by Kate Flora
I was trying to decide, once again, whether my pride would let me cry “Uncle” and flee, when the door opened and Peggy appeared, pushing a cart of food, one of her hands clutching another thick wad of pink message slips.
She had a pleasant, transparent face that right now looked like she’d lost her last friend. “I’m so sorry to be bringing you more bad news, Gareth, but the manager at the Loverage House bar just called. They’ve got a man there, a bar patron, who has quickly and efficiently drunk himself into a near stupor. When they tried to roust him, he got belligerent, said he had plenty of reasons to get drunk, and said they could call you if they wanted to know why.”
She hesitated before she finished delivering the bad news. “I’m afraid it’s Heidi’s father. Mr. Basham. They want to know if you will come and get him.”
Twenty-Two
Gareth looked at me bleakly as he sank wearily onto his chair, the sheaf of messages in his hand. The trolley with our lunch waited, ignored, by the window. “The sky is falling,” he said. “How can so many things possibly go wrong? I can only imagine the harm that man can do, out there in a public place, drunk and babbling.”
I shared his concern. A lazy, self-indulgent man like Basham, whose response to his only child’s emergency and mysterious disappearance was to head to a bar, might say any damned thing that came to mind if he was drunk. We had to get him back here and under control as quickly as possible.
Gareth sprang to his feet, transformed into a man of action. He was half way to the door when he stopped. “Dammit, no. I haven’t got the time,” he said, shaking the sheaf of messages, then swept that hand toward his crowded desk. “There’s all this waiting.”
“Give me directions, and I’ll go get him,” I said. “Let me take Amad along as muscle, just in case he gives us any trouble.”
“Amad?” he said, looking blank.
“The security guard who found Heidi’s jacket,” I reminded him. “A big guy, dark-skinned, strong. With an accent?”
“Oh. Right. Amad. The students really like him. He’d be good. Ex-military, I think.” A half smile. “Sure. Yes. Go. Take him.” He bent over the messages and started reading through them.
“Gareth?”
He looked up, surprised to still find me standing there.
“What are you waiting for?” he said. “This is an emergency.”
“For directions to the bar. For you to call Amad, since you’re his boss, not me. For a decision about whether we should take a Simmons security vehicle. For instructions about where to take him once we’ve extricated him from said bar.”
He ran a hand over his face, his fingers rasping over his whiskers. “Am I losing it, Thea?” he asked.
“Just temporarily overwhelmed.”
He picked up the phone, reached Amad, and told me, “He’ll be at the front door in five minutes. Take Basham to my house. Uh.” A pause. He’d just instructed me to take a reportedly belligerent drunk to the house where his wife and two small children lived. “Maybe Amad should stay with him, so he doesn’t wander off.”
He stared out into the dull gray day. “Loverage House is a colonial-era inn and restaurant. You go out the gate, turn right, and half a mile down, take a left onto Goodfellow Street. It winds a couple miles into the town center. Follow it to the town common, and it’s at the end of the common. Big, sprawling gray building with parking at the back. You can’t miss it. There’s a back entrance that goes right to the bar.”
He shook his head in wonderment at the mess we found ourselves in. “Next we’ll get a call that Mrs. Norris has been in a traffic accident. Or that General Norris is brawling somewhere. My students are more mature than Heidi’s parents. Who knows what goes wrong next?”
He left unsaid the possibility of bad news about Heidi.
I picked up my bag and coat and started for the door, hating to leave him just then. He still needed shoring up. There were a zillion things to be done. And as MOC reminded me with a sharp kick, there was the matter of food. I grabbed a cookie on my way out. Weren’t oatmeal and raisins food?
Amad waited at the door in a silver Ford SUV with the engine running and the heat on. Almost May. There were patches of snow on the ground and we needed heat. This weather certainly proved that April was the cruelest month. Sometimes I wonder why we live in New England. I’ve heard the suggestion that it builds character, but by now, mine ought to be built. Seriously, universe, I would like the occasional break.
