Arriving at the Hotel Alcott in the early afternoon, she found it to be a pleasant, friendly, plain sort of place. A few people, mostly women, were in the lobby. She spoke to the desk clerk.
“I wonder if you can help me? I’m looking for Miss Lucy Rowe.”
“Oh, yes, Lucy!” The middle-aged woman behind the desk smiled, but shook her head. “You won’t find Lucy here, young lady. She checked out.”
“Can you please tell me when? And where she is now?”
The woman hesitated. Vicki produced her airline identification card to introduce herself and explained that she had a message to deliver to Lucy. The woman seemed satisfied. She opened a ledger.
“Lucy checked out on—let me see—Saturday, February seventh.”
That would be—today was Monday, February sixteenth—only nine days ago. Yet Mr. Dorn reported that Lucy had left San Francisco a month ago. Vicki could not account for the discrepancy. She asked the desk clerk:
“I wonder whether Lucy has been out of town—taken any short trips—in the last month or two?”
“Yes, recently some of the girls here persuaded her to go off for week ends with them, to ski, or to hike in the mountains.”
“Can you tell me,” Vicki asked the desk clerk, “whether Lucy was away about a month ago?”