Sixteen

Billie sat in her car, drinking Styrofoam coffee while considering the innocuous, anonymous building across the street. It didn’t look like a fortress, but as she studied it, she felt like the heroes of the fairy tales she read Jesse. Gender issues aside, the king had ordered her to cut through that iron mountain with her piece of straw or die. She had to get far enough in to find Lucas’ address—if he in fact worked here. If he hadn’t been lying to Penny, or hadn’t been from out of town, building his models in L.A. or elsewhere, up here sightseeing or visiting. And if Luke or Lucas—or Stewart—was his name.

Quests were thrilling in stories; in the day-to-day, they were a royal pain.

She allowed herself a second to appreciate the clear blue air of this winter morning, tossed her empty coffee container into the litter can and nodded. Time to go. Big day ahead. Find girl, close case, accept applause.

She smoothed her tunic sweater over her tights, tightened the laces of her boots, applied fresh lipstick and fluffed her hair as much as it would cooperate, touched each silver earring for good luck, and soldiered forth, across the street and into the reception area.

The keeper of the gate behind the desk was not the same young woman Billie had confronted during her job search, but of the same vintage and basic design. The last had been a dark blonde beauty. This one had black hair and smoky features. Both past and present were politely disdainful of outsiders. “Yes?” she asked. “Can I help you?”

Billie took another deep breath, curling the muscles of her shoulders and back into her “silly, dithering blonde me” persona. She giggled, softly, nervously. “This is going to sound really dumb. Embarrassing, too.”

The receptionist apparently didn’t waste energy on verbal or facial responses.

“Don’t laugh, but like, I was at a party last week, and I met this guy. And we hit it off right away…except I got a little bombed, you see—that’s the really embarrassing part.” She gestured overly much, pointing at herself, hanging her head, doing the dork. “I told him my entire life story, about being robbed and all—I won’t bore you with that, but it had happened in the City the night before. But I would never have said anything if I hadn’t had too much to drink. Which I only did because I was still freaked when I got there. But the thing was, he was nice. I mean, really, and not in like a jerky or dull way. That isn’t what I mean. I mean decent, and kind and, oh, nice. You don’t meet a whole lot of guys like that.” Come on, she mentally telegraphed. Look as if you comprehend, as if you’ve been there, too. What’s happened to sisterhood?

The receptionist watched with infinite patience and not a trace of any other emotion.

“I— We—oh, got a little… Anyway, when I wasn’t fit to drive myself home, I wound up sleeping in his car, plus he loaned me money. He wrote his name and address on a slip of paper, said I could return the money whenever, and now my parents sent me some, so I could repay him and I really want to, but I can’t find that slip of paper anywhere, and I’m afraid he’ll think of me as a total jerk, a rip-off artist, so I was hoping you’d help. I mean, you know how they say nice guys finish last and all? I don’t want him to think that.”

The receptionist allowed two micromuscles in her forehead to contract into a slight frown. “Why here?” she asked. “I don’t understand. Why come to me?”

“Didn’t I say?” Billie closed her eyes and tilted her face to the ceiling. “Now I’m even more embarrassed! I must sound like a complete idiot!” She certainly hoped so. “He told me he worked here. That part I remember, because we talked about special effects, the different kinds of things you do. You know. So that’s the one thing I remember, and it wasn’t written on that paper. Oh, and his name. Lucas.”

The receptionist shook her head.

Billie bit at her bottom lip. “Or it could be Luke. It could be a first or last name—and I don’t mean George Lucas. It wasn’t him. I know that much.” She waited for a smile, something, then gave up.

“I think he’s the only Lucas we’ve got,” the receptionist finally said. “And he’s not based in this building, anyway.”

“It might have been his first name. How about Stewart?”

“Lucas Stewart? Luke Stewart?” She shook her head again.

“Are you positive? I’ll bet both his names were on that piece of paper. Damn!”

The receptionist sat back down at her computer keys, watching the screen. Then she shook her head.

“Then what if it’s the other way—Stewart Lucas?” Billie asked.

“Like I said…”

“Right.”

“I think maybe you’ve been had,” the receptionist said. “A lot of people want to work here, people who love movies, special effects or just computer graphics, and maybe this fellow took it one step too far. To impress you, probably.” Her bland expression managed to signal the end of this consultation.

Time to do a Puffball. Billie thought about her white kitten, a Christmas gift when she was seven. Puffball had gotten out of the house in mid-January and been killed by the neighbor’s dog.

Her eyes welled immediately. Pure reflex now, Pavlovian. Cry! the director would say. Faster! Your heart is broken! She’d worked on it until the first syllable, the barest mental whisper of “puff” activated her tear ducts.

