“But I have seen that guy before,” Deb said. My ears perked up. “He came in several months ago trying to get a job for a girl. Said he was an agent.”

An agent? The white-blond man was an agent, too? I was beginning to understand that he was a chameleon, able to do anything as long as it benefited him.

Deb had passed the photo back to Barb, who held it under her lamp to study it again. “Oh, yes, now that you say that. She was the girl with those creepy eyes.”

I practically lunged over the desk at her. “Creepy how?”

Deb and Barb looked at each other for silent confirmation again, and then Barb wiggled her fingers in front of her face and said, “I don’t know, they seemed really . . . dull. Like serial-killer flat, if that makes sense. We both noticed it.”

Or like a reptile, I thought. I dug through the file and came out with a photo of Luna, taken from one of the tabloid pages. She was quite a bit younger, but it was the best I could find. I handed it to Barb. “Was this the girl?”

“No,” she said right away. “I mean, she looks kind of like her in the face, but the girl had long black hair. Jet-black.” She pantomimed long hair flowing. “We joked that it was so long it had to be a wig.” A wig. Of course. Jet-black hair. Jetta. It made sense now. The new girl at Hollywood Dreams suddenly leaving, the blond man looking for a place for a girl with a jet-black wig.

“Oh, it was way too shiny to be real hair,” Deb said. She held up her hand. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We see all types here.”

“So what happened to the girl?” Chris asked.

“We didn’t have anything for her,” Deb said. “We’re pretty small. We thought it was odd that he would come all the way from California to try and find something with us here. We moved out of California long ago. No more ties there.”

Barb was still gazing at the photo from the clipped article about the movie. She tapped it. “I do remember this, though. It was right before we relocated. Do you remember, Deborah?”

Deb scooted her chair close to Barb again and stared at the photo over her shoulder. Now that they had gossip to spread, they seemed much more relaxed. “Oh, yes, of course. That was a sad, sad deal, huh.”

Barb handed the article back to me. “That movie was supposed to be the big movie of the year. The director they chose—that Carrie Kill—was one of ours. She was so excited about it.”

“What happened to it?” I asked, staring at the photo as if I didn’t know it by heart. As if I didn’t know the people in it. “I couldn’t find it anywhere.”