Using her phone, Drew googled for coffee houses. She picked one that had good reviews, and set her navigation app. The map said it was less than an hour away, mostly via interstate, so it wasn't too hard to get to, unlike the other places she picked before.

She and her dad had a rough time of it when she first hit upon this gimmick. They were still learning the ropes then. Initially, they would just pick places at random, but a few hairy moments at some rough places taught them some lessons. Her dad used to come along in the beginning, but now they knew the ins and outs of this thing - now they knew to pick the ones on the net that had good ratings and high prices. These, and, especially those with Wi-Fi connections as well, were usually the better places to be left alone. Snooty places always were.

They also knew now that distances on a map were not good indicators of travel time, if those were all they were basing their estimates on. Now they'd learned to pick better travel routes.

Drew had become so expert at this that she did these little trips on her own now, to minimize the number of faces that could be identified. It would have been better if Dad was the one to do it since he had a less striking image, but Drew was really the Internet-savvy one, so she was the one that did the research on the net.

As per usual, Drew pulled over in a secluded little suburb street and parked underneath a tree. She was effectively out of anyone's view and any CCTV shot.

From the boot, she got her fake New Jersey license plates, to place over her real New York ones. (She had gotten the plates from a junker car of the same make and model that her mechanics found in their bone yard). Her dad didn't know she had these fake license plates. "Well, what he doesn't know won't hurt him," Drew thought.

By means of flat, heavy-duty magnets permanently epoxied onto the back of the New Jersey plates, she easily fixed the fake license plates over her car's real ones. So, instead of Richmond New York license plates with number TRH-3088, it now sported Atlantic City license plates with number JBC-40L, complete with fake decals that she had made with her printer at home.

Having done the deed, Drew dusted her hands and got in. She then dug into her little girly backpack and got out her crappy burner phone (different from her real phone), called her dad on His crappy burner phone, and told him the name of the place she picked as well as the address and the phone number listed on the net (she knew that was relatively safe to do because the phone company would dump their records regularly, and they were using anonymous, disposable phones, too). That done, she pulled back into traffic and then headed towards the highway.

Her GPS app was a voice-equipped, turn-by-turn GPS navigation app, so she could concentrate on the driving without looking at a map.

She had put her car's top back up so she could hear the GPS app and her radio. Nothing good was on so she plugged her iPad in and listened to Adele's latest album. She looked at her latest purchases and queued Whitney's greatest hits album next (which was on sale in iTunes), then classic Foo Fighters and then Bruno Mars. She had lots of music to keep her company until the coffee place. Seems she was spending a lot of time driving and in coffee houses these days.

Even with her car's fake license plates, she parked a little bit away, as usual, so the likelihood of her car being associated with her were lessened. She got out and walked the five-minute walk to the cafe. Given how attention grabbing her little electric-blue car was, this was needed.

As she walked, she recalled the old blue Chevy they'd boosted when all of this started over three months ago. After they had established themselves as the Nances, her dad had worried about the car, and if it could be traced back to them. So they had asked their friend, Lieutenant Frank Hardy, to trace the car, and he found the police report that said it was found stripped two days after Andy had abandoned it in the street. Eventually, the owner of the car was found, and the police investigation into that case ended there, and the car was never connected to the Fayne arson case. At least that was one less thing to worry about.

When she got to the coffee place, she looked it over. It was a fairly upscale place, and the patrons were mostly kids just a bit older than her, and were all fairly well dressed. She looked through the menu above the cash register and ordered a "giant" milk chai and a little fancy packet of "crisps," whatever those were. She gave her name as "Rose," as she always did in all of these surfing assignments - a common but memorable-enough name that, if ever they traced her computer connection, they would remember a "Rose" and not a Drew or an Andrea.

She could imagine the hypothetical profile that the people after them would have of her if her Internet activities were ever traced: a well-to-do girl named Rose, somewhere in her middle or late teens, long blonde hair, used a late-model HP netbook and pre-paid Internet access, lived somewhere in eastern New Jersey, with a taste for gourmet-style teas and imported junk food. "Let's see them try and connect Rose with Drew Nance," Drew thought. "Maybe next time, I should wear my wig - that'll maintain the idea that Rose had long blonde hair." Maybe she needed to buy a brunette wig, even. And maybe they should even get another car as well, for use when she or her dad had these "spy trips."

