Be Frank With Me (23 page)

He ended by showing us an ancient copy of
The Little Prince,
now resting on his pillow. “I know I wasn't reading it last night because I don't understand much French. Although sometimes my mother and I like to pretend we speak it.”

That was the difference between Frank and me. I'd recognized the cover art but hadn't gotten past it to the letters spelling out
Le Petit Prince
. “Why do you have it in French, then?” I asked.

“My mother's very fond of this book because it belonged to my Uncle Julian in high school. She had to translate it for him for his French class the way she has to translate it for me.” He turned to the flyleaf and showed us “Julian Gillespie” there, printed awkwardly enough to embarrass a second-grader. Seeing Julian's lousy handwriting gave me gooseflesh.
Frank's psychiatrist says it runs in families.

“If she liked it so much, why didn't she get you a copy in English?” Mr. Vargas asked.

“She's fond of it because it belonged to Uncle Julian. She says the illustrations are the best thing about it anyway. Her capsule review
of the story is ‘
Waiting for Godot
,
le Junior Edition
. Snore.' She says the word
snore
because sometimes loud noises like actual snores can startle me.”

“I'll try to remember that when I go to sleep tonight,” Mr. Vargas said.

“After I've canvassed the property thoroughly I may note other tipoffs to her recent presence here,” Frank said. “I can start an in-depth investigation now if you like.”

I told him that wouldn't be necessary and hustled him into his pajamas. I'd put Mr. Vargas in Frank's monastery cell and made up the red love seat in my bedroom with sheets so the kid could stay with me. I worried he would have a harder time sleeping that night than ever, but when I tucked him in on the couch he said, “All of us could use a little rest, right, Alice?” and his eyelids fluttered shut. Once I was sure he was sleeping I went looking for Mr. Vargas. He was on the white couch, holding a plastic martini glass.

“What are you drinking?” I asked.

“I didn't get that far,” he said. “I ran out of steam after I found the glass. There's something funny about it. The weight's off.”

“It's plastic,” I said.

“Ah. That explains it.”

“Glass and Frank are a bad combination. I'm worried about Mimi, Mr. Vargas. Should we call the police?”

“Call the police? Why?”

“Because she's missing. Something terrible may have happened to her.” Sirens.

“Mimi's not missing, Alice. She packed a bag and left.”

He had a point. Not one that I liked, though. “What if she doesn't come back?”

“I suppose that's a possibility, but I doubt it. She's done this kind of thing before.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Bolted. When Mimi gets overwhelmed, she takes off.”

Like mother, like son. Also like Xander.

“But she didn't have a kid before. She wouldn't abandon Frank, would she?”

“Frank isn't abandoned. You're here.” Mr. Vargas held the glass to the light and twisted it between his fingers. “Plastic, huh? It does look different when the light shines through it.”

I dropped onto the couch alongside him and covered my face with my hands.

“Try not to worry so much, Alice. I don't know where Mimi is, but I imagine she's off someplace trying to piece her novel back together. She knows that you'll take care of Frank while she's gone. She wouldn't have kept you around if she didn't think you could handle the job.”

“But I haven't handled the job,” I wailed. “You sent me here to transcribe Mimi's book and I never saw a page of it. If I'd done it right, we'd be back in New York having cocktails in real cocktail glasses at the Algonquin now. There might not have even been a fire.”

“What I love about you, Alice,” Mr. Vargas said, “is the way you simultaneously give yourself too much credit for everything that happens and not enough. Listening to you makes me feel young again.”

“This isn't funny, Mr. Vargas.”

“Who said it was? Listen to me, Genius. I sent you out here to help Mimi in whatever way Mimi needed help. You did that.”

But I hardly heard what he was saying because I'd suddenly thought of something. “Hang on a minute,” I said, and ran into my bedroom.

When I came back I thrust my ridiculous-looking unicorn notebook into his hands.

“What's this?” he asked.

“The notes you asked me to keep. Before I went to sleep at night I wrote down everything that happened every day. I really ought to type them out for you. Some of the entries are pretty cryptic and my handwriting isn't the best. But then neither was Einstein's.”

“Notes?” Mr. Vargas asked. “What are you talking about, Alice?”

I WOKE UP
in the night pretty sure I'd heard somebody knock on my bedroom door. As much as I wanted to stay asleep, I skidded out of bed and went to check.

