“I thought you might have an idea. The last I heard from her was a few days ago. We’d made plans to go out to dinner and then she was going to take me to a concert. I talked to her that morning and she told me she’d pick me up at seven.” She paused. “She didn’t show up. I called her, but her phone was turned off. At first, I thought it was just an electronic glitch. I don’t know anything about those things.” She was breathing hard. “So I called the gallery and asked her assistant, Penny, if she knew what had happened. Penny said she’d left with a well-dressed man around noon. She’d thought maybe she’d gone out to lunch. But she didn’t come back even though she had an appointment for two with a client. When she couldn’t reach her by phone, Penny had to take over the appointment.”

“Weird,” Jane said. “No one is more reliable than Felicia.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? She was a little crazy as a teenager, but once she found her way, no one was steadier. When you hired her to be your agent, she loved every minute of working with you. I was so proud of her. And she…loved me. She would never have stood me up without calling.” Her voice broke. “And she’s been gone for four days. I’m scared to death, Jane. Sometimes bad things happen out there.”

No one knew that better than Jane. But she didn’t want to panic Wilma. “It might be okay. Felicia didn’t tell me if she was planning on visiting any of her other clients living out of the city. But we don’t have an exclusive contract. Why don’t you ask Penny to call them and—”

“I already did that,” Wilma interrupted. “No one has spoken to her. I even called the hospitals. And yesterday I couldn’t take it any longer and I phoned the police. They weren’t worried, they thought she might have gone away on a long weekend with a boyfriend. I tried to tell them she was between boyfriends right now.” She added bitterly, “I’m only a mother, what do I know? But they did one thing right, they got the gallery to give them the video camera photos of Felicia and the man she was with that day. The police said they’d check him out. I didn’t recognize him.”

“You probably wouldn’t if he was a client.”