PROOF POSITIVE
May 8, 2026 release
Donna Huston Murray
Chapter 1
A blonde walks into a bar … Sounds like a lame joke—on me—right? Except my hair doesn’t waft over my shoulders like a woman looking for action. It’s bound into a low ponytail for driving diagonally across the country, mostly with the windows of my orange Jeep open to keep me awake.
Whenever I do enter a bar—which is often—my reception is ninety-five percent predictable. Lookee here from the drunks. Deliberate indifference from women. Heightened attentiveness by management, depending on how many corners they’ve cut. Now and then, a welcoming smile from an interesting guy, although not as often as you might think. I am former police, after all, and common knowledge claims that aura telegraphs where you stand for months, maybe even years, after you quit. It’s truthful, and it saves time, so I live with it.
My name is Lauren Beck. I’m single, thirty-two, and a perpetually grateful cancer survivor. I run five miles at least twice a week, which allows me to wear whatever I want. No makeup or jewelry for me, thank you. Just tight jeans, and a white, long-sleeved T-shirt today. It’s a beautiful October afternoon here. Here being rural Ohio.
About fifteen wooden tables dot the entire expanse of this particular bar, with a half-booth for eight in the corner to my right. Simple wooden chairs are mostly upside down on the tables, indicating the area yet to be mopped. Left to right, the actual bar fills two-thirds of the back wall, the rest a kitchen door, then stairs leading up. Neon beer signs adorn the room, along with a few dusty cowboy hats on pegs.
At the moment, “Sid’s Saloon” smells of hops, mop soap, and male sweat.It is mid-afternoon, so only two men are present. The young guy giving his mop a rest slips me a sly smile. The big guy behind the bar stands still as a photograph. A beer-keg belly tests the tensile strength of his short-sleeved shirt, and his folded arms are hairier than his head. Almost certainly management, his stubbled face expresses irritation and foreboding, so I decide to hold off asking if he needs a bartender.
Instead, I take a step forward, press my palms together in that hopeful, begging gesture, and announce that I’m trying to locate a woman named Nina.
“Nina Claire Stoddard?” I finish with a grimace, as if I’m expecting bad news. Which I half am. The last cell-phone ping I got told me Nina was recently in this area. Probably not at this establishment, but somewhere in the nearly invisible little town someone optimistically named Worthy, Ohio.
Silence.“Or maybe it’s Nina something else?”
The men glance at each other, communicating something.The moment lasts long enough to suggest they might know her, and the tension I’ve been carrying for so many days and miles morphs into breath-holding hope.
I am also suddenly aware that I’m really, really hungry. In my eagerness to run down my most promising lead, I skipped breakfast and lunch.“You serve food here?” I inquire.
“Yeah,” says the big guy.
“Sorta,” says the kid.“Any chance for a burger and fries?”
The guys glance at each other again.The big one answers with a short nod, and I almost hear his reasoning. “Why wait until dinner service when you have a paying customer standing next to an empty table?” He ambles through the two-way door at the right of the end of the bar.
The kid hasn’t moved. He is short for an adult male, a few inches shy of my five-foot nine. His hair is a tousle of soft brown waves trimmed without benefit of a mirror. The expanse above his thin lips is uncommonly flat—unusual, but not that unusual. A certain twinkle in his hazel eyes tells me he hasn’t fully embraced adulthood yet.
Something about this kid is different, and I like different.
I ask him his name.
“Bo,” he replies. “What’s yours?”
I tell him, then I ask if he’s old enough to vote.
His nose suddenly tickles. “Yep. Are you?”
Bo’s gaze is now clamped on me like a pup with a bone, and his knee is bouncing. He asks my middle name, which happens to be, “Louise.”
“Does anybody call you Lulu?”
That gets an emphatic, “No!” from me, and Bo huffs out a laugh.
We sit across from each other at the nearest table.
“What’s the big guy’s name?” I ask before my food arrives.
“Sidney,” Bo answers with a snicker.
“So it’s Sid? As in …?”
“Yup. Sid’s Saloon. You play poker?”
“Sometimes.”“Bet I can beat cha.”Stifling a laugh, I lift a corner of my lips and lower my eyes.
“What! You don’t think I can?” The kid seems hurt, maybe even insulted.
“It’s just that I don't know how long I’ll be here. That’s all.” I get a whiff of hamburger on its way toward me.
Sid sets down the thick plate of food and a glass of water, then lowers himself onto another chair. That Bo is included in this conversation is interesting in itself, as if he’s more than just Sid’s employee. Exactly what the relationship is is yet to be determined.
“So, what’s your interest in this ‘Nina’ woman?” Sid asks in that protective way men use to warn off a stranger.
Which confirms that he knows her. My mouth is suddenly dry, and I can’t stop blinking. To stall, I bite into the burger, which I can’t really taste.
“She hasn’t done anything wrong …” I finally manage, “… if that’s what you’re worried about.” I wave a hand, but Sid is photo-still again, waiting for my real answer.
I tell him it’s personal.“Personal, eh?”
“Yes,” as in none of his business. I blink at him over another bite of burger.
