Painted Ladies

55

I fell in beside Missy Minor as she walked near the student union.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said.

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “You have so much you don’t want me to know.”

She stopped walking and turned toward me.

“What’s that mean?” she said.

It had stopped snowing during the night. But it was kind of cold, and the wind tossed the new snow around in small white eddies.

“I’ll explain if we can get out of the cold,” I said. “Buy you breakfast?”

“I had breakfast,” she said.

“No reason you can’t have another one,” I said.

“I’ll have coffee,” she said.

We went into the student union and got a table in the far corner of the cafeteria. At mid-morning, the place was half empty. I had milk and sugar in my coffee. She drank hers black.

“I know that your father is Ariel Herzberg and that you and he see one another,” I said.

“My mother tell you that?”

“I’ve talked with your mother,” I said. “But I actually saw you and him together in the library.”

“You’ve been spying on me,” she said.

“I have.”

“Why,” she said. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

“Wish I could,” I said. “But you are alleged to have been intimate with a murder victim, and the man who killed him appears to be your father.”

“You’re disgusting,” she said.

“But only a little,” I said. “You involved at all with the foundation?”

“I’m not involved with anything,” she said. “I hate you.”

Even for nineteen, she was young.

“Must be hard,” I said. “No father for sixteen years and all of a sudden a father. What’s that like?”

“It’s a bitch, is what it’s like,” she said. “I mean, for sixteen years my mother lied through her teeth that he was dead. You know, she never even told me he sent money. You know that they were never married?”

“She told you they were?”

“Yeah, and that he died after I was conceived,” she said. “Fact is, for crissake, she was shacking up with some guy who had no intention of marrying her, and when she got knocked up, he left.”

“Tough on her, I guess,” I said.

“She wanted him to marry her? There’s a laugh. He didn’t love her. He was just enjoying a little joyride, you know?”

“But he came back,” I said.

“He came back for me,” she said. “He said he always wanted to but she wouldn’t let him.”

“Why do you suppose she did that?” I said.

“Jealousy,” she said. “She knew if he was in my life I’d love him, and she didn’t want that.”

“Wow,” I said. “She was pretty mean, huh?”

Nothing like sowing a little family strife for stirring up information.

“Awful,” Missy said. “But Daddy is great. He got me into Walford. He introduced me to Ashton, Professor Prince; he’s been great.”

“Who pays the tuition?” I said.

“She does. She can afford it, already had the money put aside. Besides, she’s got a good job.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I imagine the foundation doesn’t pay too much.”

“God, no. Daddy’s not interested in money.”

“What does the foundation do?” I said.

She opened her mouth and closed it. I could almost read her face. This way danger lay.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“That’s surprising,” I said. “How close you are.”

“He loves me, and I love him,” she said. “That’s all anyone needs to know.”

“’Cept me,” I said. “I need to know more.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell you anything,” she said.

She began to cry and stood suddenly and walked away, almost running. In the detective business, charm never fails.