“And you are?” it asked.
The figure was a towel-clad woman with the smoothest, unblemished, most perfectly-tanned legs. Her skin had the patina of brass. She was overly-toned, bordering on overly-muscular. Wednesdays must have been her calf workout days at the gym because the slightest shift on her feet accentuated yet another muscle in the lower half of her legs that I didn’t know existed. She crossed her arms over her chest and gazed at me with pale green eyes. A quizzically arched eyebrow left no line on her engineered forehead.
“I was hired to find a missing girl,” I answered.
That seemed to amuse her.
“Give me a minute, would you?” she smiled and disappeared down the hall.
While I waited I looked over the room and a shelf piled high with books caught my attention. I always believed the books someone displayed said a lot about them, either in whom they were as a person or in whom they wanted you to believe they were. Jeanette’s shelf had your typical smattering of classics with wrinkle-free spines — no one actually read Dostoyevsky but having him on your shelf at minimum proved you knew who he was. There were also an inordinate number of well-handled books with titles that contained some combination of the words “power,” “winning,” and “transformation.” I pulled a few down to inspect the covers. They all followed a familiar formula — an incredibly catchy title with a declarative statement that boldly predicted the simple path to wealth, success, love, or any number of the elusive targets we spend lifetimes chasing.
All the books contained forwards from other self-help authors — the industry was apparently very welcoming to newcomers. It was as if they all understood that a self-help customer is a lifelong customer and that there were enough dollars to feed many mouths. Nothing in their books was actually going to solve whatever problem the person had. But the desire to fix ourselves is an insatiable want and the only answer is more books. Marketers call this enviable position, “creating dependency.”
There was at least a thousand dollars’ worth of improvement books here, all clearly read more than once. Fourteen years old seemed much too young for someone to be overwhelmed with the inevitable existential crisis of adulthood. I felt a pang of sadness at the idea that this girl had somehow skipped the trite saga of a teenage girl and jumped head-first into grown-up malaise.
I thumbed through a few of the more worn, dog-eared copies. Entire passages were called out in yellow highlighter. Particular sections were belt-and-suspendered with ink underlines. I read a few of the sections and they were remarkable in how assured the writing was in describing nonsensical concepts. My eye caught a slip of paper protruding from the back. I flipped forward and removed a carefully-folded printout of what appeared to be an old newspaper story. I got no further than the date at the top — June 1961 — when I heard footsteps approaching. I quickly shoved the paper into my pocket and replaced the book on the shelf.
The woman reappeared in a tennis outfit that was more revealing than the towel. She had taken the time to partly blow-dry her hair, which was now parted with the precision of a laser level. A trace amount of makeup had been applied, as well as a delicate citrusy perfume. She must have read the study about how the smell of grapefruit made people think you were five years younger than your actual age.
“I’m Meredith Valenti,” she introduced herself with a hand extended, “the missing girl’s mother.” There was something snide in the way she said the second part.
“Chuck Restic.”
“Dad hates private investigators,” she announced and sat down on the edge of the twin bed. “Do you work for the firm?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You’re a real private investigator?”
“Define ‘real’.”
“Have you ever made a dollar doing that kind of work?”
“No.” I got the look reserved for deviled eggs left out too long at the party. “Your father asked me to help locate her.”
“Of course he did. Dad always gets serious when money is involved,” she added mysteriously.
“Money doesn’t seem to be much of a concern,” I informed her. After all, I was being paid double the amount of money that was asked for by the girl I was trying to find.
“You don’t know Dad.”
Her lack of a pronoun when describing her father was curious. There was something impersonal about it, like she was describing an inanimate object and not the human who shared her blood.
“Has your daughter ever done this before?”
“Done what?”
“Go missing for a period of time.”
“Who said she was missing?” she asked.
“You did, when you introduced yourself.”
“I was parroting you.”
“So you know where she is?” I asked, suddenly confused.
“I didn’t say that.”
“How long has she been gone?” I tried again.
“I don’t know, almost a week.”
“When did you last speak to her?”
“I can’t remember the exact date. Sometime last weekend.”
“Has she tried to make any contact since then?”
“Not that I know of.”
Her answers were terse and tinged with bemusement, but she was the only one finding enjoyment out of it. I took a moment to study her more closely. She was approaching the half-century mark and fighting it every step of the way. I’d seen this in others — both men and women — who become obsessed with looking better with each passing year in some manic pursuit of a simple phrase: She looks good for her age.
Meredith had seemingly reached a point where fitness had taken over her life — a strict regimen of juicing and enemas and twelve hours of Pilates. Yet nothing is as inevitable as the onslaught of age. For every perfectly-toned leg there is a lack of that youthful fat that just can’t be replicated in the gym. The response is more toning, even less fat, more muscle, and ultimately two legs with knees resembling giant clam shells. I stared at one of those knees and the leg coquettishly rocking on it.
“Pardon me for being so forward, but you are acting very casual for someone whose teenage daughter has been missing for nearly a week.”
“You don’t know me,” she said icily, “or my family.”
“No, I don’t know you,” I admitted. “But I am trying to locate your daughter and finding out as much information as possible would help me. Has your daughter ever asked for money before?”
“What do you mean?”
“She sent your father an email asking for forty thousand dollars.”
“Forty thousand dollars?” This was new information to her. “Dad paid it?” she asked incredulously.
I told her he had. She got a lot of enjoyment out of that, and the frost that had descended on our conversation started to melt. She went back to bouncing her leg on her knee.
“What did you mean earlier when you said your father gets serious when money is involved? If you didn’t know about the 40K, what money were you referring to?”
“There’s a lot more money involved than some forty thousand dollars,” she said dreamily. She seemed to get lost in some other thought. I wanted to bring her back to the present.
“Does your daughter keep a diary?”
“Yes, she keeps it next to her favorite locket and dreamy publicity stills of her matinee idols.” She couldn’t resist. But as if remembering our recent truce, she wiped the smirk from her lips and took a more conciliatory tone. “You don’t have kids, do you?”
When I admitted as much she went on to explain how children didn’t keep diaries anymore when they could share all of their darkest, insignificant thoughts on the internet for everyone to read.
“Where does she keep her computer?”
“If it was here it’d be on her nightstand.”