It was Mr. Vargas, clutching a flashlight and looking embarrassed. I stepped out into the hall and closed my door behind me so we wouldn't wake Frank. “I'm sorry to disturb you,” Mr. Vargas said. “But is it conceivable that a raccoon found its way into my bedroom closet? Something's moving in there, but I don't think it's a burglar, as the sound is more shuffling than ransacking.”

“I suppose one could have found a way under the tarp over the hole in Mimi's office wall,” I said. “But I imagine a raccoon would go for the kitchen instead of Frank's closet. Although knowing Frank he might have snacks wrapped inside some of his pocket squares. Did you close your bedroom door before you went to sleep?”

“I did. And it was closed when I woke up.”

“Let's have a look,” I said, sounding braver than I felt. Where was that plastic machete when we really needed it?

When we got to the bedroom I noticed a line of light under Frank's closet door. “Was the closet light on before?” I whispered.

“I didn't notice.”

“Follow me,” I said.

We went back to my room and I turned on the light. Frank wasn't sleeping on the love seat anymore and the sheets I'd made it up with were strewn across the floor. We found the Nocturnal Rambler asleep on the rug in his closet, the light on, the cashmere overcoat it was never cold enough for him to wear rolled up under his head, an oversized pink cardigan I'd never seen before as his blanket. Frank might be okay with pink but he preferred a more tailored fit so I guessed the cardigan was Mimi's even though I couldn't imagine her in such a cheerful color. The kid had a shoe tucked in the crook of each elbow, as if he worried someone might steal them while he slept. His hands were folded across the copy of
Le Petit Prince
.

We backed out of the closet and reconvened in the hallway. “Frank's protective of his things,” I said. “We'd better trade bedrooms.”

BEFORE WE TURNED
in for the night again, Mr. Vargas and I decided to do a little nocturnal rambling of our own. Outside, a crescent moon tipped our way, spilling silvery Southern California magic all over the sad ruins of the Dream House. The two of us stood in the driveway pondering the heap. Mr. Vargas took a deep breath and said, “Smell that?”

“The smoke? The fire captain said it would smell like burned-down-house around here for a few days, a week tops. He didn't want me to worry about it.”

“Not the smoke,” he said. “The night-blooming jasmine.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes. That.”

“Alice, did I ever tell you about the time I set my mother's closet on fire?”

“You did? How?”

“Well, my mother never let me play with matches. So when I managed to nab a big box from the kitchen, I went and hid behind the dresses in her closet to play with them. I figured she'd never think to look for me there.”

“Did she?”

“She didn't. I don't think she missed me. Or the matches. After I lit the fortieth or fiftieth one, a dress caught. I might not have been smart enough to see that coming, but I was smart enough to run like heck when it did. My mother was mopping the kitchen when I found her, and she came running with the bucket. That fire didn't have a chance against my mother.”

“That doesn't exactly make me feel better about myself, Mr. Vargas, but it gives me hope for Frank.”

“You'll like this, too, then,” he said. “I didn't have friends growing up. Who'd have thought a sensitive fat kid who wore glasses and read all the time wouldn't get voted Most Popular?”

When we turned back to the house we saw a shaft of light beaming heavenward from Frank's closet skylight. “I guess we should have turned that light off,” Mr. Vargas said.

“I bet Frank left it on because he's afraid to sleep in the dark with Mimi gone,” I said. “That, or he's signaling the mother ship to come pick him up.”

“Frank will be okay, Alice,” Mr. Vargas said. “He's an odd duck, but brilliant children often are. It may take him a while, but someday he'll figure out how to live in the world of ordinary mortals.” As we climbed the driveway he added, “Frank's not the one I'm worried about.”

“So you are worried about Mimi.”

He drilled his hands into his pockets and grimaced. “I suppose I'm not as calm about this as I make myself out to be,” he said. “I'm worried, yes. But I'd worry more if she didn't have Frank. She's all he's got, and she knows it.”

“What about a guardian? Do you think Mimi has chosen one for him?”

“I wondered that myself. So I asked our lawyers to check into it.”

“And?”

“Mimi designated a guardian, yes,” he said. “Pretty soon after Frank was born. But it seems she didn't get around to discussing it with the guy she picked. And now he doesn't know what to think. Legally, he's not bound to do it, since she didn't ask his permission first.”

“Who? Frank's father?” I asked. “Do we find out now who he is?”

“No,” he said. “Not Frank's father. Unequivocally not Frank's father.”

“Xander?” I asked. “Don't hold out on me, Mr. Vargas.”

“Not Xander,” he said. “I'm not holding out. I just can't get my head around it.” He tapped his sternum with his forefinger. “Isaac Vargas,” he said. “Me. She appointed me Frank's guardian.”

