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  TO CHARLOTTE AND BROOKE THOMAS, WHO,

  AS YOUNG SQUAW VALLEY SKIERS,

  GAVE ME INVALUABLE ADVICE

  NOT LONG AFTER Abigail O'Malley helped solve the Moorehead kidnapping case, a problem she'd had all her life took a definite turn for the worse. It was a personal and very secret problem that she'd never shared with anyone, not even Paige Borden, who was her best and closest friend. So embarrassingly personal, in fact, that she had never allowed herself to believe that it actually existed, at least not for sure.

  Abby was twelve and a half years old when the kidnapping occurred, and in the seven years since her mother, Dorcas O'Malley, had become a private investigator, Abby had never gotten involved in any of her cases. At least not on purpose. And she had no plans to do so in the future. She had, in fact, made her feelings on the subject quite clear in an essay she'd written only a few days before Dorcas started work on the Moorehead case.

  The essay was for Ms. Eldridge's seventh-grade language arts class, its title was to be “My Future Career,”and it was supposed to be at least two pages long. Most of the class groaned when Ms. Eldridge gave the assignment. “Two whole pages on what you're planning to be someday? What if you haven't made up your mind?”Paige whispered.

  “I thought you had,”Abby whispered back, grinning. “You know. About being a movie star or a fortune-teller?”

  “Don't laugh.”Paige frowned. “I meant it.”

  Abby made her nod say “I know you did”and went back to her own list of career choices. Once she'd started, she found it wasn't so difficult after all. For one thing, she'd always been a list maker, so coming up with one of future careers was an interesting challenge. There were, she discovered, quite a few things she might want to do as an adult. But nowhere in the list was there one word about being a private investigator.

  Abby's essay was going to say that her first and most important goal was to be a gold medalist in the Winter Olympics. After that, a career as either a ski instructor or a lawyer, like her father. Along with getting married and raising a big normal family (important word underlined). No mention of detective work.

  The career choices were fairly recent, but the family thing Abby had always planned on, especially the normal part. Over the years she had changed her mind several times about future careers, starting with cowgirl when she was in kindergarten, and librarian when she began to love reading and was under the mistaken impression that all librarians had to do was sit around reading all day.

  But being a private investigator had never been one of her choices. Not ever, in spite of the fact that she was the daughter of Dorcas O'Malley, who, according to Tree, was one of the best detectives in California. Or at least in northern California, where there were fewer crimes but the ones that did happen tended to be more original. That was what Tree said anyway, but then, Tree (short for Teresa Torrelli) was Dorcas's employee, and under the circumstances she'd probably felt it was the tactful thing to say.

  But Abby had her own ideas about the O'Malley Detective Agency—ideas that were based on a lot more inside information. After all, Tree had been working for the agency only a couple of years, but it had been a big part of Abby's life ever since she started kindergarten. Which coincidentally was the same year her father had moved to Los Angeles and her parents got a divorce.

  Before Abby's father, Martin O'Malley, moved away, the whole family, Abby and Dorcas and Martin, had lived in a great house in the Marina. But after the divorce they had to sell the house Abby had lived in since she was a baby so that Martin could pay for his apartment in Los Angeles and Dorcas could start the agency. Someone else owned the Marina house now, but Abby could still draw accurate floor plans of every room. And she still liked to look at it as they drove by and try to remember what living there had been like. Not that driving by happened all that often anymore. Not since Dorcas decided that mourning over a house wasn't a normal thing to do. Perhaps not, but to Abby's way of thinking, she'd lost a lot of other normal things right about then, and if drawing pictures of a normal house helped, she didn't see what was wrong with doing it.

  After the divorce the O'Malley Detective Agency had set up shop in the two front rooms of a small shabby Victorian, and Dorcas and Abby moved into what was left over. Abby hadn't been quite six years old at the time, but she wasn't likely to forget how she'd had to practically live at Mrs. Watson's Day Care Center because of Dorcas's strange work hours. And how Dorcas had to worry all the time, not only about not getting enough clients, but also about things such as termites and leaky plumbing and unpaid bills. And Abby had to go without all kinds of things that most of the girls at her school got from their parents without even asking.

  Things had been a little bit better recently, at least financially, but Abby's interest in becoming a private investigator was still pretty much nonexistent. In fact she'd told her mother so more than once, and one morning in October the subject came up again while she and Dorcas were having breakfast. At the time, they were sitting in the little breakfast nook in the practically antique kitchen (no dishwasher), and both of them were already dressed for the day: Abby in her Barnett Academy uniform, and Dorcas in a blue suit that, as usual, she'd managed to hoke up with scarves and bangles, so that the end result was something halfway between a businessperson and a gypsy palm reader. Abby was checking out all the bracelets and amulets when Dorcas asked her how she was doing on the Future Career essay.

