“That’s rather uppity, Miss Randall,” she said.
“Oh, I can be much more uppity than this, Mrs. Patton.”
She was motionless for a moment and then turned to her husband.
“I’m afraid she won’t do, Brock.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Betty. Maybe you could stop being a bitch for a minute.”
Again Betty was motionless. Then she put her cup and saucer on the coffee table, and rose effortlessly, the way a dancer might, and walked from the room without another word. I watched her husband watch her go. There was nothing in his look that told me what he felt about her. Maybe that was what he felt about her.
“Don’t mind Betty,” he said finally. “She can be difficult.”
“I would imagine,” I said.
He smiled. “She’d have preferred someone less attractive.”
“I’m trying,” I said.
He smiled widely. “And failing, may I say.”
I nodded. “Your daughter’s name is Millicent?”
“Yes—Millie.”
“When did she disappear?”
“She hasn’t disappeared,” Patton said. “She’s run off.”
“When did she run off?”
“Ah, today is Wednesday,” he leaned forward and looked at the calendar on his desk. “She went not this past Monday, but, ah, a week ago Monday.”
“Ten days?” I said.
“Yes. I know it seems long, but, well, we weren’t too worried at first.”
“She’s done this before,” I said.
“Well, in a sense, that is, she’s gone off to stay with a friend for a couple of days.”
“Without telling you.”
“You know how rebellious teenagers are,” he said.
“I’m not judging your daughter or you, Mr. Patton. I’m trying to find a place to start.”
“I have a picture,” he said.
He took a manila envelope out of his desk drawer, and handed it across to me. I took the picture out and looked at it. It was a good picture, not one of those bright-colored school photos in the cardboard folders that I used to bring home every year. It showed a pretty girl, perhaps fifteen, with straight blond hair and her mother’s even features. There was no sign of life in the picture. Her eyes were blank. She seemed to be wearing her face like a mask.
“Pretty, isn’t she,” he said.
“Yes. This a good likeness?”
“Of course, why do you ask?”
“Well, just that sometimes people look a little more, ah, relaxed in real life, than they do in studio photographs.”
“That’s a good likeness of Millie,” he said.
“May I keep this?”
“Of course.”
“You know what she was wearing when she left?”
“No, I’m sorry, she had so many clothes.”
“Take anything with her?”
He shook his head, with that false helplessness men like to adopt when talking about women.
“And have you any suggestion where I should start?”
“You might ask at the school?”
“Which is?”
“Pinkett School,” he said. “In Belmont. The headmistress is Pauline Plum.”
Pauline Plum. From Pinkett, How darling.
CHAPTER 3
“What was he like?” Julie said.
Behind Julie, the light was slanting into my loft from the South Boston waterfront. It came in through the big window at the east end, and splashed over my easel, making an elongated Ichabod Crane shadow on the floor. Just out of the shadow, in the warmest part of the sunlight, my bull terrier, Rosie, was lying on her back with her feet in the air and her head lolled over so she could keep an almond-shaped eye on our breakfast.
“Tall, cute little crow’s-feet around the eyes,” I said. “Great hair.”
“Nice?”
“A little impressed with himself.”
“But you liked him?”
“Not much,” I said.
Julie took a bite of her sesame seed bagel and a sip of her coffee.
“Money?”
“It would seem so. Huge house, servants, a croquet lawn, trap shooting, river view.”
“In South Natick?”
“There’s still land left there,” I said. “This is a very big property.”
Rosie got up and came over and sat the way bull terriers do with her tail balancing the back of her and her butt several inches from the ground. She looked steadily at me now, her narrow black eyes implacable in their desire for a bite. I broke off a piece of bagel and handed it to her.
“How about the wife?”
I had a mouthful of coffee and couldn’t answer so I just shook my head.
“We don’t like the wife,” Julie said.
I swallowed the coffee.
“No, we don’t,” I said. “Arrogant, impeccable, condescending.”
“God, I hate impeccable,” Julie said. “They get along?”
“Maybe not. I almost had the sense she was jealous of me.”
“Oh ho,” Julie said. “He seem interested in you?”
“He might have been.”
“Well, that’s not so bad. Tall, crinkly, rich, and interested.”
“And married.”
“That doesn’t have to be an obstacle,” Julie said.
“It is to you.”
“Well yes, but Michael and I get along,” Julie said. “And even if I wanted to cheat I’d have to get a babysitter.”
Julie was always eager for me to have an affair, I think, so she could hear about it afterward.
“How is life among the rug rats?” I said.
“Mikey has discovered that if he doesn’t eat I go crazy.”
“It’s good to have a resourceful kid.”
