CHAPTER 14

Reardon’s office stood open and empty, so I asked a passing student to point out the little theater. She clutched her books and gave hesitant directions studded with “ers,” “ums,” “I guesses,” and “you knows,” finally mentioning a set of stained-glass windows, round like portholes, and patterned in blue doves with scarlet eyes. I saw those and made for them.

It was pitch dark inside double doors that closed behind me with a whoosh. A class was on stage—small, maybe fifteen students. The stage lights blazed, but the auditorium was black, so I crept forward and grabbed a seat, a secret audience.

Once my eyes adjusted, I had no trouble understanding Jerry’s jealousy or getting a fix on Haslam’s rumors. Geoffrey Reardon was, to put it simply, gorgeous. Sprawled on the stage floor with one knee bent, one leg extended, leaning back on his palms, he’d stationed himself under a baby spot that haloed his hair. Outside fairy tales, not many people have golden hair. It’s straw or yellow, sandy or badly bleached. Reardon’s hair belonged in an art museum; it was Rembrandt-burnished gold.

He had a sharp profile, a chiseled nose—and believe me, I’m rarely tempted to use the word “chiseled” in that context—a mustache a shade darker than his hair, great teeth. Full front, his face was broad, with high cheekbones, and a genuine Kirk Douglas chin cleft. His circle of surrounding students was mainly female—surprise, surprise—and they stared at him with spaniel eyes.

Much like my own, I thought ruefully, glad of the protective dark.

Why, I wondered, was this breathtaking specimen not on some larger stage? In front of cameras? Earning a fortune churning out TV commercials, modeling Jockey shorts if he couldn’t act at all?

I took time out to regulate my breathing and to scold myself for assuming that Reardon’s looks, surely not his fault, were his stock in trade. I was not going to cast him as a bimbo. Not before I spoke to him.

He rose in one smooth motion and the kids, in feeble imitation, stood, too. They did stretching exercises in a set pattern everyone seemed to know. I felt like joining in—that is, all of me except my aching knee felt like joining in. At a signal, the kids broke rank and started moving on their own. Some did jerky rap-dance steps, some balletic leaps and whirls. A dark-haired boy vaulted an imaginary horse. A girl with long, dark hair tried a cartwheel. She wore tights and a big shirt that threatened to slide up over her bra.

Occasionally, Reardon, prowling the stage restlessly, would yell, and all movement would cease. Then he’d say something, and they’d start again, dancing and spinning and jumping.

It was fun to watch, this game of frozen tag, but it could have used music. To tell the truth, I couldn’t figure the exercise out. The kids seemed to enjoy it. It was a far cry from my high-school memories of rigid desks, forced motionlessness, and silence.

Sometimes Reardon joined the dance, as if he had too much energy to stop himself. His movements were stunning, exciting, abrupt. One moment he was still, then he’d erupt, then the stillness again, making me doubt he’d moved at all. He wore a turquoise cotton knit sweater, khaki pants, and white running shoes. His body was slight, but hard. His hair gleamed.

Had Valerie been part of this class? Had she moved in circles, leaps, or stutters?

He motioned and they circled, touching hands, murmuring, the first and only hint of “cult.” Then the kids turned and vanished into the bordering black curtains. Alone on stage, Reardon executed a lazy dance step to unheard music.

I could have watched him for hours. I licked my lips and cleared my throat.

He turned like a cat. “Somebody out there?”

I made my way past rows of quiet blue velvet chairs.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello.” He looked relieved, glad I wasn’t somebody else. His brow furrowed attractively. I wasn’t a teacher he knew. Too old for a student. He smiled. It seemed flirtatious, but that could have been me.

If I’d been fifteen, I’d have rolled over and died.

“Uh, can I help you?” he said.

“I left you my card,” I said firmly, thankful I was not fifteen.

He was beautiful. It wasn’t the lights or anything. He glowed. He probably caused traffic accidents when he went out to get the mail.

I said, “I left my card on your desk. Carlotta Carlyle. The private investigator.”

He jammed his hands into his pockets and smiled less comfortably. “Oh, yeah. I remember now. I don’t see many cards like that. So it’s not a joke, huh?”

His voice told me why he hadn’t advanced professionally. Speech teachers might have tried, but nobody’d pried all of New Jersey out of that voice. Worse, it was high and reedy. In the days of silent film, he might have rivaled Valentino. Today, he’d have to do spaghetti westerns and get them dubbed.

In some ways his voice was a relief. He didn’t distract me as much. I find ugly men with great voices more attractive than great-looking men with icky voices.

“You don’t fit my image,” he said.

“You don’t fit mine,” I said.

We looked at each other. He was at stage level and I was two and a half feet below.

“Stairs?” I asked.

He leaned down. “I’ll give you a hand up,” he said.

I didn’t have a chance to say no. When somebody extends his hand like that you think he’s going to shake. It’s practically reflex, you stick your own out. Next thing I knew I was on stage next to the man and he was grinning. I wondered if he practiced that move on his girl students.

