Hotline to Murder

him and said, “I understand that you let the class use your condo for one of the Saturday sessions and that you have a really neat pool. That was a nice thing to do.” She gave him a thumbs-up sign.
    “How did you hear about that?” Tony asked, caught off guard.
    “Joy is my friend. She was one of the facilitators for the class. She swam in your pool.”
    “I remember Joy.” That was an understatement. He was not likely to forget the blonde Joy, especially how she looked in a bikini.
    “I’m supposed to show you around,” Shahla said, after a sip of coke. “This is the listening room. We write the names of repeat callers on the board each day so that if they call a second time, we can tell them they’ve already called.”
    “Repeat callers get only fifteen minutes a day,” Tony said, quoting from the class, where facilitators had done comical imitations of some of the chronic Hotline haunters. There were several names on the white board from earlier shifts, including Prince Pervert, Lovelorn Lucy, and Masturbating Fool. “Don’t you hang up on the bad calls?”
    “Yeah, if they start talking about sex in an explicit way or if we think they’re masturbating, we tell them it’s an inappropriate call and hang up.”
    She spoke in a casual voice, but Tony felt uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to talking about masturbation with a teenage girl. He said, “And the books are for referrals?”
    “Right. We have a couple of different telephone directories, including a local one, and these other books contain numbers we can give to callers, depending on their problem. They have names of counselors, drug and alcohol programs, shelters, that sort of thing.” She pointed out the books on one of the tables. “And this is the Green Book which tells about the repeat callers.”
    Tony made a mental note to look through the books.
    “I’ll show you how to sign in and also the rest of the office.” Shahla led the way out of the listening room.
    She had long, dark hair and dark eyes—eyes that he knew he had no business gazing into. She wore jeans cut low across her hips and a midriff-baring top with spaghetti straps. Two other straps peeked out from beneath the outside ones. No navel ring, however. In fact, the only piercings he saw on her were one in each ear containing a stud. He couldn’t guess her nationality, offhand, but assumed her parents were from somewhere in the war-torn Middle East. He wasn’t surprised. The class had been composed of predominantly teenagers, belonging to a rainbow of races. But she spoke better English than he did.
    “I guess most of the listeners are young,” Tony said as he signed in twice: on the daily time sheet and also the permanent record of hours worked by each listener.
    “Yeah, we have to get our community service hours to graduate from high school.”
    “A lot of the kids in the class were sixteen.”
    “I’m seventeen.”
    She said it with enough emphasis so he knew the difference was important. “Are you a senior at Bonita Beach High?”
    “Yes. I’ve been on the Hotline for a year and a half.”
    Shahla took him into what must be a supply room. Except that in additional to metal cabinets, it also contained a sink and some bags of chips and pretzels.
    “Food,” she said, pointing. “There’s drinks and stuff in the refrigerator. And there’s water.”
    A five-gallon Sparkletts bottle sat upside down on its metal stand. She led him out of that room and through the one remaining doorway. The room they entered was the largest one yet. It contained three desks, with all the appropriate office paraphernalia on top of them.
    “These desks belong to Gail and Patty.”
    Tony had met them at the class sessions. Patty was the Administrative Assistant and Gail was the Volunteer Coordinator.
    “What about the third desk?”
    “Several people have left. Patty’s only been here for three months. Here’s Nancy’s office.”
    Shahla went through a doorway to an interior office containing just one desk. Nancy was the Executive Director. Tony had met her, too. She appeared to him to be very competent. He glanced at a couple of framed certificates and some photographs of the local beach on the walls of her office, and then they walked back to the listening room.
    “Can you help me with something until the phone rings?” Shahla asked. She pulled a sheet of paper out of a folder she had brought with her. “I’m trying to put together a resume so I can get a