Mermaid — Margaret Millar

Cleo Jasper, a beautiful woman in her early twenties, drops out of sight while attending an exclusive school for retarded young people. Shortly before her disappearance she had gone to the office of Tom Aragon, a young Hispanic lawyer, for what seems to have been a trivial reason. Cleo's older brother, Hilton, hires Aragon to find the vulnerable girl and bring her back home. Hilton's devotion to his little sister is more than tinged with guilt and has already alienated his wife and son.

In a trailer park, far removed from the kind of environment Cleo has been used to, Aragon finds her closest friend, a counselor at the school, surrounded by suicide messages, one of them addressed to Cleo. But the girl remains as elusive as a mermaid.