Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

good and all but she was still freaked about it. She used to play with that fake fruit on her desk until I was ready to scream, or grab one and eat it. I bet—”
    Mariah ambled to the basket of fruit on the desk and pulled out a plum (wax). From beneath it she pulled out a snake. “Hey, look!” A slim leather cord that ended with a trio of thin tiny keys.
    “Brilliant thinking,” Temple said. “Where would a food freak hide something but under fake fruit.”
    Temple grabbed the flimsy keys and tried them in sequence until all three file cabinets were unlocked. The open drawers revealed colored hanging file folders stuffed with a variety of colored file folders, each bearing a clear crystal tab indicating its contents.
    “Reading rainbow,” Mariah commented.
    “Seriously neat freak.”
    Every food group, vitamin, study, and food additive had a file folder. So did every Teen Queen candidate.
    Temple collapsed on the floor to read about her alter ego, Xoe Chloe, line by flashlit line. This wasn’t just a food plan (more fruit and fiber, less empty calories like soda pop), it was a psych sketch.
    “Am I glad I’m not really me!” she told Mariah. “I show ‘clear antisocial tendencies magnified to chronic instability.’ Hey. I’m better at being bad than I thought.”
    Mariah snatched the flashlight to study her file. “I’m the ‘typical only child’ who’s ‘hidden behind baby fat.’ I’m ‘desperately seeking a father figure!’ Coulda fooled me.”
    “Listen, if Marjorie Klein was so off about a fake personality like Xoe, she’s certainly off about a real person like you. Makes you wonder how off she was about everybody.”
    “She did have a beans and legumes fixation.”
    “To the point of mania. No wonder someone crammed some down her throat.”
    “Look! Golly. Here under ‘Miscellaneous’ are some court orders.”
    “About what?”
    “Kids ordered into therapy with her.”
    “Sad but true. Take a lesson from this, Mariah. You act like Xoe Chloe once too often and you’re sentenced to psychobabble.”
    “I like Xoe. She’s way more fun than you are.”
    “So are a lot of things that are bad for you.” Temple sighed. “Working with the dysfunctional stirs up ugly emotions, especially if you’re inept. I can see someone having a motive for murdering this woman now, I just don’t see who or exactly why.”
    Temple ran her flashlight over another merry rainbow of folders. The light paused on a subject tab labeled “Indigestible.”
    It was a weird category, so naturally she pulled it. “Mariah! Look at this.”
    “Do I have to? It’s on that long legal-size paper that’s so boring.”
    “Right. Boring but important. This is a lawsuit.” Temple flipped back the pale blue pasteboard cover to skim the legalese inside. “Wrongful death. Someone sued her for malpractice! For... failing to prevent a fatal eating disorder, for creating it, actually. This is serious stuff.”
    “You mean, someone hated her enough to bring a suit against her?”
    “Exactly. Someone’s child died under her care.”
    “We hear about anorexia and bulimia and stuff at school. It’s gross, and also nuts.”
    “And a heartbreaking, relentless condition. If someone thought Matjory Klein had contributed to his or her child’s death by starvation, they might just stuff a bunch of food down her throat until she choked on it.”
    “I thought an allergy killed her.”
    “Her own food peculiarities must have been known. Or the killer mixed some poison in. We won’t know the cause of death unless your mother shares it with us, and I can’t see why she would. You’d think this suit was still ongoing, or she wouldn’t have brought it along. But look at the date.”
    “Nineteen ninety-one. I wasn’t born yet.”
    “This doesn’t make sense.” Temple ran her thin line of light over endless legal phrases, then paged back to the beginning. “The dead girl’s name has got to be in here somewhere. Maybe it’ll mean something.”
    Mariah hung over her shoulder, reading along with her. “There!”
    “Where?”
    “Two lines below where you’re reading. ‘Chastity Cummings.’ Man, I’d like to die if my first name was Chastity! That’s worse than Mariah. I mean, think what the other kids would say the minute you got out of kindergarten.”
    “Kids are teasing kids over words like ‘chastity’ in the early grades?”
    “In Catholic schools they are. The thing about going to a religious