Family Honor

by Robert B. Parker

  “Thanks for thinking so, you have any idea why armed men would be trying to find your daughter?”

  “Armed men?” he raised his eyebrows.

  “I killed one of them,” I said.

  Brock stared at me for a while.

  “Killed, how?” he finally said.

  “With a ten-gauge shotgun,” I said.

  He stared at me some more.

  “You care to tell me about it?”

  “No. I want you to tell me who these men might be.”

  “How . . . the hell . . . would I know that?”

  “His name was Terry Nee. Worked for a man named Bucko Meehan.”

  “Never heard of either of them.”

  “Someone killed Bucko yesterday.”

  “Jesus, Sunny, what the hell have you got me into?”

  “I think it’s the other way around. Ever hear of a man named Cathal Kragan?”

  “Who?”

  “Cathal Kragan. It’s an Irish name.”

  “No, Sunny, I’ve never heard of him. Have you discussed all this with the police?”

  “How is your marriage?” I said.

  “My marriage?”

  I nodded.

  “Why are you interested?”

  “Mr. Patton . . .”

  “Brock,” he said.

  “Brock. I don’t know what’s going on here and I’m trying to find out. So I ask questions . . . like, are you and your wife happily married?”

  He let his chair lean back, behind his vast desk, and folded his hands across his flat stomach. His hands were strong-looking, and tanned, the hands of an outdoorsman, but manicured. He was freshly shaved. I could smell his cologne. His color was good. His clothes fit him beautifully. His teeth were even and very white when he smiled at me.

  “Let me say, Sunny, that I’m not so married that I wouldn’t respond to you.”

  “Who could be that married?” I said. “You can’t think of any reason Millicent took off?”

  “Don’t know, Sunny, and, you might as well know the truth, don’t much goddamned care.”

  “I sort of guessed that,” I said.

  “Since she was born she’s never been right. Schools and shrinks and trouble and more shrinks and different schools and more trouble and money, Christ, has she cost us money.”

  “So why’d you hire me to find her?”

  “Well, hell, you can’t just abandon her. I mean, how the hell does that look, your daughter runs off and you don’t even look for her.”

  “How’s it look to whom?” I said.

  “To anybody.”

  “To the voters?”

  “Sure, to the voters; it’s no secret I want to be governor. I can’t have my daughter out hooking on the damned streets while I’m running for public office, for crissake.”

  “So now you know she’s not hooking, but you don’t know where she is. Is that driving you crazy?”

  “I got half a mind to pull your pants off and fuck you right here on the couch,” he said.

  “That is about half a mind,” I said.

  We stared at each other for a time.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “Anything that will help me figure out how to help your daughter.”

  “I don’t know anything. Why don’t you just hop right onto that couch and we’ll see how much woman you are.”

  “I love it when you’re poetic,” I said. “Am I still working for you?”

  He grinned. It was a very ugly grin for a man so handsome. It was a grin without humor, or friendliness. It was only a gesture he made with his mouth as he stared at a fresh piece of meat.

  “Depends,” he said, “On how quick you hop on the couch.”

  “Does your wife cheat on you?” I said.

  Again the fresh-meat grin. His blue eyes seemed smaller, and the pupils seemed shrunken.

  “Why would she?” he said.

  “Women are so flighty,” I said.

  He stood up.

  “Maybe you like it rough,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just toss you onto that couch.”

  I stood up, too.

  “Remember the clay pigeon,” I said.

  “You saying you’d shoot me?”

  “Right in your little peenie,” I said.

  He took a step around his desk. I pulled the gun from under my coat. He stopped. We looked at each other. Then he snorted and sat back down.

  “You missed your chance, bitch.”

  “And I hope to miss it again,” I said, and went to the office door and opened it and walked out and left it open behind me.

  CHAPTER 33

  I got the address of her shrink from Millicent, and made an appointment.

  Her office was on the second floor of a small commercial building in Wellesley next door to a physical therapy center. Sound in mind and body, one-stop shopping. The sign on her door said Marguerite Sandborn, Family Counseling. I went in and sat in her empty waiting room for maybe ten minutes before her inner office door opened, and a woman I assumed to be Marguerite held it open while a much younger woman came from the inner office and walked past me and out with her eyes fixed firmly on the floor ahead of her. When the young woman was gone, Marguerite invited me in, and told me to call her Marguerite.

  “I must warn you, Ms. Randall, that transactions between myself and a client are strictly confidential.”

  “Strictly,” I said.

  “Within that guideline, I am happy to help.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Millicent Patton was your patient.”

  “I prefer the term client,” Marguerite said.

