Lousiana Hotshot

doing?”
    “Okay, thanks. How’s Cassandra doing? That’s the question.”
    “She feels bad about Rhonda. And also Pamela— she can’t get through to her. I called that family, by the way. The Bergerons.”
    “You did?”
    “I got to thinking about what you said about Rhonda’s death being coincidental. I thought they should know. They wouldn’t even talk to me.”
    “Well, their daughter was buried yesterday.”
    “And they won’t let Cassandra talk to Pamela. You know what I think? They’re racists, pure and simple.”
    Talba said, “I’m sorry about Pamela,” and she was. Sorry on Cassandra’s account. She had her own opinion about why the Bergerons wouldn’t want to talk to Aziza. “I just called to find out if you’ve heard from Officer Corn.”
    Silence came from Aziza’s end. Finally, she said, “Is that someone I should know?”
    “She’s the cop on Cassandra’s case.”
    “Oh. I can’t remember things like that. Should I have heard from her?”
    Talba itched to say, “Do you ever answer a question except with a question?” but thought better of it. Instead, she wriggled her way out of what was shaping up as an extremely unproductive conversation, and sat for a while staring into space.
    She wanted to talk to Eddie.
    She was starting to get a very uneasy feeling. Langdon had spooked her. Not hearing from Officer Corn was spooking her. What if she’d set something in motion that further endangered the girls?
    Pamela had the information she needed. If Eddie hadn’t forbidden her to talk to the Bergerons… but he had. In the end, she couldn’t bring herself to go against his wishes.
    She paced.
    There was plenty to do. She could work on setting up Eddie’s website, and she could always work on the books— she’d promised, after all. But, somehow, it didn’t seem decent just to break into Eddie’s accounts and start organizing them without him.
    So she did work on the website. And then, somehow or other, she wasn’t quite sure how, she found herself emailing Tony Tino. Just one sentence— “Are you Eddie Valentino’s kid?”
    Within an hour, he answered: “Who are you? Is my father all right?” and she broke out in a sweat. She’d done it as a lark, hadn’t really expected him to answer…
    Who’d believe that?
she thought suddenly. Why the hell
had
she done it?
    She sat with her head in her hands for a while, feeling paralyzed.
    And then she began looking for her father. She spent several minutes getting into a search engine and locating a peoplefinder. She was all set to type in his name when she realized she didn’t know it. Stunned, she sat there holding her head, willing something to come to her.
Donald,
she thought. She had heard it once, at least. She had heard her mother and her Aunt Carrie mention her father in a conversation she wasn’t part of. She’d been ten or twelve maybe. The sisters probably didn’t know she was in the room. They were talking about a man they didn’t like, and Talba was pretty sure it was her father. Donald or David. Something like that. She figured she’d try both and once again was all set to begin when it hit her that she didn’t know his last name. Didn’t even know if her mother and father were married.
    How could you look for someone when you didn’t know their name?
    It might be on her birth certificate, she thought, almost certainly would be. Only she didn’t have a copy of it.
    A scrap of memory flashed uncomfortably: Needing her birth certificate to get her driver’s license; her mother giving her a folded copy; unfolding it eagerly only to find herself staring, horrified, at the four words she hated most in the world.
    Her name.
    The unspeakably ugly words—
Urethra Tabitha Sandra Wallis
— shamed her so badly she refolded it without even looking at the intriguing tiny hand-and-footprints. At that point, it ceased to be an object of interest or curiosity, and became solely a rather unpleasant device to get her license. She handed it to the clerk, and later handed it back to her mother without ever unfolding it again.
    She shrugged off the memory and checked her mail, just in case. Sure enough, Tony Tino was still on her case— he’d sent another email.
    Okay, okay, she had to bite the bullet. “Didn’t mean to alarm you,” she wrote. “If Eddie’s your dad, he’s fine (though not nearly so tough as he thinks he is). I’m just a fool who works for him. Please forgive the intrusion— just couldn’t