“No, it’s my fault. I should’ve met you a decade earlier.” Or had kids of my own that he could fall in love with. I should’ve gotten pregnant before Doc left. And gotten a college degree. Yes, it’s a lot to squeeze into a five-month relationship, but the race, as they say, is to the swift. “But it’s okay,” I said. “I’m always up for another friend.”
Generally, I see stopped traffic as an opportunity for manicure touch-ups, eyebrow tweezing, and the cleaning out of glove compartments and purses. Today I was preoccupied with failed math tests, missing boyfriends, jealous German girls, and blue-eyed men. If Britta had sold out Annika, reported her outdated Führungszeugnis to the agency, why hadn’t the agency reported it to the Quinns? Had Marty Otis blackmailed Annika? I pictured him calling her, scaring her, saying, “We’re on to you,” and Annika in her attic room, circling the date on her Führungszeugnis, thinking, I have to run. But why? How bad had it been, her trouble with the German police? And what could Marty Otis want from her? It’s not like she had money. And what did any of it have to do with Biological Clock? Or Rico’s disappearance?
Traffic inched toward Forest Lawn, whose inhabitants moved more slowly than we on the freeway only because they were dead. I noticed my mail scattered on the seat next to me, retrieved from my box on my way to the math test. I picked it up, sorted through bills and catalogs, then tossed it aside and picked up Annika’s pink file. On the back of her application, as Maizie had noticed, was another girl’s, this one from Thailand. Nootjaree “Noot” Chanaboon. She was adorable. I imagined Gene Quinn happily downloading au pairs from the Internet…
Uh-oh.
It was the woman at Miss Grusha’s music class who’d put this in my head. I didn’t want to be thinking this, about someone cheating on Maizie, a mom who made her own bread. And I didn’t want to think of Annika in an adulterous relationship. With her employer. The HMO doc. A man twice her age.
Grown men lusting after nubile babysitters is a cliché, but clichés are clichés because they happen so often. Gene Quinn could’ve had the hots for Annika without her encouragement. In fact, this scenario might have given her another reason to disappear.
I pulled the Führungszeugnis out of the pink file, stuffed it in my backpack, and called the Quinn house.
In some cultures-Japanese, for instance-frogs presage good fortune. In others, they’re a symbol of the devil. I assumed that Rex and Tricia took the benign view, since they’d commissioned the mural, but there’s a difference between tree toads hopping about and the visual assault of a West African goliath of biblical proportions.
I stood in the foyer of the Mansion and peered down the long hallway at my amphibian. It’s not like Rex wouldn’t pay me if he and Tricia hated the mural. Rex was a good egg. I’d dated him briefly, so I knew this. He’d pay me, then pay the painters to paint over the kitchen, then spend the rest of his life never inviting me for dinner, to spare my feelings. I’d be the object of pity and ridicule.
I couldn’t look at the West African goliath. Looking at him made me want to futz with him. I turned my back on him and set to work on my horned frog, the Chaco. My cell phone rang.
“Hi,” a voice said. “We met last night at the gas station. I take it you got home?”
My pulse rate increased. Standing still, I could feel it. “Is this the first time you’ve called me, or have you called before and hung up?” I asked.
There was a pause. “First time. What’s that in the background?”
“Croaking frogs.” I considered turning down the CD player, and decided not to.
“Would you mind telling me where you are right now?”
“You’re slipping,” I said. “Yes, I would mind. A good stalker shouldn’t have to ask.”
“And if I were to ask you to go straight home when you’re finished there?”
“Then I’d assume you know where I live, and since you’ve misplaced me, you want me to return to ‘Go,’ ” I said. “Look, if it’s this tough for you to keep track of me, maybe you should try a different line of work. Or practice on something simple, like a city bus. They’re harder to lose.”
“I’m not going to lose you,” the tall man said.
Slowly, I hung up. I stared at my frogs for a long time. Then I put away my paints, cleaned up the kitchen, cleaned up myself, and drove to Encino.
“Miss Maizie no home.” Lupe, the housekeeper, held an apoplectic Mr. Snuggles in her arms. She stood in the doorway of the big house, feeding the dog a steady stream of treats from her apron pocket. “You want talk to Mrs. Grammy?”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “Is Mr. Quinn home?”
“Lupe!” called a high-pitched voice. “Where my ice cream?”
“Coming, m’hija!” She threw a look over her shoulder, then turned back to me. “Mr. Gene in the studio. You know where is it?”
“Yes, I know. Thanks.” What luck.
I skipped down the porch steps, icicle lights twinkling at me, and followed the flagstone path to the back of the house. I kept an anxious eye on the grounds, but no crazed goose appeared to torment me. When I reached the studio, I knocked. Twice. After a moment, I went in.
A man sat at the worktable, his back to me, stuffing envelopes. AM talk radio played loudly, which was probably why he hadn’t heard my knock. I cleared my throat.
“Gene?” I said. “I’m Wollie Shelley. I dropped by to return a file to Maizie.”
He turned, lowered his reading glasses, and reached for a remote. “Who?”
“Wollie. Shelley.” I moved farther into the room. “Maizie lent me this file on Annika.” I held out the pink file, unsure where to go from here. “Sorry I missed her.”
“She’s at one of her classes. Sushi or sausage or something.”
Pastry, I could’ve told him, but he was already back to his envelopes. Gene Quinn wasn’t the world’s most polite guy, or the most curious. I walked around the worktable to stay in his field of vision. He looked fiftyish, with a receding hairline, ruddy complexion, and sand-colored eyebrows that made his dark eyes appear beady. I sneezed, and as he couldn’t be bothered to say “Gesundheit,” excused myself. “I’m nuts about this room,” I said. “It makes me feel creative, just being in it. Did you design it?”
“No. Maizie.”
“It’s so quiet.”
“Sound-studio insulation. Blocks out the kid and the dog. Goddamn racket.”
But not the cat. The big tabby sat on top of the refrigerator, looking down on us. He was silent, which was perhaps why he was tolerated. “Doing a mailing?” I said.
“Valley secession.”
This took a minute to process. What election was it, when the San Fernando Valley voted against splitting off from Los Angeles to become its own city? It had not been a close vote. “Is it-back? The secession issue?”
“It will be. Were you for it?”
Gene didn’t ask me to have a seat, but I took one. “I didn’t formulate an opinion. I’m sorry. I don’t live in the Valley, so it wasn’t on my ballot.” I saw Gene’s glimmer of interest fade, and added quickly, “What an art form, staging a comeback.”
“It’s a march. I’m a foot soldier.”
“Like a second job, a project like this. You must be passionate about it.”
Gene licked an envelope. “The Valley’s a bastard child, sucked dry to pay for every spendthrift social program L.A. comes up with.”
I’d probably voted for every spendthrift social program he had in mind. “You know what I liked?” I said. “The proposed names, if secession had won. My favorite was Valley City. There’s a city in North Dakota named Valley City.”
Gene licked another envelope. “I liked Camelot.”
“Camelot, California,” I said, envisioning a change-of-name greeting card. “Yes, that was… alliterative.”
Gene kept licking. Another minute and he’d turn up the radio and I’d have to leave, or come up with a darn good reason for staying.