Max shook his head in agreement. I decided to gut punch him and watch his reaction.
“You think she’s dead, don’t you?”
First, briefly, he swelled up defiantly, but he didn’t have energy or anger enough to fight the good fight and he caved in on himself before he said a word. “It’s been over three weeks. The cops try to be hopeful, but I can see it in their eyes. What do you think?”
She’s probably dead. “ I don’t know enough yet to have an opinion. That’s why I want to talk to you. I talked to Candy yesterday.”
“I figured something had happened.”
“How’s that?”
“She was a little upbeat last night. It didn’t last.”
“Yeah, I saw her leaving the house. What was she made up for?”
“You mean who, not what,” he said.
“Okay, who?”
“Randy Junction. He owns the gallery in town that shows Sashi’s work.”
“I know the name. I came across it in some stuff I was reading, but why go see him this early in the morning?”
“For a little comfort.” I purposefully kept my mouth closed and Max obliged my silence. “That’s right, Moe, comfort. The kind I don’t seem able to supply to my wife anymore, not that she’d want it from me. She’s been fucking him on and off for years. Until Sashi… Until lately, it had been off. I learned not to mind it so much when she would throw me a bone too every now and then. I suppose if I had the heart for it, I’d be looking for the same kind of comfort. Candy doesn’t want to face the reality of things yet, but it won’t last.”
I let it go because that was a time bomb I wasn’t prepared to dig around just yet. “Tell me about the day Sashi disappeared.”
Raymond Shaw is kindest, warmest, bravest… It was the Manchurian Candidate all over again. Max’s story was nearly word for word what Candy had told me. Not only that, but his movements, his hand gestures, his intonation pattern were all startlingly similar. I didn’t like it any better this time than when Candy told it to me. There was definitely something they both knew that they weren’t telling, but badgering Max or Candy wouldn’t lead me to what it was. No, they would only circle the wagons and gird themselves. Now I was certain I knew what had motivated Detective McKenna to let me in on the case without having to jump through fiery hoops. He was hoping my presence might rock the boat a little and get Max or Candy to either confide in me or to tell an obvious lie. So far, the strategy was a failure, but it was early… for me. Not for Sashi. According to her father, it was late for her. Too late. I hoped like hell he was wrong and I hoped it was just a feeling he had and not something he knew for sure.
“Tell me about Sashi’s friends.”
“She didn’t have many friends.”
Didn’t. Past tense.
“In a lot of the stories I read about her, there were often mentions of her playing with friends at shows,” I said.
“When she was little… Yeah, she had lots of friends, but she really became very much a prisoner of her work. I’m to blame for that. I encouraged her, maybe pushed her too hard. Most ten- or elevenyear-olds aren’t working on their version of the Mona Lisa. I was such a complete fuck-up at my art, I wanted her to succeed so bad. I guess I wanted it too much. Her friends just sort of fell away. And the criticism and exposes didn’t help. We tried to shield her from that, but you can’t protect kids, not when some guy on CNN calls you a fraud, not with the Net and social networks. She heard it. She felt the pressure.”
“She had to have some friends.”
“There’s Ming,” he said.
“Ming?”
“Ming Parson. Her and Sashi have been buddies forever, but in the last year or so…”
“I’ll want her address.”
“Sure.” Max scribbled something out on a pad, ripped the top sheet off, and handed it to me.
“Thanks. How are you guys doing financially?”
You throw enough punches, some are bound to land. This one landed square on his jaw and the Max I disliked suddenly reappeared out of the past. He shook his head in disgust and that familiar cocky curled lip returned, the grief and mourning vanishing as if I’d taken an eraser to his face.
“Fuck you! You and that cop, you’re both the same. Get the fuck out of my house. Now!”
Now it was my turn to oblige him. I left. Staying wouldn’t have done anything for either one of us and it almost certainly would have done my cause harm. I’d pissed the man off. I might have been pissed off, too, had someone implied my precious daughter’s disappearance was somehow about money. Clearly, McKenna had done more than imply it.
The Parsons’ house was rather more modest than the grand Victorian on the cliff. It was a cute, slightly worse-for-wear little bungalow on the same block as one of the two Russian Orthodox churches in town. The bungalow was on a small lot with a tiny front yard and a gravel driveway barely big enough for a full-size car to park on, but it looked cozy and lived in, comfortable as a pair of old jeans. I knocked on the front door and a woman answered. She was forty, on the short and heavy side, not pretty, yet attractive in the way her house was.
“Hello there.” Her voice was warm and welcoming. “How can I help you?”
“Hi. Mrs. Parson?”
“Dawn.”
“Dawn, my name’s Moe Prager. I’m an old friend of Candy Blunt-stone.”
That took the warmth and sparkle right out of her. She stepped out of the house, closing the door behind her. “Look, mister, I’ve talked to the police about this several times and I don’t want to discuss it anymore. My daughter talked to them too. She hasn’t slept well since Sashi disappeared. At this age they know enough to understand what might have happened, but not enough to make sense of it.”
“I don’t think we ever get old enough to make sense of it.”
“I’m sorry for Candy and I’m scared for Sashi, but I have my own child to protect.”
I didn’t say a word. Instead, I reached into my wallet, removed two items, and handed them to Dawn Parson. One of the items was an old card I kept to remind me of what I used to be. The other was a photo of Sarah that was taken when she was in fifth grade and was about the same age as Ming and Sashi. It was as manipulative as hell, but I’d worry about paying that bill later.
“She’s a beautiful little girl. My god, such amazing red hair.”
“Her name’s Sarah and she’s grown into a beautiful woman. The hair’s a little darker now,” I said. “Candy used to babysit for Sarah. She was like her big sister.”
“Like I said, I feel for them, but I have to worry about me and mine.”
“I know. How about you give me a few minutes and I’ll get out of your way?”
“I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already said to the cops.”
“Different sets of ears hear different things,” I said. “I was a cop once myself a long time ago and, like the card says, a private investigator. Sometimes it’s not what you’re saying that makes the difference, but who’s hearing it. Please.”
“Sure.”
“Did Ming see Sashi that day, the day she went missing?”
Ming’s mom frowned, looked at the welcome mat, and rubbed her hands. “They hadn’t seen each other for a while. So, no, they didn’t see each other that day.”
“I heard they were really good friends.”
“They were. We adopted Ming from China and she was older than most of the kids who come over. She’d been in the orphanage a long time. It was very bewildering for her at first and she was sort of the odd man out. I guess Sashi kind of felt like that too. They both didn’t quite fit in and they became immediate allies, if you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“Well, they just took to each other. Went to dance class together, summer day camp, you know, all the stuff little girls do together. If it wasn’t for Sashi, it would have taken Ming much longer to learn English. They actually became pretty popular, the two of them, and had a whole group of friends.”
“What happened?”
“Sashi stopped being a little girl and started having to be a grownup somewhere along the way. She stopped doing the stuff the other girls did. Eventually, only Ming was left.”