“That’s confidential information, of course,” Ms. Stein said, and Deborah gave her a hard look, but amazingly, Ms. Stein did not seem to wither. Perhaps she was used to intimidating glares from the wealthy parents. It was clearly an impasse, so I decided to help out.
“Does she take a lot of teasing from the other kids?” I said. “You know, about money or anything?”
Ms. Stein glanced at me and gave me a that’s-not-really-funny half a smile. “I take it you think there might be a financial motive for her disappearance,” she said.
“Does she have a boyfriend, that you know of?” Debs said.
“I don’t really know,” Ms. Stein said. “And if I did, I’m not at all sure I should tell you.”
“Miss Stern,” Debs said.
“It’s Stein,” Ms. Stein said.
Deborah waved that off. “We are not investigating Samantha Aldovar. We’re investigating her disappearance. And if you stonewall us, you’re keeping us from find
ing her.”
“I don’t really see—”
“We’d like to find her alive,” Deborah said, and I was proud of the cold and hard way she said it; Ms. Stein actually turned pale.
“I don’t …” she said. “The personal stuff, I really don’t know. Perhaps I could get one of her friends to talk to you.…”
“That would be very helpful,” Deborah said.
“I think she’s closest to Tyler Spanos,” Ms. Stein said. “But I would have to be present.”
“Go get Tyler Spanos, Miss Stein,” Deborah said.
Ms. Stein bit her lip and stood up, heading out the door without nearly as much cool composure as she’d had coming in. Deborah settled back in her chair and squirmed a little, as if trying to find a comfortable way to sit in it. There wasn’t one. She gave up after a minute and sat up straight, crossing and uncrossing her legs impatiently.
My shoulder was sore, and I tried leaning on the other one. Several minutes went by; Deborah looked up at me two or three times, but neither one of us had anything to say.
Finally, we heard voices drifting in through the door, rising in pitch and volume. That lasted for about half a minute, and then there was relative quiet again. And after several long minutes in which Deborah recrossed her legs and I switched back to leaning on the original shoulder, Ms. Stein hurried back into her office. She was still pale, and she did not look happy.
“Tyler Spanos didn’t come in today,” Ms. Stein said. “Or yesterday. So I called her home.” She hesitated, as if she were embarrassed, and Deborah had to urge her on.
“She’s sick?” Debs said.
“No, she …” Again, Ms. Stein hesitated and chewed on her lip. “They … She was working on a class project with another student,” she said at last. “They said she’s, ah, in order to work on it … they said she’s been staying with the other girl.”
Deborah sat bolt upright. “Samantha Aldovar,” she said, and it was not a question.
Ms. Stein answered it anyway. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right.”
SEVEN
BETWEEN THE LAWS THAT ANY SCHOOL CAN CALL UPON to protect its students from official harassment and the clout that the parents and alumni of a school like Ransom Everglades could muster, it could have been very difficult for us to gather any information on what was now a double disappearance. But the school chose to take the high road and use the crisis as an exercise in community activism. They sat us down in the same office with the cluttered walls while Ms. Stein hustled around alerting teachers and administrators.
I looked around the room and noticed that there were still the same number of chairs. My leaning spot on the wall no longer seemed terribly inviting. But I decided that our significance in the grand scheme of things had gone up several notches when two of the school’s students turned up missing, and, in short, I was now far too important to lean against the wall. And there was, after all, one more perfectly good chair in the room.
I had just settled into Ms. Stein’s chair when my cell phone rang. I glanced at the screen, which told me that the call was from Rita. I answered. “Hello?”
“Dexter, hi, it’s me,” she said.
“That was my first guess,” I told her.
“What? Oh. Anyway, listen,” she said, which didn’t seem necessary, since I was. “The doctor says I’m ready to come home, so can you come get us?”