by Linda Barnes
I forgot to reset the alarm and was almost late for lunch with Preston Haslam. Valerie’s dad had left two messages on my answering machine the night before: the first, asking me to get in touch; the second, setting a time and place for a meeting. Compared to his dithery wife, the husband seemed a model of clear thinking.
The only reason I didn’t slumber through lunchtime was Twin Brothers Plumbing, who came by bright, early, and noisy. I crept out of bed, gingerly peeled off my dirty clothes, shrugged into a bathrobe that was suddenly getting a good deal of use, and scurried downstairs to the tiny half-bath.
While attempting to take a shower in the sink, I checked out my contusions. In addition to the aching knee and the red welt on my arm, I had a nicely purpling bruise on my left collarbone and a long scratch on my left thigh. I tried to remember when I last had a tetanus shot. I almost dislocated my shoulder trying to inspect it in the five-by-eight-inch mirror over the sink.
Back in my room, I found a roll of Ace bandage in the bottom drawer under a moth-eaten sweater, wrapped it securely around my knee, dressed in a white silk V-neck shirt and jeans tight enough to hold the bandage in place. I didn’t have the time or patience to deal with my hair.
When I was two years old, I used to wail whenever my mother approached, comb in hand. My hair was too thick and wild to control without pain. As a teenager, I hated curly hair. I used to roll it wet onto giant orange-juice cans and actually sleep like that till it dried, waking with astounding headaches. I even ironed it a few times. I can still see the look of total disbelief in my mother’s eyes as she watched me wielding the iron, my head bent over the ironing board, long red curls splayed out from my nape across its surface, steam rising with the odor of singed hair.
Sleek, straight hair was so damn vital then, at what? fourteen? fifteen? Valerie Haslam’s age.
Now I find my curly hair a blessing. I wash it and give it a shake or two as it dries. It has a will of its own and it suits me: laziness as a fashion statement.
I surveyed myself in the full-length mirror on the back of my closet door and added Aunt Bea’s oval gold locket. I was glad I wasn’t meeting Haslam in a posh Back Bay eatery. Chinatown is more my style.
If I hadn’t had to park the car, I’d have been early. That’s Boston. If you brave the MBTA, you have to allow for the inevitable train breakdown. If you choose your car, you need to search the city for a parking space. It used to be bad, but now, since they’ve done away with half the legal parking spaces, it’s ludicrous. The city’s been converting them to pedestrian malls, or—my favorite—Resident Only Parking.
This is how Resident Only Parking operates: There are, say, nine hundred parking spaces in the South End, so the registry issues thirty-six hundred Resident Parking Permits. Works like a charm.
I deserted my Toyota in a loading zone. It was either that or block a fire hydrant.
Chinatown is a scant block from the Combat Zone and a world away. Limping down Kneeland Street, I passed a butcher shop. Duck carcasses hung in the window, meat smoked to a deep maroon, necks elongated, eyes glistening. A jewelry shop featured a carved jade Buddha surrounded by red silk fans. The air smelled of ginger root, scallions, and five-spice powder. The phone booths had curved pagoda roofs.
The Imperial Tea House is big—two floors and a neon sign. Three leather-jacketed Vietnamese teens came out as I entered. They did not hold the door.
I stepped inside, removed my peacoat with a jolt of shoulder pain, hung it on a twisted wire hanger, and jammed it into an already crowded rack. A man approached.
I wouldn’t have pulled Haslam out of a file labeled “distraught parents,” that’s for sure. At first glance, he looked too young to be the father of a teenager. He was maybe an inch taller than me, with medium brown hair, a small patrician nose, full lips. His face was tanned, and his eyes had nice creases in the corners when he greeted me.
I tried to see a resemblance between him and his daughter. Maybe the eyes. His tortoiseshell glasses made them look smaller than they were.
“Ms. Carlyle?” he said. “Jerry described you. He didn’t think I’d have trouble picking you out.”
