13

For a change, the records for the Baumen High School were stored in an attic instead of a basement. Like the basements, the attic was dusty, but unlike a basement, it was also hot and stuffy. The school principal, a man named Schaeffer, had not been able to find the graduation pictures for the years 1930 to 1936 and Lane had not been in the '37 to '40 pictures, so he took Garreth up to the files. "There's a picture in their school records. That cabinet should hold all the Biebers."

Garreth stood at the cabinet, bending down to go through its second drawer and praying for the principal to leave. As long as the man breathed down his neck, he had to check each and every file instead of being able to go straight to where Lane's file would be located.

"How can you see up here with those glasses on?" Schaeffer asked.

Eyes. Garreth thought carefully about that, then took off the glasses and hung them on his shirt pocket. He twisted around, blinking in the light, to look straight at Schaeffer. "Don't you think it's hot and dusty up here? I know you'd be more comfortable in your office. You don't have to stay with me."

Schaeffer's face went blank for a moment, then he mopped at his brow. "It's a shame we can't afford air conditioning for this building. Mr. Mikaelian, if you don't mind being left alone, I think I'll go back to my office."

"I'll be fine."

He watched Schaeffer leave, and the moment the door closed behind the principal's figure, he slammed the drawer shut and pulled open one on the bottom. He flipped through the files, past the Aarons, Calebs, Carolyns, and Eldoras. His hand paused at Garrett Bieber out of simple reaction to the similarity to his own name, and then went on, through the letters of the alphabet to the M's.

The folder there came to his fingers like iron to a magnet. BIEBER, Madelaine. He pulled it out of the drawer and spread it open on the floor. First the picture. He studied it. Though obviously of a young girl and brown with age, it was recognizably Lane. A sigh of satisfaction came up from his soul. He had found her origin. From here, hopefully, he could reach out to capture her. He paged through the record of her four years in the school, looking for anything more he might learn about her from it.

She had been a good student, he saw, earning straight A's. She had graduated first academically in her class of ten, but had not been valedictorian at graduation. The grades he somehow expected, but the lack of honor surprised him; that is, it did until he noticed the long list of disciplinary actions against her. She had, various teachers stated, an uncontrolled temper and frequently became involved in fights—the knock-down, tooth-and-claw variety—with both other girls and an occasional boy. Garreth saw the young woman who had attacked a prostitute for stealing her supper . . . but a very different person from Lane Barber. Could any of those teachers still be alive to appreciate how well Lane had learned to control her temper?

The record also gave her parents' names, Benjamin and Anna, and her home address, 513 Pine Street. Garreth made a note of it, though he doubted that it remained valid after all these years.

When he had all out of the file that he thought he could use, he returned it to the drawer, then he had only to sit in the stifling, dusty heat to wait until enough time had elapsed for searching the files before leaving the attic.

He headed for a phone. The phone book listed five Biebers, one of them an Anna living at 513 Pine. Smiling at the clerk in the high school office, he copied down the addresses of all the Biebers. "I guess I'll talk to a few people. Thanks for the help."

He started, of course, with Anna Bieber at 513 Pine, just a few blocks from the high school. A middle-aged woman answered the door. Her face bore similarities to Lane's. "Mrs. Bieber?" he asked. If she was not Lane's mother, perhaps she was a sister.

"Come on in," the woman said. "I'll get Mother."

Mrs. Bieber turned out to be a tiny, frail-looking wisp, nothing like the strapping woman Garreth would have expected to spawn an amazon like Lane. Like her daughter, though, she looked younger than her years. Though she moved slowly, she still walked straight, without the bend of age, and her eyes met Garreth's face directly, undimmed. For a moment, the similarity to his own grandmother seemed so strong, panic fluttered in him, and he wondered if she, too, possibly recognized him for what he was.

But her hand did not touch the crucifix around her neck and she cordially invited him to sit down. At the end of listening to his story, she looked him over with searching eyes. "My daughter Mada ran away at the age of eighteen with a professor from Fort Hays. May I see the picture you have?" She spoke with the distinctive accent he had heard so often these past days.

"It isn't your daughter," he said, handing over the photograph of Grandma Doyle. "I've been to the high school, and your daughter's school picture doesn't match mine. But I thought maybe you would remember a relative who looked like the girl in my picture."

She studied it. "I'm sorry. No." She handed it back.

Now what? How did he bring up Lane without asking questions that would arouse suspicion, and without appearing to pry?

Garreth pretended to examine his photograph. "I wonder how anyone can just leave home and never go back. I hope you hear from your daughter?"

The old woman beamed. "Mada calls every week, no matter where she is. She's a singer and she travels a good deal, even to Mexico and Canada and Japan. I'd be satisfied with a letter; calling must be terribly expensive, but she says she enjoys hearing my voice."

His breath caught. Jackpot! He did not have to pretend delight. "Every week? How lucky you are."

"I know." She launched into stories about friends who had children who hardly ever called or wrote.

Garreth only half listened. Called every week. Could he reasonably ask where Lane had called from the last time? Knowing even just a city— Belatedly he realized Mrs. Bieber had said Lane's name again. "I'm sorry. What was that?"

"I said, for someone so huge and awkward as a girl, Mada became a very attractive woman. She's still handsome."

He blinked. "You see her often too?" Could she be somewhere near?

"Every Thanksgiving or Christmas," Mrs. Bieber said with pride "She always comes home for one of the holidays."

Garreth wanted to yell with happiness and hug the old woman—Lane came home. Lady Luck, you're a darling! Instead of running around the world looking for her, all he had to do was wait . . . find a job here, make friends with Mrs. Bieber so he would know when to expect Lane . . . and let the fugitive come to him.