Stalking The Angel

'I'm afraid so. I have an interview scheduled with another couple in ten minutes.'

I nodded gravely, and tried to look like I would look if I was recalling an overbooked personal calendar, then shook my head. 'Of course. Being a single parent and having just been made a partner in the firm, my schedule tends to get out of hand, but maybe I can get back in a couple of weeks.' I let my eyes drift down the line of her body and linger.

She shifted behind the counter and glanced at her watch. 'It seems a shame not to see the school after you've gone to such trouble,' she said.

'True. But I understand if you can't make the time.' I touched her arm.

The tip of her tongue peeked out and wet the left corner of her mouth. 'Well,' she said, 'maybe if we hurry I can give you a short tour.' She said it deviously.

Some guys can charm the stitches off a baseball.

Mrs. Farley came around the counter, put her hand on my back, and gave me the short tour. The short tour included a lot of laughing at unfunny things, a lot of her feeling my shoulder and arm, and a lot of her breathing in my face. Violets. We saw the new gymnasium and the new science labs and the newly expanded library and the new theater arts building and a lot of coeds with moussed hair and bright plastic hair clips and skin cancer tans. Five girls were standing in a little knot outside the cafeteria when Mrs. Farley and I walked past, Mrs. Farley's hand on my back. One of the girls said something and the others laughed. Maybe Mrs. Farley didn't require as much charming as I thought.

When we got back to the office, a man in a flowered shirt and a woman in sweat pants and a New Balance running shirt were waiting. Mrs. Farley's appointment. She smiled at them and told them she would only be another moment, then thanked me for my interest in Glenlake, holding my hand a very long time as she did, and apologized twice for not having more time. She offered to be available whenever I might have more questions. I asked her if it would be all right to take a short stroll around on my way out. She took my hand again and said of course. I smiled at the man in the flowered shirt and the woman in the sweat pants. They smiled back. To think that I dressed for this.

Two minutes later I was back in the library. There was a birch-and-Formica information table as you walked in, and a girl sitting behind the table chewing bubble gum and reading a Danielle Steel novel. The girl had the same moussed, sun-streaked hair and walnut tan that every other girl at Glenlake had, and the same large plastic hair clip. I said, 'I thought Glenlake didn't require its students to wear uniforms.'

She gave me blank eyes and blew a bubble.

'Where could I find last year's yearbook?'

The bubble popped. 'In reference, over there on the shelf above California history. You see the David Bowie poster? To the left of that.'

Traci Louise Fishman was on page 87 of last year's yearbook, sandwiched between Krystle Fisher and Tiffany Ann Fletcher. She had a heart-shaped face and a flat nose and pale frizzy hair and round, wire-framed glasses. Her lips were thin and tight, and her eyebrows looked like they would have a tendency to grow together. Like her friend Mimi, she wasn't what you would call pretty. From the look on her face, you could tell she knew it. I put the yearbook back on the shelf, left the library, went back to the Corvette, cranked it up, drove off the campus, and parked in the shade of a large elm just outside the school's front gate. Traci's letters to Mimi said she would be taking two morning classes to leave her afternoons free. It was 10:20.

At 11:45, Traci Fishman came around the rear of the administration building, walked into the student parking lot, and unlocked a white Volkswagen Rabbit convertible. Dad wasn't such a cheap shit after all. She was putting the top down when I walked up behind her. 'Traci?'

'Yes?' She pronounced the word clearly.

'My name's Elvis Cole. I'm a private detective. Could I talk with you for a few minutes?' I showed her my license.

She stopped futzing with the top, looked at the little plastic card, then looked at me out of round, expressive eyes. No glasses. Maybe when you started thinking in terms of having some guy 'make you a woman,' you ditched the glasses and got contacts. 'What do you want to talk with me about?'

I put my license away. 'Mimi Warren.'

'Mimi's been kidnapped.'

'I know. I'm trying to find her. I'm hoping you can help me.'

The big eyes blinked. The contacts didn't fit well, but in a world of plastic hair clips and chocolate fudge tans, she was going to wear them or die trying. Also, she was scared. She said, 'I don't know. Are you working for her parents?'

'I was. Now I'm working for me.'

'How come you're not working for Mimi's parents if you're trying to find Mimi?'

'They fired me. I was supposed to be taking care of her when she got snatched.'

She nodded and glanced toward the front of the school. More girls were coming from behind the administration building and from other places and were going to their cars or heading through the gates to the street where parked cars waited. Traci chewed at her upper lip and stared at them through blinking alien eyes. Her frizzy hair was cut short and stuck out from her head.

She was heavy and her posture was bad. Some of the girls looked our way. More than a couple traded looks and made faces. Traci said, 'You want to sit in my car?'

'Sure.' I held the door for her, then closed it and went around to the other side.

Three girls with moussed hair and plastic clips and mahogany tans and pearl-white lip gloss walked past the Rabbit to a catch-me red Porsche 944 Turbo. I watched Traci watch them. She tried to do it sneaky, out the corner of her eye so they couldn't tell. The girls at the Porsche leaned against its fenders and looked past each other so they could see the Rabbit and me and Traci, and there was lots of laughter. One of them stared openly. I said, 'You think they share the same lip gloss tube?'

Traci giggled. She looked at me sort of the same way she looked at them, out from under her eyes, as if she really didn't want you to know she was looking, as if she thought that if you knew, you'd say something sharp or do something hurtful. 'Don't you think they look like clones?' she said. 'They have no individuality. They're scared of being unique, and therefore alone, so they mask their fear by sameness and denigrate those who do not share their fear.' She just tossed that off, like saying, Hey, buddy, how about a bag of nuts? She said, 'They're talking about us, you know. They're wondering who's that guy and why are you sitting with me.'

'I know that.'

'I knew they would. That's why I wanted us to get into the car.'

'I know that, too.'

She looked at me a long time, then looked away.

'Do you think that's shallow? I hate to be shallow. I try not to be.' Sixteen.

'Traci,' I said, 'I think maybe Mimi was mixed up with some people who might've had something to do with her kidnapping. People she might've thought were her friends and who she might've gone out with.'

Traci pooched out her lips and chewed them and shrugged. 'Friends?'

Even Traci Louise Fishman did it. I said, 'Do you know a couple of Mimi's friends named Carol and Kerri?'

'Uh-uh.'

'You sure?'

Traci chewed the lips some more and shrugged again. Nervous. 'Why would I know them?'

'Because you guys were buddies.'

Shrug.

I said, 'Traci, I've seen seven letters that you wrote to Mimi last year when she was away. I've read them.'

She looked shocked. 'You read other people's mail?'

'Monstrous, isn't it?'

She chewed harder. 'If you find her, what are you going to do?'

'Rescue her.' Sir Elvis.

'You won't tell her that I'm the one who said?'

I said, 'I know you want to protect your friend, babe, but you have to understand that right now she is in a