Speaking in Tongues

know.”
    “But where? We’ll go there, ask if anybody’s seen her.”
    There was a long hesitation. Finally she said, “I’m not sure.”
    “You’re not?” Tate asked, surprised. “You don’t know where she goes?”
    “No,” Bett answered testily. “Not all the time. She’s a seventeen-year-old girl with a driver’s license.”
    “Oh. So you don’t know where she’d spend her afternoons.”
    “Not always, no.” She glanced at him angrily. “It is not like she hangs out in southeast D.C., Tate.”
    “I just—”
    “Megan’s a responsible girl. She knows where to go and where not to go. I trust her.”
    They walked in silence back to the car. Bett grabbed her phone again and her address book. She began making calls—to Megan’s friends, he gathered. At least she had their numbers, if not Megan’s boyfriend’s. Still, it irked him that she didn’t seem to know much basic information—important information—about the girl.
    When they arrived at the car she folded up the phone. “Her favorite place was called the Coffee Shop. Up near Route fifty.” Bett sounded victorious. “Like Starbucks. All right? Happy?”
    She dropped into the seat and crossed her arms. They drove in silence north along the parkway.

Chapter Fourteen
    Braking to five miles an hour, Tate surveyed the crowded parking lot.
    He found a space between a chopped Harley-Davidson and a pickup bumper-stickered with the Reb stars ’n’ bars. He navigated the glistening Lexus into this narrow spot.
    He and Bett surveyed the cycles, the tough young men and women, all in denim, defiantly holding open bottles, the tattoos, the boots. At the other end of the parking lot was a very different crowd, younger—boys with long hair, girls with crew cuts, layers of baggy clothes, plenty of body piercing. Bleary eyes.
    Welcome to the Coffee Shop.
    “Here?” Bett asked. “She came here?”
    Starbucks? Tate thought. I don’t think so.
    She glanced at the notes she’d jotted. “Off fifty near Walney. This’s it. Oh my.”
    Tate glanced at his ex-wife. Her horrified expression didn’t diminish his anger. How could she have let Megan come to a place like this? Didn’t she check up on her?
    Her own daughter, for Christ’s sake . . .
    Tate pushed the door open and started to get out.Bett popped her seat belt but he said abruptly, “Wait here.”
    He walked up to the closest cluster—the bikers; they seemed less comatose than the slacker gang at the other end of the lot.
    But no one he queried had heard of Megan. He was vastly relieved. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Maybe her friend meant a generic coffee shop someplace.
    At the far end of the lot he waded into a grungy sea of plaid shirts, Doc Marten boots, JNCO jeans and bell-bottom Levi’s. The girls wore tight tank tops over bras in contrasting colors. Their hair was long, parted in the middle, like Megan’s. Peace symbols bounced on breasts and there was a lot of tie-dyed couture. The images reminded Tate of his own coming-of-age era, the early seventies.
    “Megan? Sure, like I know her,” said a slim girl, smoking a cigarette she was too young to buy.
    “Have you seen her lately?”
    “She’s here a lotta nights. But not in the last week, you know. Like, who’re you?”
    “I’m her father. She’s missing.”
    “Wow. That sucks.”
    “How’d she get in? She was seventeen.”
    “Uhm. I don’t know.”
    Meaning: a fake ID.
    He asked, “Do you know if anybody’s been asking about her? Or been following her?”
    “I dunno. But her and me, we weren’t, like, real close. Hey, ask him. Sammy! Hey, Sammy.” To Tate she added, “They’d hang out some.”
    A large boy glanced their way, eyed Tate uneasily. He set a paper cup behind a garbage can and walked up to him. He was about the lawyer’s height, with a pimply face, and wore a baseball cap backward. He wore a pager and a cell phone.
    “I’m looking for Megan McCall. You know her?”
    “Sure.”
    “Have you seen her lately?”
    “She was here this week.”
    “She comes here a lot?” Tate asked.
    “Yeah, she, like, hangs here. Her and Donna and Amy. You know.”
    “How about her boyfriend?”
    “That black dude from Mason?” Sammy asked. “The one she broke up with? Naw, this wasn’t his scene. I only saw ’em together once, I think.”
    “Was somebody—some man in a gray car—asking about her, following her around?”
    Sammy gave a faint laugh. “Yeah, there was. Last week, Megan and