Dating Is Murder

15

I spent Saturday afternoon in the Valley with my mural, resisting the urge to enlarge the West African goliath by keeping my focus near a wall-mounted microwave, where I painted a small Central American red-eyed leaf frog, Agalychnis callidryas.

On my way home I stopped at a Ventura Boulevard newsstand. Fredreeq had insisted I check out the winter issue of International Celeb, featuring a story on Sava

Half a

It was a three-page article. I forked over seven dollars to learn from my Biological Clock competition that beauty and brains were not incompatible, nor were a successful business and budding television career impediments to romance, cocooning, and baby making. Having lived in five countries in her nearly three decades, Sava

And just how, I wondered, did Fredreeq expect me to be an International Celeb, I, who’d barely been north of Highway 118? I sat in my car, using up my meter minutes, feeling desperately provincial. Obviously I now had to read the damn magazine cover to cover, having invested so much money in it, having looked at nothing but books on frogs for weeks. No wonder I had no repartee. Grimly, I caught up on Britain’s royal family, an Iraqi boy band, and unexpected volcanic activity in Hawaii, then came to a dead stop on a page called “Hard News.” A grainy photo caught my attention, a man with a look so salacious I blushed. Bedroom eyes. So I was not, after all, dead to sexual feeling. I should move to whatever country he was from. I read the caption under the photo. Vladimir Tcheiko, fugitive, murderer, head of a notorious eastern European drug cartel. Well. Nice to know that crime was no impediment to international celebrity. At least I’d heard of this guy, which was more than I could say about trends in Muslim head scarves, the news that only 9 percent of Vancouverites were obese, and the sudden celebrity of political wives in France.

I went back to Sava

Maizie Qui

“Not much,” I said. “And I’m sorry to bother you on a Saturday night, but I just now thought of it.”

“I should’ve thought of it the other day when you stopped by.” She led me down the path to the artist’s studio. “Gene, my husband, says I’m always out to lunch.” She laughed. “In my dreams. With Alain Ducasse, discussing chiffonade versus julie

The studio was warm and well lit. Gone were the leaves and wires from the center worktable, replaced by a turkey on a cutting board. It seemed early to be doing a turkey, five days before Thanksgiving, but maybe this was a rehearsal bird.

“I’m trying to think what else might help us.” Maizie crossed to a distressed-wood file cabinet. “This sounds awful, but Gene checked A

I was barely functional on my own computer, but maybe Cziemanski had access to hackers. I’d ask him.

Maizie held the pink file in both hands, as if picking up vibrations. “Here it is. Letters and cards she sent us, little mementos. I’d like it back eventually-there are things I want to keep for Emma.” She opened the file and took out some stapled pages. “I found her au pair application in her room. As soon as she came, she wanted to see it, to read her letters of recommendation, and how she did on her interview-” She turned the pages over and frowned, then smiled. “There’s another girl’s application on the back. We download them from the Internet, and Gene uses both sides of every sheet of paper in the house. A

“Maizie, did you ever notice discrepancies in the application?”

“Discrepancies?”

“Things that turned out not to be accurate, or…” I couldn’t repeat what I’d heard at the au pair agency. Why make her worry in retrospect about the girl she’d entrusted her child to for a year?

She moved to the worktable. “Only in the positive sense. Her grades were average, except for math, but she turned out to be so intelligent in person. Always reading. What are you hoping to find?”

“Personal data, mostly. Height and weight, medical records, for the police report. I don’t suppose they’ve been in touch?”

“No. Not yet.” She glanced at her watch, then grabbed an apron from a wall peg and put it on. It was stained, like my paint clothes, with the evidence of countless projects. “Will they, do you think? I’d really like to be more proactive in all this-”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I said. “But at least they’ll have accurate information for the database. I’ve been trying to learn about A

“Everyone was her friend.” Maizie rolled up the sleeves of her sweater, gazing at the turkey. I noticed she wore makeup and that her chin-length hair had been blown dry. All dressed up for Saturday night but unable to stop cooking. “Monday I took Emma to her music class and half the moms and na

“Maybe I could talk to some of them.”

Maizie went to the sink and washed her hands. “The music moms? I have to confess, I don’t know anyone’s last names. There’s Rachel, Brandon’s mom, and Georgine, Hallie’s mom, and I’m Maizie, Emma’s mom… I’ll try to find a class roster.” She dried her hands. “Wollie, mind if I work while we talk? I’m so behind, with Thanksgiving coming up, and Grammy Qui

“Is this what you do professionally?” I asked. “A

She laughed. “Cooking? No, cooking’s my passion. My business is aromatherapy.” She nodded to the shelves across the room, filled with the Art Deco glass bottles. “Bath, body, and hair products. No preservatives or carriers, just pure ingredients, beautiful packaging, and beautiful markup. I keep it small, high-end boutiques and some mail order, so I can work from home. I’m not very ambitious. I like my freedom, my hobbies. My family. I like cooking.” She made another incision in the turkey, this one horizontal. I was fascinated. No one in my house had cooked much. I should start watching cooking shows. Maizie looked up. “Can I ask-don’t misunderstand, I think it’s wonderful of you to take this on-but it’s a lot of trouble, isn’t it?”