Family Honor - Robert B Parker (4 page)

"And?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"And what do you think of them?" I said.

"I am not here to render an appraisal of Mr. and Mrs.
Patton," she said.

"Do you think her home environment has something to do
with her lack of motivation?"

Miss Plum didn't like this. No accomplished woman of any
age running an exclusive girls' school talked about the parents of her
students, especially if they were rich and influential and might make a
bequest. On the other hand, if there wasn't a problem at home, then the
finger of disapproval pointed back at Pinkett.

"Let me prime the pump here," I said. "I've talked with
Millicent's parents. They seem very, ah, contrived. As if they were performing
life rather than living it."

Miss Plum didn't say anything.

"They did not seem to get along very well with each other
in my short visit."

Miss Plum smiled a little uneasily.

"Millicent was gone for ten days before they took steps
to find her."

"Have they gone to the police?" Miss Plum said. "No."

"Wouldn't that be the, ah, usual first step?"

"Yes."

"Why did they hire you instead?"

"They mentioned something about discretion," I said.

"Wealthy people often value that," Miss Plum said.

"So do poor people," I said. "But they can't always afford
it. What do you suppose they wanted me to be discreet about?"

"Why, I assume, Millicent's disappearance."

"Because it's so shameful?"

"I don't know. Miss Randall, these people are your employer."

"Doesn't exempt them," I said. "This shouldn't be adversarial,
Miss Plum. You must want Millicent found."

She was silent again, her head barely nodding, as she
looked at her folded hands. Then she raised her eyes.

"I am," she said, "a traditionalist in education. I believe
in Latin, grammar, and decorum. I believe in math and repetition and discipline.
I am not much taken with theories about self-worth and mal-adjustment."

I nodded.

"But I believe two things about Millicent Patton. I believe
that she has never been loved. And I believe that sometime this year something
happened. Her grades and her behavior, never admirable, have declined precipitously
in the last two marking periods."

"You don't know what that thing might have been?"

"No."

"You think her parents don't care about her?"

Pauline Plum took in as much air as she could and let
it out slowly in a long sigh, and then fortified by the extra oxygen, she
said, "That is correct."

I nodded.

"We agree," I said.

"But they have hired you to find her."

"Decorum?" I said.

Miss Plum shook her head. She had already gone further
than she wished.

"I really have a school to run, Ms. Randall."

"Or maybe she ran away for a reason and they don't want
the reason known," I said.

Miss Plum's eyes widened with alarm. She was far too accomplished
to discuss anything like that with a woman who, for all she knew, might
have gone to a public junior college. She stood up.

"I hope you'll excuse me," she said.

I said I would and she showed me out.
 

Sister didn't look too nunnish. She was dressed in an
Aerosmith tee shirt, jeans, and loafers, no socks. I showed her my picture
of Millicent Patton.

"Yes," Sister said after a long look, "she was here. All
she would tell us was that her name was Millie."

"She's not here now?"

"No."

"Had she been abused?"

"Not that we could see," Sister said.

"She tell you why she was running?"

"No. We try to help, but we try to do so without prying."

"I have to pry."

Sister smiled. For a non-dog person she had a good smile.
"I know," she said.

"Why'd she leave?"

"She just left without a word," Sister said. "But here's
my guess. Every day or so, Bobby Doyle, who's the youth service officer
at District 13, comes down and brings some donuts and we have coffee and
sort of talk over who's shown up and what we should do about them."

"And Millicent spotted him?"

"Not even him, I think. She spotted the police car outside."

"And she was gone."

Sister nodded. She looked down at Rosie who was being
completely seductive under the table.

"What's wrong with this dog?" Sister said. "It is a dog,
isn't it?"

I decided to ignore the second part of the question. "She
wants you to rub her belly," I said.

The prospect of rubbing a dog's belly seemed deeply unappealing
to Sister Mary John.

"Why do you suppose she ran at the first sign of a cop?"

"Afraid he'd come to take her home," Sister said.

"Any idea where she would go from here?" Sister shook
her head.

"I assume that sooner or later a pimp will find her,"
Sister said.

"That seems the prevailing assumption," I said.

"And rightly so," Sister said.

"Any thoughts on why kids do this?"

"Not brain surgery, Ms. Randall--they don't like it at
home."

"There must be more to it than that."

Sister leaned back a little in the folding chair she was
sitting on, and looked at me more closely. I felt as if I might have asked
a good question.

"Lot of people settle for the easy answer," Sister said.
"Of course there must be more than that."

"So many of them run away from home and end up degraded,"
I said. "It's almost a pattern."

"Maybe it's what they deserve for running away."

"Excuse me, Sister," I said. "But no one deserves to be
giving oral sex to strangers in the backseat of a car."

