“Joe, despite all that has happened to her recently, why can’t she tell us how to reach her parents? Is she unable? Or unwilling?”
Joe said, “Maybe she was living on the street.”
“She was found just about naked. Wearing a two-dollar rain poncho. You could be right.”
Joe took away my empty plate, loaded the dishwasher according to a system of his own devising, and gave me a bowl of praline ice cream and a spoon. I got up from my stool and wrapped my arms around his neck.
“I don’t deserve you,” I said. “But I sure do love you to death.”
He kissed me and said, “Did you try Facebook?”
“Facebook?”
“See if Avis has a page. And then here’s an idea. Come to bed.”
Chapter 6
“I’LL JOIN YOU IN A BIT,” I said to Joe’s back as he walked down the hall to our bedroom.
I took my laptop to the sofa and reclined with my head against the armrest, Martha lying across my feet.
I opened a Facebook account and did a search for Avis Richardson. After some fancy finger navigation, I found her home page, which wasn’t privacy protected. I read the messages on her wall, mostly innocuous shout-outs and references to parties, all of which meant nothing to me. But I did learn that Avis attended Brighton Academy, a pricey boarding school near the Presidio.
I called Conklin at around midnight to tell him that we had to track down the head of Brighton, but I got his voice mail. I left a message saying, “Call me anytime. I’m up.” I made coffee and then accessed Brighton’s website.
The site was designed to attract kids and their parents to the school and, if you could believe the hype and the photos, Brighton Academy was a little bit of heaven. The kids — all of them good-looking and well groomed — were shown studying, onstage in the auditorium, or on the soccer field. Avis was in a couple of those photos. I saw a happy kid who was nothing like the young woman lying in a hospital bed.