She stood by the counter, smiling slyly at the other patrons that were looking her up and down, and waited for "Rose" to be called. This kind of attention from strangers usually made her a little jumpy, but this time it didn't. She had turned into some kind of attention hound, all in a matter of hours. "Fox, maybe," she thought. "Or kitten. Definitely not hound." She giggled.

After she got her drink and her little snack, she looked around and found a little spot by the glass-front window. She sat down, her back to the wall (so no one would see what she would be doing on her computer, but, "unfortunately," her legs were on display in the window).

Her tea-and-milk drink was truly a "giant" - it must be twice the size of a Starbucks Venti cup. It should last her the rest of the afternoon. and it tasted great. But the "crisps" turned out to be some unknown British-brand chips, which tasted like stale, overly salty Frito Lay's chips. She wished they had Walkers - those were the British ones she liked. Oh, well.

She opened her netbook, plugged in the little wireless Internet stick in the USB port, stood up, bent over and plugged the netbook's power adapter into the wall outlet near the foot of her table. She had bought the computer used, and the battery didn't retain more than half an hour's charge, so it was best to keep it plugged in. As she straightened up, she caught some of the guys looking at her legs and butt before hurriedly looking away. Hmmm... She tried not to giggle.

As her little computer booted up and connected to the Internet, she looked around the cafe. Most of the patrons were near her age, and most had their own laptops, smartphones or tablets, surfing as well. Absolutely no suspicious characters around.

Some of the guys caught her eye and smiled, but since she was supposed to be incognito, she didn't smile back - best not to encourage them and keep some distance.

She turned back to her computer and started to work.

-----

She didn't bring the original documents - those stayed at home, locked in a safe hidden in a place only her dad knew. But she had scanned every scrap of paper into digital files she kept in the netbook's hard drive, and she encrypted them with an encryption key only she knew.

Having gone through all that stuff that her dad got from Uncle Dave's safe deposit box, she had determined that the people behind the death of her uncle, cousin and housekeeper were from one of three companies, or were people who dealt regularly with these companies.

What made the research hard was that the papers seemed innocuous by themselves, and seemed to be random and unrelated. Her dad said that these may actually just be junk paper, and Uncle Dave only really meant for them to get the Carson and Andrea Nance documents. And the stock certificates, of course. But Drew believed that the papers really were clues to the mystery of their deaths. She needed to get the bastards, whoever they were. Maybe today she'd be able to put names to them.

Part of her method was to list down all the names mentioned in all the papers, and how often. And as far as she could tell, all of the names mentioned were connected with at least one of the companies. The research was tedious as hell since Uncle Dave had included some kind of telephone call log with at least fifty unique names per page, and there were at least twenty pages of them.

In any case, she'd gone through everything and had typed them up (there was no scanner or OCR software, and no camera in the little netbook). When she discounted those names that seemed to not be involved too much in the company or just low-level staff (like security guards and receptionists), or seemed to have just been mentioned incidentally in the documents, she was able to boil down the list to seven individuals who seemed to be very likely suspects - two men and five women. They were all fairly highly placed in at least two of the three companies, and they were all connected with a project called "Jabberwocky."

She wasn't sure but if she had to bet, she'd bet Jabberwocky was the key. But there was no way to get information about this Jabberwocky thing, unless it was from the inside, and that was what her dad was supposed to help with. As soon as she said she'd gotten all the info she could get out of the papers, her dad would start making plans to get a job in one of the companies, and try to get information from the inside. And from that point on, they'd play it by ear. And it looked like she had reached that point already.

She had done a broad-based scan over the net for these seven names, and they were all mentioned frequently in many business articles. Mostly innocuous articles, but there were a few that weren't. The dates of many of the documents were from six months ago, so Drew pulled out several business front-page or headline articles that mentioned even one of the seven names or any of the three companies from around that period up to three months ago.