He was maybe two inches shorter than me. He had muscles.

“So what can I do for you?” he said. I got the feeling he’d preferred me on lower ground.

“Is there someplace we can talk?” I said. The view from the stage was weird. I couldn’t even see the seat I’d occupied so recently. Other eyes could be out there in the dark.

He checked his watch. “Here or my office?”

“Your office,” I said.

“I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Me either,” I said, which was a lie.

He led the way behind black curtains to a metal door and shoved it open with one shoulder, ushering me through. The noise of laughing, chattering kids was deafening. The theater must have been soundproofed. I recognized the hallway outside Reardon’s office.

He closed the door behind me, indicated the chair in front of his desk, and sat in the one behind it. The manuscript on his blotter was gone. The split-leaf philodendron had gotten a much-needed drink.

“I can give you fifteen minutes,” he said.

I remembered the stash of Wild Turkey in his bottom drawer.

He spread his elbows on the desk and formed his joined fingers into a pyramid. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said looking me straight in the eye. “I have another class. And then rehearsal.”

His eyes were Paul Newman blue. “They keep you busy,” I said.

“Incredibly. They seem to think I need no preparation time, that I just crank the stuff out. It’s exhausting.”

Playing frozen tag with fifteen-year-olds didn’t look like ditch-digging to me. “I saw part of your class,” I said.

“That’s a good group. Very fluid. Open.”

Fluid? Open?

“Is Valerie in that class?” I asked.

“Valerie?” he said.

“Valerie Haslam.”

“Is that what this is about?” he asked. “This investigator stuff? Valerie? I heard she’d run off.”

“Who from?”

“Gossip and rumor. It’s how I get most of my news.”

I nodded, and he gave me a smile that generated heat. He sat up straighter, and his whole manner seemed to change. He started talking eagerly, as if he were glad to see me.

“Valerie’s not in the advanced group,” he said. “No way. She’s part of my nightmare class.” He had a trick of speaking very softly, confidingly, drawing the listener nearer. This listener didn’t mind. His voice sounded better soft.

He probably knew that.

“The counseling department,” he said, “such as it is, has decided that kids needing a few easy credits, especially kids who act out in other classes, need drama in their lives. They ought to send them to woodworking, math, science, teach them a little discipline. I don’t want them.”

I had the feeling I was not the first to hear this little outburst. “Troublemakers?” I inquired sympathetically, while thinking to myself that this man wouldn’t know a troublemaker if he tripped over one. Let him go to Paolina’s school for a few days. Let him meet nine-year-olds with knives.

He sighed. His mustache had not a waxed hair out of place. “I was going to put a picture of the Statue of Liberty on my office door with the caption: ‘Send me your drugged, your weird, your outcasts, yearning to leave school.’”

He waited for me to smile my appreciation of his cleverness, then went on: “Oh, they’re not all bad. They’re harmless kids, really, most of them. Valerie’s very sweet. Open, no. Getting her to move was like pulling teeth at first. They’re so self-conscious, these kids. I used to see her in the hallways, walking next to the lockers, maybe an inch away from them, staring straight ahead. Scary. She was very closed when the class started, but there was something there, something strange, even wild, secretive. I thought she had depth—and now …”

“Now?” I prompted.

“Well, I guess her running away proves it.”

“Proves what?”

“That she’s not as ordinary as she seems, not like every-humdrum-body-else. Maybe that she’s synthesizing her experience, creating her own art—”

“By running away?”

“Look,” he said, “I’ve been here four years. We’ve had two suicides, God knows how many pregnancies, more runaways than I can count. This place may look like heaven, but it’s not.”

The way he said it, it seemed like a direct warning: Things are not as they seem. I couldn’t get a fix on him. His self-conscious artiness, his set phrases and catchwords were like a foreign language. And he was such a performer, using his entire body for the emphasis his voice couldn’t quite provide.

“Do you have any idea where Valerie might be?” I asked.

“No.”

“Why she went?”

“No.”

There was a faint hesitation this time. He smiled at me, as if we were playing a game and he knew the rules and I didn’t.

“I heard you were her favorite teacher,” I said.

“Really?” He pushed his hair back off his forehead. “I’m flattered. I thought she was starting to get into the movement games, the exercises. She has a very soft voice, not a good stage voice, but she has a presence. Her mime is exciting, even when it’s technically flawed.”

“Was she in any of your after-school productions?”

“Nothing with a speaking role. But we did some improvisational pieces in the fall, experimental stuff, and, yes, I think she was involved in one or two of those. She moves well. But I didn’t know I was her favorite teacher. She doesn’t even hand her work in on time.”

“So if she told her family that she was staying after school for drama club—”

“Recently? Then she would have been lying.” He smiled, a wonderfully warm, flirtatious smile that looked as if it had been practiced in a dozen mirrors. “Acting, maybe.”

“I imagine a lot of the girls have crushes,” I said.

