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.”“Marion Kravitz doesn’t like me.Ever since I started—uh—filling out, she’s had it in for me.”“And what about Mr.Kravitz? You said once he was creepy.”“Did I say that?”“That’s what you said—a bit creepy.”She thought about it.“He tries too hard to be helpful,” she said.“He was always taking me and Lydia on trips.He would take us sailing, horseback riding.Once, when I was having problems with calculus, he offered to coach me.Mrs.Kravitz shot that idea down.”“I thought he wore the pants in the household?”“Depends which pants you’re talking about.There are pants for every occasion.Some of them come with lacey bits around the edges.”She said this with a certain tartness that I found odd.“So how do you feel about Lydia now?” I asked.“What do you mean? Lydia’s my best friend.”“Yes, but she’s the one who’s getting you into all kinds of trouble.At least it seems that way to me.”Andrea looked dejected.“She’s still my friend.I don’t want to see something bad happening to her.”“Would she be as worried if she thought something bad might happen to you?”“Of course!”I let her think about it for a while, then said, “Okay, I apologize.I thought for a while you were maybe the bad girl.”Tears welled up in Andrea’s eyes again.“If you’d taken advantage of my stupidity last night,” she said, “you’d have been only the second guy I ever had sex with.”On that sobering thought, I changed the subject.“So how are you supposed to report back to Pedrosian?” I asked.“And what do I tell him?”“Well, let’s take those one at a time.Is there a plan with Pedrosian?”“He said he would get in touch with me when I had something to tell him.I asked him how he would know when that was.He said, ‘Don’t worry—I’ll know.’ He made it sound kind of threatening.I feel he could show up at any moment, and then what?”“If he really cares about Lydia’s well-being, nothing bad is going to happen to you.”I thought of some of the things that had happened to me in the previous couple of days, and hoped I was right.Probably Pedrosian had known Andrea was in my apartment, and someone—either Pedrosian or somebody he had assigned—could have followed her when she left, though I had seen nothing suspicious as I trailed her.“When you came uptown to your parents’ apartment,” I asked, “did you call the service and give your whereabouts?”She shook her head.“I was getting too freaked out.”That meant there was at least some chance Pedrosian did not know where Andrea was.I laid it on the line for her.“Do you really want to help Lydia?”“Of course.”“Even though you know she’s trouble—big trouble—and maybe in big trouble.”Andrea looked frightened.The truth was, I didn’t know if Lydia really was big trouble, or in big trouble, or just a pain in the ass.And I still wasn’t totally sure about Andrea, but I needed to get her reaction.She was confused.“I don’t want anything bad happening,” she said.“So are you willing to help me?”“Help you how?”“I’ll have to figure that out, but remember you’re our one possible bridge to Lydia, so if she is in trouble…”“What do you want me to do?”I told her to go back to her parents’ apartment and stay put till I got in touch.“Okay, but don’t call their phone.I still have my own line in my old room.”She gave me the number.“Who uses it now?” I asked.“Barbie and Ken?”Andrea giggled.I liked that giggle a lot.“Or call me at the office,” I said.“You can always leave a message there.”THIRTEENSo it was the good old good girl, bad girl scenario.The problem was that I wasn’t sure which was which.Sitting there in the coffee shop with Andrea, I had wanted to believe everything she was telling me.Even after she was no longer there, I was pretty sure that the story she had just laid on me had many elements of truth to it, but it would take only one deliberately embedded lie to throw the whole thing off.I stopped at a phone booth and called the number she had given me for the message service.When a woman answered, I asked, “Does this account belong to Jerry Pedrosian?” The woman said, “I’m sorry, sir, we can’t give out that information.”Then I had a moment of inspiration.“Does this account belong to Michigan J.Frog?”I could tell by the woman’s attempt to stifle a laugh that I had hit pay dirt.I was tempted to leave a message for Pedrosian, but that would compromise everything.I took a subway downtown and went to my office to check my own messages.The third one was interesting.It was a male voice that I didn’t recognize.Definitely not Pedrosian’s, but I suspected the message had originated with him.“We’ve been trying to warn you to mind your own business.Seems you’re a bit thick, so let me spell it out for you.Lay off, or else.”My conversation with Andrea had made me curious about what kind of picture of Lydia I’d get if I contacted her school.I called Teddington and explained that I was the investigator who had been hired to look into Lydia’s disappearance and was bounced around between administrative flacks until I finally spoke to an assistant dean.“Lydia is a lovely girl,” she said, “and extremely gifted.We thought she was rather quiet at first, but in fact, she’s just extraordinarily self-possessed.She doesn’t commit herself until she has something worth saying, if you understand me.If she has one failing, it’s perhaps that she’s a trifle over-confident.”“In what way?” I asked.“How shall I put it? She’s so determined to play a leadership role among her peers that she sometimes pushes a trifle too hard.But she’s great fun and everyone here loves her.”“Does she have any special friends at Teddington?”The woman paused.“That’s a difficult question to answer.She’s been here just over one semester, and it takes time to forge those lifelong friendships that are among the cherished legacies of a school like Teddington.But Lydia’s an extremely popular girl.”“What,” I asked, “is her major?”“At Teddington, we don’t have majors.We believe in a broad, liberal education.”“Does Lydia have any areas in which she excels?”“Oh, many areas.She tends to be at her best in fields that involve participation—debate for example.Last semester she was quite the star of a weeklong experimental workshop devoted to the subject of the interplay among art, politics, and society, emphasizing the potential role the artistic impulse can play in the community at large.”“That would have been Jerry Pedrosian’s course?”“Why yes.Do you know Mr.Pedrosian?”“Lydia’s father mentioned his course.”“I imagine he told you how much Lydia enjoyed it.”“He did say something of the sort.Could you tell me more about that course? What was Mr
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