Family Honor - Robert B Parker (2 page)

Which is the way I was wearing it on an early morning
at the beginning of September as I drove through a light rain up a winding
half-mile driveway in South Natick, dressed to the teeth in a blue pant
suit, a white silk tee shirt, a simple gold chain, and a fabulous pair
of matching heels. I was calling on a lot of money. The driveway seemed
to be made of crushed seashells. There were bright green trees along each
side, made even greener by the rain. Flowering shrubs bloomed in serendipitous
places among the trees. The whole landscape, refracted slightly by the
rain, made me think of Monet. At the last curve in the driveway the trees
gave onto a rolling sweep of green lawn, upon which a white house sat like
a great gem on a jeweler's pad. The vast front was columned, and the Palladian
windows seemed two stories high. The drive widened into a circle in front
of the house, and then continued around back where, no doubt, unsightly
necessities like the garage were hidden.

As soon as I parked the car a black man wearing a white
coat came out of the house and opened the door for me. I handed him one
of my business cards.
 
"Ms. Randall," I said. "For Mr. Patton."

"Yes, ma'am," the black man said. "Mr. Patton is expecting
you." He preceded me to the door and opened it for me. A goodlooking
black woman in a little French maid's outfit waited in the absolutely massive
front hallway.

"Ms. Randall," the man said and handed the maid my card.

She took it without looking at it and said, "This way,
please, Ms. Randall."

The foyer was very air-conditioned, even though the rainy
September day was not very hot. The maid walked briskly ahead of me, her
heels ringing on the stone floor. If her shoes were as uncomfortable as
mine, she was as stoic about it as I was. My heels rang on the stone floor,
too. The foyer was decorated with some expensively framed landscape paintings,
which were hideous, but probably made up for it by costing a lot. Through
the French doors at the far end of the foyer I could see a croquet lawn
and, beyond that, a more conventional lawn that sloped down to the river
at the far bottom.

The maid opened a door near the end of the foyer and stood
aside. I stepped in. The air-conditioning was even more forceful than it
had been in the foyer. The room was a man's study, and it absolutely
howled of decorator. Bookshelves were filled with leatherbound books
artfully arranged. The walls were done in a dark burgundy. The drapes matched
the walls but with a golden triangular pattern in them. There was a fireplace
that I could have stood upright in on the wall opposite. There was a fire
in it. The ceiling was far above my head. There was a massive reddish wooden
desk along the left wall of the room with Palladian windows opening behind
it. The deep colorful rugs had been woven somewhere in the far east. A
huge globe of the world was on its own dark wooden stand near the fireplace.
It was lit from within. Above the fireplace was a formal portrait of a
good-looking woman with smooth blond hair and the contemptuous smile of
a well-fed house cat.

The maid marched across the rug and put my card on the
desk and announced, "Ms. Randall."

The man behind the desk said, "Thank you, Billie," and
the maid turned and marched out past me and closed the door. The man looked
at my card for a little while without picking it up, and then he looked
up at me and smiled. It was an effective smile and I could tell that he
knew it. The little crinkles at his eyes made him look kind though wise,
and the parentheses around his mouth gave him a look of firm resolve.

"Sunny Randall," he said, almost as if he were speaking
to himself. Then he rose and came around the desk. He was athleticlooking,
taller than my ex-husband, with blue eyes and a healthy outdoor look about
him. He put his hand out as he walked across the carpet.

"Brock Patton," he said.

"How very nice to meet you," I said.

He stood quite close to me as we shook hands, which allowed
him to tower over me. I didn't step back.

"Where did you get a name like Sunny Randall?" he said.

"From my father," I said. "He was a great football fan
and I guess there was some football person with that name."

"You guess? You don't know?"

"I hate football."

He laughed as if I had said something precocious for a
little girl. "Well, by God, Sunny Randall, you may just do."
 
"That's often the case, Mr. Patton."

"I'll bet it is."

Patton went around his desk and sat. I took a seat in
front of the desk and crossed my legs and admired my shoes for a moment.
Of course they were uncomfortable; they looked great. Patton appeared to
admire them, too.

"Well," he said after a time.

I smiled.

"Well," he said again. "I guess there's nothing to do
but plunge right in."

I nodded.

"My daughter has run off," he said. I nodded again.

"She's fifteen," he said. Nod.

"My wife and I thought somehow a woman might be the best
choice to look for her."

"You're sure she's run away?" I said.

"Yes."

"She ever do this before?"

"Yes."

"Where did she run to before?"

"She didn't get far. Police picked her up hitchhiking
with three other kids ... boys. We were able to keep it out of the papers."

"Why does she run away?" I said.

Patton shook his head slowly, and bit his lower lip for
a moment.

Both movements seemed practiced. "Teenaged girls," he
said.

"I was a teenaged girl," I said.
 
