Blunt Darts (13 page)

“You mentioned his ‘quest.’”

“I’m coming to that. One day I just sort of decided to try talking—really
talking
—with him. That was this year, maybe October or November.” She paused. “November, like, because the decorations were up. You know, the stupid stuff like cardboard turkeys and pilgrims?”

“I know.”

“Well, we just started talking, and it was amazing, you know, the way Stephen could explain things and understand the things I would say. It was like … it was like he was the best teacher I ever had, but he was my own age—actually a year older because he … lost a year. Stephen understood me, but he acted older, so I could …”

“Respect him?” I said tactfully.

Kim sniffed again. “Yeah, respect him. Anyway, it was maybe two months ago that he told me about his mother, and how he’d gotten sick and was in the hospital.”

“Did he tell you what kind of illness he had?”

Kim fixed me with her still-reddish eyes. “Yeah, mental illness. He was in a crazy house, out in the mountains somewhere. His father did it.”

I tensed. “Did what?”

“Huh?”

“You said, ‘his father did it.’ What did his father do?”

“Oh, the judge put Stephen in this crazy house. His grandmother didn’t want him to stay, but he still had to spend a long time, like maybe a year, there. When he got out, he came home. And that’s when Stephen began his quest.”

I held onto my patience. “What was his quest?”

Kim became very still. She looked down. “You have to promise never to tell anyone.”

I promised.

“You can’t even tell Stephen I told you. I’m the only one who knows, so you can’t even let him, like, suspect you know or
he’d
know it came from me.”

I repeated my promise.

Kim twisted the earphones off her neck and began playing with them in her lap. I involuntarily noticed that the fat woman in the red dress must have won again, because now she was literally smothering the host, who was no longer smiling, sportingly or otherwise.

Kim’s first words snapped me back. “Stephen’s mother was murdered. His quest was to, like, get evidence. Prove the judge did it.” She shivered.

I gave her a moment, then: “Kim, what kind of evidence?”

She began gnawing on her lower lip again. “A gun.”

“A gun?”

“Yes.”

“Stephen’s mother supposedly died in a car accident, but he believes she was shot?”

Kim, crying again, now nodded vigorously. I heard soft footsteps, Valerie’s, I thought, approach and recede. I could just hear her voice from the kitchen.

She said, “They’re doing fine, Mrs. Sturdevant.”

On my part, I wasn’t sure how much more Kim had left. “Why did Stephen think that his mother had been shot?”

“Because,” Kim said, too loudly, nearly a wail. Then she dropped her voice. “Because he was there.”

Kim fell silent. Me, too. Then, “At that last lunch, did Stephen say anything about being in danger, or …”

She blew her nose and fixed me again. “You don’t understand. He’d found it. That was what Stephen told me at lunch. The quest was over. He’d found the gun.”

“When?”

“The night before. Every night, Stephen would wait until everyone else was asleep. Then he’d, like, search a different place. He thought his father might suspect he was on the quest, so sometimes Stephen would double-back and re-check some of the old places. But, finally, he found it.”

“Did Stephen say what he was going to do with it?”

“No.” Kim managed a half-smile. “No. He’d been on the quest for so long—years, like—that I don’t think he really had figured out what he was going to do. I mean exactly what Stephen was going to do if and when he found it.” She wiped her eyes again.

“Kim, I think Stephen left on his own. And from what you’ve told me, I’m sure it was because of finding the gun. Is there anything else you can tell me about Stephen, like where he might go?”

Head shake. “No, he never—”

Kim stopped and froze as the big front door clicked and then banged open. “Sally? Kim? I’m home. Hey, Sal, I may be early but—”

I swiveled around and rose. A bearish, balding guy of forty-five or so came tromping up the stairs to the living room. I caught Kim rubbing furiously on her lips with my handkerchief as he saw us and exploded.

“Who are you? And Kim! What the hell is that stuff doing on your—You’re crying!”

By this time a terrified Mrs. Sturdevant, with Val in her wake, burst into the room.

“Hal, oh Hal,” she cried, “they said it would be all right.”

I remember nearly laughing. Val, Sal, and now Hal. But there was nothing humorous about Hal Sturdevant just then.

“You’re the guy we told to stay away, aren’t you?” Hal’s briefcase, newspaper, and a supermarket bag hit the carpet. A widening pool of milk gurgled through the brown paper from an unseen carton within.

