Found: One Marriage

by Laura Parker

  “That’s the gospel truth,” Bill McCrea responded. “Fixed it so the boy’s spoiled, moody, thinks he should have his own way.”

  Joe detected tension between the pair but solving family differences wasn’t part of his job description. He had found the best way to operate in such an atmosphere was to be matter-of-fact. He pulled out a small notepad and pen. “What sort of things have you and Lacey argued about recently, Mr. McCrea?”

  McCrea waved a hand dismissively. “Things every father and son do.”

  “He means there wasn’t much they didn’t fight about,” Mrs. McCrea added softly.

  “The last fight?” Joe prompted.

  “Don’t remember,” McCrea muttered.

  “The last one began when my husband told Lacey he was going to enroll him in a military academy, the one down near Harlingen, next fall,” Mrs. McCrea offered helpfully.

  “Time he became a man.” McCrea scowled at Joe as if he expected an argument. “Military school will shape him up before it’s too late.”

  The combative tone in McCrea’s voice perked up Joe’s investigative senses. “Is there a reason why you’re worried about Lacey’s ability to measure up as a man?”

  “I certainly don’t think so,” Mrs. McCrea said in a snippy voice. Her husband slanted a quelling look her way but she bristled under it, twitching her shoulders in annoyance. “I think you should tell him just how old-fashioned you are.”

  “Now, Ella, we agreed —”

  “Don’t ‘Now, Ella’ me!” Mrs. McCrea turned a sweet smile on Joe. “My husband thinks Lacey’s been tainted by certain influences.”

  Joe offered her a sympathetic look. As a cop, he’d become accustomed to shocking revelations of every sordid sort. “What sort of influences?”

  “Dancing lessons,” Bill McCrea muttered under his breath. “The blame thing is,” he went on in a louder voice, “the junior high football coach encouraged it. Said it would make him a better quarterback. Only I never heard of Roger Stauback or Troy Aikman taking dancing lessons.”

  Joe curbed his urge to smile. “It’s become pretty common, Mr. McCrea, for male athletes to take up dancing as a method of improving their flexibility and balance. Linebacker Rosie Grier broke the ice back in the seventies by taking up ballet. Then he took up knitting. Said it was more relaxing than meditation.”

  McCrea frowned at Joe. “That was easy for him, he’d already proved himself a man. By the way, what’s Grier doing these days?”

  “He’s now a minister.”

  McCrea snorted then glared at his wife. “You see? Dancing turns a man’s thoughts away from the field of conflict. No son of mine is going to be a dancer.”

  Joe’s restraint slipped and a smile appeared. “Is that what you fought about? Lacey wanted to take dancing lessons?”

  “Took ’em.” McCrea’s face was set in the age-old lines of parental disapproval. “His mother thought he should have them if he wanted them. Drove him into Dallas every Saturday the first year.”

  “I did the same for the girls,” Mrs. McCrea maintained.

  “Was Lacey ashamed for it to be known that he was taking these lessons?”

  “Hell, no!” McCrea exploded. “Once he turned sixteen and got his driver’s license, he spent more hours after school in Dallas than here. Dam—blamed if he didn’t start boasting about the classes to his teammates. Claimed they were a quick and easy way to meet city girls. Lots of would-be models and cheerleaders in Dallas dancing classes.”

  “So Lacey likes girls,” Joe said lightly, mentally scratching off another possible motive for the boy to feel compelled to leave home.

  McCrea snorted. “That was never the issue. The trouble is, he wants to drop football and take up dancing full-time. He was going to make the state allstar team this year, practically guaranteed. The coach came to see me almost weeping because Lacey had told him he wasn’t going to play. Might as well have aimed a .45 between my eyes, right?”

  Joe didn’t doubt the coach’s distress. He hadn’t been back in Texas fifteen minutes before he was reminded that football was taken just about as seriously as religion in this state.

  “My husband is a traditional man, Mr. Guinn,” Mrs. McCrea added graciously. “The thought of his son performing on stage is anathema to him.”

