CHAPTER 19

Back home, I spent fifteen bleary-eyed minutes deciphering notes stuck under the magnets on my refrigerator door. Roz had scrawled a message from Spider telling someone, probably herself, not to miss ProtoSlime at the Rat, ProtoSlime being some rock group and the Rat being Rathskeller in Kenmore Square, a hangout of bizarre repute. There was a note that said “peanut butter,” meaning she was running out of it, and one that said “check out toilet!”

Sometimes Roz answers the phone and sometimes she doesn’t, depending on her mood and hair color du jour, so I have a telephone answering machine. Its red light glowed steadily. Either Reardon hadn’t gotten around to reading Valerie’s diary, hadn’t found anything relevant therein, or had ripped up my card as soon as he’d ushered me out his office door.

The latter possibility seemed the most likely, what with his lying about not seeing Valerie, so I tossed the place until I found the phone book most likely to contain the address of a man who worked in Lincoln. The Metro West Directory—Ma Bell’s attempt to forge an identity for Boston’s western suburbs—was underneath a potted plant in my bedroom.

No Reardon, Geoffrey. I searched some more and found the Boston phone book propping open a kitchen closet.

Reardon, Geoffrey L., lived at 228 Dudley Street, Somerville—a low-rent address. Since I have little respect for the sleep of people who lie to me, I dialed, 4 A.M. notwithstanding. I got no answer. A deep sleeper, or a man who slept away from home.

With his looks he could sleep anyplace he wanted, I thought, summoning courage to check out the second-floor bathroom. I eased open the door, saw chocolate tile, holes and pipes. A large carton rested in a corner. Peeking inside I thought I saw, yes, I did see, a perfectly appalling electric blue toilet.

Must be in transit to another bathroom, I told myself. I thought about rousing Roz. Maybe she was sleeping with someone I could question concerning the blue toilet. I decided this was not something I wanted to deal with in the wee hours and contented myself with writing a note: “Do not install this toilet!!!” and taping it to the box. Then I got undressed, unwound the Ace bandage from my knee, and pulled the covers over my head.

I dreamed about Sam Gianelli and bathtubs, bathtubs and Sam.

I don’t need a lot of sleep. Not quite four hours later, I woke with the alarm, flexed my knee cautiously, and decided to try the Y. Even if I couldn’t play volleyball, I could take a long hot soapy shower.

My knee loosened up as I played, and I put in a creditable game-and-a-half, once scoring three kills in a row. I don’t particularly like the terminology, but there it is, and it’s one of the things I do best. I’m an indifferent server, but a fine outside hitter, and outside hitters spike for a living. A kill is just a successful spike. You take a full 180-degree preparation, jump, meet the ball over the net, and smash it down and away from their blockers. If you’ve placed it out of diving setter range, it smacks the floor, bounces back six feet high, and is extremely satisfying.

So was the shower. I mean, it wasn’t a long, luxurious bath, but compared to what I could have anticipated in my first-floor bathroom, it was great. My first-floor bathroom cannot rightly be called a bathroom, because it has no bath. It’s a water closet, slightly larger than a phone booth. The sink is wedged in a corner next to the toilet, and I have to hold my breath to get the door closed once I’m inside. The sink is one of those old-fashioned types, with separate hot and cold spigots and a rubber plug on a metal chain so that warm water can be blended in the basin. I don’t have the patience for that, so I either scald myself or freeze myself whenever I use it, which is not often. I used the second-floor bath, the one that now has the holes and pipes and chocolate tile and vile blue toilet.

Maybe I could move into the Y until Twin Brothers finished the job.

I phoned Reardon’s home from the Dunkin’ Donuts in Central Square between bites of glazed donuts and sips of strong coffee. No answer. I dialed the Emerson, getting the number from Information. A woman with a silky voice connected me to Reardon’s office. The phone rang twelve times before she came back on the line and told me that Mr. Reardon was not answering. Hot news flash.

In between the time she’d disappeared and the time I’d questioned him, someone who looked like Reardon had visited someone who looked like Valerie in the Zone. I have what Mooney always called an “overactive imagination,” so I could come up with any number of explanations, ranging from the bizarre—Reardon running a chain of high-priced prep-school hookers—to the ridiculous—Reardon discovering one of his students by chance while cruising for a lady of the night. Somehow I couldn’t see gorgeous Geoffrey paying for sex. None of my explanations had the nice simple ring of probable truth.

