Blunt Darts

SECOND

– ¦ The bouncy voice on the other side of the fire alarm said, "Hi, John. This is Valerie Jacobs."

The clock radio said eight-thirty; the sun in my bedroom window said A.M. Unfortunately, I had decided to cut back on my drinking slowly, and the Red Sox game on TV the night before had gone thirteen innings.

"Hi," I said quietly. "Who are you?"

"Fine, thanks," she replied, I guess because she thought I'd said "how" instead of "who." Maybe I had. "The school year's over, and I'm hoping this will be my best summer of all."

"That's nice," I said.

"Listen, John, I can tell I woke you up, and I'm sorry. I wanted to talk to you about a problem, but when I called Empire, they said you'd left the company. I'm not seeing Chuck anymore, so I didn't know."

Valerie. Valerie and Chuck. Sure. She was a teacher who'd been going out with one of the claims adjusters in the office. Beth and I had met her at a few company functions. In fact, I remembered she'd sent a condolence card just after Beth died.

"I'm a private detective now. In Boston."

"Oh, John, that's perfect! I know this is short notice, but so much time has gone by already. Could you meet me for lunch today? Around one?"

"Sure."

"How about L'Espalier?"

"Fine. You buyin'?"

"Put it on your expense account," she laughed, and hung up before I could tell her she definitely had overestimated my status in the profession.

I got up, vacillated over running, then finally laced my Brooks Villanovas. I pulled on a fading Tall Ships T-shirt from the Bicentennial summer and a pair of black gym shorts. I warmed up with loosening and stretching exercises for ten minutes and then went outside. It was a glorious June day, and the sidewalk was frying-pan hot. In Boston, we don't have spring; at some point in May, we jump from March to August.

I crossed over Storrow Drive on the pedestrian ramp and did a fairly leisurely two miles upriver and two miles back. As I recrossed the ramp toward Charles Street and the apartment, I watched the commuters inch by below me.

It had been only five months since I'd missed the kid on the bike, but I wasn't really struggling. In terms of conditioning (or reconditioning, if you insist), I'd been running three times a week, three to six miles each time. I'd been doing push-ups, sit-ups, and a little weight lifting. To try to regain some dangerousness, I began relearning jukado (a combination of judo, karate, and a number of other disciplines) which I'd picked up in the army. I even persuaded a police-chief friend of mine from Bonham (pronounced "Bonuhm," if you please), a town south and west of Boston, to let me use his department's pistol range.

In terms of business, the advent of no-fault divorce in Massachusetts had cut back considerably on that aspect of private investigating, which was line by me. A friend in the trade had told me that the secret of survival was keeping the overhead down. He suggested I use a tape device on my telephone instead of an answering service, and he was proving to be right. I also operated out of my apartment, so I had no office expense.

A retired Boston cop who'd known my family was a security director for a suburban department store. He had thrown a few "inside-job" surveillances my way, and on one we'd actually nailed the dipping employee. I had been quietly blackballed in Boston insurance circles, which kept my unemployment compensation coming. However, one maverick investigator had brought me in as a consultant on a warehouse security problem, and I sewed it up nicely in enough days to pay the next three months' rent. In other words, although I wasn't exactly pressed for free time, I was getting by.

I stopped at the grocery store on the corner and bought a quart of orange juice, some doughnuts, a Boston Globe and a New York Times. I politely stayed downwind (actually down-air-conditioner) from the cashier. After I climbed the three flights to my apartment, I duplicated the pre-run exercises. I showered, shaved, downed my doughnuts, and dressed in my only gray slacks and blue blazer. I even wore a regimental tie. Peter Prep School goes to luncheon.

I sat in Public Garden for two hours, reading my papers thoroughly in a way I'd never seemed able to while I was working. Funny, with my time my own and only food, shelter, and car insurance to worry about, I couldn't really look on my present occupation as working. By the time I finished the Times, it was 12:45, and I'd been panhandled three times. I walked down Arlington Street and toward the restaurant. L'Espalier was then on the second floor of a building between Arlington and Berkeley streets on Boylston. It has since moved to Gloucester Street between Newbury and Commonwealth. It has also ceased serving lunch, to allow concentration on the magnificent dinner menu. The couple who own and manage the restaurant had lived above Beth and me in the condominium building. After Beth died, I'd wasted some beautiful afternoons over a carafe of house bordeaux while Donna and Moncef patiently looked on.

