Sophie is completely trustworthy. I never have to tell her how important it is not to share what she finds. This time I didn’t have to tell her much at all. She knew immediately how best to help.

“She said Phoenix,” I told her, “but my mother thought she was flying back from California. Maybe she was there first or planned to be later, or maybe Mom isn’t thinking straight. Anyway, I’m assuming Wendy meant somewhere in the area. Greater Phoenix?”

“That could mean Mesa and Scottsdale. They call it the Valley of the Sun. So far nothing’s turning up. Unless she was involved in a fight with the WetBack Power Gang. Two gang members’ bodies were found last night in Chandler. Or maybe she was dressed as a red-haired man in a pickup truck and just kept going after she killed a pedestrian.”

“Would everything that happened last night be online already?”

“Not for normal people.” She looked up. “Tell me more about your sister.”

Wendy was easy to describe. “She’s beautiful, one of those classic blue-eyed blondes, like Grace Kelly or Margot Robbie. Tall, willowy, thin enough but never skinny. She wears expensive jewelry, expensive scent. She can talk to anybody about anything. She has all the social graces I forgot to learn.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your social graces.”

We’d had the same mother, Wendy and me, although my version had been older and less focused. Still, Arlie Gracey couldn’t be faulted. I had just preferred not to be in situations where I always had to be on my best behavior.

As I began to load sandals and athletic shoes into another bag, I realized how little I’d told Sophie about my sister, probably because Wendy had so often overshadowed me. “She was one of Seabank High’s golden girls. You know, homecoming princess, member of the national Honor Society, a star in the drama department. She planned to act professionally, but she met Bryce in her second year of college and married him in her third. When she got around to finishing her education, she changed to marketing.”

“If she has all those attributes, she was probably a whiz.”

“I don’t know. She didn’t work much at first. Bryce is a fast-track submarine commander, and they traveled a lot.”

“Kids?”

Obviously I’d been remiss in mentioning my nieces, too. “Two girls, Holly and Noelle, eight and six. Guess what month they were born?”

“Somebody climbed out of his sub and swam to shore around March?” I smiled. “Christmas babies, but not until Wendy was in her late thirties. I don’t know if she and Bryce had trouble conceiving—my mother did. More likely she was just waiting until they could settle down. Wendy looks like Mom, and Noelle looks like Wendy. I favor my father’s family, dark hair, brown eyes, shorter and wiry. Holly looks a little like me and a whole lot like her dad.”

“You know I have two girls. They’re out of the house now, but when they were young I would never have disappeared and left them, not unless I had one hell of a reason.”