“She won’t be disfigured, will she?”
“No, Dorothy. She won’t be disfigured. How aware have you been of her drinking?”
“Now how would I know anything about that? She’s up there near you in school and never seems to want to come home. And when she does she certainly doesn’t confide in me or her grandmother. I would think if anyone were aware, you should have been.”
“If she’s convicted of DUI, the courts could order her into treatment,” I said as patiently as possible. Silence. Then, “My God.”
I went on, “Even if they don’t, it would be a good idea for two reasons. The most obvious is that she needs to deal with the problem. Second, the judge may look upon her case with more sympathy if she volunteers to get some help. ”
“Well, I’m just going to leave all that up to you. You’re the doctor-lawyer in the family. But I know my little girl. She’s not going to want to do it.
I can’t imagine her going off to some mental ward where they don’t have computers. She’d never be able to face anyone again.”
“She will not be going off to a mental ward, and there is nothing the least bit shameful about being treated for alcohol or drug abuse. What’s shameful is to let it go on to ruin your life. ”
“I’ve always stopped at three glasses of wine.”
“There are many types of addictions,” I said.
“Yours happens to be to men.”
“Oh, Kay.” She laughed.
“That’s quite something coming from you. By the way, are you seeing anyone?”
15
Senator Frank Lord heard a rumor that I had been in a wreck and called me before the sun was up the next morning.
“No,” I told him as I sat half dressed on the edge of my bed.
“Lucy was driving my car.”
“Oh, dear!”
“She’s doing fine, Frank. I’ll be bringing her home this afternoon.”
“Apparently one of the papers up here printed that it was you who had wrecked and there was a suspicion alcohol was a factor.”
“Lucy was trapped in the car for a while. No doubt some policeman made an assumption when the tags came back to me, and this ended up being relayed to a reporter on deadline.” I thought of Officer Sinclair. He would get my vote for such a blunder.
“Kay, can I do anything to help?”
“Do you have any further clues as to what might have happened at ERF? ”
“There are some interesting developments. Have you heard Lucy mention someone named Carrie Grethen?”
“They’re co-workers. I’ve met her.”
“Apparently she’s connected to a spy shop, one of these places that sells high-tech surveillance devices.”
“You aren’t serious.”
“Afraid so.”
“Well, I can certainly see why she would have been interested in getting a job at ERF, and it stuns me that the Bureau would have hired her with that in her background.”
“No one knew. Apparently, it’s her boyfriend who owns the shop. The only reason we know she’s a frequent visitor is she’s been under surveillance.”
“She dates a man?”
“Excuse me?”
“The owner of the spy shop is a man?”
“Yes.”
“Who says it is her boyfriend?”
“Apparently she did when questioned after being seen in the shop.”
“Can you tell me more about both of them?”
“Not much at present, but I have the shop’s address, if you want to hold on a minute. Let me dig it out.”
“What about her home address or the boyfriend’s home address?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have those.”
“Whatever information you can give me, then.”
I looked around for a pencil and wrote as my mind raced. The name of the shop was Eye Spy, and it was in the Springfield Mall, just off 1-95. If I left now, I could be there by mid-morning and back in time to bring Lucy home from the hospital.
“Just so you know,” Senator Lord was saying, “Miss. Grethen has been dismissed from ERF because of the spy shop connection, which she obviously omitted divulging during her application process. But at this point, there’s no evidence whatsover she was involved in the break-in.”