Lane as being too reminiscent of Lois, before deciding that only Place, in honor of the Sundance Kid's notorious girlfriend, Etta Place, also made a convincing last name. She'd been a mysterious lady lost to history. I might be en route to becoming another one.
Mrs. Haliburton's scanty eyebrows lifted above the thick lenses of her glasses. Her keyboard clicked and her unblinking eyes scanned a series of computer pages invisible to us as we sat staring at the back of her monitor.
Then her frantic fingers stopped and her face went white.
Really. I'd never seen anyone actually do that, and she had started out a pearly pink.
"This file is sealed," she announced, anger underlying her words. "You must have suspected that."
"No," Ric said, glancing at me. "Not at all. Only juvie court documents can be sealed. This isn't one of those?"
"No," she answered, to my relief.
"Then the file can't be sealed," Ric said.
"It is. That's all I know. I can't enter it, even if I would be willing to violate the seal."
"That's crazy," I said, leaning forward in my slippery-seated chair. "She left the system at age fourteen, when she entered high school."
"Check with the high school, then," Mrs. Haliburton snapped at me. "I can refer you to the public school superintendent during that era. He would have to approve admitting someone with a record so ... extreme it would be the only one ever sealed."
She was one of those old-time female bureaucrats who still knuckled under to men, but gave women a bad time. I suddenly knew I'd probably run into her ilk many times before, among the social workers and group home supervisors.
"Thanks a bunch, Mrs. Haliburton," I said, "but Delilah Street didn't leave the system for a public high school. She had a scholarship to Our Lady of the Lake convent school."
"That place! I don't like your tone, Miss. I'm giving up my time to look into this matter as a courtesy to Mr. Montoya and his former affiliation. I know nothing of what yours is."
Oh, I so wanted to snap that I'd been a reporter on WTCH-TV. How could she not even recognize my face? I hadn't exactly been anonymous.
Ric put a hand on my forearm as he stood up, bringing me upright with him.
"I'll take the superintendent's information, Mrs. Haliburton," he said, his voice as smooth as milk chocolate. "We appreciate your efforts."
He held out his open hand until she huffed a sigh and scribbled something from the screen down on a memo pad. By the time she looked up and handed it over, she was simpering.
"Quite all right. Glad to oblige you, Mr. Montoya." Her glance flicked my way and hardened. "You'll find that Our Lady of the Lake is even stingier than the state with their records ... to anyone."
Ric took my arm firmly in hand until we were in the hall. "Amazing," he murmured. "There's no love lost between you and female authority figures, whether you remember it or not. That's a valuable piece of information."
I tried to shrug off his "gentlemanly" custody. I was ready to explode with indignation.
"State building, Del," he murmured. "Security cameras everywhere, outside, in the elevator. Maybe even voice recording. Stifle yourself."
"You - " In a minute, he'd be telling me I looked beautiful when I was angry, just to add fuel to my fire.
I bit my lower lip, a gesture I knew he found inciting, and shut up all the way to the parking lot. There, I stopped at the driver's side and held my palm up until he tossed the keys into it.
"Where to, mon capitaine?" I asked.
"The motel, to regroup." He got into the passenger seat and laid his left arm along Dolly's channeled red-leather seat back.
"The Thunderbird Inn?" I wondered. "Sounds like a waste of precious time when here I got all dressed up to snow the ice queen."
I turned the key in Dolly's ignition, put her in gear, and sped her out of the parking lot fast to spin the dust of bureaucracy from her tires.
Ric's fingers stroked the nape of my neck and curled under the tendrils of my pseudo-bun until shivers slithered over my spine.
"I don't know why," he said, "this Delilah Street is such a hot potato she's got the only sealed file in the history of Wichita's Department of Child Protective Services, but I intend to take Miss Place to the Thunderbird Inn and take her apart until I discover that."
"You're not scared?" I flashed him a sizzling glance.