A handful of these articles caught her attention. One said that the record earnings of one of the three companies she was looking at was due to mass redundancies or resignations, while others talked about fortuitous events like foreclosures of competing companies, and insurance claims from "defective" factory equipment. There was one that was about how all three companies had been bilking a large community of Athabascans in Alaska out of their petroleum rights for the past twenty years (unprovable, of course). There was another that was about the loss of houses in several large communities in Louisiana because the subcontractors (the companies) who constructed the water levees to protect them didn't do a good job.

The story she was currently working on was about an explosion in a small manufacturing plant of one of the companies way out in the boonies that accidentally killed thirty employees. Or so the article said - only a couple of names were mentioned specifically. But she was able to track down the other twenty-eight - it was amazing what a bit of common sense, pictures, perseverance and access to the Internet can do: Using the search engine client software installed in the netbook, she searched through obituaries for people who died that month, specifically those that worked for the same company that died in the town where the factory was. It was tedious work but she got all thirty names.

What was amazing was the unmentioned twenty-eight of the thirty who died were from company offices nowhere near the plant, and were either office managers or accountants. None of them were factory people and had no business being in the plant, except for the two mentioned in the article, so what were they doing in the factory? Four of them were actually vice presidents based out of the New York office. What was incredible was that the police never picked up on this and therefore never followed it up. Very suspicious, indeed. Drew was able to conclude that this was one of the major smoking guns that would help them in unraveling all of this.

As before, she copy-pasted a lot of text, typed up a lot of references, and put them all in a plain TXT file for later printing at home. At that point, she decided to wrap up. If she missed anything, there was always next week. She ran her encryption program, wiped all the temp files, powered down the netbook, unplugged everything and stowed her stuff in her little magenta backpack.

After she finished wrapping up, she only noticed then that the sun was already low. She also noticed that her table was suddenly surrounded by a lot of boys.

"Hi," the nearest one said.

Drew smiled exasperatedly. "Bye," she replied, stood up and walked out of the coffee place, hips swinging saucily underneath her little skirt.

-----

Per the routine they had developed, Drew drove opposite the direction she wanted to go, and got lost in the wilds of downtown Basking Ridge, New Jersey. As she drove, she thought of what she'd been doing since the start of all this. She knew that it was just a matter of time before she was either discovered or she tripped up. And if she kept on doing this, people would eventually be able to link her car with her real identity. She toyed with the idea of asking her dad to get "Rose" her own car, but knew that it might not be needed - she was close to wrapping up her "investigation" and then passing it on to her dad. Actually, with what she finished today, it could actually mean she was done, and that might be it for Rose.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Still, maybe she should look into getting another car. It was fun souping up her Opel, and her old Sunfire back home, and her new friends at the garage were more than helpful with her "Tiger", so maybe she could do it again with another car. It's not like they couldn't afford it. Sure, she could always buy some stock sports car but that wouldn't be fun at all. She thought about it some more.

For an hour she drove around randomly, but made sure she didn't drive near any iffy-looking neighborhoods. She saw a 7-Eleven, so she pulled over a bit aways, walked back to the 7-Eleven and bought half a dozen prepaid Internet cards for later. (She always bought her cards in New Jersey, and with cash - just another layer of subterfuge, to prevent people from tracing her.)

Eventually, when she felt that she had driven around enough, she started driving home.

When she was ten minutes from her house, Iola called (she called Drew's real cell phone, of course), wondering where she was.

Drew then remembered she was supposed to go to Iola's house that afternoon. She apologized profusely and turned her car around. She called her dad (on his real phone this time) and told him she was done with her research but she was going to Iola's first.

She eventually reached Interstate 287, then to Route 440 and into Staten Island via the Outerbridge Crossing near Charleston. Thinking she was making good time, she detoured and went onto Richmond Road so she could pass by Todt Hill and see the golf course - her dad's new favorite place.

In a little while, she was pulling up beside Iola's house. It was a nice house, but typical for St. George, Staten Island. Not as nice as their new house, which was in the ritzier northern part of St. George, but still pretty good. A couple of passing boys whistled at her but Drew was used to that by now, and she just ignored them.

When she was sure no one else could see her anymore, she quickly pulled off the fake license plates from her car.

She put the plates, her backpack and all her "research" stuff in the trunk. She thought a bit and suddenly realized they were gonna want to know EVERYTHING about her hair! She paused, frantically trying to get her story straight in her mind.

