"John, you've lost weight," she exclaimed.
"And teaching must be fairly profitable," I replied, nodding at her packages.
"Oh," she said with her smile, "this is my annual showboat excursion into the Big City. Usually. I just barter my wares for dry goods at the general store."
She giggled, and so did I. Despite her first appearance, I remembered her as a pretty regular kid, and I decided she hadn't changed.
She declined a cocktail. We ordered a bottle of white wine to be followed by a chicken luncheon for two. She said what she had to about Beth, and I did the same. The waiter brought and poured the wine. We talked about classrooms, the declining birth rate, and teacher lay-offs.
"So how goes the private-eye business?" she asked.
I exaggerated a little. I was relieved that she didn't ask for details.
"I'm sorry," I said finally, "but I don't recall exactly where it is that you're teaching."
A flicker of disappointment at the comers of her eyes? "Um," she said, "Meade, the Lincoln Drive Middle School. And that brings me to what I wanted to see you about. Do you know where Meade is?"
I did. "It's right next to Bonham, isn't it?"
She nodded as the waiter arrived with our chicken.
"If it's particularly gory, why don't we wait until after the meal?" I said.
"Oh, it's not," she replied quickly, and glanced down at the waiter's tray. "But let's not be rude to the chicken." I laughed and motioned to the waiter to begin serving.
The entree was delightful, punctuated by few words. Valerie finished a bit before I did and fixed me with dark, dark brown eyes. "I can't really start at the beginning because I didn't know the family then," she said. "But this past year in class-I teach the eighth grade-I had a boy named Stephen Kinnington in my homeroom and English classes."
"Familiar name," I interjected as I finished the last of my chicken.
"I'm not surprised. His father, Judge Kinnington, was one of the youngest men ever to go on the bench, and his family has sort of, well, ruled Meade since long before I arrived. Anyway, Stephen's mother, Diane Kinnington, killed herself about four years ago by driving her Mercedes off a bridge and into the river. Apparently she boozed it up a lot, so no one knows whether it was accidental or intentional. It hit Stephen pretty hard, as you can imagine. I've talked with his fifth-grade teacher, Miss Pitts, who's retired now, and she said that his mother's 'activities,' as Miss Pitts put it, had appeared to be affecting Stephen for a long time prior to Mrs. Kinnington's actual death. I got the impression from Miss Pitts that by 'activities' something more than simple alcoholism was involved, if you know what I mean."
"I've read of such goings on in France," I said.
Valerie made a face and drove on. "Anyway, by the time I got Stephen this year, he seemed to be perfectly normal, though a little reserved around the other kids. By all tests, he was exceptionally bright. I mean a real brain trust. At the beginning of the year, he would ask me whether I'd read certain books. He had obviously read them, and they were way beyond eighth-grade level. He'd missed a year because of sickness, but he's still only fourteen. I sort of took it on myself to suggest to his father that perhaps Stephen should go to a private school with an accelerated program. But whenever I called his office at the courthouse, he wasn't available, and he never returned my calls."
"Don't you have some sort of parent-teacher conference during the year?"
"Yes, but he didn't appear for the first one I scheduled, and when I called his home that evening, he wasn't in. I was pretty upset, since those conferences are scheduled on my time, so I kind of demanded to speak with someone-the housekeeper answered the phone, you see-and that's how I came to meet Mrs. Kinnington."
"The judge remarried?" I asked.
"Oh, no, his mother-that is, the judge's mother and Stephen's grandmother, Eleanor Kinnington. Everyone calls her Mrs. Kinnington. She's a little tower of power, and she was ripping mad that the judge had skipped the appointment. She asked if it was convenient for me to come there for dinner the next evening to discuss Stephen. I said I'd be happy to come, but the judge wasn't there the next night, either, and Mrs. Kinnington apologized for him through clenched teeth.
"I had a terrific dinner and talk with her, though. She must be nearly eighty and needs hand braces, the kind polio victims use, to walk around. But she's really sharp. Anyway, she said the judge would never allow his son to go to a private school. I got the impression that it was for local political reasons, as if it would seem that the local public schools weren't good enough for a Kinnington. She encouraged me to help Stephen as much as I could. I got the feeling that she thought the wife's death was really a blessing in disguise.
"Anyway, after that I began giving Stephen some separate reading assignments that he really enjoyed. I also got to be good friends, in a formal sort of way, with Mrs. Kinnington, because we'd discuss Stephen from time to time."
Valerie paused for a moment to take a sip of wine. I found her way of running parenthetical thoughts and sentences together to be a little tough to follow, but oddly not tiresome.
"Um, I have to stop drinking this wine or I'll never stay straight enough to finish the story. Anyway, about two weeks ago, Stephen disappeared?
"Kidnapped?"
"Apparently not. It seems that he packed his things one afternoon and, well, left."
"You mean he ran away from home?"
"Well, yes, but not exactly. I mean, no neighbor saw him shuffling along the sidewalk with a stick and stuffed handkerchief over his shoulder. And he packed really thoroughly, as if he expected to go a long way for a long time."
"Has he been heard from?"
She shook her head as she stole another gulp of wine. "No, and the police haven't found a trace in two weeks."
"What police?"
"The local Meade police. Technically, I guess he's just a missing person, since there's no evidence of kidnapping. But there's been no publicity, so no one is on the lookout for him except some agency that the judge hired. You see-"
"Wait a minute. What agency?"
"Oh, somebody and Perkins on State Street."
"Sturney and Perkins, Inc. They're one of the best, Va1."
She smiled. "But they haven't found anything. And I bet they're not nearly as good as you."
I set down my wine glass and fixed her with my best counselor's look. "Val, Sturney and Perkins have a substantial staff. In a specific crime-type case, sometimes one operative is better than an army. That's because he or she can get inside the investigation without causing ripples until he wants to make something happen. But a missing-person case requires a computer-type approach, assembling all the information you can from all sources and trying to blanket the areas he might be in with investigators, police and private."
"But then why haven't there been newspaper articles with pictures of him to help?" she asked, her eyes glittering.
"Maybe the police and Sturney, et alia, feel that publicity would just invite a lot of crank calls or start the wrong people looking for him."
"You mean like criminals the judge put away?" she asked.
"One example," I said.
"But right now he's out there with them anyway. I mean, he's in their element, where he's more likely to be hurt by someone who doesn't even know who he is."
She was becoming upset, so I decided to shift gears a little. "By the way, if his disappearance has been kept so much under wraps, how do you know about his packing and so forth?"
She blinked a few times and played with her nearly empty wine glass. "Well, that's how I came to see you. Stephen didn't come to school for two days-you see, he took off 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…"