Blunt Darts Read online

  She said, “Mrs. Sturdevant, why don’t you and I go into the kitchen? I guarantee that Mr. Cuddy will be very careful with Kim and not do anything you’d disapprove of.”

  “Well … ?” said Mrs. Sturdevant.

  “Mom,” said Kim, clearly and stubbornly. “I’m going to find out about Stephen.”

  Mrs. Sturdevant, prodded, said, “If you think it’s best.”

  “I know it is,” from Val, relieving the woman of the formerly full, now slightly spilled, cup and guiding her toward the kitchen.

  Kim and I were alone. She wore running shorts and a halter top, small breasts just pushing out against the fabric. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted the bright pink of her lipstick. I had the feeling that the lipstick went on after Daddy left in the morning and came off before Daddy got home at night. Kim had a Sony Walkman strapped around her waist, the light earphone attachment resting on her shoulders like a high-tech necklace.

  “It’s your house,” I said, “but why don’t we sit down?”

  Kim gave a little frown, then sat in her mother’s chair. I don’t think the daughter noticed that the TV was on, either, but the heavyset woman in the red dress must have done well again, because she was once more hanging on the host, who still smiled, though only sportingly now.

  “Who are you?” Kim asked warily.

  “My name is John Cuddy,” I said, handing her a card and even flashing my identification. I thought they might impress her, but she barely glanced at either. “I’m a private investigator. I’ve been hired to find Stephen, and I’m hoping that you can help me.”

  Kim shook her head. “I don’t know where he is. I thought you’d be able to tell me how he’s doing.”

  We looked at each other for a moment. I had the feeling that Kim’s wheels turned faster and a lot more frequently than her mother’s.

  I sighed in what I hoped was a reassuring way. “Look, I was hired by Stephen’s grandmother, not his father. The judge, for reasons I can’t imagine, doesn’t seem much interested in finding his own son. Valerie—Ms. Jacobs—and I have been chasing down every lead we can find. She told me you and Stephen were good friends, that maybe you could help.”

  Kim settled back into the chair. Her left hand began to fiddle with the earphones around her neck. “Ms. Jacobs said Stephen and I were, like, good friends?”

  I sensed an opening. “Actually, I asked her who was closest to Stephen in the class, and she said you were.”

  Kim flushed a little, partly from pride, partly from embarrassment. Mostly from pride, though, if I had to bet.

  “Stephen’s a hard person to get close to,” she said. “He and I went to different schools ’til last year, and last year’s homeroom was alphabetical. You know, they’d assign us to rooms based on our last names. Then somebody got the idea that alphabetical assignment was, like, ‘stultifying.’ That’s the word the principal used this year, ‘stultifying.’ So they just assigned us randomly.” Kim smiled. “So, this was the first year I had a lot of classes with Stephen.”

  I leaned back against a couch cushion. “I’ve seen photographs of Stephen, but I’ve never met him. What’s he like?”

  Kim eyed me for a moment, hopefully deciding I was sincere. “He’s the smartest guy I’ve ever met. There are a lot of kids at our school who are great test-takers, even without, like, studying or anything, you know? But Stephen is really different. He’s smart past everybody, even the teachers. Way past.” She gave me a smug smile. “He’s a genius. Stephen could be, like, anything. Anything he wants.”

  “What does Stephen want?” I asked.

  Kim frowned, but not at me. “I don’t know,” she said quietly, looking down at her lap.

  Dead end. Back up and try another street.

  “When did you last see Stephen before he disappeared?”

  “It must have been the day he left. We were in school together. There was this morning class, one of those nothing things you have when exams are over. Then we had lunch.” Kim smiled again. “We ate together, at one of the picnic tables outside school.”

  “Did Stephen say anything that indicated why he was leaving or where he was going?”

  Kim frowned again, this time at me. “No,” she said, a little too certainly.

  I sighed and spread my hands in front of me. “Look, Kim, I will not reveal to anyone anything you tell me.”

  She eyed me cautiously once more. “Like, lawyers and clients?”