“Okay, okay,” Sid appears to concede. “But why ask us?” His gesture includes Bo. “Is this the sort of place your woman would be?”
I reach for the fries. By the time I meet Sid’s gaze, he’s relaxed into an actual person, so I tell him the truth. “Nina and alcohol don’t exactly get along, so no. But …” I circle the air with a French fry … “Charming as this town is, it ain’t New York. I figure you may have heard about somebody new hanging around.”
Sid slaps the table, not hard, but not softly either. Then he stands up and ambles back to whatever he was doing behind the bar.
I eat a little more burger before Bo asks, “Why are you looking for, whatsername? Nina?” So much is racing through my head that words won’t come, and surprise, surprise, the kid answers for me.
“She’s your mother, right?”
I need to sip water to keep from choking. “How did you guess?”“Claire—she likes her middle name—told us you used to be a cop. Also, you sorta look like her.”
A couple months ago, as I was about to leave my dad’s place in Albuquerque, he confessed that my mother might still be alive. Telling my brother and me she’d died was meant to keep us from pining for her return. I guess he figured after twenty-five years that didn’t matter anymore.He was wrong.Both times.
I’ve been waffling about catching up with my mother all the way back east, and, now that I’ve found her, my heart is pounding like a sledgehammer.
Bo opens his hand. “Gimme your phone.”
I hand it over.
After poking the GPS icon and writing something in the app’s “Where to?” box, the kid returns my phone with a flourish.“You’ve only got half an hour,” he says. “You should probably go.”
My eyes narrow with confusion.
Bo points to the destination on the GPS. “It’s a dance studio. Claire goes every week to … to dance, I guess.
“Claire?” I query.“I told you. She likes her middle name.”
Seemingly finished with me, he pinches a wad of cold fries and stuffs them into his mouth. It’s such a simple, ingenuous thing to do that I pat his shoulder as I rise.
Squirming with anticipation, I rush out to my Jeep and get moving. Heeding the GPS instructions, shops and houses flash by, a blur of small-town America in the middle of the vast swaths of farmland I passed getting here.
I’m feeling quite smug about acquiring “Claire’s” cell phone number. Not only did it prove she’s alive, with that starting point, tracking her movements became something of a folly, a halfhearted quest that added interest to the long drive from New Mexico. I can scarcely believe I’ve been lucky enough to succeed.
Passing through Worthy, Ohio’s tiny town center, I see that whatever commerce there is has already slowed for the day. Yet when I arrive at my destination, several cars are parked in the lot to the right of the two-story brick building, and a few others line the opposite curb. Good omen, there is a spot right in front, so I turn the Jeep around in the lot’s driveway and tuck him just behind a black SUV in need of a rinse. The accumulating clouds suggest it will get one soon.
Since I prefer not to leave a weapon in an unwatched car, I carry my Glock in my saddlebag purse. Thieves come with an assortment of skills and ambitions, so even leaving an unloaded handgun well-hidden isn’t entirely safe.
And yet. Do I want to spoil a welcoming hug—if there is one—with a heavy gun banging against our hips?
Welcoming hug? Who am I kidding? There are plenty of reasons why that may not happen.The Glock stays where it belongs. With me.
A half-torn picture of tiny sneakers and a FOR RENT sign suggest the ghost of a children’s shoe store haunts the building’s first floor.
On the left, a green door leads up to “Darby’s Dance Studio.” When I open it, salsa music beats almost as loudly as my heart. I feel a smile sneak onto my face as I slowly ascend.The upper landing is roughly four feet by seven, and a couple of light jackets hang on pegs to the right. The interior green door is propped open, revealing about a dozen adult couples moving to the evocative music with varying degrees of grace.
Stopping at the doorway, I peek inside to look for a place to sit. The room’s rectangle is lengthier to the right where tall windows overlook the street. Mirrors and ballet barres cover the wall to my immediate left, ending at the music equipment and a door to what I imagine is the owner’s office.
Chairs for dancers in need of a rest are lined up all the way across from me, but working my way through quick-stepping couples would be like battling a Christmastime crowd at a mall. It would also draw attention, the last thing I want. Better to wait for the dance to end before I spring my surprise on Nina, aka “Claire.” So many questions I want to ask, most of them beginning with, “Why …?”
Slipping inside as inconspicuously as possible, I lean against the plain, wood-paneled wall to the right. A few of the dancers meet my eyes as they glide past, but none are my mother, and none exhibit any special interest in me. I guess spectators aren’t that much of a novelty—people considering the class for themselves?
And then I spot her. Her elderly partner gently supports her shoulders as she dips backward, sweeping her left arm toward the floor and turning her face directly toward me. The moment hangs in the air for what feels like an eternity. Her eyes widen. Her lips form a perfect O of surprise. Her eyelashes flutter.
I have no idea what my face is doing, but I straighten up and can scarcely keep from running across the room.
I don’t get the chance. As “Claire’s” dance partner eases her upright, two rapid shots fire from the doorway to my left. Screams instantly overpower the music. I can’t even hear my mother’s body fall to the floor.
#
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