Britta once again showed me to the kitchen, same table, same seat, same place mat. I was hoping she’d offer coffee or tea, after the hour-and-a-half drive I’d survived, but none was forthcoming. She sat opposite me, displaying the hospitality of someone facing a tax audit. I handed her the application page I’d been puzzling over, the one marked Führungszeugnis.

Before I could ask, her face told me she knew what it was. She looked happy.

“You recognize this?” I asked.

“Ja. The Führungszeugnis. It is the paper that states you are not in trouble with police.”

“Is there anything strange about it?”

Her finger went to the date, prominently circled in red. “It is old.”

“Did you have to get the same document for your application?”

“Ja, but mine is new, not even one year past.”

“So what do you think of that?” I asked. “Why would Annika’s be so old?”

“Perhaps, if Annika has some trouble with the police in Germany, and she knows the agency will not take her, and she wants to be an au pair in United States, and she has a Führungszeugnis from a different year, before she was in trouble, this is what she uses to make the application. And no one has noticed this, so she is allowed to come, and find a good family and has a car for her own use, because she is so lucky.”

I stared. “Annika told you all this?”

Now Britta looked confused, her eyes darting to the left as a hand went to her throat, to play with her necklace. “Told me?”

“That this happened.”

“I am just-okay, it is just-for example, it could be like this.”

I thought of myself as a bad liar, but Britta was much worse. “Oh, I see,” I said. “Does everyone in Germany have one of these?”

“No. Only, for example, in a job where one must be trusted. A bank. Or au pairs.”

“Why would Annika have one from two years earlier, I wonder?”

Britta looked at her shirt, plucking something from the sleeve. It was the same shirt she’d worn the first time I’d met her. “Perhaps Annika made an application a year before as well, to be an au pair, but for some reason she did not come then.”

That’s exactly what had happened. Annika had told me that she’d wanted to come to America a year sooner, but her mother had had a medical problem that delayed her.

“And why do you suppose the date is circled there?” I asked, pointing.

“Someone finds she is lying. And so they look at the Führungszeugnis.”

A woman came into the kitchen, large and brooding, in stretch pants and a “Billy Joel Live” T-shirt. She carried a broom. I introduced myself, but she just glanced at Britta and left.

“The housekeeper,” Britta said. “She does not like people to mess the house.”

“Oh. Okay.” I removed my hands from the table, worried I’d left prints.

“Now she will tell them I had a guest. Even though you are a girl, so I am allowed.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” I said.

Britta made a face. “She is jealous because she thinks I do not work hard. Also because I am not so fat like her. Also I have blond hairs. But this is not my fault. Germans have the blond hairs. Annika, no, but many others.”

“So anyway,” I said. “You think maybe Annika lied to come to America, and someone discovered this, and perhaps reported her? Do you suppose that’s why she disappeared?”

“Yes, why not? If she lied to come here, she should go home.”

It seemed that Britta had sold out her friend. To whom? The agency? Marty Otis had alluded to a complaint call. “Do you know another au pair, Marie-Thérèse?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“If Annika met her in New York,” I said, “if they were in the same orientation session, does that mean she’d be from your agency?”

“Yes, we are all Au Pairs par Excellence, but all from different countries, and we are all going to different places in America. The other girls are jealous to come to California. They don’t even know of San Marino, they think everybody is in Hollywood at Starbucks with Matt Damon and Josh Hartnett.” She was sinking into bitterness.

I took a deep breath and asked if she’d ever heard of something called Euphoria. Her eyes widened. She glanced at the doorway through which the housekeeper had gone, then looked back at me. “No, I never hear of this,” she said. “Did you meet Rico? Is he not cute?”

Uh-oh.

I spoke carefully. “Have you watched the news today?”

“No, I don’t like news.”

“Rico is missing. No one’s seen him since Saturday night. The police are investigating.”

Britta’s jaw went slack, her mouth opening as if to say “Uh.” Her brow furrowed. Then, to my surprise, her facial muscles contracted and she began to weep, mewing sobs like a distressed kitten, not attempting to cover her face. I reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled back, then got up from the table and left the room.

I waited for several minutes. When she didn’t return, I stood, straightened the place mats on the table, walked outside, and drove away.

I didn’t expect a call from Detective Cziemanski anytime soon, but he found me and my cell phone stuck in stop-and-go traffic on the 134 West, just past the 5.

“Guy named Yellin,” he said. “Sheriff’s Department in Lost Hills, he’s working the Rodriguez case. I gave him your number and he’ll get in touch. When did you say you met the Rodriguez kid?”

“Thursday, lunchtime.”

“So it’s not like you’re the last one to have seen him.”

“I don’t know much about Rico,” I said. “It’s Annika I know about, and her connection to Rico. Speaking of which, I have the license number of a guy that’s threatening this other guy, Bing, who knew Annika and possibly Rico, who-”

“All right, tell it to me, but it’s Yellin’s case now. I meant what I said, though, last night. About being friends. I’m feeling like a jerk about this whole thing.”

“No, it’s my fault. I should’ve met you a decade earlier.” Or had kids of my own that he could fall in love with. I should’ve gotten pregnant before Doc left. And gotten a college degree. Yes, it’s a lot to squeeze into a five-month relationship, but the race, as they say, is to the swift. “But it’s okay,” I said. “I’m always up for another friend.”

Generally, I see stopped traffic as an opportunity for manicure touch-ups, eyebrow tweezing, and the cleaning out of glove compartments and purses. Today I was preoccupied with failed math tests, missing boyfriends, jealous German girls, and blue-eyed men. If Britta had sold out Annika, reported her outdated Führungszeugnis to the agency, why hadn’t the agency reported it to the Quinns? Had Marty Otis blackmailed Annika? I pictured him calling her, scaring her, saying, “We’re on to you,” and Annika in her attic room, circling the date on her Führungszeugnis, thinking, I have to run. But why? How bad had it been, her trouble with the German police? And what could Marty Otis want from her? It’s not like she had money. And what did any of it have to do with Biological Clock? Or Rico’s disappearance?

Traffic inched toward Forest Lawn, whose inhabitants moved more slowly than we on the freeway only because they were dead. I noticed my mail scattered on the seat next to me, retrieved from my box on my way to the math test. I picked it up, sorted through bills and catalogs, then tossed it aside and picked up Annika’s pink file. On the back of her application, as Maizie had noticed, was another girl’s, this one from Thailand. Nootjaree “Noot” Chanaboon. She was adorable. I imagined Gene Quinn happily downloading au pairs from the Internet…

Uh-oh.

It was the woman at Miss Grusha’s music class who’d put this in my head. I didn’t want to be thinking this, about someone cheating on Maizie, a mom who made her own bread. And I didn’t want to think of Annika in an adulterous relationship. With her employer. The HMO doc. A man twice her age.