Donna greeted me at the entranceway and gave me a table for two in the corner. I'd just ordered a pina colada (without the kick) when Valerie walked in. I recognized her, but I realized I would have been hard put to describe her beforehand.

She stood about five-seven without the heels. She had long, curly-to-the-point-of-kinky auburn hair, a broad, open face, and a toothy smile. That may sound unkind; I don't mean it to be. Let's say she resembled Mary Tyler Moore in her late twenties. Her sundress hinted at small but nicely shaped breasts. The dress also hid most of her legs, which were slightly heavier than I would have recalled but appeared, thankfully, to be shaved. She was burdened with at least four store bags.

From the door, she gave me a wave that was a little too much I'm-meeting-someone-in-a-nice-Boston-restaurant" and therefore not entirely for my benefit. She smiled at and said something to Donna and strode over toward me. I noticed that Donna was giving me a sardonic grin. I also noticed, as Valerie cleared the table before mine, that the bags she carried were from Lord amp; Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue labels out. I stood up.

"John, you've lost weight," she exclaimed.

"And teaching must be fairly profitable," I replied, nodding at her packages.

"Oh," she said with her smile, "this is my annual showboat excursion into the Big City. Usually. I just barter my wares for dry goods at the general store."

She giggled, and so did I. Despite her first appearance, I remembered her as a pretty regular kid, and I decided she hadn't changed.

She declined a cocktail. We ordered a bottle of white wine to be followed by a chicken luncheon for two. She said what she had to about Beth, and I did the same. The waiter brought and poured the wine. We talked about classrooms, the declining birth rate, and teacher lay-offs.

"So how goes the private-eye business?" she asked.

I exaggerated a little. I was relieved that she didn't ask for details.

"I'm sorry," I said finally, "but I don't recall exactly where it is that you're teaching."

A flicker of disappointment at the comers of her eyes? "Um," she said, "Meade, the Lincoln Drive Middle School. And that brings me to what I wanted to see you about. Do you know where Meade is?"

I did. "It's right next to Bonham, isn't it?"

She nodded as the waiter arrived with our chicken.

"If it's particularly gory, why don't we wait until after the meal?" I said.

"Oh, it's not," she replied quickly, and glanced down at the waiter's tray. "But let's not be rude to the chicken." I laughed and motioned to the waiter to begin serving.

The entree was delightful, punctuated by few words. Valerie finished a bit before I did and fixed me with dark, dark brown eyes. "I can't really start at the beginning because I didn't know the family then," she said. "But this past year in class-I teach the eighth grade-I had a boy named Stephen Kinnington in my homeroom and English classes."

"Familiar name," I interjected as I finished the last of my chicken.

"I'm not surprised. His father, Judge Kinnington, was one of the youngest men ever to go on the bench, and his family has sort of, well, ruled Meade since long before I arrived. Anyway, Stephen's mother, Diane Kinnington, killed herself about four years ago by driving her Mercedes off a bridge and into the river. Apparently she boozed it up a lot, so no one knows whether it was accidental or intentional. It hit Stephen pretty hard, as you can imagine. I've talked with his fifth-grade teacher, Miss Pitts, who's retired now, and she said that his mother's 'activities,' as Miss Pitts put it, had appeared to be affecting Stephen for a long time prior to Mrs. Kinnington's actual death. I got the impression from Miss Pitts that by 'activities' something more than simple alcoholism was involved, if you know what I mean."

"I've read of such goings on in France," I said.

Valerie made a face and drove on. "Anyway, by the time I got Stephen this year, he seemed to be perfectly normal, though a little reserved around the other kids. By all tests, he was exceptionally bright. I mean a real brain trust. At the beginning of the year, he would ask me whether I'd read certain books. He had obviously read them, and they were way beyond eighth-grade level. He'd missed a year because of sickness, but he's still only fourteen. I sort of took it on myself to suggest to his father that perhaps Stephen should go to a private school with an accelerated program. But whenever I called his office at the courthouse, he wasn't available, and he never returned my calls."

"Don't you have some sort of parent-teacher conference during the year?"

"Yes, but he didn't appear for the first one I scheduled, and when I called his home that evening, he wasn't in. I was pretty upset, since those conferences are scheduled on my time, so I kind of demanded to speak with someone-the housekeeper answered the phone, you see-and that's how I came to meet Mrs. Kinnington."