He came around to open my door for me, giving me a shy smile as I climbed in. “So now we are going to pick up a drunk?” he said.
“That’s about the size of it. It’s Heidi Basham’s father, Ted. He seems to have gone into town and got himself pickled.”
“Pickled?”
“Uh, intoxicated.”
He drove us slowly through the campus, waving at several students that we passed, and out the gate where news vans lurked, turning right without being told. “This is all very sad for Heidi,” he said.
“I just hope she’s okay.”
“I also.”
“I wanted to follow those tracks,” he said. “The ones I told you about. Before it got dark or the snow is all melted. But there are police everywhere, and we are also rather busy on the campus today. Heidi’s friends are asking me what I know and if there is anywhere else that they should look.”
He snapped on his turn signal. “When my shift is done, if she isn’t found, I will go back out there. Try to follow those tracks. I am very worried about Heidi.”
“You know Heidi?”
“Oh yes. This is Simmons, Miss Thea. It is a special place. The students here see those who work for them. We are not invisible, as in many places. And Heidi is very kind. She is sometimes asking me about where I am from. And about my family. I tell her that I have a small boy who loves to read, and she has given me some books. She is a very lovely and special girl, and I worry for her.”
We turned left onto Goodfellow Street. Such an old-fashioned New England name. Right about now, I thought, as we drove past a row of stately white homes set back from the road behind genuine white picket fences, we could use some good fellows. Amad seemed like a good fellow.
For a moment, staring out at houses that could be called homes, where people lived lives without crisis and drama and bodies, my “I don’t wanna” was ascendant, instead of my perpetual sense of duty. I wished we could drive forever. I could admire yards, and the bravery of bright yellow daffodils undaunted by the snow. I could imagine living in one of these appealing houses, and staring out at my own yard through tall glass windows. I can get kind of maudlin when I’m tired, and I badly wanted a house.
Amad rescued me from my pity party. “Excuse me, Miss Thea,” he said, “but what are we to do with this pickled gentleman once we have captured him?”
I must have been punchy from lack of sleep, because his question made me laugh out loud. It felt good, in the midst of this awful situation, to laugh.
“We’re to take him to the headmaster’s house, where you are to stand guard so he doesn’t escape.”
“This is true?” he said. “How am I to restrain him?”
Gareth and I hadn’t discussed that, so I said, “I don’t know, Amad. All I know is that if he wanders around in an intoxicated state and shoots his mouth off, he could make Simmons’s situation much worse. We have better things to do with our time right now than worry about bad parents behaving badly.”
“This is all very sad for Heidi,” he repeated. “Well, I will do my best. Maybe he will be so drunk…pickled…that he will go to sleep.” He laughed as he said “pickled,” clearly delighted with the word.
We pulled up behind the inn and parked as close to the door as we could get. Amad switched off the engine. He unfastened his seatbelt, remaining seated in a very cop-like posture with his hands at ten and two, and said, “Now what do we do?”
Perhaps he, too, had wanted to take the journey but never arrive. “Fetch him,” I said.
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He didn’t move, and I realized his dilemma. He was an Arab-looking man in a very white Massachusetts town, being asked to enter a very New England-y tavern and remove a drunken white guy who might make a scene. He had a uniform, but it carried no weight outside the campus, and we were living in an era where people were suspicious of Middle Eastern-looking folks. This town was better—or should have been—Simmons had an international population and they came into town to shop and eat, but he wasn’t a student.
“Both of us. Together,” I said. “I am not sending you in there alone.”
His hands dropped from the wheel and he got out of the car.
Together, with me in the lead, we walked up the slippery brick walk to a shiny black door with a sign that read: Nathaniel Stow Tavern. I wondered if anywhere in the world there might be a place called the Rebecca Stow Tavern. But no. Women stayed home and tended the fire and made soap. Men went out to the tavern to drink.
I was still kind of punchy.
