I went up open-riser oak steps with an oak rail and a skylight at the top. Ferns hung in the light well in white plastic baskets. At the top was a hall lined with oak doors. The pair at the end were labeled President. I went through them into a large outer office with a beige carpet, and framed pictures of carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes on the walls.
A young woman with a heart-shaped face smiled behind a white desk in the middle of the room. Her glossy blond hair was an organized cap cut neatly at chin length. She wore a blue wool dress, and her nails were an understated length and an understated color.
'Did anyone ever tell you you have a beautiful voice?' I asked before she spoke.
She blushed but kept her composure. The effect was becoming. 'Mr. Smith? Mr. Sanderson has been expecting you. Please have a seat; I'll just tell him you're here.'
She picked up the phone on her desk, spoke into it, smiled at me again. Smiling was something she did well, probably from practice. I sat on a beige fabric-covered chair, the kind that puts you too low to the ground. I admired the vegetables. Five minutes; ten. For a man who'd been anxious to see me, in particular, Mark Sanderson didn't seem very excited now that I was here.
I took out a cigarette, rolled it around in my fingers a little, lit it. After the first drag the phone on the desk buzzed. The secretary answered it, hung up, smiled again. 'Mr. Sanderson will see you now. Go right in.' She nodded toward a door in the wall behind her.
Funny how often that cigarette thing worked.
Mark Sanderson's office was a corner office, as I'd imagined, with a view out over the plant, the parking lot, and the soft hills wrapping the valley. Sanderson's desk, though, was facing the door I came through. He'd have to turn his back on his work to get the benefit of that view.
'Smith.' Sanderson rose, came out from behind the desk as I came in. He extended a well-kept hand in a solid handshake. A smile came and went on his round baby face, leaving no trace. His steel-colored eyes studied me. Then, with the casual tyranny of a man so used to being obeyed that he rarely gave orders, he said, 'Sit down.'
I sat.
Sanderson perched on the edge of the desk, one foot still on the floor, one hand folded over the other. I watched the action behind his hard eyes. 'Look,' he said, 'I think we may have gotten off to a bad start earlier. If it was my fault, I apologize. I can be abrupt, I know.' The smile blinked on and off again.
'I can be pretty rough myself,' I said. 'Let's forget it. What was it you wanted to see me about?'
'Frankly, I need your help.' He walked back around the desk, sat in a leather swivel chair. I was left trying to read his face against the glare from the uncurtained windows. 'I need to find a boy named Jimmy Antonelli. I've been told you can help me.'
The cigarette I'd started in the outer office hadn't been much fun. I took out another, lit it, looked around for a place to throw the match. There was an ashtray on a credenza against the wall. Sanderson didn't move, so I got up, walked around him, picked it up. I repositioned my chair before I sat back down.
I pulled on the cigarette, breathed out some smoke. 'Why do you want him?'
'It's a personal problem.'
'Jimmy's got some of those, too. Why do you want him?'
'Well.' He smiled again. This one was longer-lasting than the others, but it vanished as completely. 'Well, I really don't want him. But my daughter seems to have run off with him.'
'Alice?' I asked.
He looked at me blankly. 'My daughter. Ginny. Who's Alice?'
'Never mind. What makes you think your daughter's with Jimmy?'
'They've been seeing each other. Two nights ago Ginny didn't come home. I haven't seen her since.'
'Did you call the police?'
'Naturally.' He frowned impatiently. 'And they came to the same conclusion I had already come to.'
'If you've talked to the police you know they're looking for Jimmy, too. So why call me?'
'You're a friend of his.'
'That doesn't mean I can find him.'
'Have you tried?'
'I’m not a cop.'
'Doesn't that mean you're likely to do better than they have?'
I said, 'Do you have a picture of your daughter, Mr. Sanderson?'
He started to say something, but stopped. He picked up a photograph from his desk, stood and handed it to me. It was a studio portrait, maybe a yearbook picture, of a small, beautiful girl with thick golden hair billowing around a delicately boned face. A hint of a smile, high red cheeks, and something in her deep blue eyes that sent a chill up my spine. Sanderson watched me. 'She's fifteen,' he said, unexpectedly softly.
I looked up quickly. His face had lost none of its arrogance and his mouth was still hard, but his eyes held a sudden tenderness, a familiar desperation that cut through me like a knife.
He stood abruptly, turned to the window, hands in his pockets. 'I didn't want Ginny growing up around here, with the kind of punks that hang out in McDonald's and drag race down the highway. I sent her to boarding school. But like any kid, she probably thinks the grass is greener where she's not allowed to go, and she's naive enough to fall for an SOB like Antonelli if he came on to her.'
'Do you know Jimmy?'