I was glad for the “Ms.” I find my prefix situation somewhat ambiguous. I’m not technically Miss Carlyle, having been married. And I’m not Mrs. Anybody, never having taken my ex’s last name as my own. And I don’t think my marital history should be of any concern to people who don’t know me well enough to call me by my first name.
The maître d’ asked if we’d like upstairs or downstairs. Haslam said up. The waiter ushered us to a central table. Haslam asked for a booth in the back. He told the waiter he didn’t have a lot of time, so I waived the menu and we ordered, agreeing quickly on hot and sour soup, spring rolls, Kung Pao chicken, and spicy green beans with pork.
The waiter left, scrawling characters on a yellow pad, and Haslam did a careful survey of the room. It was two-thirds full, the clientele equally split between Oriental and Occidental. At a table to my right a tight-lipped man and his son argued over car insurance.
“I’m sorry,” Haslam said, catching my eye, keeping his voice low. “This seems so—I don’t know—crazy. Going to work, going to lunch, with Valerie missing.” He shook his head and repeated the word. “‘Missing.’ It sounds so stupid, so melodramatic.” He rubbed his forehead with his hands, circling his temples with his fingertips. “I can’t do any good staying home. I know that. This morning I drove around before I went to the office, looking for her. And why would she hang out near my office unless she wants me to find her? And if she wants me to find her, why doesn’t she come home?”
He had a faint nervous tic on the left side of his jaw. On closer inspection he fit pretty neatly into the “distraught” category. He just put up a better front than most.
He extended both hands, stared at them like they belonged to somebody else, and folded them on the table. Then he sucked in a couple of deep breaths. “Excuse me,” he said, his voice calmer. “I’m Preston Haslam. That’s how I meant to start.”
His handshake was firm and cool.
He leaned closer to me, spoke softly and quickly. “I’m grateful to Jerry for hiring you. But now that I’m back—I mean, Jerry’s a kid. I’d like to join him or replace him or whatever. No conflict of interest. We both want you to find my daughter. I’d just like to, well, take over. His family wouldn’t miss the money or anything, but it’s not right. They shouldn’t be paying for my family. Okay?”
“Did you talk this over with Jerry?”
“Yeah. Sure. Can I write you a check or what? Jerry said five hundred for a retainer.” He had his checkbook out on the table. He hunched over it like he was hiding evidence of a drug deal.
“Let’s talk first,” I said to slow him down. I wondered if he always spoke at top speed or if it was another sign of nervousness. “When did you see Jerry?”
“I see him all the time. He’s out in the driveway trying to make his old hulk of a car work. I wave to him in the morning and he’s still there at night.”
“Do you think he could be feeling, uh, guilty about Valerie?”
His hand hesitated over the checkbook. “Well, if he did, that would make two of us,” he said, glancing up abruptly. Beneath the glasses he had soft brown eyes, long-lashed. “Look, you want a drink? I’m going to have a bourbon and water. I don’t usually, but—” He waved and the waiter flew over, took my order for a screwdriver—orange juice for breakfast, right?—and Haslam’s Jim Beam.
“Why should Jerry feel guilty?” Haslam asked, picking up where he’d left off. “He’s a terrific kid, like a brother to Valerie.”
I said, “Why do you feel guilty?”
He finished writing, ripped the check out, and replaced the folder in his breast pocket. “Because I didn’t know,” he said more slowly. “I’ve been in Chicago the past week, on business.”
“Your wife didn’t mention it?”
“My wife is not—well, she’s not in good health. I try to
avoid traveling, but sometimes I have to go.”
Our drinks came with the soup. The screwdriver was strong. Haslam drank his bourbon like a thirsty man.
“What is it you do?” I asked. I’m always interested in the occupations of people who can write five-hundred-dollar checks without looking worried, and pay tuition at places like the Emerson.