I headed down Route 2 to the Emerson, one eye on the speedometer, the other seeking traffic cops, hoping Reardon could dish up a story I’d believe. It was a good day for a little speed, brisk and bright, and once I crested the hill into Lexington I surrendered to the impulse. Someday, a sports car.

I parked under my cherry tree and headed through the main gate and across the quadrangle to Reardon’s office. A bunch of teenage boys kicked a soccer ball on the muddy field. One of the tame squirrels crossed my path and flew up a tree. It was as big as a cat. Not as big as T.C., but then he’s tall for his age.

A four-by-six card was taped to Reardon’s office door. It said: “Classes canceled for the day.” It was signed with a flourish: “Geoffrey L. Reardon.”

I lurked in the hallway, casually reading a bulletin board, until two girls finished wailing over a homework assignment and disappeared. I tried the door. Locked.

A credit card will do the trick nine times out of ten. The tenth time you’ll split the card, and it’s such a pain to explain that you need a new VISA because the old one failed while breaking and entering. So I carry what is known in the trade as a “loid,” a thin strip of celluloid that slips down between the door and the jamb and snicks those lousy little bolts back before you can dial 911. I was in Reardon’s office as quickly as if I’d had a key.

The drawer that had been filled with notebooks was empty. I sank into Reardon’s desk chair and dialed his home number. Seven rings. Eight. I yanked his center drawer open while I waited. Pencils, erasers, scissors, tape—the same stuff I’d pawed through two days ago.

I sat up straight. Someone had taken the phone off the hook.

“Hello,” I said cautiously.

Someone grunted.

“Hello,” I repeated. “Mr. Reardon?”

“Yeah? What?”

“Mr. Reardon?” I repeated.

“Which one?” The voice was gruff, male.

“Geoffrey.”

“Not here.”

“Don’t hang up. Please, it’s important. Do you know where he is?”

“Lady, I’m half asleep. He’s not here. He’s at work.”

“I’m calling from the Emerson. He’s not here.”

“He must be. The Reliant’s gone.”

It took me a minute to realize he meant a car.

“’Bye,” said the voice on the phone. Then I heard a click and then nothing but a hum.

Damn. The car was gone. The man was gone. The diary was gone. Valerie was gone.

I searched the desk again, to make sure he hadn’t transferred his paperwork from drawer to drawer. The key was still under the blotter. As I fitted it into the bottom-drawer keyhole, my fingers felt a roughness and I leaned closer for a better look. There were scratches, scratches I hadn’t left there. Strictly amateur hairpin stuff.

The bottle of Wild Turkey had been shoved to the back to make room for a pile of diaries, maybe twenty in all. I leafed through them quickly. Most had a name inscribed on the front. Two had the name scrawled in the upper left-hand corner of the inside cover. None of the names was Valerie’s. I went through the pile again, making sure one book hadn’t been tucked inside another by mistake.

Then I gazed longingly at the bottle of Wild Turkey, which proves how upset I was. Wild Turkey at ten-thirty in the morning. Ugh.

I had the strong feeling that Reardon and Valerie were in a Plymouth Reliant motoring toward some southern state where you could marry your first cousin provided you were both over the age of eight.

I pitched the diaries back in the drawer, relocked it, and went out into the hallway. I wondered if Reardon had put up the sign yesterday or this morning. Maybe I’d missed him by minutes.

The doorway to the little theater was closed, but unlocked. Backstage, it was pitch black. When I opened the door something stirred, so I reached in my purse and yanked out a can of hair spray that fooled me by its shape. I use that old fashioned lacquer-style hair spray as a substitute for Mace. It costs less and is just as effective. I tried again and got my flashlight. I ran it around the stage perimeter and heard the scrambles and giggles of teenagers getting dressed in the dark. Puppy love. Puppy sex.

“Reardon?” I called into the sudden hush.

“He’s not here,” said a boy whose voice threatened to squeak.

“You see him today?” I asked.

“No.” This voice was female, childish.

“Thanks,” I said. I turned off the flash and left the room to young love.

My knee was starting to stiffen again, so I decided on the long way back to the car, thinking a walk might do it—and me—good. The long way led past a rustic shack, built to look older than it was and hold gardeners’ tools or maybe athletic equipment without ruining the tone of the place. The path wound through stands of pine trees, oaks just beginning to bud. The sun shone brightly and even I, a woman nervous out of sight of concrete, began to enjoy my country ramble.