I
WAS ASLEEP,
dreaming I was shaking a cardboard box next to my ear to figure out what was inside it when I heard Frank say, “Alice, wake up.” Since the Dream House was on fire the last time he spoke those words, that sentence catapulted me out of bed. I wasn't fully awake and was so completely wrapped in bedclothes that I ended up on the floor of my new boudoir, formerly Frank's bedroom. The kid stood over me in his Sherlock Holmes cape and deerstalker, rattling the shake flashlight Mr. Vargas had given him. He grabbed me by an eyelid and focused it on my eyeball.

“Frank!” I said. “Cut that out. What do you think you're doing?”

“I'm checking you for brain damage. In case you struck your head when you fell.”

“I'm fine,” I said. I sat up and rubbed my hand across my face. “Is anything on fire?”

“What's your name, Alice?” Frank asked me.

“Frank, for Pete's sake.”

“Oh dear. Not good. I'm Frank. Your name is Alice.” He blinded me with the flashlight again. “Your pupils are responsive to light, but your possible head injury may have rendered you unable to remember the paramedics saying that not knowing your own name may signify brain damage. Also, nothing is burning and olfactory hallucinations can indicate compromised brain tissue. George Gershwin imagined he smelled burning rubber for weeks before he died of a brain tumor on July eleven,
1937
. We should call an ambulance.”

“We do not need to call an ambulance, Frank. My name is Alice
Whitley, okay? I asked if something was on fire because the last time you woke me in the middle of the night, something was. What do you need?”

“I need to look for Xander.”

“Why?”

“Because he's lost.”

“I wouldn't waste my energy thinking about Xander. I'd worry about my mother,” I said as I kicked myself free of the sheets and stood up. Xander needed to get lost, if you asked me. He was as guilty of setting the Dream House fire as Frank was. More. What's worse, every mention of Xander's name forced me to consider that I might be somewhere on that continuum of guilt. I should have soaked those Roman candles in a bucket of water, cut off the fuses, and driven them halfway to Vegas to bury them in the desert.

“But, Alice, your mother is dead. No amount of thinking on my part will bring her back.”

“Not my mother, Frank. Your mother.”

“Why should I worry about my mother? She's not lost. Mr. Vargas knows where she is.”

Mr. Vargas knew where Mimi was? That was news to me. By then I was awake enough to realize I'd better zip it about worrying about Mimi if I didn't want Frank to go rigid on the floor. “I'm going back to sleep, Frank,” I said. “So should you.” I picked up the sheet and coverlet, rearranged the bed, and got in. Once I was back under the covers Frank perched on its edge. “Do you want me to tuck you in, Frank?” I asked.

“That's all right. I'm not tired. I'll sit here until you've rested enough to talk.”

I sighed. “What do you want to talk about, Frank?”

“Looking for Xander.”

“What makes you think we need to look for Xander?”

“I told you. He's lost.”

“Xander's not lost, Frank. He's probably outside Salt Lake City
right now, blowing a wad of cash.” I thought of the three sad, crumpled singles in his wallet that he didn't even have.

I guess Frank was thinking about that, too, because he said, “Xander doesn't have a wad of cash to blow. All the money he has is in his wallet, which you're keeping in your purse. Also his monthly bus pass. He wouldn't have invested in a monthly bus pass if he meant to leave town before the month was halfway done. He's not crazy, you know.”

I was so beyond getting mad at the kid for going through my purse again that I stifled a massive yawn. “Can't this wait until morning, Frank?”

“It could. But then I wouldn't have an excuse to use this excellent flashlight.” He gave the flashlight the kind of two-fisted, elbow-intensive shake that bartenders at the Algonquin probably used when mixing martinis for Robert Benchley and his crew of jaundiced wits. Then Frank put the flashlight in my hand, pulled his bubble pipe from the pocket of his cape, and extracted a small rolled-up piece of paper from its bowl. He smoothed it on the bedside table, grabbed my hand and directed the flashlight's beam onto it.

“So,” he asked. “How early is too early to telephone this ‘Sara'?”

AT BREAKFAST THE
next morning I sent Frank to the yard to pick a rose for Mr. Vargas to use as a pocket square. While the kid was outdoors I asked Mr. Vargas if he knew where Mimi was.

“Of course not,” Mr. Vargas answered. He put down his knife and fork and wiped his hands on his napkin. “What makes you ask?”

“Because Frank thinks you do,” I said.

“Why would he think that?”

