The Reverend Alfred Moody reminds me of baby mice—pink an’ nearly hairless, with puffy slits for eyes an’ a little sucky mouth. An’ his hair an’ whiskers’re so white an’ fine they look almost see-through.
The head missionary was just about as useful, an’ not a whole lot more helpful than Rye Willis’s rumors. He pretty much repeated what Peter’d told me. Moody weren’t worried so much as annoyed by the defection of one of his staff. He sounded like a man who wasn’t unsure of his facts very often. An’ he was puzzled.
“It’s not that he just disappeared,” the Reverend tole me. “He left a letter of resignation. What’s strange is that he didn’t resign in person. He didn’t say anything to anyone—just folded his tent, so to speak, and vanished overnight. Very inconsiderate, I must say.”
“He take his things?”
“Most of them. That’s odd, too. He took his clothes and car, but left his books—even the Bible his parents gave him. And he didn’t mention them in his letter of resignation. I don’t know if he meant us to keep them or if he plans to send for them.”
I axed him what kind of car Devon drove—an old gray Escort—an’ the name an’ address of his next of kin—Mr. an’ Mrs. Ansel Devon of Illinois. He didn’t know nothin’ about Devon’s friends or extracurricular activities.
“He got along well with the children. In fact, some of them are quite upset about his leaving.”
“Which ones?”
“Well … You’ll have to ask them—you won’t frighten them?”
“Why’d I wanna do that?”
“Well … er … Some of them have been brought up to fear representatives of the law …”
“Gotcha. How ’bout if I leave my gun an’ badge in the car an’ jus’ tell ’em I’m a friend of Roger’s?”
“That would be acceptable. As long as you don’t lie.”
I shrugged. It takes all kinds.
“The children will be breaking for lunch soon. I’ll ask the teachers to cooperate fully with your … uh … investigation.”
“’Preciate that, Reverend. Jus’ one more thing?”
“What is it?” He set down in the chair behind his desk, an’ I could see he was dyin’ to wipe the sweat off his face, only he didn’t want me to notice he could sweat.
“D’you have a pi’ture of Devon? It’d be a damn—er, pardon—a heck of a lot easier to find him if I knew what he looked like.”
I left my sidearm an’ badge in my squad car, locked in the glove box, an’ the pi’ture—Devon holdin’ a guitar, between a kid with a fiddle an’ one with a banjo—on the passenger seat. For good measure, ’cause there prob’ly ain’t fifteen people over the age of ten in Boone County who can’t slim-jimmy a car open in twenty seconds flat, I put my stuffed rattlesnake, Clyde, on the seat on top of Devon’s pi’ture, where anybody thinkin’ to trespass’d see him an’ have second thoughts. Clyde looks pretty convincin’ if you throw somethin’ over the dog-bite holes in his middle, which I did. On the way back to the schoolyard, I cut a couple a switches off the Reverend’s willow tree. In the yard, I found me a seat in the shade an’ proceeded to cut the switches into sticks the right size for whistles. Pretty soon, I had the first whistle done an’ was testin’ it. The kids started swarmin’ around like I was the Pied Piper, elbowin’ each other out of the way, an’ pesterin’ to know who I was an’ how to “make them worthless sticks sing.” I told them I was a friend of Mr. Devon an’ I’d be obliged if anyone could tell me where to find him. Nobody could, but I hung around ’til all the kids had more or less got the hang of makin’ whistles.