  She had long, graying hair. She wore a shapeless dress with big flowers on it, and no makeup. The only jewelry was a narrow gold wedding band on her left hand. She looked exactly the way a mental health professional ought to look, one who had rejected the artifice of ordinary women to embrace the deeper beauty. I was very glad I hadn’t done the same thing.

  “She was your client?” I said.

  “She is still my client,” Marguerite said. “She just isn’t coming to see me at the moment.”

  “Right. Did you know that she had run away from home?”

  Marguerite paused for a moment. Then she said, “I’m not surprised.”

  I raised my eyebrows and looked interested, and waited.

  “She was . . .” Marguerite paused thoughtfully. “She had failed to live up to her parent’s expectations. Her parents were disappointed. Millicent resented their expectations and their disappointment and was very angry.”

  “And what was your job?” I said.

  Marguerite smiled at me the way professionals do when an amateur asks them a question. “To help her see that her parents’ expectations were not unreasonable, to see that she was perfectly capable of achieving them, and to help her deal with her anger.”

  “She have any expectations for herself?” I said.

  Marguerite shook her head very slightly, as if a fly had landed on her ear. She didn’t answer. Apparently the head twitch dismissed the question.

  “She a good patient?” I said.

  Marguerite smiled sadly, “She was resistant.”

  “To the idea that her parents’ expectations weren’t unreasonable?”

  “If you wish,” Marguerite said. “It is a bit more complex than that.”

  “Of course,” I said. “How did you do with her anger?”

  “We were making some progress. We took a few moments every session to help her drain some of it off.”

  “How,” I said, “if it’s not privileged?”

  “No, no. It’s not privileged,” Marguerite said. “I use it with many clients.”

 
She nodded toward the corner of the room where a small body bag stood on a pedestal with a pair of boxing gloves hanging from a hook next to it.

  “She hit the body bag?” I said.

  “Yes. She was free to imagine it was anyone she wished.”

  “She say anything when she was punching the bag?” I said.

  “I’m sorry, that would be privileged.”

  “But she did say things?”

  “Not very much,” Marguerite said. “It was a rather silent fury.”

  “But she did give the bag a good punching out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like she liked it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do we call that displacement?” I said.

  Again the indulgent smile. How sweet the way I tried to understand the magic she performed.

  “How’d she get here?” I said.

  “I believe one of the servants drove her. A maid.”

  “Can you tell me if she was close to anyone?”

  “We didn’t spend much time on such matters,” Marguerite said. “I think she might have liked the maid who drove her, maybe a little.”

  “You know her name?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “You have any notes, whatever, that might tell us?”

  “I never take notes,” Marguerite said. “I try to give myself fully to the client. Empathy is crucial.”

  I was pretty sure that a certain amount of distance was also useful, but I didn’t think it would be productive to argue that point. As we talked I glanced at the framed document on the wall. The best I could make out from the Latinate mumbo jumbo in which they were written was she had a B.A. from North Dakota State, and an M.Ed. from Lesley College.

  “Do you happen to know if there is more than one maid?”

  “I believe there is a butler and a maid.”

  “And the butler is a guy?”

  “That is my impression.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me that will help me to understand her?”

  “Perhaps you should be more concerned with finding her,” Marguerite said.

  “I have found her.”

  “Then why on earth . . .?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what to do with her.”

  “You haven’t returned her to her parents.”

  “She doesn’t want to go.”

  “And you feel that her wishes are sufficiently mature.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you feel that it is your responsibility to honor them?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope you do not exceed your expertise,” Marguerite said.

  I thought about taking a turn on the body bag. But I had too much detecting to do. Displacement would have to wait.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  CHAPTER 34

  Most of the time when I tail somebody, it’s in the city, and on foot, and it’s not especially hard to do if they don’t know you by sight. But out in the wilds of South Natick, near the Dover line, where no one is on foot, and the Pattons would recognize me on sight, it was a somewhat larger proposition. I got out my collection of street maps and drove around the area until I had a pretty good idea of what roads led where and what was parallel to what. Then I parked off the road at the end of the dead-end street that ran past the Patton’s long driveway and waited. It took about two hours before a Natick Cruiser pulled up behind me and a young cop got out and walked up beside the car, staying a little behind me on the driver’s side. By the time he got there I had my papers out and the window down.

  He said, “May I see your license and registration, please.”

  I handed them out, along with my detective license. The cop was quite cute, with little crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was very young. Was he too young for me? Hideous thought.

  “I’m working an undercover thing with the Boston Police,” I said. “You can call Sergeant Brian Kelly, District 6 detectives, and ask him.”

  “What might that undercover thing be?” he said.

