Shakespeares Christmas Page 0,26

for. She found out who prints the most school memory books in the state, went to them, told them she was from a private school and she was looking for a printer. The guy gave her all kinds of samples to show her parents committee."

Jack seemed to want me to acknowledge Aunt Betty's cleverness, so I nodded.

"Then," he continued, "Betty comes down to Bartley, goes in to see the elementary school principal, shows her all the samples of memory books she has, and tells the principal she works for a printing company that can give them a competitive bid on the next memory book."

"And?"

"Then she asks to see this year's Bartley memory book, notices the slide picture, asks the principal who the photographer was, maybe her company might be able to use him for extra work. Betty figured the shot was good enough to justify the lie."

I shook my head. Betty must be persuasive and totally respectable and nonthreatening. I'd known the elementary school principal, Beryl Trotter, for fifteen years, and she was not a fool.

"How does it help, having the whole book?" I asked.

"If worst had come to worst, we would have looked at all the faces in the class section until we had them matched, so we could get their names. Or Betty would have called on the man who took the picture and coasted the conversation along until he told her who the girls were. But, as it happened, Mrs. Trotter asked Betty to have a cup of coffee, and Betty found out everything from Mrs. Trotter."

"The names of the girls? Their parents? Everything?"

"Yep."

This was a little frightening.

"So, once we had the names of the parents, we were able to do some background on the O'Sheas, since he's a minister and they have several professional directories that give little biographies. Dill, too, because the pharmacists have a state association. Chock full of information. The Osborns were harder. Aunt Betty had to go to Makepeace Furniture, pretend she'd just moved in and was shopping for a new table. It was risky. But she managed to talk to Emory, find out a few things about him, and get out without having to give a local address or mention any local relatives whom he could check up on."

"So then you knew the names of the girls and their parents, and some facts about their parents."

"Yep. Then we got busy on the computers, and then I started traveling."

I felt overwhelmed. I'd never talked to Jack in any depth about what he did. I'd never fully realized that one of the qualifications for a successful private detective is the ability to lie convincingly and at the drop of a hat. I pulled away from Jack a little. He took some papers from his briefcase.

"This is a computer-enhanced drawing of Summer Dawn as she may look now," he said, apparently not conscious of my unhappiness. "Of course, we have photographs of her only as an infant. Who knows how accurate this is?"

I looked at the picture. It looked like someone, all right, but it could have been any of the girls. I decided that the drawing looked most like Krista O'Shea, because it depicted Summer Dawn still plump-cheeked, like the baby snapshot the newspaper had printed.

"I thought these were supposed to be really accurate," I said. "Does it look so anonymous because she was a baby when she vanished?"

"Partly. And as it happens, none of the pictures of Summer Dawn was really good to use for this. The Macklesbys took fewer pictures of her than of their other two children because Summer Dawn was the third child, and the third child just doesn't get photographed as much as number one and number two. The picture that appeared in the newspaper was really the best one the parents had. They had an appointment to get Summer's picture made the week she disappeared."

I didn't want to think about that. I shuffled the top drawing, looked at the other three. The second was of the same face but framed by long, straight hair. In the third, a somewhat thinner-cheeked version of Summer Dawn was topped with short, wavy hair. There was a fourth, with medium-length hair and glasses.

"One of her sisters is nearsighted," Jack explained.

Eight years.

"She has sisters?" I kept my voice level. At least I tried.

"Yeah. Two. They're fourteen and sixteen, now. Teenagers, with posters on their walls of musicians I've never listened to. Closets full of clothes. Boyfriends. And a little sister they don't