Evelyn bought a house in Bel Air near her sister and tried to start over. She enrolled Christina as an eighth-grader at Sea Winds Middle School, where the girl promptly hooked up with a dark-clothed, drug-using crowd. She dyed her blond hair black, played hooky, and got in trouble with the police for vandalism and underage drinking. The following April, during spring break, she wanted to go to Mexico with her friends. When Evelyn refused, backed up by her sister, whom she called on for advice, Christina took her nine-month-old baby and ran away.

“That was the last time I saw her or little Kelly.”

“Her baby?”

“Yes.”

“Where did they go?”

“She went to Mexico with those kids, then to a commune in the San Bernardino Mountains with a man she met in Oaxaca. I hired a detective and he traced her to the commune. But by the time he found it, she was gone.”

The loss of her daughter sent Evelyn tumbling down a steep staircase of drunkenness and promiscuity. After her family intervened and had her hospitalized, she got sober and began the life she had lived ever since-of upper-class sports, charity work, and Eastern spirituality. She had kept a series of detectives on the case through all the years since Christina’s disappearance, spending large sums to follow up leads in San Francisco, Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Mexico City, Miami, and many other cities. When Baba contacted her out of the blue the previous summer and told her that he had word of her daughter, his call had sent a thrill through her because the last message she had ever had from Christina was a postcard years before asking for five thousand dollars to be sent to her, general delivery, at the Venice Beach Post Office.

When Evermore went to see Baba Raba at the Murshid Center for Enlightened Beings, he told her that he had met someone who knew her daughter. He said Christina had been living in Venice earlier that year and that the man who knew her didn’t want to come forward because he was a drug dealer who had sold Christina marijuana and cocaine. Baba told Evermore that the dealer would track Christina down if she would give him ten thousand dollars to pay off a pressing debt. During their first conversation, the guru mentioned several things about Christina’s past that he said the dealer had told him. The accurate personal details made Evelyn believe the offer might be legitimate. She wanted to get a private detective involved, but Baba said that would spook the dealer, so she left the matter in his hands, along with a cashier’s check for ten grand.

Through the late summer and early fall, a pattern had developed. Each time it seemed that they were on the verge of making contact with Christina, there would be some hitch that required another chunk of cash to smooth over. The amounts had increased to $15,000 and then $25,000. Under the stress of anticipation and repeated disappointment, Evermore began to drink again, which made it easier for Baba to manipulate her. Each time she got upset about the delays, Baba doled out a few more intimate facts about Christina that could only have come from her or someone who knew her well. He was aware of the incest and told Evermore things about Christina’s relationship with her father that even she didn’t know but which nevertheless rang true.

In early January, he had asked about the necklace. She wasn’t sure how he found out about it, but when she revealed the circumstances in which she had received the diamonds, he told her that she must get rid of them if she wanted her daughter back.

“He said a lot of stuff about crystals, how they focus and magnify psychic energy,” Evermore told me. “It didn’t make sense to me at first, but after I did some research, I understood what he was talking about. Crystals are very powerful and mysterious. They really are. That is how early radios worked, you know, with crystals that sent energy waves through space.”

Baba told her that the diamonds were contaminated with negative energy because she had taken them in exchange for her daughter’s innocence, and that the crystals were broadcasting a kind of force field that was keeping the girl away. That was why all their plans had fallen through and all the money gone to waste. He said that the best thing would be to give the necklace to him so that he could sell it and use the money in a worthy cause. That would destroy the force field and allow Christina to return.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Evermore said, “but I told him he could have the necklace after I wore it to this big charity bash we have out in the desert every winter.”

“How much is the necklace worth?” I asked her.

“I don’t know, exactly. It was valued at a quarter of a million the last time it was appraised for the insurance rider, but a jeweler who cleaned it several years ago told me it was worth twice that.”

“That’s quite a gift to give someone you’ve only known six months.”

“My sister would kill me if she found out.”

“I can see her point,” I said. “Has it ever occurred to you that Baba is conning you?”

“Of course it has!” Evelyn said sharply, with a flash of alcoholic anger. “I wonder about it almost every day. But I have to believe him. If he is lying it means I will never get her back. I couldn’t live with that now, not after coming so close. And he must be telling the truth. How else could he know all those things about her? He knew the name of her horse and the kinds of trees that grew along the trails we rode on at the ranch. He knew which suite we stayed in that winter at the Fairmont and the names of the kids she ran away with. He even gave me a picture of her and little Kelly that he got from one of those people. I’ll show you.”

Half leaning, half falling sideways, propping herself up on her elbow, she opened the nightstand drawer and took out a snapshot. It was a photo of the girl whose pictures I had seen in the jewelry box at the Oasis Palms. The girl was holding a baby dressed in pink footsie pajamas and smiling toothlessly at the camera.

“Baba’s psychic powers could explain some of what he knows about Christina, but not this picture. I took it myself the Christmas before she ran away.” Evelyn paused, looking down at the creased photograph. “Those pajama’s were Christina’s when she was little. She dressed the baby in them for the picture. We had a wonderful time that day. Everyone was happy. Look at the way little Kelly is smiling! Christina kept the picture in a frame on her dresser, and she took it with her when she ran away. It could only have come to Baba through someone who knows my daughter.”

“What kind of psychic powers does he have?” I asked, still worried about him rummaging around in my neurons.

“They’re called siddhis in yoga,” Evermore said. “He can tell what you are thinking sometimes, and he knows about things that are going to happen ahead of time. He sent a kind of a bodyguard to the desert with me because he sensed danger. I told him it was silly, but he insisted, and it turned out he was right. Someone broke into my hotel room and tried to steal the necklace. They would have gotten away with it, too, if the guard hadn’t gone back to my room.”

“Why did he go back?”

“When we were on our way to dinner, he asked me if I had put the necklace in the room safe. When I told him no, he got angry and turned around and went back to the hotel. That’s when he caught the burglar in the room and got beat up. He is still in the hospital out there.”

“Where were you when he went back up?”

“In my car in front of the hotel, why?”

“It’s just lucky you didn’t go up, too,” I said. “You could have been hurt.”

If she was in her car in front, Jimmy must have gone in through the lobby as I suspected and slipped past my partner.

“Were you able to wear the necklace at your charity event?” I asked.