“The little bastard won’t eat anything but macaroni with butter on it.”
“So?”
“So it’s not balanced.”
“Oh hell,” I said. “People live quite well on a lot worse.”
“He needs protein and vegetables.”
“Maybe he sneaks some when you’re not looking. You’re the psychiatric social worker,” I said. “What would you say to someone about that?”
“That it’s one of the few areas where he can exercise control,” Julie said. “I can’t force him to eat.”
I nodded encouragingly.
“Like toilet training,” Julie said.
“Didn’t you have trouble toilet-training him?” I said.
“So what do I tell the pediatrician when she tells me he’s malnourished.”
“Tell her he’ll get over it,” I said.
“Oh sure. It’s easy . . . you haven’t got any children.”
“All I did was ask a couple of questions. Besides, I have Rosie.”
“Whom you spoil horrendously.”
“So?” I said. “Your point?”
Julie finished her sandwich. “I can’t wait,” she started.
And I finished for her, “Until you have kids!”
We both laughed.
“The mother’s curse,” Julie said. “How old is this girl you’re looking for?”
“Fifteen,” I said.
We were through breakfast and putting the dishes into the dishwasher.
“Pretty?”
“Come on down to the office,” I said, “I’ll show you her picture.”
The kitchen was in the middle of the loft. Behind it was my bedroom. The east end was where I painted. The west end was my office. Julie and I stood near my desk looking down at the picture of Millicent Patton. Rosie followed us and flopped down behind me. I knew she
was annoyed. She never understood why I couldn’t just stay still near where she was sleeping.
“Well, at least she doesn’t have purple hair and a ring in her nose,” Julie said.
“At least not in the picture,” I said.
“If things are good at home,” Julie said, “kids don’t run away.”
“True,” I said. “But what defines bad at home will vary a lot from kid to kid.”
“So where will you start looking for this little girl?” Julie said.
“Do the easy things first,” I said. “Call the local police to see if they’ve picked up a juvenile that might be Millicent or found any unidentified bodies that might be Millicent.”
Julie shook her head as if to make the thought go away.
“Have you done that?”
“Yes. No one fits.”
“Good. Now what?”
“Where do young girls usually end up when they run away from home?”
“Prostitution,” Julie said.
I nodded.
“You say that to her parents?”
“No.”
“What if you find her and she doesn’t want to leave?”
“I’ll urge her,” I said.
“What if there’s a pimp?”
“There’s almost always a pimp,” I said.
“Maybe you should ask Richie to go with you.”
“I can’t do this work if I have to ask my ex-husband to protect me.”
In the quiet I could hear some of the trucks grinding along Congress Street in low gear as they hauled stuff to or from the new tunnel site.
“I have never understood why you do this work, anyway,” Julie said.
“I know,” I said.
“Maybe if you gave me a reasonable explanation . . .”
“It pays for my painting.”
“Shouldn’t the painting pay for itself?” Julie said.
“Day at a time,” I said. “It also pays for my MFA.”
“Which you’ve been pursuing since I was childless.”
“Night at a time,” I said.
“Sunny,” she said. “I’ve known you all my life and I don’t understand you.”
“At least you know it,” I said.
Julie looked at her watch.
“My God,” she said, “I’m late, late. I love you, babe, you know that.”
“I love you, too, Jule.”
We hugged. She left. I stared at Millicent’s picture for a while. Then I put Rosie in the car and went out to visit the Pinkett School.
CHAPTER 4
Pauline Plum from Pinkett was everything the name promised. She was tall and slim and flutie with a prominent nose and the kind of clenched-molar WASP drawl that girls used to acquire at Smith and Mount Holyoke. She was wearing one of those hideous print prairie dresses that are equally attractive on girls, women, and cattle. She made a point to introduce herself as Miss Plum.
We talked in her office, on the first floor of the Pinkett School’s white clapboard main building, me in a maple captain’s chair with a small plaid cushion on it, Miss Plum sitting straight in her high-backed leather swivel, with her feet on the floor and her hands folded before her on the desktop.
“Millicent Patton is not a very industrious student,” she said.
“How so?”
“She is bright enough, at least she seems so. But she also seemed to lack any motivation.”
“Bad grades?”
“Yes, but more than that. She isn’t active in school affairs. She doesn’t play a sport. She is not on the yearbook staff, she has no extracurricular activities on her transcript.”
“She is not a resident,” I said.
“No, we are not a resident school.”
“Any special friends here?”
“Sadly, none that I know of.”
“No friends that she might have gone to visit without telling her parents?”
“None.”
“Could she have friends you don’t know about?” I said.