There were only a few ways to go with it, anyway... She sighed. Okay.

She got the bag from the salon as well as the stuff she bought at the mall, closed the trunk, walked to Iola's house and rang the doorbell.

Iola's dad greeted her at the door.

"Hi, Drew," he said. Iola's dad was a small, round man who was extremely likable even though he had a lot of old fashioned notions that were at odds with his daughter's behavior.

Mr. and Mrs. Morton were a nice couple. Drew couldn't help thinking of the folks of her old buddy, George. George's folks were nice people, too, just like the Mortons.

Mr. Morton noticed her new do. "Hey! Great haircut!"

"Good evening, Mr. Morton," Drew smiled. "Thanks. Just got it today. Is Iola home?"

"She's in her room upstairs with Callie. Go on up. I think they're expecting you."

"Thank you, sir," she said. She waved to Mrs. Morton, walked up the stairs, and knocked on Iola's bedroom door before walking in.

"So, what have you two JDs been doing," she giggled, dropping her stuff and her purse on Iola's study table.

"Hey, girl!" Iola said. The two of them went and gave Drew hugs.

"So, you went and did it, huh," Callie said, looking at Drew's new hair. "The short hair's a bit drastic, isn't it?"

"I don't know, Callie," Iola said. "I think the short hair is super-sexy bitchin' hot!" Callie frowned a little bit at that comment.

Iola touched Drew's hair. "It also feels real soft." Drew knew the wig's texture was different from natural hair, but she didn't say anything about that, of course.

Iola inhaled. "You smell good, too."

Drew blushed.

Iola giggled at that and pulled Drew over to the bed, and all of them sat on the pillows and cushions.

"Who in the shop did your hair," Iola asked. "Got to be Natalie, right? She's so much better than Lalaine. Or maybe Daisy. She's good with short bobs." they all giggled. Daisy had a boyfriend named Bob, and he was five-foot five.

"Maybe I'll get a bob, too," Callie said. The others giggled again. "I mean a haircut!" Callie corrected. "If Natalie can do it without gossiping too much, that is." Iola and Drew giggled some more. Iola's hairdresser was a notorious gossip.

"I hate to say this, but..." Drew said, hesitating.

Iola looked shocked "Get out! Don't tell me it was Lalaine? That girl can't even hold a pair of scissors straight!"

"Actually, I didn't go to your regular place..." Drew bit her lip.

"You didn't," Iola said, a little hurt that Drew didn't take her advice, but really more curious than offended. "Where did you go?"

"Well," Drew said, answering, "You guys know how I feel about people messing with my hair, so I thought I could cut it myself."

Iola and Callie gasped. "Oh, no! You didn't!" Callie said in horror.

Drew nodded in feigned sadness. "I didn't want anyone who knew me to see my botched job, so I went to a different hairdresser's."

They nodded. "You poor girl," Iola said, and touched her hair again. "But it turned out great in the end. Where did you end up going to?"

"A small place in town I found on the net called Benzaiten? They were real nice over there, and the guy who fixed my hair was so friendly."

This was greeted with silence. "What?" Drew said. She was puzzled at their reaction.

"You went to Benzaiten?" Callie said incredulously.

"Quick! What was the name of your hairdresser!" Iola asked with urgency in her voice.

Drew was puzzled. "I didn't get his full name, but everyone called him Julian..."

The girls squealed.

"What! What's wrong?"

"Oooh! She doesn't even know," Callie exclaimed.

"C'mere," Iola said and dragged Drew to her computer. Iola typed on the keyboard, pressed Enter, and after a few short moments, a wiki page popped up with a picture of Drew's hairdresser.

"Is that your stylist?"

Drew nodded dumbly, and listened as the two girls explained. It seemed that the man was a legend among the teen set, at least around St. George. He was an instructor at the famous Atelier Institute in New York, but he resigned following an argument with the school's administration, quit teaching altogether and moved to St. George in 1999 to be part of the town's revival movement, and put up his own salon (Julian was apparently a Staten Island native). Around St. George (and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the island), Julian was known as a one-man crusade trying to reverse the island's reputation, and his salon became known as the trendiest and classiest salon south of Manhattan.