“Listen, don’t cry.” The receptionist stood up and came around the desk. She was shorter than Billie, narrower, and looked made of a substance lighter than air. It was possible that she herself was a special effect. “He conned you, gave you false info when you were vulnerable. Bet he realized all along that meant he couldn’t get his money back. And doesn’t really deserve it. The name on that paper was probably fake along with everything else, so he wasn’t nearly as nice as you thought. And don’t be ashamed. It happens to all of us.”

God bless sisterhood. “But he said—” The phone rang. Damn. Just as her performance was winning over the audience. “I can’t believe he lied. Oh, this is awful—I’m leaving tomorrow. Going home for a while and I wanted this off my conscience.” The receptionist started back to her desk to answer the phone. “You sure there’s absolutely no Stewart Lucas or Lucas Stewart?” Billie persisted. “Or maybe Luke as a nickname for something else altogether? He’s cute, brown hair, about six feet, and he drives a hearse.”

“Hearse?” The receptionist leaned over her desk, lifted the receiver and held up one finger, signaling Billie to wait. She politely routed the call, then replaced the receiver and turned back. “You said his car—”

“An old hearse painted a shimmery yellow. A good place to sleep, even if it wasn’t for my eternal rest yet.”

The receptionist almost smiled at her lame joke. “Well,” she said, “I guess there could be two six-foot-tall cute young guys with brown hair who drive cars like that, but there is a guy who works here who rebuilt one of those and drives it. It’s older than he is.”

“Yes—he said he’d had to redo it from the street up.”

“But his name’s not Luke or Stewart, it’s Stephen Tassio, so I don’t know…”

“It has to be the same person because I know he didn’t lie. Stephen…you think I could have mixed up Stewart with that?”

The receptionist nodded. “Stephen’s a good guy, all right. A little weird, but in nice ways. The party you went to—was it one of those Middle Ages things?”

“No. Everybody was pretty young. I think maybe I was the oldest person there, and I’m twenty-five.” The receptionist didn’t blink. Maybe Billie actually did look younger than she was, maybe people weren’t just flattering her.

“Not middle-aged. Middle Ages. Medieval stuff. He likes to dress up in fake armor or something and be a knight. There’s a bunch of them who go out and hold tournaments or jousts, whatever you call it. He even has this bird—a hawk or something—who lives with him, like the knights had. Of course he got his bird through a rescue society. It’d been shot or something and couldn’t be in the wild anymore. But the Middle Ages bit, it’s a whole thing, he says. People involved in it all over the world.”

“What’s it called?” Billie asked, trying not to slobber in her eagerness.

The receptionist shook her head. “I thought maybe you were part of it, too.”

“I don’t know if we even have such a thing in Indiana.” She pretended to pull herself back to the issue at hand. “Anyway, now that we know who he is, could you let him know I’m here? My name’s Audrey. Audrey Miller.”

God bless that blank-faced high-school classmate. Maybe whenever she needed a name and an empty shell of personality to fill, she’d be Audrey, whose four-footed clients weren’t likely to notice. But the truth was, unless Audrey had really changed, even spaniels probably forgot her immediately after they were returned home.

“Tell him the girl from the party. The one who was robbed. This is great. I feel so much better.”

The receptionist nodded and pushed buttons for an extension. Then a crease reappeared between her eyes as she listened to a message. Someday it’d become permanent, ruining the carved appearance of her face. “I forgot. He’s not here,” she said. “You want to leave the money in an envelope with me?”

“I’d rather… When will he be back in? I could go take care of a few errands.…”

“He’s taken two weeks off. Probably camping somewhere. He likes doing that when he isn’t—jousting or something. You want his voicemail?”

“No, it won’t do any—I’m leaving for Indiana tomorrow. I could give him my folks’ number and ask him to leave a message as to where I can mail the…” She enjoyed thinking aloud as Audrey. Audrey wasn’t quick-witted, and her sluggish thought process bought Billie breathing space to think on her own. “But wait—I would just hate for my parents to find out about the mugging—they hate that I moved to ‘crazy California,’ as they call it. That would about push them over the hump, and until I get established…well, until I get a real job—I’m a fabric designer—they kind of subsidize me. Only partly, but…you know?” Stephen Tassio, she repeated to herself. Even if we’re at an impasse, that was something. How common a name could that be? She’d find him. Why’d he take off these particular weeks? Pray that it wasn’t so he could drive across the country with the girl. Do not let him be only a courier, delivery service for the real Luke or Stewart, waiting for her far away.

“Could you give me his number instead? Or his address?—I’ll mail it directly to him with a note.”

