Dating Is Murder

“Hold Everything.” Fredreeq came to a dead stop.

“Okay, maybe ‘stalker’ is too strong a word-”

“Where is it?”

“What?”

“Hold Everything. It used to be right there.” She pointed to Bikini Bazaar. “They sold shoe trees. Man, I hate to lose a store.” Fredreeq strode ahead once more, me trotting to keep up. “Restoration Hardware, that’s our only hope. The day they fold is the day I start shopping online.”

Inside Restoration Hardware, Fredreeq got into deep conversation with the greeter and I pulled out my cell phone and called Maizie Qui

“Hi,” Maizie said, breathless. “Just getting a brioche out of the oven. Marie who?”

“Marie-Thérèse. I came across an e-mail-I think A

“About what?”

“Problems on Biological Clock. A

“Good Lord.” An audible sigh. “I should’ve kept a closer eye on her, but- Okay, let me think. She met so many au pairs in New York-all the girls start there for a week of orientation and training, a sort of boot camp before they meet their host families. Marie-Thérèse was probably one of those, the other January arrivals.”

“Did all these girls come from the same agency? Au Pairs par Excellence?”

There was a pause. “I’m not sure. I can- Yes, Emma, what?” Maizie’s voice went into another mode, pronounced patience. “No, Mommy’s on the phone. You need to wait one minute and I’ll do it for you. If you need it right now, you have to ask Lupe or Grammy Qui

“I have another thought. Emma’s music class-you said A

“The problem is, Music with Miss Grusha has a ‘no observers’ policy. She says visitors create performance anxiety. She was not very gracious to Grammy Qui

“Oh,” I said.

“And I can’t alienate Miss Grusha; she’s my ticket into preschool. But I’ll ask the moms-oh, not tomorrow, I’m interviewing na

Next week? A week was a lifetime, I thought, hanging up. I joined Fredreeq at the register and told her about Miss Grusha’s antivisitor injunction. “What can I do?” I said. “I’ve got to talk to these women.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve gone through everyone else who knows A

“Here’s an idea. Give it a rest. You’re like a crazy person-”

“I’ll meet you up on seven,” I said, grabbing back the application. “I need a better German dictionary, and maybe a how-to book for finding missing persons-”

“Level eight,” the salesclerk said, sca

“Thank you,” Fredreeq said, glaring at him. “We know all about level eight.” She turned to me. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard this week. A how-to book on missing persons. No. We are not going on a wild book chase. There is no such book, because there is no market for-”

“But there is, there are forty thousand missing Americans-”

“This is a missing German, who’s gone back to Germany and hasn’t told her fruitcakey mother, because she’s probably sick and tired of talking to her on the phone every damn Sunday. The cops told you that, the agency told you that, the Mother Goose mom told you that, how many votes have to be in-”

“No. There’s no consensus on what happened to her, everyone’s got different theories, and mine is, something happened on the show-”

“So someone hit on her. Welcome to show biz. Is that my total? Did you take off the extra ten percent on the fly gun and the card shuffler?” Fredreeq studied her receipt, then turned to me. “Look. We have two objectives today: destroy the competition and work on your wardrobe. No Soviet kindergartens, no German dictionaries…”

We argued about it all the way to a clothing store called Parsley Sage Rosemary, where Fredreeq’s voice dropped to a whisper. “No one shops here except people trying out for Hamlet. Okay, bury your face in brocade and stay low until I give the word. Here, hold my butterfly net. Excuse me,” she called, walking away before I could ask questions. “Is Kimberly working today?”

I realized this was the second day job for Kimberly Karmer. So I wasn’t the only Biological Clock contestant with multiple odd jobs. And Parsley Sage Rosemary was odd, as odd as Plastique, the velvets and ruffled blouses suitable for fairy tales, for maidens who hang out with unicorns. Greeting cards took shape: Hamlet at the mall, fencing across level six, up the escalator… My thoughts drifted for ten minutes or more until Fredreeq tapped my shoulder.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We got what we needed.”

Fredreeq couldn’t see why gathering dirt on Kim did not sit well with me.

“I came here to create an alliance with her,” she said, leading me past Baby Gap, “but she called in sick today, so I chatted up her coworkers. Is that a crime?”

“Fraud?” I said. “Yes, that’s a crime. Slander, libel, defamation of character, telling people you’re with the National Enquirer, that you’ll pay-”

“I never used the word ‘dirt’ and I only implied I’d pay if a story checked out. Lighten up. It worked. Kim has been followed; she’s called mall security twice in two weeks. Which confirms it’s Sava

I gazed at a pregnant woman walking past us. “But how could anyone but B.C.’s editor influence how people vote? And if he did that, featured one contestant over another, wouldn’t we notice? Wouldn’t the producers?”

“Yes.” Fredreeq stopped, eyes wide. “Who’s to say the producers aren’t in on it? Maybe they kidnapped A

I just stared.

“Yes!” she said excitedly. “The producers, in cahoots with bookies in Vegas. Not Joey, of course, but Elliot’s always been a little shady.” She took out her phone. “You go buy that dictionary. If this Music with Mrs. Khrushchev class is our only lead, I’ll get you in there. If someone’s kidnapped A

In the bookstore I stood holding a German-English dictionary and staring at one page of A

No single English word expressed it. Führungszeugnis needed its own sentence: “document issued by police certifying the holder has no criminal record.”

This sounded like good news except that the date circled in red pointed to the fact that A

Someone else had figured this out too, someone who’d circled the date in red. And then what? Blackmailed her with the information? Who? To what end?

And for what crime?