The Wrong Quarry (11 page)

I sipped my coffee. “You consider these young single girls your competition?”

“Damn straight.”

“What are you competing for? Aren’t three sour marriages enough? You still looking for Prince Charming? Look what happened to Diane Keaton when she went looking for Mr. Right.”

“That was Mr. Goodbar, wasn’t it?” She shivered. “Depressing damn movie. So...what’s your article about, Jack? Poor little rich girls who refuse to grow up?”

“You’re under the false impression that this song is about you. You may be part of it, but that’s a coincidence. I honestly didn’t know you were a Stockwell.”

Her eyes narrowed, and as she listened to what I next had to say, her flip manner faded.

“What I’m really writing about is the disappearance of your niece—Candy. My understanding is that certain members of your family believe this local dance instructor, Roger Vale, is responsible somehow. They made public accusations that he may have kidnapped and murdered your niece, and yet Vale has never sued.”

“All right.” Her voice had changed. Husky as ever, but all the humor was out. No anger, though, and the eyes had a new alert hardness. “Let’s back this up. You need to convince me you didn’t come looking for me. That this really
is
a coincidence.”

“Okay...”

“I don’t like being used. I may be easy...but I do not fucking like being used.”

“Last night? I was sitting at the bar. You came up and sat next to me.”

“Okay. And you were sitting at the bar when I came in. Could you have known I’d be there?” Who was she asking, herself or me?

I said, “Is the Golden Spike the only bar in Stockwell you frequent?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m gonna say no. Do you regularly go to the Spike on Sunday night? And is that something I could know?”

She thought about that through a few drags on the Camel. Finally she shook her head, gypsy curls bouncing, then asked, “Nobody pointed me out to you?”

“When you went to the little girl’s room, that barmaid told me who you were. But you and I, we’d already struck up a conversation. In fact, you spoke first. Said I had a nice face, remember?”

She smiled. Nodded. “It’s still pretty nice.”

“Well, you have had three glasses of wine. How about it? Will you help me?”

“How?”

“For starters, tell me about Candy.”

She glanced around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us, but the place was fairly full. She said, “Not here. Let’s go to my place.”

I said fine, and paid the bill, even if Jenny Stockwell was richer than hell. Call it an investment. This might be my first step on the road to marrying an heiress....

She drove a flashy black Firebird that looked like Robin the Boy Wonder should’ve been in the seat next to her. I followed her through town in my pathetic Pinto as she routinely did forty, seemingly unconcerned about cops or that I might lose her. But the moon was full and helped me stay with her, even when—in a wooded area barely within city limits—she took a sudden turn off onto an ungated lane marked
PRIVATE — NO TRESPASSING
.

The strip of asphalt cut through half a mile of dense trees and brush. At the end, on a stone-and-pebble hillock, sat a ranch-style house of stained-amber wood siding, an L-shape, like two boxcars had jackknifed off the tracks. A one-and-a-half story tower joined the two wings; the roofs were black and pitched, but for the backward slant of the tower, creating a geometric effect. Door-sized vertical windows were frequent, adding to the feeling of nature meeting modernity.

A cement drive led to a two-car garage at the left tip of the L. She put the Firebird away next to a couple of Harleys and the door closed automatically. I left the Pinto in the drive and, a kid crossing a pond, hopped the irregular stone slabs that served as a sidewalk. Pots for plants were placed here and there, emptied in anticipation of winter.

The front door opened and she motioned me into a high-ceilinged entryway, where she took my coat to deposit in a sliding-door closet, saying, “Let’s go into the living room.” Her black vinyl jacket had disappeared—she was just in the black mini with red belt. She turned on some subdued track lighting, and I got a look at a big room that filled most of this wing, though I’d noticed a modern kitchen coming in, behind me now.

She did have money.

So said the vaulted ceiling and the endless expanse of oak paneling; the walls were off-white plaster spotted with unframed canvases signed JS, primitive paintings Mateski might dig, only these had a real flair—landscapes based on the woodsy view out a wall of windows, marked by a striking, startling use of color, like the inside of a maniac’s brain, only better organized.