"Ben's," as the salon became known in town, slowly gained a reputation, and appointments with the place's owner and chief hairstylist became hard to come by. There were even rumors that several celebrities regularly made the trek from New York, Hollywood and other places to unfashionable Staten Island just to get their hair styled by Julian (under an agreement of secrecy enforced by Julian and the threat of cancelation of their salon privileges, a secrecy which the celebrities would have insisted on even if Julian didn't).

It was no wonder then that most of the girls in school would kill to get an appointment with Julian. Iola and Callie found it incredible that Drew was able to get one just by walking in.

"This'll get you noticed in school!" Callie said.

"As if Drew isn't already noticed now," Iola said, in a voice slightly tinged with envy, but not enough that Drew would notice. Callie did, however, and she stopped smiling.

Iola thought in the back of her mind that Drew was pretty. Gorgeous actually, but she knew, modesty aside, that she was prettier and sexier than Drew, and didn't understand why people seemed to prefer Drew over her.

Such thoughts usually ended up in teenage rivalries and catfights, especially in the loose cliques of the angst-ridden, attention-hungry world of adolescent schoolgirls. But Drew was friendly, nice, kind, and smarter than everyone she knew, except about makeup, hairstyles, and certain other things that girls their age knew almost intuitively (but Drew did know enough basic stuff to get by, and was learning rapidly besides). But the girl was also comfortable around boys in a way that was rare for a girl, and KNEW how to dress, and always knew which outfits to pick that would make boys stand up and pay attention. Drew had, in fact, started up several fashion trends in school all by her lonesome, and it was largely because of her that their school was starting to get a reputation for it. Most of the trendier girls on the island looked to their school's kids for the current fashion cues as much as from TV, magazines and the Internet.

Drew also started a kind of "cultural revolution" - of understated being beautiful, of restraint being classier, of less being better. And to her, civility was not optional, and good behavior was integral to a person's good relations: a reversal of the undeserved stereotype image of the brash, crude, uncouth Staten Islander. But then again, it was Drew Nance - the distillation-gestalt of Jane and Andrew Fayne, both being the products of well-to-do, well-behaved upper-middle class suburban families who prided themselves with their being civil and civic-minded. Boring stereotype family image, true, like she was a refugee from parent-approved homogenized fifties teen-fiction... but Drew was far from boring.

Originally, Iola had no intention of getting to know Drew, but she, Drew and her best friend Callie soon became as thick as thieves, In fact, the three were inseparable almost from Day One. Iola didn't really understand it, but she was happy with the results. Iola looked at Drew and Callie as she continued their conversation.

"I know," Callie said, acknowledging Drew's popularity, "but news like this will blow everyone away!"

"You think so?" Drew said. "What about this?" Drew went to fish her new card out of the plastic bag from the salon, and held it up next to her face, like she was in a MasterCard commercial.

"What's that?" Callie asked.

"My new membership card," Drew dimpled.

"What card? Lemme see!" Callie cried and grabbed for it.

Callie turned Drew's card over and over. She pulled it out of the little pink sleeve and looked at Drew's picture. She giggled. "Pixie?"

"That's what Julian called me. Apparently, that's my new club name." They were looking at her in wide-eyed amazement.

Callie turned it over. "Ohmigod! You're one of those! You're 'a friend of Julian's!'"

Drew looked puzzled. "So?"

"Ohmigod!" Callie reached for the plastic bag and emptied its contents on Iola's bedspread. She picked up the little pink booklet. "Read this!"

Drew opened the little book and read the few pages.

"Ohayo, Pixie-chan," the booklet began. Drew wondered at the Japanese greeting. It was even personalized since it had her new club-name in the greeting. Ellen must have printed and book-bound it just before she paid...

"As a friend of Julian's," the book continued, "you are entitled to several benefits at Benzaiten, your personal hair salon. Please think of Ben's as a second home..." et cetera et cetera... Drew read through it at her usual fast clip.