"No, of course not. I'm a nun, not a shrink, but I've
seen a lot of these kids, and they have equal measures of defiance and
guilt. The defiance causes them to run away, and the guilt helps them end
up selling their bodies."

"So they can run away and get punished for it, too," I
said.

"Maybe."

"Some of it must be economic," I said. "They haven't finished
high school. They haven't got a social security card. They have no hirable
skills. Some of them, perhaps, simply have no other way to stay alive."

"Things usually have several causes," Sister said.

"So what causes them to run in the first place, in Millicent's
case, from affluence?"

"Whatever is in that home is intolerable to her," Sister
said.

"Molestation?"

"Maybe. Maybe a situation which must be resolved and she
can't resolve it. Maybe simply the way being there makes her feel. What
I know is that kids don't give up a secure home for a desperately uncertain
alternative simply because loving parents are firm with them."

"There's something wrong in that house," I said.

"You can bank on it," Sister said.

Rosie gave up on Sister Mary John and nosed my foot. I
rubbed her belly with my toe.

"You save many of them?" I said.

"I don't even know. They come here. They stay awhile.
They move on. Some straighten out as they get older. Some we get psychiatric
help for. Some we may save with prayer. A lot of them, I would guess, we
don't save at all."

"Hard work," I said.

"Brutally hard, sometimes," Sister said.

"You ever want to give it up?"

"I'm a nun," Sister said. "I believe in a divine purpose.
I believe I am an instrument of it. I did not become a bride of Christ
for the perks."

We sat in silence for a moment in the small basement room
paneled in cheap plywood, sitting in folding chairs on either side of a
card table, with the shelter's files stacked in milk cartons around the
walls.

"And you?" Sister said. "You seem in an odd profession."

"My father is, was, a policeman. He's retired now."

"And you wanted to be like him?"

"Well, no, actually I got out of college with a degree
in social work, but I wanted to be a painter. My father got me a police
job to support myself until I sold my paintings."

"And you've not yet sold them?"

"Some, now and then, and I'm trying to get a Master of
Fine Arts at night, and this work supports me while I do the art."

"You are no longer with the police?"

"Too hierarchichal for me," I said.

Sister smiled. "I often think that of the church," she
said. "If you became wildly successful as a painter, would you give this
up?"

"I don't think so," I said.

"If you became wildly successful at this would you stop
painting?"

"I don't think so."

Sister smiled as if I had said something smart. We were
quiet again. Sister looked down at Rosie.

"What kind of dog is that?"

"An English bull terrier," I said.

"Like General Patton's dog?"

"Yes, only Rosie is a miniature."

"She looks rather like a possum," Sister said.

"No," I said very firmly, "she doesn't."

Sister shrugged and stood up and put out her hand. "Good
luck, Sunny Randall."

I stood up, too. We shook hands.

Outside the church, walking to my car I looked down at
Rosie. "Possum?" I said.
 

"Ma'am," the maitre d' said when Rosie and I walked in.
"I'm sorry, but you can't bring the dog in here."

"Shh," I said. "You want her to hear you?"

From the back, Spike said, "Dog's a friend of mine, Herb,
let her in."

When Rosie heard Spike's voice she strained toward him
on her leash. Herb looked a little uneasily at Spike and somewhat less
uneasily at Rosie, and smiled at me, and in we went.

Spike hung up the phone.

"Out walking our armadillo?" Spike said.

He pulled a chair out from one of the empty tables and
I sat down.

"Rosie is not an armadillo," I said. "Nor, by the way,
a possum."

"I never said she looked like a possum," Spike said. He
dropped to his knees and let Rosie lap his face. "Not a tall dog," he said.
"You want some food?"

"No, I've eaten," I said. "I need to talk a little."

"Sure."

He took a soup bowl off the china rack near the kitchen
and put it on the floor and poured water into it from a pitcher. Rosie
drank some. Rosie was a very noisy drinker.

A woman in sandals and a print skirt, with an Instamatic
camera hanging from her wrist, was at a table near us. She was sitting
with a woman wearing a Black Dog sweatshirt that was too tight and and
a long-billed yachting cap that was too big.

"Waiter," the woman in the print skirt said, "I'd like
to order."

"I'm waiting on her right now," Spike said, nodding at
Rosie, "I'll get to you."

"Isn't it illegal for dogs to be in a restaurant?" the
woman said.

"No, ma'am," Spike said. "You and your friend are fine."

The woman and her companion put their heads together and
whispered. I assumed they were trying to figure out if Spike had insulted
them.

"Sit here for a minute," Spike said, "while I swill the
customers."

A large man with a red face joined the two women at the
table.

He was wearing green plaid shorts and oversized black
running shoes, and an orange tee shirt. He must have recently gained weight
because everything seemed a little too tight except the shoes, which didn't
look as if they'd ever been run in. The women whispered to him, and when
Spike walked to the table he looked at him hard.