Блейк Крауч: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, No. 5. Whole No. 813, May 2009

Patricia McFall is a freelance writer, editor, and journalist who also teaches fiction writing. She’s the author of the suspense novel Night Butterfly and a half-dozen short stories, three of them (including this one) mysteries and all published in EQMM. See 2004’s “The Foreigner’s Watch” and 2005’s “The Resurrection of Daniel Mason.” The latter featured Lane Terry, the performance artist.

Whenever you’re playing a role, you’re lying, which may be why all of Southern California wears the unfair mantle of Hollywood’s artificiality. But be nice. We’re only practicing our lines. I’m a good liar because I used to be an actress, more of a performance artist, really, but now I practice in the line of work. As a private investigator, I sometimes have to assume an identity. I work as Lane Terry & Associates, and that last word is technically another lie, nothing more than a performance with a supporting cast when I need one. I prefer to act alone, in both senses.

With an agency located in luxurious Laguna Beach, I often call upon my theatrical background. Recently, my being a good actress even saved lives — mine, for instance.

I’ll start with the woman standing in my open office door staring at the lettering on the glass. A mousy little woman about my mother’s age, tail end of the Baby Boomers, but that was the only resemblance. Mom is well kept, in an artistic, natural-beauty, wouldn’t-think-of-plastic-surgery, handcrafted-clothes-and-jewelry kind of way. This woman’s sloppy T-shirt, padded vest, and stained grey relaxed-fit jeans weren’t aimed at effortless classic style. They were aimed at keeping the rain off and the wind out, and could as easily have come from a shelter as a thrift shop.

I wondered if she was some poor soul who had lost her home and family and was in need of someone to share with. She surprised me by opening the door, giving me a sharp look, and asking, “Are you Lane Terry or an associate?” When I said I was Lane Terry, she mumbled that she’d expected a man, and that I looked awful young to be an investigator.

I get this underestimation all the time if I don’t dress right or wear makeup. I’m twenty-six, but since I look younger, these days I’ve taken to wearing my hair expensively cut to shoulder length with feathery bangs I can peer intelligently out from under. I also acquired a business wardrobe of sorts.

But at that moment, my expensive hair was stuck up under a baseball cap, and I was wearing deck sandals, a pair of khaki cargo shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt in aggressive tropical-bird colors. Maybe I looked like a surfer, but I was culturally appropriate since it’s a beach town and the morning had been unusually warm for March. Besides, why should she care? She didn’t have an appointment.

I grabbed a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with zero prescription I keep by the phone. Not much, but the only prop I could find on short notice, and this was improv. I stuck them on and asked, “Did you have a question about something?”

All she did was stare back, looking forlorn, catching her breath from the walk up the hill. I almost felt sorry for her, but my clients generally come from referrals, and she was a walk-in. I wanted her to make her point so I could get some work done.

She took a quick breath and said, “I need you to find my daughter.”

Outside, a driver honked at a too-mellow pedestrian carrying his Boogie Board across the street in a leisurely mid-block diagonal. With her back to the windows, the woman couldn’t see, but she flinched and glanced over her shoulder. She was still out of breath, so I offered her a chair.

She sank into it, sighing, “Lord, what a hike.”

It was. My new hilltop office is on a nice little side street near the public library. People who can’t find a parking place have to walk, and a lot of visitors to Laguna Beach don’t know where to look for one. It’s like cracking a cipher. I consider it good exercise for them and always give newcomers a minute to defib before I ask any questions.

But she didn’t wait. “I’m Ruth Holloway,” she said. “My girl’s seventeen, be eighteen in June. Her name’s—” she hesitated, which struck me as unusual — “Megan Doyle, but she could be using some other name. See, she run off from our home in Westland. Just a little town nobody’s ever heard of, population of two thousand. It’s south of Jackson in Calaveras County, off Route Forty-nine, up in the gold country where they have the Jumping Frog Gun Show?”

I nodded, though I had never been there, or to a gun show, either. I have nothing against frogs, but I don’t much like guns.

Ruth went on, “Megan took off about six months ago. The law was no help. They said half the kids in a little town take off.” She winced out a smile that showed how agreeable she’d look if she made a habit of it. She shrugged. “Guess they can’t stand the peace and quiet.”

I knew about small towns, even if this was a glamorous one. They do get to feeling smaller in your teens, and I’d done my walkabout, too. But there was something about her. This woman was afraid of something, and she was telling lies, even if they were masked by some truth.

Now that I was suspicious, I made a point of asking her why her daughter took off. She studied her ragged cuticles and shrugged, not even bothering to come up with a story. “My husband’s strict, and she — she disobeyed him.” Her voice squeezed off, her expression crumbled, and she started crying. I handed her a box of tissues. Oh boy, I thought, there’s an iceberg right underneath here. I wondered about the “my husband,” not “her father,” and the different last names. Megan’s stepfather? I tried not to feel too sorry for Ruth. My kind-of-boyfriend Sean thinks I could afford to toughen up a little, that it takes a big shield to cover such a big heart. I don’t know about that, but I do know I don’t like to watch someone who’s hurting, so I have to guard against manipulation.

Ruth blew her nose. Then she wiped her eyes and told me between sniffles that the family got information on her daughter’s whereabouts, that Megan had apparently been at The Little Church on the Hill, where they helped street kids in Laguna Beach. I knew the place, and I’d heard that they were good people. In fact, I had sent a few lost kids up there, one not long before.

Ruth said she’d been to talk to “a lady preacher,” but the woman wouldn’t tell her a thing, not even whether Megan had been there. She said, “And I knew she was there because she called a friend from there.”

But Megan hadn’t called home, had she? I waited for Ruth to finish.

“I don’t know what kind of Christian that so-called pastor thinks she is,” she snapped, and I could see a nasty edge to her now.

“How do you mean?” I asked evenly.

“Well, Miss Terry, I shouldn’t have said that. She was acting like some government bureaucrat, you know, talking all about how they don’t give out information. I’m sure she was just doing her job.” She paused for me to respond, which I didn’t, then answered herself. “But she thinks her job is to keep kids away from their own parents. Well, but I’m sure she was doing right as she seen it...”

Ruth Holloway gave me the impression that she could easily change her opinion a hundred and eighty degrees just to avoid the listener’s displeasure. I had seen this kind of conversational dodging before, from someone I met at a women’s shelter. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but I was curious enough to ask her what they’d already done, whether they’d officially reported the girl missing to the unhelpful police in Westland or been in touch with our locals. No to both. Maybe I did feel sorry for her, but I was running out of time, patience, and a good reason to get involved.