The furnishings were modular and right out of a rich college kid’s apartment—tweed-covered cushions of either off-white or dark brown on chrome-plated steel frames. A group of white cushions formed a couch facing a big tan brick fireplace, two brown ones served as armchairs with matching ottomans. End tables and coffee tables were low-slung and glass-topped.

The fireplace wall bore signs from the Stockwell family’s fortune-making but long-dead business—
STOCKWELL BRAND BUGGY WHIPS — LIGHT, STURDY, DEPENDABLE
—with silhouette of horse and buggy and a driver poised to flick the product; the most modern-looking advertisement (1920?) said
STOCKWELL BUGGY WHIPS — TRUE HORSEPOWER
. Over the fireplace, on nails, hung four vintage buggy whips. And off to one side, in an antique gilt frame, a Civil War-era funky-sideburned gent posed with a whip in his hands like a ringmaster getting ready to discourage some animal.

“So you do have some family pride,” I said.

“Or maybe I just like whips.” She gestured to the tweedcushion-and-chrome couch. “Get comfy. How about something stronger than Coke?”

“Any kind of beer.”

“Coors okay?”

“Fine.”

She brought me one and sat beside me. She appeared to have made herself a Jack and Ginger.

“You’d be surprised,” she said, “how rarely I have a man out to my house.”

“Would I?”

“I’m strictly a parking lot and motel brand of slut.”

“I don’t think you’re a slut.”

“No?”

“No.”

And I didn’t. I thought she was one fucked-up dangerous damn piece of ass. Slut didn’t quite cover it.

“Well,” she said, “whatever I am, I value my privacy. You’re a rare guest out here.”

“I’m flattered.”

She got up and got a fire going. It was gas, so that didn’t take long; even so, watching her bend over was a pleasure, legs long and muscular in a sinewy way. Then she went over and turned off the track lighting, the room infused with a nice orange glow as she sat beside me.

She played with my hair absently. “Why should I talk to you about Candy?”

“Because you’re her aunt. It’s obvious you two were close. Do you think she’s still alive?”

“I hope so.”

“You don’t believe Vale was responsible for whatever happened to her?”

She frowned, sighed, sipped her drink. “He might be, but not the way my father and brother think.”

“Explain.”

“I don’t know Roger Vale that well. I talked to him two or three times, at recitals where Candy was dancing. She was his star pupil. Wonderful dancer. Jazz, not ballet. Sexy child, I mean, my God. Your eyes would’ve popped out of your head, Jack. No flying shit.”

“How could Vale be to blame for her disappearance?”

A shrug. She looked beautiful in the firelight, the shadows doing interesting things to the sharp planes of her face. “I suppose it’s possible he had an affair with her. Candy was pretty wild. And I wasn’t convinced he was the queen he seemed to be. Might’ve been bi, might even’ve been straight, playing up to these hicks. So they’ll trust their daughters to him.”

“So he can get close to them, you mean? And do what? Have his way with his budding pupils?”

She shook her head; you could almost hear the gypsy thumb cymbals. “No, I don’t read it that way. I think he wanted to work closely with the girls, and he’s apparently really quite gifted—he had considerable success last year helping some of our girls do well on the pageant circuit.”

“I heard. A lot of parents have stood by him.”

She nodded. “I know Candy was crazy about him...not romantically, but because he had helped her improve, and was encouraging her to take dance and theater, in college. Even urged her to consider going professional someday. She could sing well, too, you know. And act. Real triple threat. Vale said she had the makings of another Liza Minnelli.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he was right. This coming year, after working with Vale, Candy would have killed at the Miss Teen Missouri pageant.”

“Then what makes you say he might be responsible for her going missing?”

“He probably wasn’t. Not directly. Indirectly? Maybe.” She gathered her thoughts, sipping the Jack and Ginger to help her along. “Candy’s father...my
brother,
Lawrence...did not approve of Roger Vale encouraging these show business dreams of hers. Larry had told her that entering Miss Teen Missouri was out of the question. Not dignified enough for a Stockwell, and taking theater and dance at college as her major, that was not an option, either.”

“Why not?”

She sighed. “Well, we’re running out of Stockwells. There was Larry’s Candy and my David, and that was it for the next generation. You knew, didn’t you, that the heir apparent, Steven, died in Vietnam?”