“Mr. Sturdevant, I’m investigating. …”

He swung a rounding left as Sally screamed his name and Valerie yelled mine. I ducked under his fist and just pushed him, but hard, with my open hands as his shoulder went over my head. It knocked him off balance, and his momentum was broken by banging into the wall.

I spoke as quickly as I could. “This is your home, Mr. Sturdevant. I have no desire or reason to hurt you. I will leave immediately if you tell me to.”

Sturdevant came off the wall and hesitated. Sally grabbed his arm. “Please Hal, just tell him to go!”

Sturdevant, his honor redeemed by her entreaty, glared at me. I noticed for the first time that Kim was no longer with us. I had a vague recollection of a slamming door in there somewhere.

“Get out! Get out of my house and don’t ever come back!”

I nodded and backed toward the stairs. I motioned that Valerie should precede me down, which she did. The Sturdevants, Hal leading and Sal in tow, followed us, maintaining a three-step interval.

“Get out!” The last shout cracked his voice a bit.

Once we were outside, Sturdevant slammed the house’s door behind us. We’d reached my rented Mercury when I heard a window open. I turned around in time to see Kim’s head and forearms pop out an upper-story frame.

“Tell Stephen,” she sobbed, “tell him that I love him. Tell him …” at which point a pair of fatherly hands pinned Kim Sturdevant’s elbows, yanked her from the opening, and slammed the window as well.

A tearful Valerie Jacobs spoke as I opened the car door for her. “Somebody else does care for Stephen.”

“Yeah,” I said, “for all the good it’s done him so far.”

I
DROPPED
V
ALERIE OFF
at her place. She apologized for having to rush off to meet her friend, and I assured her that I’d see her for dinner the next night. As I backed out of her driveway, I checked my watch. Three-thirty. A little early for court to be over, I hoped.

I drove down several, now-familiar Meade byways until I reached the Kinnington driveway. I swung onto its gravel and up, parking nose-out for a potentially quick escape. Five seconds after I knocked at the door, Mrs. Page opened it a crack, into which I introduced my right foot. We both spoke at the same time.

“Mrs. Kinnington?”

“Go away!”

The door jarred against my shoe, but the beach-head held.

“You’re crazy to come here.”

“I have to see her, Mrs. Page.”

The pressure relaxed. “Still crazy.” Then a resigned sigh. “Upstairs, same room.”

Reaching it, I knocked and entered.

This time I had to pull the solid chair over myself. Otherwise, the arrangement was unchanged.

“You have word of Stephen?” asked Eleanor Kinnington.

“Yes, and no. I’ve received some words that encourage me and others that I should have heard first from my client. That, by the way, is you.”

“Mr. Cuddy, I am not used to being addressed—”

“And I am not used to playing Blind Bozo bumbling in the dark. At least not in unnecessary darkness. Why didn’t you tell me what Miss Pitts saw between Gerry Blakey and Stephen?”

Kinnington’s eyes dropped to examine her teacup.

“It is not the type of thing one discusses.”

“Maybe not at meetings of the Daughters-of-the-American Revolution. But with the investigator who’s looking—”

“That’s quite enough!” Mrs. Kinnington snapped, her teacup rattling against its saucer. “You damn, self-righteous bastard! You’re my employee, not my employer. You may be a professional, but you’re
my
professional. You’ll do what you’re told—and be satisfied with what you’re told—or you can quit.”

I stood up. “My resignation will be on your desk in the morning, Ma’am,” I said. Dropping her original print of Stephen’s photo on the table, I turned to leave.

“Mr. Cuddy,” her voice quavering, “are you close to him?”

“Mrs. Kinnington,” I said over my shoulder, “I’m closer than I was the last time we had this argument.”

Her tone steadied itself. “Please, sit down again?”

The air seemed a bit freer as I did. “Why didn’t you tell me about Stephen and Blakey?”

She re-seated her teacup in the saucer. “It’s so troubling to think that there could be any relationship between them that … Stephen has always been so indifferent to his father. I just assumed that the … distaste that Stephen displayed toward Blakey was a function of his being my son’s … oh, henchman.”

“‘Henchman’?”

“Well, that’s just how Blakey has always struck me. As a designated doer of evil things. I even forbade the judge to allow the man to enter any room I was already occupying. Consequently, when Miss Pitts called me, I realized I was in no position to be able to say what—if anything—there might be between Stephen and Blakey.”