  “I hate it!” McCrea concurred. “You ever see a man in dancing tights? Indecent doesn’t begin to cover it. Depraved, is more like. Standing on the stage being ogled at like a centerfold. A man should have more self-respect!”

  Joe turned his attention to Mrs. McCrea. “Is Lacey good?”

  “A natural,” she answered with motherly pride. “He’s received offers from schools, even scholarships. He danced this past winter in a Dallas-based production of The Nutcracker. He was the Mouse King.”

  “See what I mean?” McCrea cut in. “Mouse King. Lord love us! A mouse!”

  “Lacey’s been accepted at the Dallas Magnet School for the Performing Arts next fall,” Mrs. McCrea explained with an injured glance at her spouse. “He disappeared the morning after my husband refused to allow him to accept.”

  “I refused to encourage the boy on the wrong path.” McCrea turned to his wife. “Football is good exercise, tests a man’s courage, his resolve. It teaches him to be a team player, to take his lumps without complaining. It shows him how to accept victory and loss. What does dancing teach?”

  “Poise, self-confidence and self-expression,” his wife promptly answered. “You had no problem with our daughters dancing in talent shows or participating in drill team.”

  “But did I encourage a single one of my girls to think of it as a career? He—heck no! Told ’em, you got to go to college, get a real education and then a real job.” He turned to Joe. “I raised a teacher, a junior high school counselor, and a businesswoman.”

  “A clothes designer,” his wife amended. “Charlotte Designs is a fashion firm.”

  “Charlotte owns her firm.” McCrea’s expression turned pugnacious. “That makes her a businesswoman in my books.”

  Mrs. McCrea offered Joe a little helpless gesture with her hands, as if she had participated in this conversation countless and fruitless times before. “As you may have gathered by now, Mr. Guinn, this is the source of our family conflict. Lacey ran away after my husband refused to allow him to change schools in order to pursue a career as a performer. It’s his dream.”

  “His delusion, you mean.” McCrea shook his head. “Boy thinks he’s going to be the next Tommy Tune.”

  “Mr. Tune is a Texan, you know,” Mrs. McCrea said confidentially to Joe. “He’s danced on Broadway.”

  “I don’t care if he’s danced for the president,” McCrea thundered at his wife, who nodded in the affirmative to Joe. “No son of mine is gonna be a dancer!”

  Mrs. McCrea’s face crumpled a little and for the first time Joe realized she was older that her deceptively taut skin made her seem. “I think the best solution is to wait for Lacey to return.” She didn’t look at either man as she said, “I’m certain he will be back on his own in a few days.”

  “What makes you think that, Mrs. McCrea?”

  Joe noted that this time she didn’t look at him as she spoke. “I just know. Lacey is a sensible boy.” She sighed elaborately. “Once he’s had a chance to think about things he’ll come home, if only for my sake.”

  For a woman whose husband claimed she had required sedation the day before, Mrs. McCrea seemed amazingly calm, Joe noted. Maybe too calm. He was getting vibes that said she knew something her husband did not.

  He flipped over to a clean page of his notepad. “I’d like the name of Lacey’s dancing instructor and a list of the students he seems closest to.”

  “Oh no, I can’t do that.” She turned in appeal to her husband. “Billy, think what an embarrassment that would be if Mr. Guinn begins interrogating Lacey’s friends? It will seem that we’ve driven out our only son.”

  “I’d be a little more subtle, Mrs. McCrea. You h
ave no reason to be alarmed.”

  Joe saw her eyes narrow as if in calculation though she turned a smile on him. In that smile he saw a match for McCrea’s bluster. When it came down to a real match between the McCreas, he doubted she lost many arguments. “I’m perfectly sure you’re a fine detective, Mr. Guinn—may I call you Joe?—or else my husband wouldn’t have approached you. But I simply couldn’t endure it if my husband or my son were publicly embarrassed by what is essentially a private matter. Mr. McCrea is about to seek another term in the state senate, as you well know. He cannot afford even the teeniest, tiniest breath of scandal.”

  Joe saw his bank account head toward tilt as the job slipped away. He rose to his feet. “Whatever you say, Mrs. McCrea.”