Right before making a sharp left to get back to the car, I turned for a final view of the school buildings, the athletic fields, the trees, the squirrels—and I stopped dead and waited.

What’s wrong with this picture?

That was my first conscious thought, that something was wrong.

Later I realized it was the wheel tracks cut into the sod where no vehicle should have gone, coupled with the steady drone of an automobile engine. Now, in no hurry, merely curious, I followed the tracks over a rise, past stately pines.

The car was a black Plymouth Reliant, maybe five years old. The engine was running and a corrugated vacuum cleaner hose snaked from the tail pipe though the right rear window.

Someone was inside, slumped over, head resting on the driver’s window. I ran the last fifty yards, forgetting my knee.

I grabbed the front-door handle. Locked. All the doors were locked. Bright gold hair pressed against the glass. Given time and tools, I can crack a car.

I shouted. The hair didn’t move. I pounded the glass. The hair didn’t move.

I ran around and yanked the hose from the back window, shoving it behind the car so it would spill its poison far from me. There was maybe a two-inch gap at the top of the window. I shoved my hand in, choking from the fumes, then pulled away and stripped off my gloves, my jacket, rolled up the sleeve of my shirt, anything to make my arm thinner, make it slip down far enough to pull up the button, open the door.

I could make it through to about six, seven inches above my wrist. The button was three inches away. It might as well have been a mile.

What do you use to break a car window—a shoe? a rock? I was wearing sneakers. There were only pebbles on the ground. I remembered the feel of the flashlight in my hand and I grabbed it out of my bag.

It was safety glass; it wouldn’t shatter, I reminded myself. I could stand close without getting cut. The first time I hit it, it just cracked, so I wound up, the way I do for a volleyball spike, and drove the flashlight damn near through the glass. Then I used my coat to shield my hand, reached through, and unlocked the passenger door.

It opened easily. I kneeled on the front seat, grabbed Reardon’s shoulders, and started hauling him out of the car. He was unwieldy, the way drunks are, lolling and heavy. His left foot stuck behind the gear shift and I had to crawl into the backseat, reach over, and free it. I knew he was dead before I got him onto the grass. Still I held my fingers to the pulse at his throat. He was cold.

A stiff. That’s what we used to call them when I was a cop. We never gave them the dignity of a first name, a last name. A stiff is not a human being. A stiff is nobody’s mother, nobody’s child, nobody’s teacher, nobody’s friend. A stiff made the job possible.

Sometimes we named them for their choice of death—floater, croaker, roast.

I looked away from Geoffrey Reardon’s face, away from the half-open blue eyes, the spill of golden hair, and turned him into a stiff so I could go on with my job.

I pulled my right glove on, reached into the car, and shut off the motor, leaving the keys in the ignition. There was a notebook on the seat. I grabbed it, thinking it was Valerie’s missing diary. It was the manuscript of Reardon’s play. I riffled the pages. Nothing fell out. I checked the rest of the car, the glove compartment, the cassette holder. I felt under the seats. Old Kleenex and loose change.

Twenty feet away, I sat on the ground and made myself breathe, in and out, in and out. Deeper and slower. Then I walked back to Reardon’s office, ’loided the lock again, and carefully wiped my prints off the doorknobs, the desk, and the phone.

I tried to remember if I knew anybody in the Lincoln Police Department, but I couldn’t come up with a name. I left Reardon’s office, went to the building closest to Reardon’s body, the one to which I’d have logically fled after finding the grim scene in the woods. I asked a gray-haired woman where I could find a phone. Student lounge, she said, pointing straight ahead. The place with the blue velvet couches. I wanted to sink into one of them and sleep for a week.

I punched 911. The bored voice perked up and turned officious when I mentioned the Emerson School. I gave my name and told the voice I’d meet the patrolmen at the scene. Then I found a dime and called home, reaching my own message machine which was what I wanted. Maybe Reardon had phoned after I’d left.

Holding my remote beeper to the receiver, I pressed the button. It made a noise like a turkey gobbling.

There was the scratchy sound of tape, then Mooney’s voice. He said: “Hey, I’m going into this hearing pretty damn soon. You got anything? Do I owe you or do you owe me?”

Then there was a beep and a second message.

“Hello. This is Preston Haslam. Valerie’s come home, safe and sound. Please send me a bill for your time, and thanks for your concern.”