What? I didn’t even understand the question. A buzzing sounded in my brain, a phenomenon that occurs when people talk to me about auto mechanics, computer programming, or compound interest rates. Next would come singing fairy voices and hummingbirds and bunnies cavorting in a meadow. My hand, taking on a life of its own, doodled on my notepad, copying the equation or whatever it was. I attached long sticky fingers to it, bulging eyes, some spots, and watched it turn into a greeting card: My Frog Ate My Brain.
Concentrate, Wollie, I told myself. You’re a grown woman, you once operated a small business, you can set your VCR to record. How hard can this be, really?
I decided to pick the answer that looked prettiest: D. (csc2 ø) – 1
The next problem, number 14, asked, “From a point on the ground the angle of elevation to a ledge on a building is 27 degrees, and the distance to the base of the building is 45 meters, blah, blah, blah” and had a diagram next to it that looked like either a treehouse or a club sandwich. I chose answer B, for Believe in the Stars. After that, I didn’t bother reading questions; I just went straight for the answers. This astrology thing either worked or it didn’t.
In this case, it didn’t.
I headed to Rex and Tricia’s Mansion, fully depressed. Having flunked the assessment test, I was now doomed to take Maths 81 through 21, a course at a time, followed by endless science classes, which would keep me on SMC’s grubby campus until menopause set in.
At a standstill on the 405 North, I dialed Britta again, and this time she answered the phone. She couldn’t see me after three P.M., as personal visitors were forbidden when she was working. With difficulty, I persuaded her to see me in the next hour, while her charges were still in school. Tricia’s frogs would have to wait.
Britta once again showed me to the kitchen, same table, same seat, same place mat. I was hoping she’d offer coffee or tea, after the hour-and-a-half drive I’d survived, but none was forthcoming. She sat opposite me, displaying the hospitality of someone facing a tax audit. I handed her the application page I’d been puzzling over, the one marked Führungszeugnis.
Before I could ask, her face told me she knew what it was. She looked happy.
“You recognize this?” I asked.
“Ja. The Führungszeugnis. It is the paper that states you are not in trouble with police.”
“Is there anything strange about it?”
Her finger went to the date, prominently circled in red. “It is old.”
“Did you have to get the same document for your application?”
“Ja, but mine is new, not even one year past.”
“So what do you think of that?” I asked. “Why would Annika’s be so old?”
“Perhaps, if Annika has some trouble with the police in Germany, and she knows the agency will not take her, and she wants to be an au pair in United States, and she has a Führungszeugnis from a different year, before she was in trouble, this is what she uses to make the application. And no one has noticed this, so she is allowed to come, and find a good family and has a car for her own use, because she is so lucky.”
I stared. “Annika told you all this?”
Now Britta looked confused, her eyes darting to the left as a hand went to her throat, to play with her necklace. “Told me?”
“That this happened.”
“I am just-okay, it is just-for example, it could be like this.”
I thought of myself as a bad liar, but Britta was much worse. “Oh, I see,” I said. “Does everyone in Germany have one of these?”
“No. Only, for example, in a job where one must be trusted. A bank. Or au pairs.”
“Why would Annika have one from two years earlier, I wonder?”
Britta looked at her shirt, plucking something from the sleeve. It was the same shirt she’d worn the first time I’d met her. “Perhaps Annika made an application a year before as well, to be an au pair, but for some reason she did not come then.”
That’s exactly what had happened. Annika had told me that she’d wanted to come to America a year sooner, but her mother had had a medical problem that delayed her.
“And why do you suppose the date is circled there?” I asked, pointing.
“Someone finds she is lying. And so they look at the Führungszeugnis.”
A woman came into the kitchen, large and brooding, in stretch pants and a “Billy Joel Live” T-shirt. She carried a broom. I introduced myself, but she just glanced at Britta and left.
“The housekeeper,” Britta said. “She does not like people to mess the house.”
“Oh. Okay.” I removed my hands from the table, worried I’d left prints.
“Now she will tell them I had a guest. Even though you are a girl, so I am allowed.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” I said.
Britta made a face. “She is jealous because she thinks I do not work hard. Also because I am not so fat like her. Also I have blond hairs. But this is not my fault. Germans have the blond hairs. Annika, no, but many others.”
“So anyway,” I said. “You think maybe Annika lied to come to America, and someone discovered this, and perhaps reported her? Do you suppose that’s why she disappeared?”
“Yes, why not? If she lied to come here, she should go home.”
It seemed that Britta had sold out her friend. To whom? The agency? Marty Otis had alluded to a complaint call. “Do you know another au pair, Marie-Thérèse?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“If Annika met her in New York,” I said, “if they were in the same orientation session, does that mean she’d be from your agency?”
“Yes, we are all Au Pairs par Excellence, but all from different countries, and we are all going to different places in America. The other girls are jealous to come to California. They don’t even know of San Marino, they think everybody is in Hollywood at Starbucks with Matt Damon and Josh Hartnett.” She was sinking into bitterness.
I took a deep breath and asked if she’d ever heard of something called Euphoria. Her eyes widened. She glanced at the doorway through which the housekeeper had gone, then looked back at me. “No, I never hear of this,” she said. “Did you meet Rico? Is he not cute?”
Uh-oh.
I spoke carefully. “Have you watched the news today?”
“No, I don’t like news.”
“Rico is missing. No one’s seen him since Saturday night. The police are investigating.”
Britta’s jaw went slack, her mouth opening as if to say “Uh.” Her brow furrowed. Then, to my surprise, her facial muscles contracted and she began to weep, mewing sobs like a distressed kitten, not attempting to cover her face. I reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled back, then got up from the table and left the room.
I waited for several minutes. When she didn’t return, I stood, straightened the place mats on the table, walked outside, and drove away.
23
I didn’t expect a call from Detective Cziemanski anytime soon, but he found me and my cell phone stuck in stop-and-go traffic on the 134 West, just past the 5.
“Guy named Yellin,” he said. “Sheriff’s Department in Lost Hills, he’s working the Rodriguez case. I gave him your number and he’ll get in touch. When did you say you met the Rodriguez kid?”
“Thursday, lunchtime.”
“So it’s not like you’re the last one to have seen him.”
“I don’t know much about Rico,” I said. “It’s Annika I know about, and her connection to Rico. Speaking of which, I have the license number of a guy that’s threatening this other guy, Bing, who knew Annika and possibly Rico, who-”
“All right, tell it to me, but it’s Yellin’s case now. I meant what I said, though, last night. About being friends. I’m feeling like a jerk about this whole thing.”