“That belonged to Tannie’s brother, Steve. Actually, he moved his operation into Santa Maria, figuring if someone’s car broke down, the owner would never manage to get it out here. He wasn’t about to offer to go get them. At the time, he only had one tow truck and that was usually out of commission.”

“Not much of an advertisement for auto repair.”

“Yeah, well he was bad at it anyway. Once he moved, he hired a couple of mechanics and now he’s doing great.”

Daisy pointed out the house where Chet Cramer lived with his current wife. “The Cramers were the only family with any sizeable income. They had the first television set anybody’d ever seen. If you played your cards right, you could watch Howdy Doody or Your Show of Shows. Liza took me over there once, but Kathy didn’t like me so I wasn’t invited back.”

The Cramers’ house was the only two-story structure I’d seen, an old-fashioned farmhouse with a wide wooden porch. I’d stuck a pack of index cards in my jacket pocket, and I used one now to make a crude map of the town. I’d be talking to a number of current and former residents, and I thought it would help to have a sense of where they’d lived relative to one another.

Daisy paused in front of a pale green stucco house with a flat roofline. Up came the hand so she could gnaw on herself. A short walkway lead from the street to the walk-out porch. A chain-link fence surrounded the property, with a sign hanging from the open gate that read NO TRESPASS. The yard was dead. Raw plywood sheets had been nailed over the windows. The front door had been lifted from its hinges and left leaning against the outside wall. The house number was 3908.

“That’s where you lived. I recognize the porch rail from the photograph.”

“Yep. You want to come in?”

“We’re not trespassing?”

“Not now. I bought it. Don’t ask me why. My parents rented from a guy named Tom Padgett, who sold it to me. You’ll see his name on the list. He was in the bar on a couple of occasions when the two of them pitched a fit. Daddy worked construction so sometimes we had money and sometimes not. If he had it, he’d spend it, and if he didn’t have it, too bad. Owing people money never bothered him. Bad weather he’d be out of a job or else he’d get fired for showing up drunk. He wasn’t exactly a deadbeat, but he operated with a similar mentality. He’d take care of the bills if he was in the mood, but you couldn’t count on that. Padgett was forever pounding on him for the rent because Daddy tended to pay late, if he paid at all. We’d be threatened with eviction, and when he finally coughed up the rent, it was always with the attitude that he was being abused.”

I followed her through the gate. I knew she must have been back a hundred times, but looking for what? An explanation, a clue, an answer to the questions that were plaguing her?

Inside, the layout was elementary. Living room with a dining cove, a kitchen with just enough room for a table and chairs, though those were long since gone. The kitchen appliances had been removed, pipes and wires sticking out of the wall. Blocks of relatively clean linoleum indicated where the stove and refrigerator had once sat. The sink was still there, along with the chipped Formica counters with metal rims. Cabinet doors stood open, revealing the empty shelves where paper was curling up from the corners. Without even meaning to, I moved forward and closed one of the cabinet doors. “Sorry. Things like that bug me.”

“I’m the same way,” Daisy said. “You wait. Leave the room and come back and the door will be open again. Almost enough to make you wonder about ghosts.”

“You’re not tempted to fix it up?”

“Maybe one day, though I can’t imagine ever living here again. I like the house I’m in.”

“So which bedroom was yours?”

“In here.”

The room was barely nine feet by twelve, painted an unpleasant shade of pink that I supposed was meant to be girlish.

“My bed was in this corner. Chest of drawers there. Armoire. Toy box. Little table and two chairs.” She leaned against the wall and surveyed the space. “I felt so lucky to have a room of my own. I didn’t know from tacky. Most of the people we knew were as bad off as we were. Or that’s what I realize now.”

She moved from her room to the second bedroom and paused in the door. This one was painted lavender with a wallpaper border of violets along the low ceiling line. I backtracked three steps and checked the bathroom, where the sink and bathtub were still anchored in place. The toilet had been removed and a rag was stuffed in the hole, which still emitted the spoiled-egg smell of flushes gone by. This was possibly the most depressing house I’d ever been in.