“Not at all. Any more questions?... Good-by, then, Miss Barr.”
Well, in fairness to Mr. Dorn, he had not mentioned the beach house and Telegraph Hill. The lie was the girl’s.
Vicki consulted her list of names and addresses. She was feeling rather grim about these lies. She decided to check with Whitney Decorators, where the presumed Lucy had said she had been employed.
There was no Whitney Decorators listed in the regular telephone directory, nor in the Classified Advertisements telephone book. Vicki called a professional association of decorators. They had no knowledge of a firm or person named Whitney. Next, Vicki called Information. She waited while the operator looked up the name.
“We have no record of any firm by that name. However, there are several persons named Whitney listed in your regular directory, if you care to call them.”
Vicki did that. Not one of them was a decorator nor even in any allied field. Not one of them had ever heard of a Lucy Rowe.
So that was that. An outright lie! Vicki tried to recall whether Mr. Dorn had been party to this lie. No, as she remembered the talk last Sunday, only Lucy had mentioned Whitney Decorators.
“I suppose,” Vicki thought, “that seeing her silver ring and family letters convinced Mr. Dorn that he had found the right Lucy. How in the world did she come by the ring and other family things, if she’s an impostor? It doesn’t seem possible! Unless she stole them from the true Lucy?”
That was perfectly possible—though Vicki had no way of proving it, as yet.
Dr. Alice James.... Let’s see, it was Dorn who last Sunday had brought up this physician’s name. Vicki remembered how he had made rather a point of telling that Dr. James had been both Lucy’s and Lucy’s mother’s physician.