”Is there anything you can think of, Millie, that would help me find your mother?’‘
“No, nothing. Don’t you think I’d like her back. I have to do all the cooking and look out for my brother and sister and make sure the cleaning lady comes and a lot of other stuff.”
“Where’s your brother and sister?”
“At the beach club, the lucky stiffs. I have to stay home for you.”
“For me?”
“Yeah, my father says I have to be the hostess and stuff till my mother comes home. I’m missing the races and everything.”
“Life’s hard sometimes,” I said. She made a sulky gesture with her mouth. We were silent for a minute.
“The races go on all week,” she said. “Everybody’s there. All the summer kids and everybody.”
“And you’re missing them,” I said. “That’s a bitch.”
“Well, it is. All my friends are there. It’s the biggest time of the summer.”
So young to have developed her tragic sense so highly.
Shepard came back in the room with a cardboard carton filled with letters and bills. On top was an 8 1/2 x 11 studio photo in a gold filigree frame. “Here you go, Spenser. This is everything I could find.”
“You sort through any of it?” I asked.
“Nope. That’s what I hired you for. I’m a salesman, not a detective. I believe in a man doing what he does best. Right, Mill?”
Millie didn’t answer. She was probably thinking about the races.
“A man’s gotta believe in something,” I said. “You know where I’m staying if anything comes up.”
“Dunfey’s, right? Hey, mention my name to the maitre d’ in The Last Hurrah, get you a nice table.”
I said I would. Shepard walked me to the door. Millie didn’t. “You remember that. You mention my name to Paul over there. He’ll really treat you good.”
As I drove away I wondered what races they were running down at the beach club.
Chapter 5
I asked at the town hall for directions to the police station. The lady at the counter in the clerk’s office told me in an English accent that it was on Elm Street off Barnstable Road. She also gave me the wrong directions to Barnstable Road, but what can you expect from a foreigner. A guy in a Sunoco station straightened me out on the directions and I pulled into the parking lot across the street from the station a little before noon.
It was a square brick building with a hip roof and two small A dormers in front. There were four or five police cruisers in the lot beside the station: dark blue with white tops and white front fenders. On the side was printed BARNSTABLE POLICE. Hyannis is part of Barnstable Township. I know that but I never did know what a township was and I never found anyone else who knew.
I entered a small front room. To the left behind a low rail sat the duty officer with switchboard and radio equipment. To the right a long bench where the plaintiffs and felons and penitents could sit in discomfort while waiting for the captain. All police stations had a captain you waited for when you came in. Didn’t matter what it was.
“Deke Slade in?” I asked the cop behind the rail.
“Captain’s busy right now. Can I help you?”
“Nope, I’d like to see him.” I gave the cop my business card. He looked at it with no visible excitement.
“Have a seat,” he said, nodding at the bench. “Captain’ll be with you when he’s free.” It’s a phrase they learn in the police academy. I sat and looked at the color prints of game birds on the walls on my side of the office.
I was very sick of looking at them when, about one-ten, a gray-haired man stuck his head through the door on my side of the railing and said, “Spenser?”
I said, “Yeah.”
He jerked his head and said, “In here.” The head jerk is another one they learn in the police academy. I followed the head jerk into a square shabby office. One window looked out onto the lot where the cruisers parked. And beyond that a ragged growth of lilacs. There was a green metal filing cabinet and a gray metal desk with matching swivel chair. The desk was littered with requisitions and flyers and such. A sign on one corner said CAPTAIN SLADE.
Slade nodded at the gray metal straight chair on my side of the desk. “Sit,” he said. Slade matched his office. Square, uncluttered and gray. His hair was short and curly, the face square as a child’s block, outdoors tan, with a gray blue sheen of heavy beard kept close shave. He was short, maybe five-eight, and blocky, like an offensive guard from a small college. The kind of guy that should be running to fat when he got forty, but wasn’t. “What’ll you have,” he said.
“Harv Shepard hired me to look for his wife. I figured you might be able to point me in the right direction.”
“License?”
I took out my wallet, slipped out the plasticized photostat of my license and put it in front of him on the desk. His uniform blouse had short sleeves and his bare arms were folded across his chest. He looked at the license without unfolding his arms, then at me and back at the license again.
“Okay,” he said.