  I shook my head. “I won’t bullshit you, Kim. There is no investigator-confidential-source privilege in Massachusetts. But that just means that I might go to jail for keeping quiet about what you tell me. It doesn’t mean I won’t keep my word.” I leaned forward again. “Stephen’s in trouble because someone is after him. I don’t know why someone’s after him, and I’m not sure you do. I am sure that if I don’t get more information about Stephen, I’m never going to find him.”

  Kim dropped the frown and resumed fiddling with the earphones. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”

  I resisted the temptation to ask her why she might think that. “Please, trust me.”

  Kim shook her head. “Stephen once told me not to trust anyone. He said he didn’t trust anyone.”

  Quietly I said, “He trusted you.”

  A wistful smile. “No, not much.” Kim wiped at her eye, then said, “Look, mister, I don’t know where Stephen is. I don’t even know why he, like, left. I was hoping you could tell me he was okay. If you can’t cover that, you can’t. If I can’t cover where he is, I can’t. Okay?”

  “No.” This time I shook my head more emphatically. “Not okay. I care about Stephen, Kim. I care because—despite all his family’s money—he’s had a tough life so far, and it’s my job to find him. But you care for him, and despite what you’ve said so far, I think he did trust you with something, with some information. There is no way I can make you trust me, but I don’t see how you can think Stephen is better off out there than back here with us protecting him.”

  Kim glared at me. “Us! Us protecting him? It’s his father who’s after him. The judge and his talking gorilla, Blakey. How can you protect Stephen from them?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but maybe the reason Stephen ran would give me leverage enough to do that.”

  “‘Leverage,’” she snorted sarcastically. “That’s what my father uses to close computer sales. That’s how you’re going to stop the judge and Blakey?”

  “Kim, I don’t know what your image of Willard Kinnington and his power is, but nobody’s all-powerful. There are things, facts or evidence, that can scare the judge, same as you or me. If Stephen knows or found out something, and that knowledge or fact was important enough to make him run, it may be important enough to bring him back and protect him from his father.” I paused. “What do you say?”

  The glare slid away, and Kim chewed her lower lip. “I’m just so scared for him,” she said, the tears welling up.

  I dug out a handkerchief, and Kim cried quietly into it for about ten seconds. Then she wiped her eyes and nose. “What do you want to know?” The girl was flushed and red-eyed, but seemed cooperative.

  “What did you and Stephen talk about at lunch that day?”

  Kim sniffed and began. “The same thing we always talked about. His quest.”

  “His quest? You mean, like a search or a mission?”

  “Yes. Stephen and I got to be, like Ms. Jacobs said, ‘close.’ I kind of watched him last year and the beginning of this year. He’s real intelligent-looking and, well, anyway, I saw that he didn’t seem to have any friends. I mean, Stephen would talk to the other kids, but just kind of politely, like he was talking to a teacher or somebody’s father and he didn’t want any trouble. I think Stephen just wasn’t much interested in what the kids were doing and talking about. Like, whenever he talked with me, it was like we were on a different level from the rest of the kids.”

  “You mentioned his ‘quest.’”

  “I’m c
oming to that. One day I just sort of decided to try talking—really talking—with him. That was this year, maybe October or November.” She paused. “November, like, because the decorations were up. You know, the stupid stuff like cardboard turkeys and pilgrims?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, we just started talking, and it was amazing, you know, the way Stephen could explain things and understand the things I would say. It was like … it was like he was the best teacher I ever had, but he was my own age—actually a year older because he … lost a year. Stephen understood me, but he acted older, so I could …”

  “Respect him?” I said tactfully.

  Kim sniffed again. “Yeah, respect him. Anyway, it was maybe two months ago that he told me about his mother, and how he’d gotten sick and was in the hospital.”

  “Did he tell you what kind of illness he had?”

  Kim fixed me with her still-reddish eyes. “Yeah, mental illness. He was in a crazy house, out in the mountains somewhere. His father did it.”

  I tensed. “Did what?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said, ‘his father did it.’ What did his father do?”

