On the table stood the silver bowl filled with lettered tiles. In addition, two lines of tiles had been arranged on the table, as though Calida had returned to the inquiry that had begun in Bibi’s kitchen the night before. The first line read ASHLEY BELL. The line below it was an address: ELEVEN MOONRISE WAY.
Beside the bowl lay a sheet of high-quality photographic paper of the kind used in a color printer. When Bibi turned it over, she was staring at a lovely girl of perhaps thirteen. Champagne-yellow hair. Wide-spaced violet eyes the shade of certain hyacinths. It was mostly a head shot, from the shoulders up. The girl wore a white blouse with a crisp white collar, and across that garment were written five words: Calida, this is Ashley Bell.
This girl. This Ashley Bell. Her face beautiful. Her expression serene. But in that serenity, Bibi saw a hard-won composure, a mask meant to deny the photographer his subject’s true emotions, which were fear and anger. She warned herself that she might be reading into the photo a scenario from her imagination. Maybe the girl was just bored or trying for one of those vacuous expressions that models were encouraged to assume for the haute-couture magazines these days. But no. For Bibi, the proof could be seen in that remarkable stare. If the colors in the picture were true to life, those enchanting reddish-blue eyes were as limpid as distilled water and revealed a profoundly observant and quick mind. They were wide-set eyes but also as wide open as they could be without furrowing her forehead, as if she meant to belie the apparent tranquillity of her face, or as though the photographer or something else beyond the camera disquieted her.
In addition, Bibi perceived in the girl a tenderness and vulnerability that inspired sympathy, a kindredness that she could not—or would not—explain to herself. This reaction, this sense of equivalence, hit her with such force that it changed everything.
Until now, the search for Ashley Bell, such as it was, had been to a degree unreal, a game without rules, a joke quest without many laughs. It might even be a hoax involving a cleverly staged, phony divination session enhanced by hallucinogens, perpetrated by a group of crazies whose motivation was likely forever to elude a sane person. To this point, Bibi had played this dangerous game as though she exclusively stood at the center of it, focus and sole target. Because of the girl’s appearance and demeanor, which were at once radiantly ethereal and as real as stone, Bibi’s perception changed. She was the paladin, the white knight, and a secondary target only because she would act to save the girl. Ashley Bell was the primary target of the Wrong People and the focus of all that would happen hereafter. In surfing terms, Ashley was the grommet, the trainee surf mongrel, and Bibi was the stylin’ waverider who had to save her from being mortally prosecuted by a series of storm-generated behemoths.
Reality had finally resolved out of the chaos of the last twelve hours. It had bitten hard, infecting Bibi with conviction.
Ashley Bell was real. And in desperate trouble. The people who threatened her were in some way weirdly gifted and beyond the reach of the law. Also well organized. Also homicidal.
Calida had printed out a picture of Ashley that someone had emailed to her as an attached JPEG. It would be helpful to know the source of the photograph. Maybe she had printed the email, too.
Like any house, this one produced noises separate from those its people generated. Creaks and ticks and soft groans of expansion, contraction, and subsidence. A series of these caused Bibi to freeze and listen intently, but silence and a guarded sense of safety settled after the building finished complaining about gravity.
She looked through desk drawers for the email. Nothing. An electric shredder fed the waste can, which contained mostly quarter-inch-wide ribbons of paper suitable for celebrating a welcome-home parade of astronauts returning from the moon, but otherwise useless. The remaining contents did not include the email.
She suspected that she’d already spent too much time in the house. Exploring Calida’s computer might be interesting, but it would also require a reckless delay.