingering the cheap lockset on the doorknob. But despite the ease with which I could pry open the door and the reasonable certainty that Ken wouldn’t arrest me, I didn’t want to risk my PI license. Likely the most I could expect for my foray into crime would be information that I could more easily extract with the assistance of a search warrant Ken could probably procure.
    Returning to the car for a flashlight, I directed it through the ratty curtains into the bedroom, then through the partially open blinds in the living room, which also gave me a view of the kitchen. I saw no signs of a youngster – no toys, no children’s clothes lying around. Unless he was squirreled away in a closet, Enrique wasn’t here.
    I drove back to the motel feeling just as jittery as when I’d left. Once in my room, I settled on the bed with my computer and I updated my database with the sparse bit of intelligence I’d gotten from Bryan and Sondra. I entered Sondra’s name and address,