Andy knocked on the wooden screen door of the run-down house where Laura Parnell lived. He listened to the creak of the floor as someone approached and the inside door swung open, and an extremely overweight woman with gray hair and a cigarette dangling from her lips stared up at him.
“Yeah?” was all she said through the closed screen door. Smoke drifted up into his face.
Andy coughed and waved the smoke away. “I’m looking for Laura. Is she home?”
The woman scratched her head with her stubby, wrinkled fingers. Her short gray hair was an untidy mess. “Who?” She truly looked confused, and then she pulled the cigarette from her lips and coughed a deep smoker’s cough until tears shimmered in her eyes.
“Laura Parnell, young, blonde, good-looking girl. She’s got a little boy. I dropped her o
