Vicki said to her, “I’m not sure, but I think that I met an acquaintance of yours while I was in San Francisco. Jill—I can’t remember her last name—” Vicki pretended.
“Was it Jill Baker?” said Lucy. “Such a nice girl.”
Vicki nodded and did not press the point.
Not Jill Baker—that name was Jill Joseph. Unless Baker had been Jill’s name before her marriage? Vicki decided to check the next time she was in San Francisco. She noticed that Lucy did not mention her old friend Jill’s living in her family’s former house, nor their having been in school together—in fact, nothing about Jill. Didn’t this girl know Jill Joseph? Lucy again chattered along, changing the subject. Or was the omission of no importance?
Just then Thurman Dorn came in.
CHAPTER VIII
A Game of Wits
For a moment Vicki wished she had never gotten mixed up in the search for Lucy Rowe. The lawyer looked so cold, so professional, that her own small efforts to find Lucy shrank to absurdity. How impertinent she would appear if Mrs. Bryant happened to tell about Vicki’s search—how difficult it would be to justify to the lawyer her doubts about this girl.
Vicki glanced beseechingly toward the grandmother. Very, very slightly, Mrs. Bryant shook her head. Did that mean she was not going to reveal their secret? Vicki hoped so. She glanced away just in time to hear and answer Mr. Dorn’s “How do you do?”
“Careful, now,” Vicki warned herself. “Don’t say or ask anything which could alert Lucy that I suspect her. And I mustn’t intrude on Mr. Dorn’s territory, particularly since Mr. Bryant has praised him so highly.”