“What can you do?” he said smugly.

I thought of a few things—like not batting your eyelashes so shamelessly, wearing your clothes a little looser, not posing in the sunlight …

“They express their admiration in giggles,” he continued. “I have taught enough giggling teenagers to last me a lifetime. I won’t miss it.”

“You’re leaving.” I said. Not a question, but a statement.

“I hope and pray this will be my last year.”

“Another teaching job?” I asked.

“God forbid. I have had teaching up to here and then some.” He smiled again. This one was a variation on the friendly flirtatious one. More sidelong. Smile number two.

“I may take some time off,” he continued. “Maybe dance instead of act. I need to get back to performing. Make the New York scene before I get hopelessly old and stale. I hope this will be my last year of giggling misfits.”

Given his voice, dance would be a good field. God, he could just stand still. Movement would be extra.

“Then I have this play,” he said eagerly. “This thing I wrote. It’s been going no place forever, but I’m going to open it up, turn it into a screenplay. I may have some financial backing. I’m a good director. I’d like to do my own script, but you need clout for that. Hollywood is so uncertain.” He nodded a few times, staring at the ceiling, seeing something up there that I couldn’t.

Hooray for Hollywood, I thought. Why should it be different?

“You said Valerie handed in her assignments late,” I said.

“Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yes, she did.”

“All of them?”

“I don’t give much written work. That’s why the counselors sic the losers on me. But they all have to keep a diary, a kind of interior monologue, throughout the class, and I give specific assignments from time to time. The kids never know when the diary’s going to be collected. Otherwise, they’d wait until the day before it’s due and write a whole semester’s worth of bilge in one night. I hate it when it takes longer for me to read the tripe than it took them to write it.” Charming smile number three.

“An interior monologue?” I said.

“Their thoughts about the school experience, about themselves, about each other, about me. I try to make them bring their own experiences to acting, so they have to be aware of their emotions. And by the time I get them, by the time they’re teenagers, they’re already so caught up in not showing their feelings. For the boys in particular, even acknowledging emotion is hard.”

His hands flew as he spoke, very expressive hands, fingers fully extended. His eyes, open very wide, never left my own. I felt like I was watching a performance given especially for me.

“Do you have the diaries for Valerie’s class?” I asked.

He thought it over. “I collected them a few weeks ago.”

“Valerie’s?”

“Hers was late.”

“Could I have a look at it?”

Smile number four, apologetic, but sincere. “I’m sorry, but one of the few things I make a point of is absolute privacy. Otherwise I’d never get them to explore their minds, would I? They know the diary’s a safe place to bring their thoughts.”

“It might give me an idea of where she’s gone.”

“Sorry. I just can’t do it.” His eyes went to a drawer in his desk. I remembered the notebook with the rotten handwriting. Dammit, Valerie’s might have been the next one in the pile. “Look,” he said, “If there’s anything in Valerie’s diary about running away, about a special place, anything like that, I’ll call you. I have your number.”

“When?” I asked.

“You really think this might help?”

“Yes,” I said.

“As soon as I can. I’ve got a lot of stuff on right now, but maybe I can find time tonight. No guarantee.”

“The girl’s been missing a week,” I said.

“And you’re looking for her,” he said. “How on earth did you get to be a private investigator?”

“I was a cop,” I said in a tone that usually kills conversation about what I want to be when I grow up.

“Oh.”

“You mentioned the guidance department. Who was Valerie’s guidance counselor?”

“She didn’t have one.” Reardon leaned back complacently. “She never went. Very intelligent decision on her part.”

“You don’t think she needed guidance?”

“Not the kind they give. They’re not therapists, they’re high school guidance counselors. They’ve got slots and they stick kids in them. All they care about is where you go to college. They guide you to a college, period. They don’t want to talk. They don’t listen.”

“But you do.”

“Valerie never confided in me, not in words.”

“Without words, then,” I said. “What did you see in Valerie?”

He paused, seemed to give the question some thought. “I don’t know. A kind of desperation, maybe. Who knows if I saw what was there? Or what she meant me to see.”

I wondered if this guy ever saw anything beyond himself reflected in other people’s eyes.

“About tonight,” he said, smiling, flirting. “Those diaries. I’ll really try to get back to you. Is the number on your card home or office?”

“Both,” I said.

There was a knock on the door and a soft voice said, “Geoff, you in there?”

Reardon checked his wristwatch. “I’m late,” he said, standing and waiting for me to precede him out of the office. He made quite a production out of locking his door, patting the key in his pants pocket.

The girl in the hallway was more than pretty, with silky blonde hair and a glossy pink leotard. She took his arm to lead him to the stage. Very touchy-feely, this drama coach. Damn friendly, these kids and their teachers.

I watched them disappear down the hall and wondered if the initials “GR” on the back of Valerie’s photo stood for Geoffrey Reardon.

I took a few steps and my knee almost buckled. I wondered if the extravagance of the Emerson ran to hot tubs for the gym.