"The judge remarried?" I asked.

"Oh, no, his mother-that is, the judge's mother and Stephen's grandmother, Eleanor Kinnington. Everyone calls her Mrs. Kinnington. She's a little tower of power, and she was ripping mad that the judge had skipped the appointment. She asked if it was convenient for me to come there for dinner the next evening to discuss Stephen. I said I'd be happy to come, but the judge wasn't there the next night, either, and Mrs. Kinnington apologized for him through clenched teeth.

"I had a terrific dinner and talk with her, though. She must be nearly eighty and needs hand braces, the kind polio victims use, to walk around. But she's really sharp. Anyway, she said the judge would never allow his son to go to a private school. I got the impression that it was for local political reasons, as if it would seem that the local public schools weren't good enough for a Kinnington. She encouraged me to help Stephen as much as I could. I got the feeling that she thought the wife's death was really a blessing in disguise.

"Anyway, after that I began giving Stephen some separate reading assignments that he really enjoyed. I also got to be good friends, in a formal sort of way, with Mrs. Kinnington, because we'd discuss Stephen from time to time."

Valerie paused for a moment to take a sip of wine. I found her way of running parenthetical thoughts and sentences together to be a little tough to follow, but oddly not tiresome.

"Um, I have to stop drinking this wine or I'll never stay straight enough to finish the story. Anyway, about two weeks ago, Stephen disappeared?

"Kidnapped?"

"Apparently not. It seems that he packed his things one afternoon and, well, left."

"You mean he ran away from home?"

"Well, yes, but not exactly. I mean, no neighbor saw him shuffling along the sidewalk with a stick and stuffed handkerchief over his shoulder. And he packed really thoroughly, as if he expected to go a long way for a long time."

"Has he been heard from?"

She shook her head as she stole another gulp of wine. "No, and the police haven't found a trace in two weeks."

"What police?"

"The local Meade police. Technically, I guess he's just a missing person, since there's no evidence of kidnapping. But there's been no publicity, so no one is on the lookout for him except some agency that the judge hired. You see-"

"Wait a minute. What agency?"

"Oh, somebody and Perkins on State Street."

"Sturney and Perkins, Inc. They're one of the best, Va1."

She smiled. "But they haven't found anything. And I bet they're not nearly as good as you."

I set down my wine glass and fixed her with my best counselor's look. "Val, Sturney and Perkins have a substantial staff. In a specific crime-type case, sometimes one operative is better than an army. That's because he or she can get inside the investigation without causing ripples until he wants to make something happen. But a missing-person case requires a computer-type approach, assembling all the information you can from all sources and trying to blanket the areas he might be in with investigators, police and private."

"But then why haven't there been newspaper articles with pictures of him to help?" she asked, her eyes glittering.

"Maybe the police and Sturney, et alia, feel that publicity would just invite a lot of crank calls or start the wrong people looking for him."

"You mean like criminals the judge put away?" she asked.

"One example," I said.

"But right now he's out there with them anyway. I mean, he's in their element, where he's more likely to be hurt by someone who doesn't even know who he is."

She was becoming upset, so I decided to shift gears a little. "By the way, if his disappearance has been kept so much under wraps, how do you know about his packing and so forth?"

She blinked a few times and played with her nearly empty wine glass. "Well, that's how I came to see you. Stephen didn't come to school for two days-you see, he took off just after final exams. Anyway, I called his house-I'd given up trying to reach his father-and Mrs. Kinnington told me all about it. We've talked almost every day since, and she was so upset last night, because nothing has happened, and I know I don't have the money to pay you, so…"

"So you sort of volunteered to be her cat's-paw and bring me into the case for her."

She looked at me with a smile somewhere between bleakness and mischief. "At least you think it's a case, huh?"

I put on a fake frown, and she laughed. "Oh, please, John, he's such a good, bright little kid. He's had such a tough time so far, with his mother and all, and I'm so afraid for him out there."

"Okay, okay," I said, and motioned to the waiter. "Let's have our salad, and then you call Mrs. Kinnington to set up an appointment."

She smiled and shook her hair and poured herself another glass of wine.

"Today's the judge's day for tennis, so he won't be home until at least seven. She's expecting you at four-f1fteen."