“No. First I heard.”

She shook her head wearily. “In the final months of that fucking war. Nice guy, Steven, though very establishment, very conservative, like his folks and his grandparents.”

“I don’t get it. A guy from a rich family didn’t have to go to Vietnam. That’s why God made college deferments.”

A dark eyebrow arched. “Not after Uncle Sam trumped God with the draft lottery. Steven drew a low number, something like fourteen, and that put him on the fast track to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. My father tried to pull some strings, but before Dad had managed anything, Steven enlisted in the Marines. And for all their misgivings, our parents were proud of Steven. He won some medals. Made lieutenant.”

Plus got his ass killed. Great goddamn war. Where would I be without it?

She was saying, “Steven’s death accelerated a drinking problem my mother already had...she died ten years ago, liver failure. Shattered Daddy. Crushed David, living with his grandparents. And then, six, seven years ago? Larry lost Candy’s mother Karen to breast cancer, and Jesus, for a while there, it was just the Stockwell family apocalypse.”

Rich people had their problems, too. Ask the Kennedys.

“That,” she was saying, after a Jack and Ginger booster, “was when Larry started spoiling Candy. Letting her wrap him around her pretty pinkie, buying her everything and anything, fancy cars, expensive clothes. She stayed out to all hours, drugs, drinking, fucking. That’s what losing a mom can do to an impressionable young girl. I tried to do what I could—we were very close. But it just didn’t any good.”

You don’t suppose having Aunt Jenny as a role model had anything to do with Candy’s wild behavior? I pose this question to you, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up with Aunt Jenny.

Instead, I said, “Doesn’t sound like Daddy was ‘spoiling’ her where her Broadway dreams were concerned.”

“No. He wanted her to pursue Steven’s dream—a new generation of Stockwell business! Somehow my brother deluded himself into imagining Candy with an MBA, taking over one of the family firms, maybe, or marrying somebody who could.”

She let out a short, humorless laugh, then had another swig of Jack and Ginger.

Her smile was bitterly ironic as she continued: “I can just see it—Larry forbidding her to enter the Miss Teen Missouri pageant, Candy flipping out and running off.
That’s
why I say she may still be alive.”

“You really think so?”

She nodded emphatically. “Candy could be a runaway, Jack. She may be living somewhere, under an assumed name, working as a waitress or something, and trying to break into show business. Hollywood, New York, Toronto, who knows?”

Would a spoiled brat want to work that hard? Yet a girl as cute and talented as Candy
could
be working on some lower show biz rung. Or she might have found a sugar daddy. Possibilities, but they didn’t resonate for me.

“So,” she said, sitting cozily closer, “how do you think writing an article about all this will do anybody any good?”

“It’ll call attention to the case. If I do a good enough job, the piece will get some national play, with Candy’s picture splashed around. And if she’s alive, somebody will let us know.”

“And if she isn’t?”

“Well, I intend to explore the possibility of Vale’s culpability. Look into why some Stockwell family members consider him a prime suspect in what they feel is Candy’s murder.”

“And what good will
that
do?”

“Attracting attention to an unsolved crime can have a very positive effect. It might spark the FBI to get involved. Or the Missouri state police, anyway.”

She had started nodding halfway through that. She sipped more Jack and Ginger. “How can I help?”

“I was hoping you could pave the way for me with your brother and your father. I need to interview them. But it sounds like you and they might not be on the best of terms.”

“No, we’re okay. I’m not their favorite, but...I’m about all that’s left, except for my son. They know I’ve been pretty upset since Candy disappeared. They know how much I love her. And with my David coming of age, their
heir
apparent...especially since he and I are getting along marginally better now...they’re trying to take me back into the fold, a little. No, I can help you with that.”

“Tomorrow maybe? During the day?”

“Sure, Jack. Why not?” She sounded sleepy.

“It’s getting late,” I said, taking the cue. “I should probably go. What time tomorrow, do you think?”

She kissed me and stuck her tongue in my mouth; it tasted like Jack and Ginger, not surprisingly. And her breath smelled of tobacco. Should have been disgusting. It wasn’t.