The receptionist looked sympathetic, but shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not allowed to do that ever, at all, but in this case especially. Stephen left strict, strict rules that nobody is to be given his phone number or address. And in fact, I don’t even have them. He moved because of this situation he’s in, and he lives with friends, and I don’t know their names or where they are.”

“What about mail? Or if you need him suddenly?”

“He has a post-office box in San Rafael. And a beeper when he’s not on vacation.”

“That’s odd,” Billie whispered. “That doesn’t fit the guy I met or the one you described. Do you think he’s involved in something criminal? Running from the law?”

The receptionist smiled weakly and shook her head. “Hardly. He’s— Don’t repeat this, okay? Don’t tell him I told you when you see him, but he’s being harassed.”

“Meaning?”

“Stalked, except he thinks that’s too humiliating, not a guy thing, to even say the word about an ex-girlfriend. A crazy ex-girlfriend. She used to wait across the street there, scream at him, cry, until we called the police on her. He wouldn’t. Too un-macho, I guess. He said she’d calm down, get over it. Meantime, he’s hiding. In fact, I’ll bet he’s not anywhere around here because the ex would expect that.”

Hiding, Billie wondered, or enjoying a honeymoon with Penelope Redmond?

Okay, then. She had a name. Neither of the names she thought she was after, but all the same, this was progress.

*

It was suspiciously easy. There, in the phone book in the kiosk around the corner from ILM was a listing for Stephen Tassio. Name and address in Larkspur. If what the receptionist said was true, it had to be his former residence, but maybe if she dialed it, the computerized operator, not knowing about stalkers and paranoia, would give forth the new number.

Instead, voice mail picked up, stating the obvious, that she’d reached the number she’d dialed.

What if Stephen Tassio hadn’t moved at all? Maybe that was a ruse, to get the possessed girl off his case. Or what if the receptionist was a whole lot more devious than she’d seemed?—what if she considered Billie—even pathetic Audrey—as the possible stalker? Everybody lied. That’s what Emma said.

She could just imagine Emma’s acidic comments if she set off on an obscure hunt for the man without checking the obvious first.

She wrote down the address and number and returned to her car.

*

The Tassios’ overinflated plantation house looked misplaced and out-of-scale in a neighborhood of large but relaxed shingled homes that blended into their landscape. To get there, Billie had driven up a road that curved abruptly to one side so as not to disturb an ancient tree. But this house was pure arrogance and made no attempt to be compatible with its surrounds. Stephen Tassio’s home, or former home, or the home in which he currently or previously rented a room—whatever this was—belonged in a different sensibility. Enormous columns guarded a front door large enough to admit the King’s guards, ceremonial high hats, the horses they were riding, and the carriage they pulled.

The man who answered her ring was dwarfed by the lintel high above him. You’re a small and mortal thing while I am a majestic monument to myself, the doorway’s mouth seemed to proclaim. Behind him, Billie saw gilded mirrorwork and a marble floor. What royal guests did these people anticipate in the charmingly sleepy town of Larkspur?

“I’m looking for Stephen Tassio,” Billie said. “I’m—”

“Then your wish—and mine, too—has been granted, doll.” His smile was more than half leer. “You found him.”

In his fifties, she thought. Probably nice-enough-looking man before he sagged. He was pillow-soft and sloping. Even his hair was feathery, too fine and sparse to assume a shape. Couldn’t be the man Penny ran away with, whose car was older than he was. “You—you’re Stephen Tassio?”

“Have been all my life.”

Then maybe Stephen wasn’t Penny’s Luke or Wesley’s Stewart, after all. But the receptionist had said his car was older than he was. “And you drive a yellow hearse?”

His smile and all its component parts faded. “What’s he done now?” he said. “I’m Stephen Senior. You’re looking for Junior. Why do you care what he drives? Was he in a collision?”

If he thought that might be the reason for her call, why didn’t he ask if his son was injured?

“Who is it?” a sharp-edged voice called out.

Stephen Senior ignored the sound.

“He hasn’t done anything,” Billie said. “Nothing’s wrong. We have a mutual friend I’m trying to reach. I lost her address and I think she’s staying with him awhile. That’s all.”

The owner of the voice appeared behind the senior Tassio. She looked as razor-edged as she’d sounded. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “We don’t accept door-to-door solicitors. We have a notice posted, so it’s illegal to come here.”

“She’s not—”

“I’m looking for—”

“—selling anything,” Senior said.

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“Look, Marie…”

“What does she want, then? Is she a visitor?”

He considered this, then nodded. “More or less.”

“Then why haven’t you invited her in? Show a little common decency!”

This seemed a practiced routine the woman had to complete before she did what she was furious with her husband for not having already done. This was the machinery that primed them for the next step.

Senior sighed, then gestured to Billie to enter.