“Mrs. Kinnington, I have to assume that Stephen left voluntarily.” I remembered my promise to Kim Sturdevant. “But I still need to know what reason he might have had
for
leaving.”

She clasped her hands in her lap and tried to relax. “Mr. Cuddy, I do not know why Stephen would have gone. He did not get along with his father, but I know of no recent incident that could have triggered Stephen’s disappearance.”

“Speaking of triggered,” I asked, bending my promise to Kim a bit, “did Stephen have a gun?”

Eleanor Kinnington’s throat worked once before any sound came out. “A … gun?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you want to know about guns?”

Plural. “Please, Mrs. Kinnington?”

She considered. “My son, that is, Stephen’s Uncle Telford, left him a pistol in his, ah, will. Some sort of fancy target contraption. To start him properly. Stephen, almost before he could write, would shoot on the grounds with Tyrone, who was our houseman then. But I haven’t seen the gun, nor Stephen with a weapon of any kind, in years.”

“Well, he has one now,” I said as I rose.

“How do you know that?”

I ignored her question, substituting one of my own. “By the way, was a gun all that Stephen and Telford shared?”

Mrs. Kinnington looked at me suspiciously. “What do you mean by that?”

“I have reason to believe that Telford was institutionalized, or nearly so, while he was in the service. Stephen was institutionalized after his mother’s death. Could it be that mental illness runs in your family, Mrs. Kinnington?”

“That’s preposterous, and I’ll not have you spreading a lurid, defamatory statement like—”

“I’m not,” I said with my hand on the doorknob, “but Stephen and his gun might be.”

“Mr. Cuddy, do you know where Stephen is or not?”

“I don’t. But in view of Blakey’s involvement and temperament, I’d be afraid to tell you if I did.”

As I pulled out of the Kinnington driveway, my mind was working on the most direct route to the Mass Pike. As I skirted Meade Center, I went past a large public building on my right. There was a sign just beneath the flagpole. I hit my brakes and eased to the curb. From what Valerie Jacobs and Mrs. Kinnington had told me of Stephen’s reading habits, he must have exhausted the contents of his school’s library years ago. It was a longshot, but I was pretty much down to longshots right then.

The public library was itself a restored quasi-mansion, red brick with four white columns. There was a meticulous expanse of lawn and a semicircular parking lot. Inside, the librarian was a pleasant change of pace from most Meade residents I’d met.

Meaning, polite.

I identified myself to Cornelia Traub and explained that Ms. DeMarco and I were investigating Stephen’s disappearance. Since I was out here speaking with Mrs. Kinnington anyway, I thought I’d stop by and check the boy’s library borrowings. I wasn’t sure if Ms. DeMarco had done so yet.

Traub’s middle-aged face grew concerned. “You know, Mr. Cuddy, I wondered whether someone was still looking into that. Such a poor, unfortunate family. First Telford, then Diane—they were the judge’s brother and wife, you know—and now Stephen. The whole town is whispering about it, but nobody really knows anything. You make yourself comfortable, and I’ll be right back.” She walked back into an inner office behind the counter. Traub came back with a tray of perhaps a hundred, old-style computer cards and set it on the counter.

She looked down and began flipping through some cards. “You know, I nearly cursed the idea of a computer system for borrowers. Imagine, a computer in Meade! But I must say it
is
more efficient once you get the hang of it. Here.”

Traub slid the tray gently toward me. “Stephen’s read all these books?” I asked.

“Oh, my, he’s read many more than just these, which are only the ones he’s borrowed since January. He’d also spend nearly every afternoon after school here in our reading room, literally devouring both books and magazines. I never saw the like of him, poor boy.”

I started to flip through the cards the way Traub had. Almost all were novels or historical works. Two I came upon dealt with camping. I was about to ask my new-found friend if I could see those when a photocopier began hiccupping behind me. It was one of those open-topped machines for use with books. I hadn’t noticed it when I came in.

“Did you see Stephen photocopying any maps recently?” I asked.

“Maps? No-o-o, but now that you mention it, I did see him photocopying something that was in an issue of
New England Outdoors.
In fact, shortly before he disappeared, though I never would have thought about it if you hadn’t asked me. You see, many of the ah … young boys try to copy certain, well, advertisements for, ah, women’s clothes, and I never thought Stephen was that type, but when I came close to him as he was copying something, he became secretive, so I wondered if I was wrong about him. But I watched him put the magazine back, and I checked on it and was relieved.”