  “I have it all outlined,”Abby told her mother. “But I haven't quite decided whether to work as a ski instructor for a while first, or to start right out studying for my law degree.”

  She was still considering what her decision would be when her mother, with a smile that was only halfway joking, said, “Oh, but I thought for sure you'd want to take over the agency someday.”

  Abby shrugged. “Mom. You know I just don't have any interest in that kind of thing.”For years Abby had called her mother Dorcas most of the time, but now and then, often when they were arguing, the Mom word came out, usually in a tone of voice that made the point that Dorcas was being too Smothering (mothering with a big S). “At least you should know it,”Abby added. “I've said so often enough.”

  “Darling"—Dorcas O'Malley reached out to pat Abby's hand—“I know. I know how you felt about me starting the agency and I know you'd much prefer to have a mother who did something …”She paused and her upside-down smile made it clear that what she was saying was a put-down. “Something more socially acceptable, like arranging ski trips and taking tennis lessons.”

  Abby was swallowing a mouthful of oat bran cereal at that moment or she might have interrupted resentfully. Dorcas was obviously putting down Daphne Borden, Paige's mom. It wasn't the first time Do
rcas had used that tone of voice when talking about the Borden family. As if the Bordens were uninteresting just because they lived like they had gobs of money, which of course they did. But before Abby could get started on a suitable response, something such as “I know you think that the Bordens are boring, but I don't see what would be so boring about living in a mansion instead of the back side of a detective agency,”her mother's little speech took an entirely different, but equally familiar, turn.

  “About why you might consider joining the agency, Abby …”Dorcas's uncertain smile hinted that she knew Abby wasn't going to agree. But she went on anyway. “I do think that you have an extraordinary ability to pick up on important information that no one else might notice. Remember that time you—”

  That did it. Abby knew what her mother was leading up to because she'd mentioned it so many times before. Dorcas was going to bring up a case she'd been working on a year or so before, in which this crummy guy snatched a purse from an old lady—a purse that held some papers and photos that were so important the woman hired Dorcas's agency to try to find them. And Abby had just happened to come in while she was in the office talking to Dorcas. Abby had listened to the old lady talk about her precious photos for just a couple of minutes, and a little while later she'd made a wild guess as to where the purse might be.

  Finding the old woman's purse was just the result of a hunch that happened to be right, but it was enough to make Dorcas start talking about “Abigail's special gift.”A gift that she supposedly inherited from some strange ancestors way back in Dorcas's family tree who could read people's minds, find missing objects, and do other weird things. And whom Dorcas had learned about when she was a child, from an old lady she called Great-aunt Fianna.

  Abby didn't enjoy Dorcas's stories about her weird ancestors, particularly after she began to suspect that one of the main reasons Dorcas had decided to stay in San Francisco and be a detective instead of moving to Los Angeles and staying married was that she really believed she herself had inherited some special powers that would help her become a world-famous detective.

  But the way Abby saw it was …Well, okay—on the one hand, having a career doing something you were extra good at was important, whether it was skiing or solving mysteries. But on the other hand, so was having a normal family life.

  So when her mother started to bring up the purse-snatching episode, Abby wasn't exactly enthusiastic. “No,”she said, shaking her head. “I didn't use any special powers when they caught that purse snatcher. I mean, that isn't the way it happened. I didn't have any supernatural vision about where that guy hid it. Like I told you, I must have just happened to think of where he might have gone right after he took the purse and—and …”Abby stuttered to a stop. It was a familiar discussion that had never gotten anywhere and wasn't about to now.

  “All right. I'm sorry I mentioned it,”Dorcas said. “I only meant to suggest that—”

  “I know what you meant,”Abby interrupted. “You meant you think that you—that both of us—can do weird things. Like reading other people's minds, and maybe getting mysterious, out-of-thin-air messages about whodunit?”Twisting her mouth into a sarcastic grin, she went on, “Or how about flying around on broomsticks?”

  Dorcas's exasperated sigh started out angry and wound up sounding a little bit like an apology. “I know, sweetie. I probably shouldn't have told you so much about the things Aunt Fianna used to tell me. But I do think there was some truth in her stories.”

  Dorcas shrugged and went on. “When I was no more than five or six I sometimes knew what people were thinking without being told. And I could find things that had been lost for ages. And I do think some of my success as an investigator is probably due to my ability to …”She paused and checked out Abby's expression (which this time was probably saying something like “Not that one again") before she smiled and changed the subject. “Well, you'll have to agree that I've managed to make us a living as an investigator since your father left. I've done it all by myself, and I do feel I'm quite good at what I do.”

  Abby shrugged and said, “Okay, okay. I know you're a good PI, Mom. But right now I have to go get ready to catch the bus. Okay?”She left the kitchen and climbed the narrow stairs that led to her own private room, where things were arranged just the way she wanted them. Where everything—books, board games, and even the shelfful of her old outgrown toys—was lined up exactly where she had known it would be, because she herself, not anyone else—supernatural or otherwise—had put it there.