"And I'll bet a cute one, Sunny."

"Indescribably," I said, "but I didn't run away."

"Well, of course, not all teenagers ..."

"Things all right here?" I said.

"Here?"

"Yes. This is what she ran away from."

"Oh, well, I suppose ... everything is fine here."

I nodded. To my right the fireplace crackled and danced.
No heat radiated from it. The air-conditioned room remained cold. The windows
fogged with condensation in which the rain streaked little patterns.

"So why did she run away?"

"Really, Sunny," Patton said. "I am trying to decide whether
to hire you to find her."

"And I'm trying to decide, Brock, if you do offer me the
job, whether I wish to take it."

"Awfully feisty," Patton said, "for someone so attractive."

I decided not to blush prettily. He stood suddenly. "Do
you have a gun, Sunny?"

"Yes."

"With you?"

"Yes.

"Can you shoot it?"

"Yes."

"I'm something of a shooter myself," Patton said. "I'd
like to see you shoot. Do you mind walking outside in the rain with me?"

Other than the fact that my hair would get wet and turn
into limp corn silk? But there was something interesting happening here.
I wasn't sure what it was, but I didn't want to miss it.

"I don't mind," I said.

He took an umbrella from a stand beside the French doors
behind his desk. He opened the doors and we went out into the rain. He
held the umbrella so that I had to put my arm through his to stay under
cover. We walked across the soft wet grass, my heels sinking in uncomfortably.
Maybe there should be a new rule about wearing heels when I was working.
Maybe the new rule would be, never. On the far side of the croquet lawn,
and shielded from it by a grove of trees, was an open shed with a sort
of counter across one side and a wood-shingled roof. We went to the shed
and under the roof. Patton closed the umbrella. He took a key from
his pocket and opened a cabinet under the counter and took out something
that looked like a small clay frisbee.

"What have you for a weapon," Patton said.

I took out my 38 Special.

"Well, very quick," he said. "Think you could hit anything
with that?"

There was a test going on, and I didn't know quite what
was being tested.

"Probably," I said.

He smiled down at me.

"I doubt that you can hit much with that thing," he said.

"What is your plan?" I said.

"I'll toss this in the air, and you put a bullet through
it."

If I did that using a handgun with a two-inch barrel it
would be by accident. He knew it.

"I'll toss it up here," he said, "it's safe to fire toward
the river." He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I nodded. He smiled
as if to himself and stepped out of the shed and tossed the disk maybe
thirty feet straight up into the air. I didn't move. The disk hit its zenith
and came down and landed softly on the wet grass about eight feet beyond
the shed. And lay on its side. I walked out of the shed, and over to the
disk, and standing directly above it, I put a bullet through the middle
of it from a distance of about eighteen inches. The disk shattered. Patton
stared at me.

"I don't need to be able to shoot something falling through
the air thirty feet away," I said. "This gun is quite effective at this
range, Brock, which is about the only range I'll ever need it for."

I put the gun away. Patton nodded and stared at the disk
fragments for a moment or two; then he picked up the umbrella and opened
it and handed it to me.

"Come back in," he said. "I'd like you to meet my wife."

Then he walked away bareheaded in the nice rain. I followed
him, alone under the umbrella.
 

"You've been shooting," Betty said. "Yes."

"Can she shoot, Brock?"

"Well, sort of," Brock said.

"Did you ask Brock to shoot, Ms. Randall?"

"No," I said. "I didn't."

"Oh, well, you've disappointed him badly then. That was
the real point of the exercise."

I had nothing to say about that, and I said it. The decorative
fire was still burning vigorously. A servant must have fed it while we
were out. The air-conditioning was still fogging the glass in the French
doors.

"I think Ms. Randall is who we need," Brock said.

Betty smiled and sipped her coffee. She didn't spill a
drop on her dress. She wouldn't.

"I rather expected you to think so," Betty said when the
elegant cup was perfectly centered back in the elegant saucer. "She's quite
pretty."

"She has a good background," Brock said. "She is straightforward.
And I have the sense that she is discreet."

Discreet about what?

"Do you think you can find our Millicent?" Betty said,
leaning forward slightly as if to make her question more compelling. Like
her husband, she seemed incapable of an unrehearsed gesture.

"Probably," I said.

"Because?"

"Because I'm really quite good at this."

Betty smiled interiorly.

"Odd profession for a woman," she said.

"Everyone says that."

"Really?"

I knew it would annoy her to be clumped in with everyone.

"Yes," I said. "Usually they say it just as you did."

"Are you married?"

"No, I'm not."

"Ever been married?"

"Yes."

"So you're not a lesbian."

"Having been married doesn't prove it."

"Well, are you?"

"I guess that's not germane."

Betty stared at me for a moment. A perfect little frown
line appeared between her flawless eyebrows.

"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.