"Maybe we should check with the front desk to see if she got here and then left again? She might've called for another taxi from here?"

The front desk hasn't seen her.

Fun! "Okay, if we get our own taxi and go the way she would've come, we might find her if she's been in an accident? That doesn't really help if something else happened, though."

"Do we suppose there's any chance that someone affiliated with the cult has kidnapped her? I know it's not likely, but it seems like the sort of thing we ought to consider?"

"I mean, if it's foul play that's the obvious thing, right. Kidnapped her or otherwise held her up."

"If so, it would have had to either be the taxi driver, someone who could stop the taxi driver, or someone between her getting out of the taxi and getting to the hotel?"

"Would anyone on staff have noticed?"

She can ask again. Has there been any kind of altercation outside the hotel today, they're concerned something's happened to their friend. (The flophouse didn't pay any attention to their altercation but this is a nicer place, yeah, they might.)

The receptionist hasn't seen anything! She is very concerned though.

Thanks for the concern, they're worried too. "Okay, do we have any ideas other than retracing her most likely route?"

"We could call her father again and ask if there are any other places she's likely to have gone? Whether she specified that she was actually going to meet some other set of friends, or something? I don't know. If it gets to be long enough we could contact the police, but I don't know that that's warranted after two hours."

Mordred is concerned about her foster father but he doesn't have very good reasons for that and he's going to try and come up with an actual basis for this worry before he voices it.

"Yeah. I spoke to a maid before but we should probably ask to talk to her father? He should be aware of this and would probably know more besides, that's who she was visiting." She does not go into why she didn't ask to talk to him in the first place. Mordred is not the only uneasy one.

She goes upstairs again and calls the Trammel residence.

"Hello," the maid says again. "This is the Trammel residence, I'm Mrs. Magwood."

"Hi, it's me again. Zoe Aletheia. Lacie definitely didn't show up back at the hotel, and we're trying to figure out what to do. Could we speak to Mr Trammel?"

"Mr. Trammel is busy but I will ask."

A few minutes later--

"Hello, this is Samson Trammel."

"Hi, I'm Zoe, I'm one of the friends Lacie was supposed to meet! Mrs Magwood said she left your house at 1pm, and it's been over two hours and nobody at the hotel has seen her and we were wondering if you knew anything? It's really worrying."

"That is very worrying!" He doesn't sound worried. "Where do you think she could have gotten off to?"

Could you at least pretend to care about your foster daughter, sir. "We don't know. She could've been in an accident, or kidnapped, or something, we don't know yet. Who did she leave with?"

"She left in a taxi," he says. "I think that's jumping to conclusions a bit hastily, isn't it? Perhaps she'd stopped off to do some shopping and lost track of time."

"We had a very tight itinerary, sir. We wanted to be in and out of LA as quickly as possible. What did the taxi look like? Did you see what direction it drove off?"

"It was an ordinary taxi? I don't keep track of these things. If she turns out to actually be missing then I would appreciate a notification, but I am a busy man and I do not have the time to soothe the foolish worries of a silly girl."

"Could you at least give us the number of the taxi you called so we can get out of your hair."

He carelessly gives the number of a taxi dispatcher.

She writes it down. "Thank you, sir. If your daughter does turn out to be missing we will be sure to let you know."

Zoe goes downstairs and calls the taxi company. The taxi dispatcher says they have not dispatched a taxi to Samson Trammel's address.