“What more can you tell us?” Barb asked the lawyer.

“There's no sign that anything happened to her. The police assume she's sightseeing.”

Barb thought, Levon, tell them, but Levon had said to her before the magazine people arrived, “We'll take information in. We'll listen. But we've got to keep in mind that we don't know these people.” Meaning, anyone attached to the magazine could have had something to do with Kim's disappearance.

Susan Gruber put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward, said to Levon, “Kim was inside the hotel bar with Del, and Del went to the men's room, and when he returned, Kim was gone. No one took Kim. She left on her own.”

“So that's the story?” Levon asked. “Kim left the hotel bar on her own, and no one's heard from her, and she's been gone for a day and a half, and that means to you that Kim ditched the shoot and went sightseeing? Am I getting that right?”

“She's an adult, Mr. McDaniels,” Gruber said. “It wouldn't be the first time a girl dumped a job. I remember this girl, Gretchen, took off in Cannes last year, showed up in Monte Carlo six days later.”

Gruber was talking like this was her office, and she was patiently explaining her job to Levon. “We've got eight girls on this shoot.” She went on to say how many people she had to supervise and all the things she had to cover, and how she had to be on the set every minute or looking at the day's shots?

Barbara felt the pressure building inside her head. All that gold on Susan Gruber, but no wedding ring. Did she have a child? Did she even know one? Susan Gruber didn't get it.

“We love Kim,” Carol Sweeney blurted to Barb. “I? I felt that Kim was safe here. I was having dinner with one of the other models. I mean, Kim is such a good girl and so responsible, I never thought we had reason to worry.”

“I only turned my back for a minute,” said Del Swann. And then he started to cry.