  “Oh, the judge put Stephen in this crazy house. His grandmother didn’t want him to stay, but he still had to spend a long time, like maybe a year, there. When he got out, he came home. And that’s when Stephen began his quest.”

  I held onto my patience. “What was his quest?”

  Kim became very still. She looked down. “You have to promise never to tell anyone.”

  I promised.

  “You can’t even tell Stephen I told you. I’m the only one who knows, so you can’t even let him, like, suspect you know or he’d know it came from me.”

  I repeated my promise.

  Kim twisted the earphones off her neck and began playing with them in her lap. I involuntarily noticed that the fat woman in the red dress must have won again, because now she was literally smothering the host, who was no longer smiling, sportingly or otherwise.

  Kim’s first words snapped me back. “Stephen’s mother was murdered. His quest was to, like, get evidence. Prove the judge did it.” She shivered.

  I gave her a moment, then: “Kim, what kind of evidence?”

  She began gnawing on her lower lip again. “A gun.”

  “A gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stephen’s mother supposedly died in a car accident, but he believes she was shot?”

  Kim, crying again, now nodded vigorously. I heard soft footsteps, Valerie’s, I thought, approach and recede. I could just hear her voice from the kitchen.

  She said, “They’re doing fine, Mrs. Sturdevant.”

  On my part, I wasn’t sure how much more Kim had left. “Why did Stephen think that his mother had been shot?”

  “Because,” Kim said, too loudly, nearly a wail. Then she dropped her voice. “Because he was there.”

  Kim fell silent. Me, too. Then, “At that last lunch, did Stephen say anything about being in danger, or …”

  She blew her nose and fixed me again. “You don’t understand. He’d found it. That was what Stephen told me at lunch. The quest was over. He’d found the gun.”

  “When?”

  “The night before. Every night, Stephen would wait until everyone else was asleep. Then he’d, like, search a different place. He thought his father might suspect he was on the quest, so sometimes Stephen would double-back and re-check some of the old places. But, finally, he found it.”

  “Did Stephen say what he was going to do with it?”

  “No.” Kim managed a half-smile. “No. He’d been on the quest for so long—years, like—that I don’t think he really had figured out what he was going to do. I mean exactly what Stephen was going to do if and when he found it.” She wiped her eyes again.

  “Kim, I think Stephen left on his own. And from what you’ve told me, I’m sure it was because of finding the gun. Is there anything else you can tell me about Stephen, like where he might go?”

  Head shake. “No, he never—”

  Kim stopped and froze as the big front door clicked and then banged open. “Sally? Kim? I’m home. Hey, Sal, I may be early but—”

  I swiveled around and rose. A bearish, balding guy of forty-five or so came tromping up the stairs to the living room. I caught Kim rubbing furiously on her lips with my handkerchief as he saw us and exploded.

  “Who are you? And Kim! What the hell is that stuff doing on your—You’re crying!”

  By this time a terrified Mrs. Sturdevant, with Val in her wake, burst into the room.

  “Hal, oh Hal,” she cried, “they said it would be all right.”

  I remember nearly laughing. Val, Sal, and now Hal. But there was nothing humorous about Hal Sturdevant just then.

  “You’re the guy we told to stay away, aren’t you?” Hal’s briefcase, newspaper, and a supermarket bag hit the carpet. A widening pool of milk gurgled through the brown paper from an unseen carton within.

  “Mr. Sturdevant, I’m investigating. …”

  He swung a rounding left as Sally screamed his name and Valerie yelled mine. I ducked under his fist and just pushed him, but hard, with my open hands as his shoulder went over my head. It knocked him off balance, and his momentum was broken by banging into the wall.

  I spoke as quickly as I could. “This is your home, Mr. Sturdevant. I have no desire or reason to hurt you. I will leave immediately if you tell me to.”

  Sturdevant came off the wall and hesitated. Sally grabbed his arm. “Please Hal, just tell him to go!”

  Sturdevant, his honor redeemed by her entreaty, glared at me. I noticed for the first time that Kim was no longer with us. I had a vague recollection of a slamming door in there somewhere.

  “Get out! Get out of my house and don’t ever come back!”