Perhaps she shouldn’t judge on first impressions, but even if the couple had been less abrasive, their door and entry-hall decor were enough to convince her that she couldn’t like them. She thought of Stephen in a job that never required clothing more dressy than a flannel shirt, driving a thirty-year-old hearse, and she approved. This was a family whose best hope would be a misfit.

“This is lovely,” she lied. “You certainly have a beautiful home.” Billie liked this part of her job—seeing the stages people erected for their personal dramas. This one was a still life. Embalmed shrine to success. A property statement, not a home.

Mrs. Tassio’s nod was in acknowledgment of the praise her home deserved as she directed Billie and her husband into a room of watercolored silks, fragile side tables, embroidered runners, and gilded accessories.

The sofas and chairs were so far apart, interaction below a scream would be difficult. The coffee table was distant enough from the sofa so as to make retrieving an actual cup from it hazardous, liable to spill and stain a pink-and-cream rug, too delicate to endure the pressure of shoes. Guests would socialize here only because they had to, not because they wanted to. You couldn’t live in this living room.

She paused at a small table filled with silver-framed photos, one of which was of a smiling young man in cap and gown. “Your son?” she asked Mr. Tassio. He nodded.

Junior was nice-looking. Open-faced, inviting. She wondered if he always looked that way, or if graduation’s promised freedom from these people was what had lit his face.

Billie sat gingerly, refusing the offer of a beverage. “And you are?” Mrs. Tassio asked. “I never caught your name.” She shot an accusatory glance at her husband.

“Billie August.” No need for Audrey here. She told the truth, at least partially. She explained that she was looking for a female friend of Stephen’s who had inherited money but didn’t know about it.

“Another girl, then.” His mother sealed her mouth so tightly she had no lips, only lines radiating from where they had been. Girls, then, were bad. Stephen’s girls were bad.

“Truth is,” Senior said, “Stephen’s close-mouthed about his whereabouts lately. He hasn’t lived here in a while.”

“Only right after college,” his mother said. “While he was job-hunting, but it didn’t work out. Not at all. Stephen himself, well, that might have worked, but there were all these girls, a parade of them, and his friends. Strange people.”

“Who, Marie?” Senior asked. “Who was strange?”

“Remember Alicia Malone?”

Her husband nodded and smiled. “Pretty child,” he said. “I always liked her.”

Mrs. Tassio sniffed. “After high school she became weird and then she infected Stephen. He was normal till then. She’s the one dragged him in with her crowd. People who think it’s still the Middle Ages, or should be. Pretend to be lords and ladies. Thanks to her, he arrived here with a wild bird. Filthy thing that sat on his wrist, on a leather band. It ate mice. My freezer was filled with them.” She shook her head. Her hair was salt-and-pepper, pulled back into a twist. Attractive on anybody else, as would have been her black turtleneck and slacks, but the style only emphasized the steeliness of her temperament.

Billie had a moment’s pleasure imagining Stephen’s hawk defecating digested mouse upon this living room.

“Last time we knew his whereabouts it was with this girl Yvonne,” his father said.

Mrs. Tassio inhaled loudly, then let the air escape in a ragged exhale. “I’m glad that one’s over,” she said. “She was not… You could tell how far downhill he was sliding if he was with her. She was different. Not…educated. Not refined. Cheap, if you understand what I’m saying. And after they broke up, she had the nerve to come here and accuse us of causing the rupture because we didn’t approve of her! What a piece of work! There’s no law says I have to let whatever my son picks up—mangy friends who don’t own a decent suit, a hawk, or Yvonne—into my house. A woman’s home is her castle, too.”

“Then you don’t have his new address or phone number?”

“I wouldn’t have known he’d moved if that…person hadn’t come here and carried on that way. Stephen is not your ideal son. He lacks social niceties, like telling his parents where he lives, calling sometimes, even visiting. Without the bird.”

“Did Stephen ever mention Penelope Redmond?”

“You might be getting the idea that Stephen mentions very little to us, Miss August,” Senior said. “You’d be correct in that.”

“Is this Penelope the girl who’s inherited something?” his wife asked.

Billie nodded.

“At least his taste in women has improved since Yvonne.”

An interesting judgment since the only information she’d been given was that imaginary money floated on her imaginary horizon.

“Then I thank you for your time and consideration.” Billie stood up. “Please let me know if you do hear from Stephen. It’s important that I notify Penelope.” She handed them one of her cards, the one that simply said, Investigator.

It was interesting what you gleaned while searching for something else altogether. Peel back the fronts of those tidy homes and see how they’ve organized their lives, how closely they resemble their facades and landscapes. Learn a lot.

What she hadn’t learned, however, was the only thing she’d been hired to find out. Where was Penelope Redmond?