  “What about what I want?” Mr. McCrea planted himself squarely before Joe. “I hired you, not Ella. I don’t want a scandal, either. That’s why I want you to find Lacey. Now. Today.”

  Joe glanced between the couple. “Can you give me the information I need, Mr. McCrea?”

  “I can get the name of the school. Never went there myself but I signed enough checks.” He grinned. “You’re an investigator. Should be able to dig up the rest. I’ll just check my bank receipts for the name.”

  When her husband had left the room on his errand, Mrs. McCrea turned an appealing smile on Joe. “You must think me a doting mother, Joe, for that is exactly what I am. Lacey is a good boy. He and his father naturally have their differences. What fathers and sons don’t? So, since I can’t convince my husband not to pursue this matter, I must appeal to your sense of chivalry.”

  She rose and came toward him, her eyes wide with kind appeal but Joe felt the web being spun about him. It was obvious she was just as accustomed as her husband to getting her own way.

  “Please, Joe, if you should find Lacey before he voluntarily returns, promise me you’ll call me first if you discover anything...sensitive about his circumstance.” She lay a hand lightly on his forearm. “Promise me.”

  Joe looked into her eyes and the feeling inside him resolved into certainty. She was withholding secrets. He suspected she was covering for her son. “Is there something you want to tell me, Mrs. McCrea?”

  “I—Oh, here’s Bill.” She sounded a bit flustered but her husband did not seem to notice.

  McCrea strode across the plush cream carpet and thrust two pieces of paper at Joe. “Here’s the name, address and phone number of the dance school. The check is your retainer. I expect you to get on up to Dallas and get started today.”

  Joe glanced at the check and in his mind’s eye saw not only a stack of bills marked Paid but a new fishing reel in his future. “Thanks, Mr. McCrea.”

  “I’ll pick up all expenses in Dallas, of course.”

  Joe folded both pieces of papers into his breast pocket. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to handle this my way. Before I head for Dallas, I need to settle another matter.”

  “What sort of matter? You working another job? Cancel it. I’ll make up the difference in your salary. I want Lacey back before anybody realizes he’s gone.”

  “The matter is personal and it cannot wait.”

  The two men eyed one another for several seconds before McCrea shrugged.

  Joe knew better than to glance at McCrea’s wife as he said, “I’ve a feeling Lacey’s safe enough. It may be just a matter of time before he returns of his own volition.”

  “Exactly!” Ella McCrea concurred.

  “Or he could have gotten himself into deep trouble.” McCrea rocked back on his heels. “Ella doesn’t like unpleasantness but I can face facts. I’m a wealthy man. A boy alone like that, without protection, he could be kidnapped for ransom.”

  Joe smiled as Ella rolled her eyes behind her husband’s back. “You have no reason to suspect that.”

  McCrea shrugged. “I had no reason to suspect the boy would light out like he did. Packed a bag and everything.”

  Joe’s gaze cut to Mrs. McCrea. “He packed a bag? May I see Lacey’s room?”

  A few minutes later, Joe was once again at the front door of the McCrea homestead, as McCrea referred to his ranch house of palatial dimensions. The tour of Lacey’s room had been more enlightening than he was willing to divulge to his client.

  Runaways seldom took much with them. There were conspicuous vacancies in Lacey’s closet and chest of drawers. For instance, not one piece of his dancing attire was there, nor could he find an address book. A dozen CDs were missing from the rack. Lacey’s parents volunteered that his CD player and laptop computer were also missing. So then, Lacey had not just tossed a couple of T-shirts and jeans into a backpack and stalked out in a huff. No, a young man that burdened by that many belongings probably had a destination in mind before he even left home. In fact, he’d packed as if he were going to camp, or summer school.

  Joe hadn’t considered himself to be pilfering when he swiped one of the summer dance school brochures he found tucked in the back of a drawer in Lacey’s desk. He needed this paycheck. If it meant pursuing the obvious, he would.

  “I just know you will do what’s right, what’s best for all,” Ella McCrea called after him.

  “What’s best for all,” Joe muttered as he stepped out into the bright sunlight of midmorning. He was being asked to make a hell of a lot of ethical decisions this day, and it wasn’t even noon.

