Southern Lights by Danielle Steel Page B

come through the mail. Just be aware when you go in and out, and don’t get in the elevator alone with a guy you don’t know.” It was good advice.
    “Why would someone write me something like that?”
    “Because there are a lot of nuts in the world, and you’re a very pretty girl. Just be careful and smart and you’ll be fine.” Alexa tried to treat it lightly and went downstairs to mail the college applications. She didn’t want to admit to her daughter that she was somewhat unnerved herself. She was thinking about her mother’s admonition to be particularly careful during the Quentin case, and her reminder that men like him had friends outside, even when they were safely put away in jail. So far Quentin didn’t seem like a man who had a lot of friends, or any in New York. Some of his pals in prison had told investigators he was a lone wolf.
    Alexa asked the doorman if anyone had hand-delivered a letter to them, and he said no one had, which led her to wonder how the sender of the note to Savannah had dropped it off. And more importantly, who would write the letter to her and why. She tried to look less upset about it than she was when she went back upstairs, but she admitted to being concerned. She had quietly put the letter in a plastic bag. Savannah brought it up again as they shared Chinese takeout that was delivered.
    “I was thinking about that letter again, Mom. I think it’s really scary, and I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that would be written by a kid,” even though the envelope had looked that way. “Kids just don’t write that kind of thing.”
    “Maybe a very repressed kid would. Some boy who admired you in secret from the distance, and disguised his handwriting on the envelope, so you couldn’t guess who it was. I don’t think it’s a big deal. You should be careful anyway, but it isn’t a threat.” Alexa was trying to be cool.
    “I guess so,” Savannah said in response, finishing a spring roll. “It still creeps me out.”
    “Yeah. Me too. And actually, it’s kind of insulting. I live here too, and nobody’s in love with me or telling me they want my body.” Savannah laughed, but in truth Alexa particularly didn’t like that an anonymous stranger had written a note like that to Savannah. She was far more disturbed than she let on.
    Without saying anything to Savannah, Alexa stuffed the letter in its plastic bag into her purse, and took it to the forensic lab the next day. Her favorite technician was on, a young Asian man who always got her fast results and gave her the most minute details.
    “Who wrote that?” she asked bluntly, and he laughed when she handed him the plastic bag with the envelope in it.
    “You mean hair color and shoe size? Or just what brand his jeans were?”
    “I mean man, woman, or child?” She was afraid that it had not been written by a lovesick young boy, and maybe not even by a dirty old man. She had a feeling it had been written to unnerve her, and it had.
    He narrowed his eyes as he carefully took the envelope out of the plastic bag, wearing rubber gloves, and looked at it, and then smiled at her. “Give me a few minutes. I have to finish something up, or the guys in narcotics are going to kill me. I’ll call you in an hour. I assume you want me to check it for fingerprints too.” She nodded.
    “Thanks.” She smiled back at him and went upstairs to her office. As promised, he called her within the hour.
    “Okay, got it.” Jason Yu got right to the point, he always did. “Adult male, steady hand so probably somewhere in his twenties or thirties. American. Possibly Catholic school education, so maybe it’s a priest,” he chuckled.
    “Very funny.”
    “The handwriting was disguised, clumsily, to look like it was written by a child, but it wasn’t. And there are no prints on the paper. He must have worn rubber gloves. Death threat?” he asked with interest. It wasn’t unusual for cops and assistant DAs or even public defenders