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Ravinia stepped into the room and gently closed the door to the hallway. “I hope so. I need to ask you about my cousin, Elizabeth Gaines. She used to be a student here. I’m trying to locate her.”
“Elizabeth Gaines.” Mrs. Kampfe set down her pen slowly. “You’re her cousin, you say?”
Ravinia nodded and Bernice seemed to search her features as if trying to find a resemblance. Whatever she saw seemed to satisfy her enough to say, “She kept in touch with me for a while after she left school. How did you know to ask for me?”
“I heard you were close to her.”
“But from whom?”
“Mrs. Holcomb at Wembley Grade School. She said you were like her mentor.” That was a stretch, but an easy guess, Ravinia felt.
“Well . . . Elizabeth was an interesting person.” Bernice seemed to be weighing how much to say. “I got a couple Christmas cards from her after she graduated. I don’t know if I can help you.”
“She’s adopted and her birth mother, my aunt, is very ill,” Ravinia said, expanding on the lie. “I don’t know if Elizabeth even wants to see her, but I’d like to give her the information.”
That seemed to touch a chord. “Her family moved to Dana Point. I remember because the street, Del Toro, was familiar to me. I had a college friend from that area and we would take Del Toro to get to her house. Whether they’re still there, though . . . it’s been a few years.”
“Thank you,” Ravinia said.
A bell rang and Bernice glanced at her watch. “I’m sorry, is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, there isn’t.”
“If you find her, say hi from me.”
“I will.”
Ravinia left using the staircase by the gym and hurrying down the empty stairs. Her footsteps echoed against the risers in a quick beat. At the first floor, she threw open the doors and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Still enough minutes left.
At least I’ve found out where Elizabeth went after high school, Ravinia thought as she rounded the building again and walked along tree-lined streets.
She put in a call to Rex and relayed the information, to which he said, “Good work. I looked up as many R. L. Gaines and Lendel Gaines as I could find and there was an address in Dana Point on Del Toro. I could give a call now, but—”
“No way! We have to go there! It’s better in person. You said that.” Then, “Where’s Dana Point?”
After a brief hesitation, it sounded like he muttered, “Might as well see this to the end.”
“What?”
“Had to get gas. I’ll be outside Van Buren again in ten minutes.”
“Is Dana Point in California?”
“Yep. We can go today.”
Ravinia hung up with a smile on her face. She was a definite help to Rex and it felt like she was destined to be his investigative partner. She just had to convince him of that.
Chapter 25
The afternoon with Marg and Buddy Sorenson was more of the same. Though Marg loved the house she’d found on Zillow, Buddy was more interested in pointing out everything wrong with it. Elizabeth’s head was so full of other problems that their bickering barely registered. Eventually they all left and Marg sat in silence, fuming at her husband’s need to “put everything down” and be a “horse’s ass.”
Elizabeth split with them at the Suncrest parking lot and dropped them from her thoughts, her mind touching on when Gil Dyne had brought her back after lunch. His last words had chilled her.
“Strangest thing happened to me last night. I got sideswiped by this SUV. I was just driving along, and it swerved at me and scraped the side of my car before taking off. This one’s a rental.”
“Weird,” Elizabeth said.
“It was night, but the woman had sunglasses on. For a minute, I thought it was you.”
