“Then you know where she is?” Lauren asked in excitement.
“Driver’s licenses, please.”
Lauren and Matt exchanged a glance and dug into their respective pockets for identification. Only when the man had taken notes to his satisfaction did he put down the pad and face them.
“No, I don’t know where Susan is,” he admitted. “The last time I heard from her was nearly two years ago. She sounded fine then. Why did she leave L.A.?”
“We’re not sure,” Matt answered. “But we do know she left. We’d hoped she’d contacted you, or someone else she knew before.”
“You could try Tim—”
“We already have. He suggested we try you.”
Fraun sighed and gave a shrug that made his belly shake. “I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t believe Susan’s in trouble. She was always honest, and a hard worker.”
“She probably still is,” Lauren speculated. “It’s just that she had the ill fortune to get mixed up with a man who’s probably neither of those things. Can you think of anyone she may have contacted? Timothy said she wasn’t close to her family, but there’s always a chance she could be in touch with one of them.”
Fraun shook his head. This time his jowls shimmied. “Tim was right. She wasn’t big on her family. She did mention the sister from time to time.”
“Do you know her married name,” Matt asked, “or where she’s living?”
“Nah—Wait just a minute.” He bounced off the desk and tugged at the drawer of a file cabinet. It resisted his efforts, yielding at last, but with reluctance. Lauren understood why. The drawer was nearly as overstuffed as was the man rummaging through it.
“How can you find anything in there?” she asked on impulse.
“I find. I find. It just takes a little time.”
It took a good fifteen minutes, during which Lauren and Matt sat by helplessly, glancing from each other’s faces to the man at work to the calamity of his office.
“Here we go!” Fraun exclaimed at last. He held up a sheet of paper that had a permanent press running diagonally through it. “Susan’s original employment application. You see,” he cried victoriously, “it sometimes pays not to clean out drawers.” Holding the paper at arm’s length, he ran his eyes down the form. “Aha! Person to call in case of emergency: Mrs. Peter—Ann—Broszczyn-ski. Relationship: sister.” Proudly, he offered the form to Lauren. “St. Louis. Think you can get there?”
Lauren looked from the form to Matt and grinned. “You bet we can.” When she returned her gaze to Alexander Fraun, she realized that, with a beard and a little more hair, he would have reminded her of Santa Claus.
Ann Broszczynski was not living at the address listed on the employment application, which was understandable, Lauren and Matt told each other, since the application had been filled out seven years before. The people presently living at that address didn’t know what had become of the Broszcynskis, but the telephone company did.
A phone booth with its book miraculously attached and intact gave them the information they needed, and a taxi delivered them to the right address. It was another apartment, but a nicer one, more a garden complex. Lauren felt a certain pleasure that Susan’s sister had moved up in the world.
The door was answered by a teenage girl who reminded Lauren of the guard at the garage where she parked. Definitely a music fan. If the net of lace banding her curly hair, the penciled mole just above her lip, or the abbreviated top and minuscule straight skirt hadn’t given her away, the fingerless lace glove on her hand would have.
“Mmm?” the girl mumbled.
“We’re looking for Ann Broszczynski,” Lauren explained. “Is she in?”
The girl tilted her head back and hollered to the ceiling, “Mom!” A minute later she stepped aside to make room for the woman who approached.
Ann Broszczynski was a clean and attractive representative of middle America. She wore jeans, a sleeveless blouse and an apron, the latter serving at the moment as a towel for her wet hands. Her hair, a little lighter than Lauren’s, was shoulder-length and swept behind her ears. Even devoid of makeup, her face was lovely.
It was also momentarily stricken. Her eyes were huge. She opened her mouth, then closed it and stared at Lauren in puzzlement.
Lauren smiled. “I look a lot like Susan, I know, but my name’s Lauren Stevenson. This is Matt Kruger. We wonder if we could talk with you for a few minutes.”
“Are you friends of Susan’s?” the woman asked, more wary than curious, a fact that Lauren attributed to the distance between the sisters.
“Indirectly, yes,” Lauren answered. “May we come in?”
Ann didn’t budge. “Susan and I don’t see each other,” she returned a little too quickly. “We go our own ways.”
“I know that. But we need to talk with you. No one else has been able to help us.”