“Investments,” he said. “Stockbroking, analysis. A little work with the commodities market. That’s why I had to be in Chicago. It’s mostly plodding stuff, but I’m good at it. I can’t let this business at home get to me at work,” he said as if he was trying to convince himself instead of me. “Oh, hell. I probably should have had you come to the house instead of trying to squeeze this into the workday, but I didn’t want to upset my wife. She’s feeling very guilty, very depressed. I thought maybe if I handled it here … I don’t know.…”
I took another sip of my drink. My interrogation technique can be summed up in three words: Let them talk.
While he talked I watched. He had a trick of fiddling with his glasses, sliding them up and down his nose. His navy suit was expensive, probably custom tailored. He seemed intense, but not worried. I imagine a worried-looking stockbroker would not last long. The glasses gave him a solid, respectable look. Intellectual, but jovial. Good eyes. Long fingers; buffed, manicured nails. Onyx cuff links.
“Do you know why your daughter ran away?” I asked when he seemed to run out of chatter about his job and his wife and how hard this had been on her.
“No idea,” he said quickly. Then he hesitated, as if the first had been a knee-jerk response and not what the situation required. He said, “I don’t know. Because she wants more attention, I guess. My wife, well, she has health problems. Sometimes, I don’t know, I think she’s almost jealous of the girls. And she’s not strong. She has to rest a lot. I suppose she doesn’t really take good care of any of us. Valerie had to take on a lot of responsibility early.”
“When did you see her last?”
“What’s today? Thursday? A week ago Tuesday. At night. Watching TV in her room. My wife saw her the next morning.”
“And hasn’t seen her since, Mr. Haslam—”
“Pres, call me Pres, okay?”
“Your daughter’s been gone for over a week. Why did it take your wife so long to—”
“Look, she thought Valerie was with her friends, okay? Sherri, that’s my little one, said Valerie was staying with a friend at school, and maybe she did for a few days. Maybe she’s just with a different friend now.”
“Then there wasn’t any argument at home, right before she took off?”
“Mathilde says there was no argument. She doesn’t argue. And listen, what’s important here is finding Valerie, making sure she doesn’t get hurt out there. Later, when she’s home, we’ll deal with whatever upset her so much. You just find her. All this question-and-answer stuff isn’t going to help—”
“Mr. Haslam,” I said very quietly, “if you want somebody to find your daughter and not ask questions, you’d better get yourself a bloodhound and give him a shoe to sniff. Investigators ask questions. I’ve already asked Jerry a few. He doesn’t think Valerie ran away. If she didn’t, then we have to consider other possibilities. Have you called the police?”
“No,” he said. “I, uh, I’d rather not—”
“Your daughter has been gone over a week—”
“I’d rather not,” he repeated.
“She’s only fourteen years old, Mr. Haslam—”
“Listen,” he said flatly. “This isn’t the first time.” He swallowed hard, avoiding my eyes, slicing his spring roll into tiny bits. “She’s run away before.”
“But Jerry said—”
“Maybe Jerry doesn’t know that much about Valerie,” he said. “She presents herself in different lights. She’s a good little actress, my Valerie.”
“She’s run away more than once?”
“Twice before,” he said. “The first time she came home on her own. Mathilde thought she might do it again. So she waited. She hoped. You can understand that.”
“And the other time—”
He pushed a piece of spring roll around his plate. “The police picked her up.”
“In the Combat Zone?”
“How did you—?”
Maybe Jerry knew more than Haslam gave him credit for.
“A lot of kids wind up there,” I said.
He rubbed his hand across his forehead like he was trying to ease a headache. The tic in his jaw was more pronounced. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered under his breath, “I should have pulled her out of that school.”
“The Emerson?”
“Everybody said to get her out of public school. I mean, to listen to people, public schools are hotbeds of drugs and sex and God knows what else. The Emerson is expensive, but they’re supposed to take care of the kids. Good care, not expose them to weirdos and perverts.”
The waiter brought more food so we were forced into silence. As soon as he left, I prompted Haslam, repeating what he’d said. “Weirdos and perverts?” They weren’t words I associated with the Emerson.
He started on the Kung Pao chicken with his knife and fork. I used chopsticks.