The black door opened to a small vestibule with benches on both sides, pegs on the wall for coats, and two of those pseudo-candlelight lanterns with flame-shaped bulbs that gave off a sickly kind of flickering yellow light. Beyond there was a larger room, lots of dark wood and slightly better lighting. The bar was a thick, heavily shellacked slab of pine. The tables were graced with red checked tablecloths and faux candles in crackled yellow glass and plenty of people were tucking into their lunches. The inviting aromas of their lunches made my stomach growl.
At the far end of the room was a big brick fireplace with a real fire, flanked by two high-backed settles fronted by low tables. On one of the tables were the remnants of several drinks and a lunch. The tables in that area, which should have been the most popular on a day as gray and damp as this, were empty. The reason was instantly clear.
One of the settles was occupied by a man whose posture was perfectly balanced between vertical and horizontal. Oblique, my brain supplied. He was singing a tuneless tune, and keeping time with one unsteady hand. Tucked into a voluminous overcoat, he looked like a pile of rumpled laundry. Or a bum.
The beefy man behind the bar was watching him warily. He turned when we came in, took in Amad’s uniform, and said, “Simmons?”
Amad nodded.
The man shook his head and said, “He’s all yours. Good luck.”
“He paid his tab?” I asked.
“We’re square. Just get him the hell…uh…heck out of here. Please. He’s the maudlin, obnoxious kind. Keeps trying to talk to people about what a shit father he is.”
I wanted to ask what else Basham had said, but this guy wanted Basham out right now, as did we. I looked over at the man on the settle. “We may need your help.”
“Which will be gratefully given.” His long-suffering smile was fleeting. “Tell Gareth the asshat didn’t say anything too damaging.”
Ah. Small towns.
I crossed the room with Amad and the bartender behind me and approached Ted Basham.
“We need you back at Simmons, Mr. Basham,” I said in my best “don’t mess with me” voice. “There have been developments.”
“Wha…who? Have you? Found? Oh, God…what? Where am I?…How did I? I only meant to…My leg was hurting, see, and I…” A sloppy grin. “Just getting me some lunch.”
A mostly liquid lunch. The shape of the glasses suggested martinis. The mess on the plate showed his sandwich had been more dissected than eaten.
His babble was a string of self-centered, “I” and “I” and “Me.” Her friends said Heidi was a sweet and kind girl. Now that I’d met the parents, I couldn’t help wondering how that miracle happened.
He stumbled to his feet, and Amad, moving with unexpected speed, handed him his crutch and took his free arm. The crutch was muddy and damp, like he’d been hiking in a swamp.
Fortunately, Basham was a docile drunk and came quietly. I went ahead to open the doors. Amad led Basham with a firm, “don’t give me any crap” grip, and the bartender came behind just in case Basham hesitated. He hovered until we had Basham in the backseat, securely belted in, and the door shut. Then, with a wave and a muttered, “Thank God!” he turned and went back inside.
I climbed into the passenger seat, Amad got behind the wheel, and we headed back to Simmons with our prisoner.
Both Amad and I contemplated homicide several times on the short drive back to the campus. Amad had a pretty good poker face—or cop’s face—and the disguise of a full beard, so his reaction didn’t show there. I was reading the grip of his hands on the wheel.
It started before we were even out of the parking lot. That’s when Basham started whining. Despite the way he slurred his words, I could understand most of what he said. If I thought I was having a pity party on the way to pick him up, I didn’t know what a pity party was.
“Christ, I’m such an ass! Knew I never shoulda left her with them. Knew Norris couldn’t be trusted,” he said. “If I only coulda taken her, I woulda. But ya can’t keep your kid…in a car trunk. Right?” He snuffled. “You gotta…buh…lieve…me. Love my little girl. Do anything…for her. Did something for her.”
It was such an odd statement. I wondered what he thought he’d done for Heidi.
A police officer is not supposed to question a suspect when the person is intoxicated. It might make the statements inadmissible. Or so I’ve heard. But despite the accusations sometimes hurled at me, I was not a cop. I did a cop-like thing, though, kicking myself for not doing it earlier. I got out my phone and started recording the conversation.
