I said, “In the end, you’ll do what’s best for you.”

Her eyes flickered with uncertainty, shifted to the soda bottle.

“God, I didn’t even offer you any. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I just had that Coke.”

As if she hadn’t heard, she said, “Here, let me get you some.” She reached up into the cupboard and retrieved another glass. As she placed it on the counter, her arm jerked and the glass skidded across the shelf. She caught it before it dropped on the floor. Dropped it and fumbled to catch it again. Staring at it, breathing hard, she said, “Damn!” and ran out of the room.

I followed her again, searched for her throughout the ground floor of the house, but couldn’t find her. Went up the green stairs and headed toward her room. The door was open. I looked in, saw no one, called out her name, got no answer. Entering, I was hit by deceitful memories: crystalline recollections of a place I’d never been.

The ceiling was painted with a mural of gowned courtesans enjoying a place that could have been Versailles. Carpeting the color of raspberry sherbet covered the floor. The walls were pink-and-gray lamb-and-pussycat wallpaper broken by lace-trimmed windows. The bed was a miniature of her mother’s. Shelves brimming with music boxes and miniature dishes and figurines lined the room. Three dollhouses. A zoo of stuffed animals.

The precise images she’d described nine years ago.

The place she’d never slept.

The only concession to young adulthood was a desk to the right of the bed bearing a personal computer, dot-matrix printer, and a pile of books.

I inspected the books. Two manuals on preparation for the SAT. The College Game: Planning Your Academic Career. Fowler’s Guide to American Universities. Information brochures from half a dozen first-rate colleges. The one from Harvard, dogeared, a bookmark inserted in the Psychology section.

Manuals for the future in a room that clung to the past. As if her mind had developed while the rest had stagnated.

Had I been fooled, nine years ago, into believing she’d changed more than she had?

I left the room, considered looking for her on the second and third floors, and realized how daunting that would be.

I went downstairs and stood alone in the entry hall. Man without a function. A ten-foot marble clock, with a face almost too ornate to read, said 11:45. Gina Ramp had been gone almost nine hours.

I’d been hanging around for more than half of it.

Time to catch some sleep, leave the detecting to the pros.

I went to tell the pro I was leaving.

He was standing behind the desk, tie loosened, sleeves rolled carelessly mid-forearm, phone tucked under his chin, writing rapidly. “Uh-huh… Is he generally reliable?… He does? Didn’t know you guys were doing that well… That so?… Really… Maybe I should be thinking about that, yeah… Anyway, what time was this?… Okay, yeah, I know where it is. I appreciate your talking to me at this stage of the game… Yeah, yeah, officially, though I don’t know that they’re actively involved- San Labrador is… Yeah, I know. Just for strokes, though… Yeah, thanks. Appreciate it. Bye.”

He hung up, said, “That was the Highway Patrol. Looks like my freeway theory’s getting some validation. We’ve got a possible sighting of the car. Three-thirty this afternoon, on the 210, heading east, out near Azuza. That’s about a ten-mile drive from here, so it makes sense time-wise.”

“What do you mean “possible sighting,’ and why did it take so long to find out if it was spotted that long ago?”

“The source is an off-duty motorcycle guy. He was hanging out at home, listening to his scanner, happened to hear the bulletin and called in. Seems at three-thirty he’d pulled some speeder off onto the left shoulder of the westbound 210, was in the process of writing out a ticket when he happened to notice the Rolls, or one just like it, zip by on the eastbound. It happened too fast for him to get the plates, other than to notice they were English. That answer both your questions?”

“Who was driving?”

“He didn’t see that either. Not that he would’ve if it was her, because of the smoked windows.”

“Did he notice smoked windows?”

“Nope. It was the car he was looking at. The body-style. Seems he’s some sort of collector, has a Bentley from around the same period.”

“Cop with a Bentley?”

“That was my reaction, too. The guy I was just talking to- sergeant at the San Gabriel chippy station- is a buddy of the first guy. The call came in to him, personally- he’s also a motorhead, collects Corvettes. Lots of cops are into wheels- they work extra jobs to pay for their toys. Anyway, he informs me that some of the old Bentleys aren’t that expensive. Twenty grand or so, cheaper if you buy a wreck and fix it up yourself. Rolls from the same year cost more ’cause they’re rarer- only a few hundred of those Silver Dawns were made. That’s why the first guy noticed it.”

“Meaning it’s probably hers.”

“Probably. But not definitely. The guy who saw it thought it was black over gray, but he couldn’t be sure- it might have been all black or dark gray over light gray. We’re talking a sixty-mile-an-hour zip-by.”

“How many old Rolls would there be driving around, that time, that place?”

“More than you might imagine. Apparently, a hell of a lot of them ended up in L.A. back when the dollar was worth something. And there are plenty of collectors concentrated in the Pasadena-San Labrador area. But yeah, I’d say we’ve got a ninety-percent-plus chance it was her.”

“East on the 210,” I said, picturing the wide-open highway. “Where would she be heading?”

“Anywhere, but she’d have had to make a decision fairly soon- the freeway ends around fifteen miles from there, just short of La Verne. North is Angeles Crest and I don’t see her as the type to rough it. South, she could have caught any number of other freeways- the 57 going straight south. Or 10, in either direction, which would take her anywhere from the beach to Vegas. Or she could have continued on surface streets up into the foothills, checked out the sights at Rancho Cucamonga- what the hell is out there, anyway?”

“I don’t know. But my guess is she’d probably stay near civilization.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Her type of civilization. I’m thinking Newport Beach, Laguna, La Jolla, Pauma, Santa Fe Springs. Still doesn’t narrow it much. Or maybe she turned around and headed for her own place in Malibu.”

“Ramp called there twice and she didn’t answer.”

“What if she wasn’t in the mood to pick up the phone?”

“Why would she go in one direction, then reverse herself?”

“Let’s say the whole thing started out impulsively. She’s just driving, for the hell of it. Gets on the freeway, gets swept along- going east by chance. Maybe it’s just a matter of it being the first on-ramp she sees. When the freeway ends she decides upon a specific destination. Closest thing to home: home number two. Or let’s say she was heading east intentionally. That means Route 10 and a whole bunch of other possibilities: San Berdoo, Palm Springs, Vegas. And beyond. The great beyond, Alex- she could drive all the way to Maine, if the car held up. If it didn’t, with her dough she could’ve ditched it, gotten another one fast. All you need to chew up the open road is time and money, and neither of those is her problem.”

“An agoraphobic doing the scenic route?”

“You said yourself she was in the process of getting cured. Maybe the freeway helped it along- all that blacktop, no stoplights. It can make you feel powerful. Make you wanna forget about the rules. That’s why people move out here in the first place, isn’t it?”

I thought about that. Thought of my first time on the open road, heading west for college at sixteen. The first time I’d driven over the Rockies, seeing the desert at night, thrilled and terrified. My first view of the dirt-brown haze looming over the L.A. basin, heavy and threatening but incapable of dimming the gilded promise of the city at twilight.