“Possibly,” Miss Plum said. “But I keep a close eye on my charges, and after you called I made it a point to refamiliarize myself with Millicent and her situation.”
“No boyfriends?”
“This is a girls’ school.”
“Doesn’t mean she might not have a boyfriend,” I said.
“We feel dating is better left to later years,” Miss Plum said. “We try to focus our girls on growing into accomplished young ladies.”
“And I’ll bet you do a hell of a job,” I said.
Miss Plum frowned. Accomplished young ladies did not speak that way.
“Our graduates usually continue their education at the best schools,” she said.
“Where do you suppose Millicent Patton is headed?”
“I fear that perhaps a public junior college would be her only option,” Miss Plum said.
“Eek,” I said.
“Did you go to college, Miss Randall?”
“Yes.”
I knew Miss Plum was dying to know where, but I was too perverse to tell her, and she was too well-bred to ask. I’d known a lot of Miss Plums, people who couldn’t form an opinion of you until they knew where you went to college, and what your father or husband did for a living, and where you grew up. I was sure in Miss Plum’s world that no accomplished young lady became a private eye.
“So what was wrong with Millicent Patton?” I said. “Why didn’t she fit in? Why is she the one that won’t go to a good school and has no friends and might end up, God forbid, in a public junior college?”
“As I say, she is unmotivated.”
“That’s not really an answer,” I said. “That is just another way of describing the problem.”
“What answer would you prefer, Miss Randall?”
“Why was she unmotivated?”
“I can’t say. I can tell you that the failure is not at Pinkett. We have tried every possible way to encourage her participation in the educational experience here.”
“Do you know her parents?” I said.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“And what do you think of them?” I said.
“I am not here to render an appraisal of Mr. and Mrs. Patton,” she said.
“Do you think her home environment has something to do with her lack of motivation?”
Miss Plum didn’t like this. No accomplished woman of any age running an exclusive girls’ school talked about the parents of her students, especially if they were rich and influential and might make a bequest. On the other hand, if there wasn’t a problem at home, then the finger of disapproval pointed back at Pinkett.
“Let me prime the pump here,” I said. “I’ve talked with Millicent’s parents. They seem very, ah, contrived. As if they were performing life rather than living it.”
Miss Plum didn’t say anything.
“They did not seem to get along very well with each other in my short visit.”
Miss Plum smiled a little uneasily.
“Millicent was gone for ten days before they took steps to find her.”
“Have they gone to the police?” Miss Plum said.
“No.”
“Wouldn’t that be the, ah, usual first step?”
“Yes.”
“Why did they hire you instead?”
“They mentioned something about discretion,” I said.
“Wealthy people often value that,” Miss Plum said.
“So do poor people,” I said. “But they can’t always afford it. What do you suppose they wanted me to be discreet about?”
“Why, I assume, Millicent’s disappear
ance.”
“Because it’s so shameful?”
“I don’t know. Miss Randall, these people are your employers.”
“Doesn’t exempt them,” I said. “This shouldn’t be adversarial, Miss Plum. You must want Millicent found.”
She was silent again, her head barely nodding, as she looked at her folded hands. Then she raised her eyes.
“I am,” she said, “a traditionalist in education. I believe in Latin, grammar, and decorum. I believe in math and repetition and discipline. I am not much taken with theories about self-worth and maladjustment.”
I nodded.
“But I believe two things about Millicent Patton. I believe that she has never been loved. And I believe that sometime this year something happened. Her grades and her behavior, never admirable, have declined precipitously in the last two marking periods.”
“You don’t know what that thing might have been?”
“No.”
“You think her parents don’t care about her?”
Pauline Plum took in as much air as she could and let it out slowly in a long sigh, and then fortified by the extra oxygen, she said, “That is correct.”
I nodded.
“We agree,” I said.
“But they have hired you to find her.”
“Decorum?” I said.
Miss Plum shook her head. She had already gone further than she wished.
“I really have a school to run, Ms. Randall.”
“Or maybe she ran away for a reason and they don’t want the reason known,” I said.
Miss Plum’s eyes widened with alarm. She was far too accomplished to discuss anything like that with a woman who, for all she knew, might have gone to a public junior college. She stood up.
“I hope you’ll excuse me,” she said.
I said I would and she showed me out.
CHAPTER 5
It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Rosie and I had been to seven shelters. The eighth was the basement of a dingy Catholic church on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain. We were talking to Sister Mary John. Actually I was doing most of the talking. Rosie was working on Sister to rub her belly. Sister Mary John was apparently not a dog person. She paid no attention to Rosie. I thought about mentioning St. Francis of Assisi, but decided it wouldn’t help me find Millicent Patton, which was what I’d been hired for.
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