  Actually there was plenty of time before she had to leave, but she had needed to get away. Sitting down at her desk, she picked up her notes for her Future Career essay and started to reread them, but her mind kept flip-flopping back to one thing in particular that had been said at the breakfast table. To one word, actually. The word left—as in “since your father left.”As if the divorce had been all his idea.

  Not that either of them had ever said so. Neither of them had told Abby much about why they'd gotten divorced. They'd probably thought she was too young to understand at the time, but even now that she was almost thirteen, they still wouldn't talk about it. But it had always seemed obvious to Abby that everything had been fine until her dad's firm moved him to Los Angeles and her mom chose San Francisco and her new detective agency.

  As for the things that had been said at the breakfast table, there was definitely no point in trying to explain to Dorcas why Abby's idea of a normal family didn't include a parent who spent most of her time associating with people like purse snatchers and hit-and-run drivers instead of spending time with her family. And it certainly didn't include having weird supernatural ancestors.

  That was just how she felt about the whole thing, and what happened with the kidnapped kid's locket didn't change her way of thinking one bit.

  THE MOOREHEAD KIDNAPPING episode began only a few days after Abby and her mother had had that discussion at the breakfast table. Dorcas had just taken a case concerning a kidnapped six-year-old kid. The little girl, whose name was Miranda Moorehead, had gone out to visit a friend who lived right down the street—and she never got there. Disappeared, it seemed, into thin air.

  The police thought the kidnapper might be the girl's father, who was divorced from her mother and had moved to Oregon. A father who had lost the right to see his daughter because, according to his ex-wife, he had a mean streak and a violent temper. But nobody knew for sure if he was the kidnapper, because he'd recently sold his house and business in Portland and dropped out of sight. And no one, not even the police, could find out where he'd gone. Then Mrs. Moore head called up and said she'd heard about the O'Malley Agency from a friend, and asked Dorcas to take the case, and Abby picked up the kitchen phone and listened in.

  As a rule Abby tried not to pay any attention to the cases her mother was working on. But this case had been a little harder to ignore because it had happened so close to where the Bordens lived. And also because Paige Borden, Abby's absolutely best friend in the whole world, was sure she'd seen the victim at the supermarket a few days before the kidnapping.

  According to Paige, she'd been right behind this kid and the kid's mother in the check-out line, and they'd been arguing about whether to buy some candy. The little girl kept saying, “Daddy always let me buy some.”And the mother kept saying, “Miranda, please stop saying that.”Paige was sure the mother had called the little girl Miranda, which, as she kept pointing out, is not a terribly common name. And later, when the Chronicle printed a picture of Miranda, Paige was sure she looked exactly like the girl she'd seen in the market.

  That made the whole thing a little more interesting, and Abby had even gone so far as to read some of the newspaper stories about the kidnapping. It was mainly because Paige was so fascinated by the whole thing that Abby had eavesdropped when Dorcas had been talking on the phone to the kidnapped girl's mother. But that was all she'd done about it until the locket thing happened.

  Dorcas had been on the Moorehead case for
only a few days on the Saturday morning when Abby got involved. She might have flown down to see her dad that weekend, but he was visiting a client in New York, and as for Dorcas, there was no telling where she was. She'd made a quick trip to Portland the day before. And that day, who knew where? But Tree was supposed to be in the office that morning when Abby went in to look for a pen because all of hers had run out of ink.

  Abby's pens frequently ran out of ink because of her notebook, a special loose-leaf binder that was partly a diary but also contained a large collection of lists, as well as maps and floor plans. The maps she'd drawn of her favorite places, such as the Marina and Pacific Heights and Squaw Valley, and the floor plans were of houses she'd lived in or visited. As for the diary, she'd been keeping one since she was about seven years old, and she'd started making lists even before that. Long lists of everything she did and wore and ate, of all the books she read and whether she liked them, as well as all the other things and people she especially liked or disliked. She wasn't sure why, but there was something satisfying about list keeping—even though it did use up a lot of ink.

  The office of the O'Malley Agency consisted of two rooms, one of which had once been a fairly large Victorian parlor complete with high ceilings and a nice marble fireplace. But now, instead of comfortable chairs and sofas like you'd find in most people's living rooms, it held a couple of big beat-up desks, several cluttered tables, three computers, and a couple of armless chairs where clients were supposed to sit. And beyond the parlor, in what had once been a dining room, there were more cabinets and office equipment, such as copiers and fax machines. Because neither Tree nor Dorcas had much interest in unexciting housekeeping activities, the whole area also had a lot of dusty surfaces and overflowing wastebaskets.

  That morning the office was, as usual, full of dust, but unusually empty of people. No Tree, that is. But the BACK IN A MOMENT sign was on the front door, which probably meant that Tree had run down to the corner grocery store to buy something for lunch.