Flesh And Blood

My footsteps made her look up, and though she smiled she seemed momentarily frightened, as if I’d come to revoke her son’s recovery.

“Dr. Delaware.”

“Hi, Mary Lou. How’s everything?”

The red hair was a flyaway frizz that she patted down. “Brandon’s doing great – I probably should have called you to tell you.” She approached the counter. “Thanks so much for your help, Dr. Delaware.”

“My pleasure. How’s your mom?”

She frowned. “Her hip’s taking a long time to heal, and the other driver’s being a butt – denying responsibility. We finally got ourselves a lawyer, but everything just drags out. So what brings you here?”

“I’m trying to locate a student who was involved in research.”

“A grad student?”

“Undergrad. I assume you have a record of ongoing projects.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s generally not public information, but I’m sure you’ve got a good reason…”

“This girl’s gone missing for a week, Mary Lou. The police can’t do much, and her mother’s frantic.”

“Oh, no – but it’s midquarter break. Students take off.”

“She didn’t tell her mother or her roommate, though she did say she’d continue to come here even during the break, to do research. So maybe the job took her out of town. A conference, or some kind of fieldwork.”

“She didn’t tell her mom anything?”

“Not a word.”

She crossed the room to a wall of file cabinets. Same golden beige. The outcome of someone’s experiment on color perception? Out came a two-inch-thick computer printout that she laid on a desk and flipped through. “What’s her name?”

“Lauren Teague.”

She searched, shook her head. “No one by that name registered with perso

“Nothing.”

“Maybe there’s a misunderstanding,” I said. “Thanks.”

She crossed her mouth with an index finger. “Wait a second – when it’s part-time work, sometimes the professors hire out through one of those employee management firms. It avoids having to pay benefits.”

Another cabinet, another printout. “Nope, no Lauren Teague. Doesn’t look as if she’s working here, Dr. Delaware. You’re sure the study was in psychology? Some of the other departments have behavioral science grants – sociology, biology?”

“I assumed psychology, but you could be right,” I said.

“Let me call over to the administration building, see what the central employee files turn up.” Glance at the wall clock. “Maybe I can catch someone.”

“I really appreciate this, Mary Lou.”

“Don’t even think about it,” she said, as she dialed. “I’m a mom.”

No job listing anywhere on campus. Mary Lou looked embarrassed – an honest person confronting a lie.

“But,” she said, “they do have her enrolled. Junior psych major, transferred from Santa Monica College. Tell you what – I’ll pull our copy of her transcript. I can’t give you her grades, but I will tell you which professors she took classes from. Maybe they know something.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Hey,” she said, “we’re not even close to even in the thank-you department… Okay, here we go: This past quarter she took a full load – four psych courses: Introductory Learning Theory with Professor Hall, Perception with Professor de Maartens, Developmental with Ro

“Gene Dalby?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We were classmates,” I said. “Didn’t know he switched from clinical practice to teaching Social.”

“He came on full-time a couple of years ago. Good guy, one of the less pompous ones. Even though he drives a Jag.” Her eyes rounded and she pretended to slap her wrist. “Forget I said that.” She began to return the transcript to the drawer.

“Lauren told her mother she got straight A’s.”

“Like I said, Dr. Delaware, grades are confidential.” Her eyes dropped to the paper. Tiny smile. “But if I was her mother I’d be proud. Smart girl like that, I’m sure there’s an explanation. Here, let me write those professors’ names down for you. Ro

“Thanks. You’d make a good detective.”

“Me?” she said. “Never. I don’t like surprises.”

She locked up, and I walked her through the lobby, both our footsteps echoing on black terrazzo. When she was gone I strode back to the elevators and read the directory. Simon de Maartens’s office was on the fifth floor, Stephen Z. Hall’s and Gene R. Dalby’s on the sixth.

I pushed the button and waited and thought about Lauren’s lie to Andrew Salander. No research job. Probably covering for her real employment. Stripping, hooking, both. Resuming her old ways. Or she’d never stopped.

Runway modeling. Another lie? Or maybe gigs at the Fashion Mart were just another way to cash in on her looks.

Smart kid, but enrollment in college and good grades weren’t contradictory to plying the flesh trade. Back when Lauren had worked for Gretchen Stengel, the Westside Madam had employed several college girls. Beautiful young women making easy money – big money. Someone able to compartmentalize and rationalize would find the logic unassailable: Why give up five-hundred-dollar tricks for a six-buck-an-hour part-time bottle-washing gig without benefits?

Salander had said Lauren was living off investments, and I wondered if her body was the principal. If so, her disappearance could be nothing more than a quarter-break freelance to accrue spare cash.

No car, because she was flying – jetting off somewhere with a sheik or a tycoon or a software emperor, any man sufficiently rich and deluded to fall for the ego sop of purchased pleasure.

Lauren serving as amusement for a few days, returning home nicely invested.

But if that was the case, why had she raised her mother’s anxiety by not providing a cover story? And why hadn’t she packed clothing?

Because this particular job required a new wardrobe? Or no clothing at all beyond the threads on her back?

She had taken her purse, meaning she had her credit cards. What did a party girl require other than willingness and magic plastic?

Maybe she was punishing Jane by slipping away without explanation – letting Jane know she wouldn’t be controlled.

Or perhaps the answer was painfully simple: rest and recreation after grinding away for grades. Cooling out in one of the places she’d used before – nice quiet Malibu motel – if that was true.

Maybe Lauren had done the L.A.-to-Reno shuttle, found her old stomping grounds lucrative, decided to stay for a while… The elevator doors wheezed open, and I rode up to five. Professor Simon de Maartens’s door was decorated with Far Side cartoons and a newspaper clipping about moose deaths from acid rain. Closed. I knocked. No answer. The handle didn’t turn.

I had no more success at Stephen Hall’s unadorned slab of chartreuse wood, but Gene Dalby’s door was open and Gene was sitting at his desk, wearing a rumpled white shirt and khakis, bare feet propped, gray laptop resting on a ski

I said, “Uh, hi, Professor Dalby. Could we talk about my grades?”

Gene’s head turned. Same bony pencil face and jug ears and rebellious ginger hair. His temples had silvered. Black-framed half-lens reading glasses rode the center of a swooping, askew hook of a nose. He gri