“What do you mean ‘Norris couldn’t be trusted’?” I asked. I asked it in a sweetly conversation voice, not the “come with me or else” voice I’d used in the bar.
“You know. Treated her like shit but kept staring at her like a man isn’t supposed to look at kid.” Basham fumbled with the controls on the door. “Mind if I roll down the window. It’s hot back here.”
Amad lowered the window slightly.
“Thanks.” Basham sucked in air loudly and exhaled a breath so redolent of alcohol I wondered, briefly, if babies could be affected by second-hand alcohol.
“At the time that you and your wife were separating and custody was being decided, did you suspect that General Norris had an inappropriate interest in your daughter?”
“Oh, yeah. I sure did.”
Beside me, Amad’s hands took a death grip on the wheel.
“Yet you left her with them, knowing your ex-wife would be unlikely to protect Heidi?”
“Feel awful about it.” Another big inhale and boozy exhale. “But Heidi said she could take care of herself. Heidi’s always…pretty mature for her age.” He stumbled over the word ‘mature’ but I thought that was what he said.
I tried to keep anger from my voice as I said, “How old was Heidi when you left?”
“Thirteen. Fourteen. Ya know, I lose track sometimes. The years fly past. Busy with the band. Man’s work…important, right? Remember when she was just…little bitty thing, learning to walk with that prosthesis.” The word ‘prosthesis’ nearly floored him. “Hardly held her back at all. ’Course, Lorena found it repulsive. She hated helping Heidi put it on. Hated getting her fitted for bigger ones as she grew. Heidi such a cute lil’ thing. ’Cept for this. Lorena so mean. Mean to me, too. Said my fault…baby wasn’t perfect.”
And Heidi still kept hoping her mother would love her. The sadness of it stabbed me like a dagger.
We slowed at a crosswalk to let a speed-walking pod of senior citizens cross. They wore brightly colored sweats and chattered merrily as they anything but speed-walked across the street. I put a cautioning hand on Amad’s arm, and saw his death grip on the wheel slacken.
“Do you believe General Norris is the father of Heidi’s baby?”
“Nah. Figure that asshole Norris too smart for that. He’d use precaution, ya know?”
Kill. Him. I was going to kill this man if we didn’t get back to Simmons soon. I tried to repress my anger and
consider what other questions I should ask while he was too impaired to be cautious. “So, not The General. Who, then?”
“Told you this morning. Dee or Dum—horny guys, wouldn’t care what they nailed. Or Dennis because he’s just mean enough to do that. Or what’s his name. Music guy. Name doesn’t begin…letter D. Bill. Will. Better if it was Dill.”
Basham began to sing.
Amad squeezed so hard I thought the steering wheel would crack.
“I thought Will, the music teacher, was her friend?”
“Is. Very. Good. Friend. I think. Was friend. Not anymore.”
“Why isn’t he her friend anymore?”
A delighted, demonic cackle from the backseat. “’Cuz he’s out of the picture.”
Twenty-Three
We were back at Simmons, the turn onto the campus just ahead, but this was no time to stop. It would be far better to keep driving and keep Basham talking and see what else he would say. I didn’t want to tip Basham off, though, by saying something to Amad. Basham had gone back to singing one of his tuneless tunes, and probably wouldn’t notice if we missed the turn.
I didn’t have to say anything. Amad sailed past the entrance without a word.
“When you saw her yesterday, did Heidi say anything about her baby’s father?”
A sound that was sort of grunt and sort of laugh. “You forget. My daughter has never had sex and never had a baby.”
“You don’t believe her?”
“Well, I do. And I don’t. Innocent. Naïve. Could of…not…understood.” He yawned. “Feeling very tired,” he said. “Re…covering. Accident, ya know? Be good to lie down a bit. We almost there?”
Like a little kid on a car trip. “You said it could be Dee or Dum or the music teacher, Will. But now you say Will is out of the picture. Is that because things have been said that make you believe he’s not the father?”