“The kids at the Emerson,” he said after a swallow, “they look okay. They dress well and they’ve got good teeth. Money. But they’re a fast crowd. And Val tries to keep up. I mean, we’re not that rich. We’re well off, don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving you some wrong-side-of-the-tracks story here. But my dad stocked shelves at a grocery store. I wasn’t born to money. I had to work for what I got, and that’s not exactly respected at the Emerson. Val always wants to show that she’s as good as any of them. And by good, I mean rich.”
“You said ‘weirdos and perverts.’ You have anybody in mind?”
“I should have yanked her out of there. But her mother likes the place. It’s something, to say your kid’s at the Emerson. I mean, even at the office—”
“Weirdos and perverts?” I repeated.
He pushed his plate away. He’d eaten maybe two forkfuls. “Her drama teacher. That’s what they call the son of a bitch, a drama teacher.”
“Geoffrey Reardon?”
“You know the name.”
“I went to the school yesterday.”
“I thought the man might be notorious in law-and-order circles,” he said.
“Not that I know.”
“She’s always staying after school with him.”
“Just the two of them?”
“The drama club. She says.”
“That doesn’t seem so bad.”
Haslam glanced at the man discussing auto insurance at the next table as if he might be an undercover FBI agent, and lowered his voice to little more than a whisper. “This may sound dumb—paranoid, even—but that man has got some kind of hold over his students, over my daughter at least. I don’t know what he does with them, but it’s, well, it’s not normal. It’s like she was a Hare Krishna or a Moonie or something. She can’t come home. She’s got rehearsals every day, but there never seems to be a goddamn performance. And she’s got extra sessions and mood work and preening in front of mirrors and emoting and sensationalizing every tiny thing in her life.”
“Sounds like what a lot of teenagers do anyway,” I said.
“He encourages them. The girls. And the pretty boys. He takes photos.”
“And you suspect something a little more racy than your old-fashioned drama club?”
“I do.”
“But how can you blame Reardon when you say she’s run off before?”
“There’s always a trigger.”
“What was it last time?”
“A fight with a teacher. Valerie likes to be right.”
I pursued a slippery green bean around the plate with my chopsticks. “She sounds like a difficult child,” I said.
He grimaced. “You have kids?”
I thought of Paolina in Bogota. “No,” I said.
&nbs
p; “Sometimes Valerie’s difficult. Sometimes she’s, well, terrific. Perfect. I hate the thought of her out there somewhere, alone.…” He lowered his eyes to the tabletop. He wasn’t eating, but his hand stayed clenched around his fork.
“I went to see Reardon yesterday,” I said.
“What did he say?” Haslam asked sharply.
“He wasn’t in.”
“The man’s nothing but an actor.”
“You’ve met him.”
“The Emerson prides itself on close parent-teacher contact.” Haslam didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Whenever I see him he gives me all this soothing bullshit about adolescent rebellion. I think the kids rebel just so he’ll approve of them. The man is attractive. The girls chase him. They’ve all got crushes on him.”
“Valerie?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Look, just find my daughter. Whatever you need, I’ll cooperate. Mathilde reads the papers, all the sensational stuff about rapes and murders—and, well, she’s hysterical. That’s not too strong a word for it. She has a vivid imagination, and it’s taking over—”
Haslam realized that his voice was getting louder. The insurance advocate was giving him the eye. He took a deep breath and straightened his tie.
“What did Valerie take with her?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you or your wife check her room? Is a suitcase missing?”
“She had her backpack when she left for school. She has so many clothes, I can’t tell if anything’s gone. I mean, she’d borrow things from other girls at school and lend things. She has an allowance, a generous allowance, so she can choose her own clothes.”
“Does she have money other than her allowance?”
“She has a savings account. I don’t know if she took her passbook. I’ll check on that. I should have done it this morning.”
“One more thing,” I said. “Your daughter—does she use drugs?”
“No,” he said loudly. Then he shook his head. “Hell,” he muttered, “not that I know. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
