“There is no place else to look,” she said. “There isn’t even a rug to hide anything under. Besides, I don’t think that Paula’s actually hiding anything. If she were, she wouldn’t have left that make-up kit around, and all those dresses with the special Helen de Mayne labels.”
“Why don’t we look in a Los Angeles phone book?” Amy suggested.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Peggy replied. “Paula probably didn’t have a phone listed under her own name anyway. And even if she did, we don’t know where she lived. It doesn’t have to be Los Angeles, just because she had her clothes made there. You’d have to get a hundred California phone books and then start to trace every Andrews listed. And even then you might never learn anything, because wealthy people often have phone numbers that aren’t listed in the directory.”
After a few more ideas were considered and rejected, Peggy said, “I’m afraid the only thing we can do now is confront Paula with what we know, and see if we can’t persuade her to tell us the rest, and to call her parents and let them know where she is.”
It was now nine-thirty, and they had done all they could do. It would be at least another half-hour before Greta brought Paula home for her surprise party. Time dragged slowly, with neither Amy nor Peggy able to find even the shadow of an idea of what to say or do.
Amy went back to the table to fuss with the arrangement of turkey, ham and cheese and to nervously try artistic little experiments with the potato salad.
Idly, Peggy looked over the small shelf of books to see if there was something that would help her pass the time until the party—a party that she now no longer looked forward to in the least. She selected a well-worn, leather-bound volume of the Complete Plays of Shakespeare, hoping that the old, familiar comic world of Twelfth Night would take her mind away from Paula’s problems.
She leaned back and opened the book, then sat bolt upright.
“This is it!” she almost shouted. “Amy! Here’s exactly what we’ve been looking for!”
“Shakespeare?” puzzled Amy.