I squinted. "And you think this is somehow connected to your father's disappearance?"

She seemed startled. "Well, no, but you said you wanted all the facts. I wanted to fill in the picture so you could see what you're up against."

"Meaning what?" A commercial came on, the sound ratcheted up a notch so the little children who lived across the street wouldn't miss the pitch for a vitamin-rich cereal that was supposed to look and taste like licorice.

Blanche was saying, "Doesn't Crystal's behavior strike you as odd?"

I was largely lip-reading by now and her comment had gone completely over my head. "Blanche, could we turn down the sound on the television set?"

"Sorry." She reached for the remote control and muted the sound. The silence was heaven. The children continued to sit on the floor, arranged in front of the set as though gathered around a campfire. Frantic images danced across the screen in colors so vivid they left an afterimage if I glanced away.

Blanche returned to her commentary. "I don't know about you, but Crystal doesn't seem at all distraught about what's happened. She's cool as can be, which seems inappropriate to me."

"It has been nine weeks. I don't think anyone can be distraught for that long. Defenses kick in. You manage to adjust or you go insane."

"I just think it's interesting that Crystal's never made a public appeal for information about Daddy. She's never offered a reward. She's never sent out any flyers. No psychics have been consulted..."

That caught me up short. "You think a psychic would help?"

"It wouldn't hurt," she said. "My friend Nancy's uncanny. She has this amazing, quite incredible gift."

"She's a psychic? Is that why she's offering to consult with me on the phone?"

"Of course. When I lost my diamond ring, she was able to pinpoint the exact location."

"How'd she do that? I'm really curious."

"It's hard to describe. She said she smelled something sweet. She saw glimpses of white, maybe something nautical. She did two separate... readings, for lack of a better word... and the images were the same. Then I realized the last time I remembered seeing the ring, I'd taken it off to wash my hands at the bathroom sink. I'd already searched that area half a dozen times. As it turned out, I'd set the ring in the soap dish and it was embedded on the underside of the soap, which is exactly what she smelled."

I said, "What was the white part? Was that the bathroom sink?"

"Not in that bathroom. The sink is hunter green in there, but the soap was white."

"Got it. What was the nautical part?"

Blanche's tone was defensive. "Not everything's literal. Some of the images she sees are metaphorical... you know, associative."

"Nautical... faucet water," I suggested gamely.

"The point is, Nancy's offered to consult with Crystal, but she refuses to cooperate."

"Maybe she doesn't believe in psychics."

"But Nancy's fabulous. I swear."