Blunt Darts Read Free

packages.
    “Oh,” she said with her smile, “this is my annual showboat excursion into the Big City. Usually I just barter my wares for dry goods at the general store.”
    She giggled, and so did I. Despite her first appearance, I remembered her as a pretty regular kid, and I decided she hadn’t changed.
    She declined a cocktail. We ordered a bottle of white wine to be followed by a chicken luncheon for two. She said what she had to about Beth, and I did the same. The waiter brought and poured the wine. We talked about classrooms, the declining birth rate, and teacher lay-offs.
    “So how goes the private-eye business?” she asked.
    I exaggerated a little. I was relieved that she didn’t ask for details.
    “I’m sorry,” I said finally, “but I don’t recall exactly where it is that you’re teaching.”
    A flicker of disappointment at the corners of her eyes? “Urn,” she said, “Meade, the Lincoln Drive Middle School. And that brings me to what I wanted to see you about. Do you know where Meade is?”
    I did. “It’s right next to Bonham, isn’t it?”
    She nodded as the waiter arrived with our chicken.
    “If it’s particularly gory, why don’t we wait until after the meal?” I said.
    “Oh, it’s not,” she replied quickly, and glanced down at the waiter’s tray. “But let’s not be rude to the chicken.” I laughed and motioned to the waiter to begin serving.
    The entrée was delightful, punctuated by few words. Valerie finished a bit before I did and fixed me with dark, dark brown eyes. “I can’t really start at the beginning because I didn’t know the family then,” she said. “But this past year in class—I teach the eighth grade—I had a boy named Stephen Kinnington in my homeroom and English classes.”
    “Familiar name,” I interjected as I finished the last of my chicken.
    “I’m not surprised. His father, Judge Kinnington, was one of the youngest men ever to go on the bench, and his family has sort of, well, ruled Meade since long before I arrived. Anyway, Stephen’s mother, Diane Kinnington, killed herself about four years ago by driving her Mercedes off a bridge and into the river. Apparently she boozed it up a lot, so no one knows whether it was accidental or intentional. It hit Stephen pretty hard, as you can imagine. I’ve talked with his fifth-grade teacher, Miss Pitts, who’s retired now, and she said that his mother’s ‘activities,’ as Miss Pitts put it, had appeared to be affecting Stephen for a long time prior to Mrs. Kinnington’s actual death. I got the impression from Miss Pitts that by ‘activities’ something more than simple alcoholism was involved, if you know what I mean.”
    “I’ve read of such goings on in France,” I said.
    Valerie made a face and drove on. “Anyway, by the time I got Stephen this year, he seemed to be perfectly normal, though a little reserved around the other kids. By all tests, he was exceptionally bright. I mean a real brain trust. At the beginning of the year, he would ask me whether I’d read certain books. He had obviously read them, and they were way beyond eighth-grade level. He’d missed a year because of sickness, but he’s still only fourteen. I sort of took it on myself to suggest to his father that perhaps Stephen should go to a private school with an accelerated program. But whenever I called his office at the courthouse, he wasn’t available, and he never returned my calls.”
    “Don’t you have some sort of parent-teacher conference during the year?”
    “Yes, but he didn’t appear for the first one I scheduled, and when I called his home that evening, he wasn’t in. I was pretty upset, since those conferences are scheduled on my time, so I kind of demanded to speak with someone—the housekeeper answered the phone, you see—and that’s how I came to meet Mrs. Kinnington.”
    “The judge remarried?” I asked.
    “Oh, no, his mother—that is, the judge’s mother and Stephen’s grandmother,