'Are you through here?' she said finally.
'No more pencils,' I said.
'No more books. No more teacher's dirty looks.'
'Really!' she said.
As I left the building, classes were changing and the students were milling about in the halls. They seemed inconceivably young to me. Full of pretense, massively other oriented, ill formed, partial, angry, earnest, resentful, excited, frantic, depressed, hopeful, and scared. When she was this age, Beatrice Costa had pledged herself to Marty Anaheim and nothing after was ever the same.
I sat in my car with the motor running and looked at my lists of names. It made more sense to start with the one Olivetti than to work my way through all seventeen Costas. I dialed the number and a woman answered.
'My name is Spenser,' I said.
'I'm a detective trying to locate a woman named Bibi Anaheim, whose maiden name was Bibi Costa.'
'I remember Bibi,' the woman said.
'She's a friend of my daughter's.'
'Your daughter is Abigail Olivetti?'
'Yes. Where did you get her name?'
'From the high school,' I said.
'Does your daughter still see Bibi?'
'Oh, I should think so, they've been best friends since they were little,' the woman said.
'Does your daughter live in town?' I said.
'No, she's up in Needham.'
'Mass.?'
'Un huh. She's all grown up now of course. Married and kids and all. And she waited, thank God, until she was old enough.'
'Who'd she marry?' I said.
'Carl Becker. He's got a big job with the phone company and they had to move up there. But she calls home every week, and sometimes the kids get on.'
'Isn't that nice,' I said.
'Is she a housewife?'
'No, she works in a bank. I think it's too much, with the children and all, but she's very modern, I guess. Things are different now.'
'Ain't it the truth,' I said.
'Can you give me her address and phone number? I'd like to get in touch with her.'
'About Bibi Costa?'
'Yes.'
'Is Bibi in some kind of trouble?'
'I don't know,' I said.
'She's missing and I'd like to find her.'
'I don't think I should give out Abbey's number,' the woman said.
'Well, just the address then.'
'No, I think you should talk with my husband. You can call back tonight if you'd like to. He gets home about six.'
'Thank you,' I said.
'That won't be necessary. Can you tell me if any of Bibi's family lives in town?'
'No, there was just Bibi and her mother. Her mother remarried and moved away years ago.'
'You don't know where?'
'No.'
'Do you remember who she married?'
'No.'
'Well, thank you very much,' I said, 'for your time.'
We hung up.
It goes that way a lot, conversation often dries up as they start thinking about how they don't actually know you, and don't quite know what you're up to. It's always wise to get as much as you can as soon as you can. If I couldn't find Abbey Becker in Needham, Massachusetts, I'd turn in my file of Dick Tracy Crimestopper tips.
