Janet spots her reflection in the television store window and instinctively checks her head scarf. "Thank God," she murmurs, though she questions the identity of the waiflike woman wearing it. "Who are you?" she asks and is surprised to see the woman's lips moving in unison. "Mother?" she questions.
In many ways, Janet has become her mother, a fearful woman devoted to God but lost to the world who slaved in the service of a man as required by her marriage vows.
"Listen to your father… Do what your father says… Your father knows best… He must be obeyed," Janet's mother always said, using the same words her mother drilled into her as a child, and her mother's mother before her. And then: "Listen to your husband… Do what your husband says… Your husband knows best… He must be obeyed."
And after that: "Listen to God… Do what God says… God knows best… He must be obeyed." In Janet's childhood world, political correctness was a thing of the future — God was still indisputably a man.
With the growing feeling that her God was no longer on her side, and with a baby swelling inside her, Janet had thrown herself on the mercy of another man: Joseph C. Creston, a shy, pious young man, a man — a pimply youth, really — who, she was well aware, had lusted after her from the choir stalls throughout puberty.
"That's the third one this year," complains Rick Button an hour later as he and Trina survey the debris of the Jetta in the police pound.
"Wasn't my fault," she is protesting as she begins rummaging through the wrecked vehicle to retrieve her personal belongings, then she spots an unfamiliar garment bundled onto the back seat by the tow truck driver. "Yes!" she screeches triumphantly as she drags out Janet's sodden raincoat and examines it in the headlights of Rick's car.
"Yes what?" inquires Rick.
"I told you she dropped her coat," Trina says as she fingers the wet material, searches the pockets, and comes up with a bronze crucifix bearing a figure worn smooth by years of veneration.
"We'd better give it to Sergeant Brougham," suggests Rick, taking a look at the aged icon, but Trina is shaking her head.
"Not likely. Remember what happened when I turned in a stray goat."
"That was different," protests Rick. "It was a wild animal."
But Trina doesn't agree. "They still had no right to do that to it. And then there was the time I warned them about the anthrax in Wal-Mart."
"It was just a leaky packet of talcum powder."
"Yeah. But they had no right to strip-search me."
"Decontamination. They stripped everyone, Trina… mainly because you were running around shouting, ‘I'm a nurse — we're all gonna die.'"
"Look. It comes apart," says Trina, anxious to move on as she unscrews the base of the small metal crucifix and spots the end of a paper cylinder tucked into the upright of the cross.
"This belongs to Janet Thurgood. 255 Arundel Crescent, Dewminster, Hampshire," she reads once she had slipped the sepia roll from the inside.
"What's that?" asks Rick, looking over her shoulder.
"Our first case."
"Whose case? What case? What are you talking about?"
"Lovelace and Button, International Investigators," she says, as if Rick should have remembered the zany scheme she cooked up with her elderly English friend following an escapade in the mountains of Washington State. "I'd better phone Daphne and let her know we're in business."
"In business? I thought you were joking."
"No joke," says Trina as she flicks open her cell-phone, but Rick clamps his hand over the keypad and points to his watch.
"Whoops!" exclaims Trina realizing that it's four in the morning across the Atlantic in sleepy Westchester, home of retired wartime agent Daphne Lovelace. "I'd better wait till tomorrow."
"Surely you need a licence or something to be an investigator," protests Rick. "You can't just go around snooping…" But he knows he's wasting his time; Trina has spent her life delving through other people's garbage, both physical and psychological, and will leave no stone unturned to get at the truth.
Answers are also being sought in the untimely death of Constable Roddick Montgomery. The suspected murder of a serving officer has galvanized the police community with as much fervour as the threat of an overtime freeze. Cruisers have been drawn from all over the city. The area surrounding the Mandarin Palace has been sealed off for several blocks, while officers trudge through the muddy back alleys rounding up the usual suspects: pimps, pan-handlers, hookers, and dealers. The fact that the officer's demise occurred in a seedy back alley of Chinatown is sufficient confirmation of foul play. The possibility that it could have been natural causes is not even considered by his colleagues.
Montgomery's final radio message describing Janet Thurgood has yet to be associated with his death. Indeed, if Charley Cho hadn't phoned to complain that someone had dived, headfirst, into his fish tank, the death of Montgomery might have gone unnoticed until shift handover at 10:00 p.m.
"Come on," says Rick, peering at the shivery creature in Trina's arms. "Let's get you home."
"But what about Janet?" demands Trina as they drive away.
"Who?"
"Janet. The woman."
"Forget it, Trina. Like the sergeant said, she obviously didn't want to be caught."
"That's not the point. Now that I've got her coat and I know her name I kinda feel responsible for her."
"You've got to get over this idea that everyone needs your help. Some people manage quite well on their own."
Droplets of tears glisten on Trina's cheeks, her lips quiver, and she clutches the guinea pig tightly — too tightly, but she's determined not to say anything. Then Rick comes to his senses.
"All right," he concedes, U-turning, "where did you last see her?"
"Yes!" she exclaims triumphantly, and the furry creature makes a break for freedom and heads for the dark corner under Rick's feet.
chapter two
Janet is prowling Trina's luxurious basement suite, keeping pace with the guinea pig in the cage on the corner table, though she doesn't realize it, and she's thinking of running again; if only she could remember how to get home. The sopping clothes given to her by the bagman have been replaced by dry ones from Trina's closet, but while the lost woman is about as meaty as a wire clothes hanger, Trina is only a notch or two short of voluptuous, and Janet is forced to hold both the clothes and herself in place with folded matchstick arms. She has slept little and eaten less.
"You have to keep up your strength," Trina insisted the previous evening as she laid out a smorgasbord of delicacies filched from the Christmas goodies that she has been laying away since Thanksgiving.
Janet eyes smoked salmon sandwiches, banana cream chocolates, and marzipan fruits, muttering, "The Devil's poison," and her brow is furrowed as she warily glides a hand over the television, computer, and stereo, as if she is a time traveller beamed in from the past or, possibly, the future.
"Where am I? Where am I?" she repeatedly intones as she searches the room for anything to give her a grounding.
Janet's temporary domicile is also a concern for Trina.
"Just make sure she's gone by the time I get home from the office," Rick said on his way out of the door. "I've warned you before about bringing your work home and filling the house with strays."
"She's not one of my patients," declared Trina angrily, then she softened and gave him a placatory