Alison decided to push things just a bit.

"Hello, Beatriz," she said to the girl. "I'm Suzanne."

The remarkable beauty smiled over at her.

"Hello, pleased to meet you," she said, her English densely accented. Then she lowered her eyes again to focus on her nails. Her response was packaged, as if she had learned it from a tape . . . or from her tutor.

Hello.

Hello, pleased to meet you.

"Goodness, but she is very beautiful," Alison commented.

"I know," Connie said. "Her English is improving, but she is still embarrassed by it."

"Yours is nearly perfect. Are you both from the same place?"

Keep digging! Alison exhorted herself. Keep searching for some sort of opening you can begin to probe.

"Yes, Mexico," Connie said, "but not the same city."

"Oh, I should have been able to tell. I spent years as a child living with my grandmother in Chihuahua. Beatriz, ¿dónde vas a clase?"

Where do you go to school?

The girl looked up, nonplussed.

"She is tutored at home," Connie said, quickly and somewhat uncomfortably.

The blue-haired lady had repaired to the small drying area, and the pair were nearing the end of their manicures. They might choose to sit in the drying area as well, or they might simply leave. They didn't seem like the type who would risk smudging, but Alison worried that her question about school may have made the tutor willing to take the risk. She could back off and hope to learn more another time through surveillance, or she could push on and risk further alerting the woman or, worse, having her inadvertently alert Griswold. As things were, Alison's manicurist was in overdrive, and she had nearly caught up with the others.

A young mother wheeled her sleeping infant into the salon and entered into an animated discussion with the available manicurist. Alison decided to risk a little more probing.

"¿Vives con familia?" she asked, hoping that Beatriz might perk up and join the conversation. Do you live with relatives?

"No, well, yes," the woman replied in terse English. "An uncle."

Beatriz stood up at that moment, extending her glistening, wet nails in front of her and turning toward the dryers. She was surprisingly tall, Alison realized—and unselfconsciously regal in her bearing. Her lithe body, highlighted by her designer jeans and tank top, was absolutely arresting. A surpassingly lovely pubescent Mexican girl . . . a beautiful, young tutor . . . no relatives in Richmond except a probably bogus uncle . . . residence in a magnificent old home that almost certainly belonged to some secret incarnation of Treat Griswold. Alison felt queasy as her mind spun through the possibilities.

More information, she thought. Try for more.

"What does her uncle do here in Richmond?" she asked in English.

"Beatriz, just a few minutes of drying, then we leave," Connie said in Spanish, gingerly carrying her cell phone to the seat next to the girl. "He is a salesman," she said over her shoulder to Alison.