  Halle had left Shipmann.

  The divorce became final just a few weeks ago, Sarah had continued. We all just knew after the first month that it wasn’t going to work out between them.

  Joe briefly closed his eyes, hoping he hadn’t struck a false note with Sarah when he’d responded.

  So, Halle and Dan couldn’t stick it out. Any reason in particular?

  Other than you, you mean?

  Right, Sarah, that’s a cheap shot. I wasn’t even in the state.

  Come on, Joe. Once you weren’t so modest. Halle told me about the time near the end of your marriage when you two were fighting constantly and you told her that you had gotten into her blood like a virus and she was never going to recover.

  I was wrong. She found the cure. It’s called divorce.

  Don’t fool yourself. Daniel never stood a chance. Not after you, Joe. Halle just never got over you.

  Joe swung open the door of his truck and climbed in.

  Sarah’s words had floored him. Yet he couldn’t think of a single reason why Sarah would lie to him. After all, she had sided with all Halle’s society friends in thinking that he was little more than a retro Neanderthal dressed in NYPD blue. She had no reason to want to make him feel better now.

  To his face Halle’s friends had been condescending to the point of snobbery. Behind his back they told her that they understood the attraction—his macho job and working-class charisma were proof positive that he had more testosterone than brains. Sleep with him by all means but then forget him.

  Joe stuck his key in the ignition but didn’t start the engine.

  Had they thought Halle wouldn’t repeat their remarks or had her friends hoped their insults would run him off? Halle hadn’t understood the depth of his hurt when she told him some of the remarks their relationship was eliciting from her friends. Secure in their love for one another, she’d thought they were hilarious and completely wrong. Despite her lonely upbringing, she was so full of generosity and goodwill she seldom saw the bad in people. Perhaps that’s why the seeming betrayal had hurt her so badly she couldn’t even face him with an accusation. She had been brought up to ignore unpleasantries and do as she wished. He’d been reared to face reality whatever the price.

  A major difference between them. He always tried to be pragmatic and do what was right, no matter the personal cost. Two years ago he had paid a high price for making a mistake about what was right and what was wrong. Now he wasn’t at all certain what was right. Basically, he no longer trusted himself to make any decisions that involved anyone else’s life.

  He put the truck in gear and headed down the McCrea drive
toward the highway.

  Halle had divorced Shipmann.

  If he hadn’t cut himself off completely from everything and everyone who had been part of his New York life, he might have known about the breakup before this. But he’d been too badly hurt to risk hearing how deliriously happy Halle might be with her new husband, about how after the first glorious year of marriage they were buying a home in Stamford, Connecticut with plans to convert the extra bedroom into a nursery. If that had been the case, he might have slit his throat.

  Now he knew the truth of the relationship. It hadn’t lasted until its first anniversary. Though he couldn’t say the news made him want to do handsprings, somewhere deep inside him a tiny flame of hope that had no right to do so was flickering to life.

  Halle had divorced Shipmann.

  So what? It shouldn’t make any difference. He and Halle were over long before she looked seriously at Shipmann. The man hadn’t come between them. He’d just stepped very quickly into the breach. So why the hell hadn’t he stuck it out?

  Joe rubbed his palms up and down the steering wheel to stop the itching sensation brought on by the desire to smash something. His dislike of Shipmann wasn’t logical or really personal, but it was gut level. What kind of jerk gave up a woman like Halle?

  “A jerk like me.”

  Joe forced himself to relax. He stuck an elbow out the open window and stretched his other arm along the bench seat, absorbing the heat from the sun-drenched leather as he turned onto Interstate 20, heading west. The fact that their marriage hadn’t worked out didn’t mean he held any animosity toward Halle. He wanted her to be happy. That is all he had ever wanted for her, even if it meant he had to lose her to achieve it. Now he knew she wasn’t better off without him.

  She was suffering from amnesia. She didn’t have a husband or a reliable family to turn to. That pretty much meant she was alone in the world. Logically the thing for him to do would have been to present Dr. Lawlah with the facts and then leave the medical man to take over things from there. No doubt she had been in a delicate emotional state before the accident.