Complementary coffees and snacks from the minibar per visit... fifty percent off on all procedures and Benzaiten products (she didn't know Ben's made its own stuff)... ten percent off on others... a personal invite to the salon's regular Costume Parties (they had one every other month)... There was one whole section on etiquette and decorum while inside the salon, though - no abusive language, no loud voices, tasteful clothes ("We want to impress visitors with our city," the booklet said, "and show them the best of Staten Islanders"), et cetera.

There was another whole section for appointments. Apparently, people needed to call two weeks ahead for appointments, and, if anyone was late, reception could cancel the appointment and allow waiting customers to take the slot. For Julian's friends, though, they only need an hour's notice, and it was guaranteed that there would be a stylist available for them.

The booklet also said that stylists at Ben's would be willing to do almost any style but it was strongly recommended (Drew wryly noted the italics) that the customer take their advice. The only exception was Julian - if the appointment was with Julian, there are no ifs or buts - the customer takes his advice.

There were lots more, but most were just details. "Good God," Drew thought. She passed it back. Callie passed it to Iola - she was busy looking through the other books from the bag.

"You're not gonna read it?" Drew asked.

"I know what's in it," Callie said.

"I thought this was the first time you saw one."

"A real one, yeah, but I have one of those knock-off copies." She rummaged inside her big tote and handed Drew a lookalike booklet.

It turned out copies have always been around. Enterprising individuals at the school regularly churn out remarkably accurate facsimiles by the dozen, and then sell them for fifty dollars apiece. Some even fake the card, although they never could pass if ever they were actually used at Ben's. They were just for show. Callie and Iola had their own fake books and cards, just like many of the girls in Drew's junior high class.

Drew perused Callie's fake one and saw by the binding that it was just an imitation, and though the text was identical, it wasn't personalized with Callie's name.

Drew hadn't really understood it all before. It was just hair, after all. But listening to Callie and Iola over the months as Drew, she now knew it wasn't "just" hair. She knew, of course, how important looks are to everyone, especially to girls. Many girls' sense of self, indeed even their sense of self worth, were so closely wrapped up with their looks that it was never "just makeup" or "just hair." Drew knew this, but only on an intellectual level. As Andy, she used to dismiss girls with such obsessions as flighty, self-obsessed bimbos, whose worlds often revolved around themselves alone, and Drew held the same kind of prejudice. Until recently, that is.

The three spent most of the night talking and laughing, but Drew listened not with the idea of taking down notes about girl behavior as she usually did. Now, there was more immediacy to it - a more personally applicable feeling, and she listened, thinking how it all applied to her. She schemed and giggled and laughed with her friends, just like any regular girl would have.

Iola remarked that Drew wasn't as uptight as she usually was, that she was more open - more herself. Drew paused and thought about it. Something really seemed to have changed in her. In the coming days, Drew would wonder if Julian had cast a spell on her or something.

After showing off her new top and skirt (Drew didn't offer to model them, though, since she wasn't prepared underwear-wise and would have risked being found out), Drew made her goodbyes.

Callie was spending the night, and though Iola invited Drew to stay as well, Drew begged off, her expressions of regret not feigned this time.

"Oh, right," Callie said, "it's Sunday out with your dad tomorrow..." There was a sad inflection in her voice.

Drew looked at her friend, leaned over and gave her a hug. Callie didn't have a mom or dad anymore.

"I'm sorry, Callie," she said. "But I'm game to doing something tomorrow afternoon?"

"Sounds good," Callie said, and looked to Iola. As the alpha female in their little pack, Drew and Callie always waited for Iola's lead, although Callie felt the balance of power in their little group was shifting slowly to Drew.

Iola nodded at the idea and suggested hanging out in Central Park, something that non-New Yorkers rarely suggested. Drew was, of course, not a real New Yorker, but she quickly submerged her fear of being mugged.

"Okay," Drew agreed. "Central Park. Where?"

"The pool, I guess," Iola answered, "so bring a suit. Callie and I will take the X1 or X10 bus, and then we can meet at the Fifth Avenue entrance near the Conservatory Garden, and walk to the pool together."

"I might be late. Let's meet by the pool gates instead. Around one o'clock?"

Iola agreed, and they both gave Drew a hug before she walked downstairs.

Drew waved goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Morton, who were in the living room watching TV, and let herself out.