  “We’re suspicious of one of your residents, but it may not pan out, and we don’t want to hurt anyone’s reputation until we know.”

  “Wait here, please.”

  He walked back to the cruiser and was on the radio for a long time. I didn’t mind waiting. I was waiting anyway. Eventually the young cop strolled back from his cruiser to my car and handed my papers back to me.

  “Took awhile to get Kelly,” he said. “But we did and he vouches for you. Talked to my chief, too. He says you can stay here long as we don’t get any complaints. But you annoy somebody or we get too many calls about you hanging around the neighborhood, we’re going to have to respond.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Boston cops hiring a lot of private eyes these days?”

  “Just happens that our interests coincide on this case.”

  “Well, you need some help, give us a call,” he said.

  He turned and strolled back to his cruiser, the way cops do, sort of sauntering as if they had all the time in the world. I watched him as he went. He backed up carefully, and pulled out around me and waved and drove away. Young . . . but not impossible.

  I sat some more. It was full-out autumn now. A lot of the trees were bare. The leaves that had fallen littered the road and packed drably along the sides of the road. The leaves that hadn’t fallen were bright gold with some splashes here and there of red. After another hour and a half, a small red Ford Escort came down the street that ran past the Pattons’ house and turned right, onto my street. The driver was a good-looking black woman. I’d seen her twice now when I called on her employers, and, being a trained observer, I recognized her as the Patton’s maid. When she drove past, I slid out behind her and trailed along after her as she turned right in South Natick Center and drove along Route 16 through Wellesley and parked in the lot beside Bread & Circus.

  She went in. I went in behind her. Turned left where she had turned right, went down an aisle and came up to her as if by accident.

  “Hello,” I said. “Small world.”

  She looked at me uncertainly.

  “Sunny Randall,” I said. “I’m doing some work for the Pattons.”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am, how nice to see you.”

  “It’s nice to see you. Do you have a minute so I could buy you a cup of coffee?”

  “Well, I really need to shop, Ms. Randall, and get back for supper.”

  “It won’t take long. I need to talk to you a little about Millicent.”

  “My Millicent?”

  “Millicent Patton,” I said.

  She was very good-looking, with big dark eyes and smooth skin. She was wearing a nice perfume. In jeans and a white tee shirt she might have been a Wellesley College senior, though if you looked closely you could see a little more age than that at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She looked regretfully at her carriage, which, so far, had accumulated a head of broccoli.

  “There’s a place next door,” she said finally.

  “Good, thank you.”

  When we were seated and had our coffee, I said, “I don’t know your name.”

  “My real name is Elinor, but everyone calls me Billie.”

  “Last name?”

  “Otis.”

  “My real name’s Sonya,” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please call me Sunny. Could you tell me a little about Millicent.”

  Her eyes were steady as she looked at me.

  “We don’t talk about our employers,” Billie said.

  “You being who?”

  “My husband and I.”

  “Your husband is the butler?”

  “Yes.”
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  “His name?”

  “John.”

  “John Otis?”

  “Yes.”

  I drank some coffee.

  “I understand,” I said, “and I admire, your reticence. But I need help. She’s in bigger trouble than any fifteen-year-old kid ought to be, and I can only help her by understanding her and her family.”

  “You know where she is?” Billie said.

  “Yes.”

  “She all right?”

  “She’s not hurt, and for the moment she’s safe,” I said. “I understand that you used to drive her to counseling twice a week.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Billie, we’re both employees. No need to ma’am me. My name is Sunny.”

  Billie nodded.

  “You drove her to therapy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Her parents ever drive her?”

  “No.”

  “Too busy?”

  “I guess.”

  “You and she ever talk about things when you were driving her back and forth.”

  “Some.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  Billie looked straight at me for a moment, her big dark eyes full of the knowledge of things I’d never encountered. “This is a good job, Miss Randall. Good money. John and I get to work together. We get most weekends off together. Lot of couples work domestic, they never get time off together.”

  “You like Millicent?” I said.

  “I feel bad for her,” Billie said.

  “Because?”

  “Because she’s so alone. Got nobody to talk to.”

  “Except you?”

  Billie didn’t answer.

  “Billie, she needs us to help her.”

  “You first,” Billie said. “What kind of trouble is she in?”

  “There are men trying to find her. Men with guns. I had to kill one.”

  Billie’s face never changed.

  “There’s something going on involving her mother,” I said, “maybe her father, and I think it’s why these men are after her. I think it’s why she ran away.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Billie said.

  “You know a man named Cathal Kragan?”

  She picked her coffee cup up in both hands and drank some and put the cup back down and sat back in the wooden booth.