Family Honor - Robert B Parker Read Free Page B

Brock said. "She is straightforward.
And I have the sense that she is discreet."
    Discreet about what?
    "Do you think you can find our Millicent?" Betty said,
leaning forward slightly as if to make her question more compelling. Like
her husband, she seemed incapable of an unrehearsed gesture.
    "Probably," I said.
    "Because?"
    "Because I'm really quite good at this."
    Betty smiled interiorly.
    "Odd profession for a woman," she said.
    "Everyone says that."
    "Really?"
    I knew it would annoy her to be clumped in with everyone.
    "Yes," I said. "Usually they say it just as you did."
    "Are you married?"
    "No, I'm not."
    "Ever been married?"
    "Yes."
    "So you're not a lesbian."
    "Having been married doesn't prove it."
    "Well, are you?"
    "I guess that's not germane."
    Betty stared at me for a moment. A perfect little frown
line appeared between her flawless eyebrows.
    "That's rather uppity, Miss Randall," she said.
    "Oh, I can be much more uppity than this, Mrs. Patton."
    She was motionless for a moment and then turned to her
husband.
    "I'm afraid she won't do, Brock."
    "Oh for God's sake, Betty. Maybe you could stop being
a bitch for a minute."
    Again Betty was motionless. Then she put her cup and saucer
on the coffee table, and rose effortlessly, the way a dancer might, and
walked from the room without another word. I watched her husband watch
her go. There was nothing in his look that told me what he felt about her.
Maybe that was what he felt about her.
    "Don't mind Betty," he said finally. "She can be difficult."
    "I would imagine," I said.
    He smiled. "She'd have preferred someone less attractive."
    "I'm trying," I said.
    He smiled widely. "And failing, may I say."
    I nodded. "Your daubhter's name is Millicent?"
    "Yes -Millie."
    "When did she disappear?"
    "She hasn't disappeared," Patton said. "She's run off."
    "When did she run off?"
    "Ah, today is Wednesday," he leaned forward and looked
at the calendar on his desk. "She went not this past Monday, but, all,
a week ago Monday."
    "Ten days?" I said.
    "Yes. I know it seems long, but, well, we weren't too
worried at first."
    "She's done this before," I said.
    "Well, in a sense, that is, she's gone off to stay with
a friend for a couple of days."
    "Without telling you."
    "You know how rebellious teenagers are," he said.
    "I'm not judging your daughter or you, Mr. Patton. I'm
trying to find a place to start."
    "I have a picture," he said.
    He took a manila envelope out of his desk drawer, and
handed it across to me. I took the picture out and looked at it. It was
a good picture, not one of those bright-colored school photos in the cardboard
folders that I used to bring home every year. It showed a pretty girl,
perhaps fifteen, with straight blond hair and her mother's even features.
There was no sign of life in the picture. Her eyes were blank. She seemed
to be wearing her face like a mask.
    "Pretty, isn't she," he said.
    "Yes. This a good likeness?"
    "Of course, why do you ask?"
    "Well, just that sometimes people look a little more,
ah, relaxed in real life, than they do in studio photographs."
    "That's a good likeness of Millie," he said. "May I keep
this?"
    "Of course."
    "You know what she was wearing when she left?"
    "No, I'm sorry, she had so many clothes."
    "Take anything with her?"
    He shook his head, with that false helplessness men like
to adopt when talking about women.
    "And have you any suggestion where I should start?"
    "You might ask at the school?"
    "Which is?"
    "Pinkett School," he said. "In Belmont. The headmistress
is Pauline Plum."
    Pauline Plum. From Pinkett. How darling.
 
    CHAPTER 3
"What was he like?" Julie said.
    Behind Julie, the light was slanting into my loft from
the South Boston waterfront. It came in through the big window at the east
end, and splashed over my easel, making an elongated Ichabod Crane shadow
on the floor. Just out of the shadow, in the warmest part of the sunlight,
my bull terrier, Rosie, was lying on her back with her feet in the