  I nodded and backed toward the stairs. I motioned that Valerie should precede me down, which she did. The Sturdevants, Hal leading and Sal in tow, followed us, maintaining a three-step interval.

  “Get out!” The last shout cracked his voice a bit.

  Once we were outside, Sturdevant slammed the house’s door behind us. We’d reached my rented Mercury when I heard a window open. I turned around in time to see Kim’s head and forearms pop out an upper-story frame.

  “Tell Stephen,” she sobbed, “tell him that I love him. Tell him …” at which point a pair of fatherly hands pinned Kim Sturdevant’s elbows, yanked her from the opening, and slammed the window as well.

  A tearful Valerie Jacobs spoke as I opened the car door for her. “Somebody else does care for Stephen.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “for all the good it’s done him so far.”

  Seventeen

  I DROPPED VALERIE OFF at her place. She apologized for having to rush off to meet her friend, and I assured her that I’d see her for dinner the next night. As I backed out of her driveway, I checked my watch. Three-thirty. A little early for court to be over, I hoped.

  I drove down several, now-familiar Meade byways until I reached the Kinnington driveway. I swung onto its gravel and up, parking nose-out for a potentially quick escape. Five seconds after I knocked at the door, Mrs. Page opened it a crack, into which I introduced my right foot. We both spoke at the same time.

  “Mrs. Kinnington?”

  “Go away!”

  The door jarred against my shoe, but the beach-head held.

  “You’re crazy to come here.”

  “I have to see her, Mrs. Page.”

  The pressure relaxed. “Still crazy.” Then a resigned sigh. “Upstairs, same room.”

  Reaching it, I knocked and entered.

  This time I had to pull the solid chair over myself. Otherwise, the arrangement was unchanged.

  “You have word of Stephen?” asked Eleanor Kinnington.

  “Yes, and no. I’ve received some words that encourage me and others that I should have heard first from my client. That, by the way, is you.”

  “Mr. Cuddy, I am not
used to being addressed—”

  “And I am not used to playing Blind Bozo bumbling in the dark. At least not in unnecessary darkness. Why didn’t you tell me what Miss Pitts saw between Gerry Blakey and Stephen?”

  Kinnington’s eyes dropped to examine her teacup.

  “It is not the type of thing one discusses.”

  “Maybe not at meetings of the Daughters-of-the-American Revolution. But with the investigator who’s looking—”

  “That’s quite enough!” Mrs. Kinnington snapped, her teacup rattling against its saucer. “You damn, self-righteous bastard! You’re my employee, not my employer. You may be a professional, but you’re my professional. You’ll do what you’re told—and be satisfied with what you’re told—or you can quit.”

  I stood up. “My resignation will be on your desk in the morning, Ma’am,” I said. Dropping her original print of Stephen’s photo on the table, I turned to leave.

  “Mr. Cuddy,” her voice quavering, “are you close to him?”

  “Mrs. Kinnington,” I said over my shoulder, “I’m closer than I was the last time we had this argument.”

  Her tone steadied itself. “Please, sit down again?”

  The air seemed a bit freer as I did. “Why didn’t you tell me about Stephen and Blakey?”

  She re-seated her teacup in the saucer. “It’s so troubling to think that there could be any relationship between them that … Stephen has always been so indifferent to his father. I just assumed that the … distaste that Stephen displayed toward Blakey was a function of his being my son’s … oh, henchman.”

  “‘Henchman’?”

  “Well, that’s just how Blakey has always struck me. As a designated doer of evil things. I even forbade the judge to allow the man to enter any room I was already occupying. Consequently, when Miss Pitts called me, I realized I was in no position to be able to say what—if anything—there might be between Stephen and Blakey.”

  “Mrs. Kinnington, I have to assume that Stephen left voluntarily.” I remembered my promise to Kim Sturdevant. “But I still need to know what reason he might have had for leaving.”

  She clasped her hands in her lap and tried to relax. “Mr. Cuddy, I do not know why Stephen would have gone. He did not get along with his father, but I know of no recent incident that could have triggered Stephen’s disappearance.”