Blunt Darts

Blunt Darts Read Free Page B

Book: Blunt Darts Read Free
Author: Jeremiah Healy
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just after final exams. Anyway, I called his house—I’d given up trying to reach his father—and Mrs. Kinnington told me all about it. We’ve talked almost every day since, and she was so upset last night, because nothing has happened, and I know I don’t have the money to pay you, so...”
    “So you sort of volunteered to be her cat’s-paw and bring me into the case for her.”
    She looked at me with a smile somewhere between bleakness and mischief. “At least you think it’s a case, huh?”
    I put on a fake frown, and she laughed. “Oh, please, John, he’s such a good, bright little kid. He’s had such a tough time so far, with his mother and all, and I’m so afraid for him out there.”
    “Okay, okay,” I said, and motioned to the waiter. “Let’s have our salad, and then you call Mrs. Kinnington to set up an appointment.”
    She smiled and shook her hair and poured herself another glass of wine.
    “Today’s the judge’s day for tennis, so he won’t be home until at least seven. She’sexpecting you at four-fifteen.”
     
     
     

     
     
    Valerie wanted to drive me out to the Kinnington place, but I insisted that she merely lead me there and let me see Mrs. Kinnington alone. She reluctantly walked with me to a rent-a-car place in Copley Square (my ancient Renault Caravelle being in the shop awaiting a used A-frame from North Carolina). I rented a Mercury Monarch, and we bailed her car out of a parking garage.
    We took the Mass Turnpike to Route 128, the elongated beltway around Boston. We were beating the high-tech rush hour by thirty minutes. After about six miles we took the exit after the one I used for Bonham and continued into Meade.
    As we wound down the stylish country road, I began to get a better sense of the town. Meade was about as rural as its neighbor Bonham, but a good deal ritzier. In Bonham, there were big old farmhouses flanked by peeling, musty-looking barns with rusting agricultural machinery slumped in the yards. In Meade, there were big, skylighted farmhouses flanked by newly painted, too-red bams with burnished Mercedeses and Jags in the yards. I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror. Meade would happen to Bonham someday, and at that point I’d probably no longer be able to use the pistol range.
    Val signaled a turn onto a private gravel road, then pulled past it to a stop. She stuck her head out the window and swiveled a hopeful face back toward me. I waved her on. She frowned and crunched some gravel on the shoulder as she accelerated out. I checked my watch. It was a shade after four, so I made the turn and weaved slowly upward through the trees.
    As I approached it, the house appeared more modest than I had expected. It was a white colonial, with thin black shutters framing the smallish downstairs windows. No modern glass walls punched through here.
    I swung around a wide circular drive with a small, nonspitting fountain in the center. I pulled past the fountain so that the Merc was headed out again. By the time I closed the car door, the main door to the house was open, and a middle-aged black woman stood frowning at me.
    “Hello,” I said, “I’m—”
    “I don’t want to know your name. I don’t even know you’re here. Mrs. Kinnington is upstairs. Follow me.
    Maybe, I thought, it’s my breath.
    The central staircase was beautifully maintained, with a polished, curving mahogany handrail atop off-white pickets. The steps were mahogany under a narrow, oriental runner. I glanced left and right as we climbed the stairs. On one side I could see a living room with a large portrait of a young army officer over the mantel. On the other side was the corner of a dining room. Polished hardwood floors and no wall-to-wall, only old, tasteful orientals. A natural product of old, tasteful money.
    At the top of the staircase was an invalid lift, a chair that would slide mechanically up and down on a floor-and-wall track. Through clever coloring, the wall tracks were almost

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