Before I could let him in on what Frank told me the night before, the kid burst in with the rose and thrust it at Mr. Vargas to smell. I put my hand on the back of the chair to keep Mr. Vargas from tipping over when Frank came at him.

“Lovely,” Mr. Vargas said. “I think I've smelled it enough now, thank you, Frank.”

Frank crammed the blossom into Mr. Vargas's breast pocket and then arranged its tips with a neurosurgeon's care.

“So Frank,” Mr. Vargas said, “tell me, what's your favorite thing about school these days?”

“Not going,” Frank said. “I'm on hiatus. Like my mother.”

“I see,” Mr. Vargas said. “Just as well. School isn't for everybody, you know.”

“I know,” Frank said matter-of-factly, then launched into his spiel about Winston Churchill, Ansel Adams, Noël Coward, and their fellow dropout luminaries. He offered to show Mr. Vargas the list with all the names on it that Mimi kept in her bedside table drawer.

“After Mimi comes back I'd love to see it,” Mr. Vargas said. “A gentleman doesn't go through a lady's drawers without permission.”

“Ah.” Frank nodded. “Now I'm wondering if you're the gentleman Alice always references.”

“He is, Frank,” I said. “Mr. Vargas is the gentleman.”

I SAW NO
point in involving Mr. Vargas in our search for Xander since we were only doing it to occupy Frank's mind and, okay, mine until Mimi was back from her mysterious hiatus. So I was glad when he shut himself away with my notebook after breakfast.

I made the kid wait until
10
:
00
A.M
. to call Sara's number. Which gave him plenty of time to decide what ensemble would be most appropriate for this type of investigative work, as he lacked the requisite gumshoe trench coat and fedora. The E. F. Hutton suit, or the Clarence Darrow? Overcoat with top hat, or without? His good white tie and tails? I'd started out the morning exhausted and exasperated with Frank, but if trying on clothes kept him calm and happy while his mother was out of pocket, I was willing to play along.

“The Thin Man, I presume,” I said once he settled on a smoking jacket over pajamas, a pencil-thin fake mustache from the set I'd given him for Christmas, and a plastic martini glass. The martini glass was the clincher.

“The ‘thin man' is the skeleton in the movie
The Thin Man,
so if I were portraying that character I'd be holding a beer and mop. This,” Frank said, waggling the fingers of his free hand in front of his smoking jacket, “is an homage to Nick Charles, society detective, as portrayed by William Powell, brother of Eleanor Powell.”

“I don't think they're actually siblings,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Frank said. “But I like to imagine they are.”

When the time came to phone Sara-whoever-she-was, I brought the portable handset into Frank's bedroom. While we sat on the bed together, Frank declaimed the numbers while I tapped them in. When I entered the last one and put the receiver to my ear, Frank put an arm around my shoulders and pressed his left ear to my right one.

I hung up. “Frank,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“Listening in.”

“Really? Do you think I have nothing in between my ears but air and a piece of string?”

“That's right. Your brain is fairly dense. Maybe I should listen in on the other handset.”

“Fine.” I handed the receiver to Frank, put the paper with Sara's number in my pocket, and went into the kitchen to get the other handset. When I came in he had the phone to his ear and was saying into it, “My name is Frank Banning. I'm investigating the disappearance of Xander Devlin. Where were you on the night of February eleventh and the subsequent morning of February twelfth? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

I sat on the bed beside him, took the paper with Sara's number from my pocket, and punched the numbers into the kitchen handset. When I held it to my ear a woman's voice said, “Frank, please tell whoever that is that you're already using the phone.”

I grabbed Frank's receiver and pressed “end call” on both his and mine. “You memorized Sara's number, didn't you?” I asked.

“What a ridiculous question, Alice. Next I imagine you'll ask me to recite the multiplication tables for you. Please. Pressing ‘redial' works
much faster than inputting all those digits. You should try that when you call her back.”

IT DIDN'T TAKE
us long to establish that Sara was Tattoo Girl, the young woman who'd delivered Xander's box to Frank.

“Did Xander tell you what was inside the box before you delivered it?” Frank asked.

“Your birthday present,” Sara said. “That's all I know. What was in it?”

“Roman candles.”

“That sounds about like Xander,” Sara said. “Please tell me he had enough sense to come and set those fireworks off for you, Frank.”

“He came,” Frank said. “But I'd set them off already and the Dream House was well on its way to burning to the ground by the time he arrived. Before I could explain what had happened the police hauled him away in handcuffs. We haven't heard from him since, so we're worried he feels responsible for destroying his home away from home.”

“He ought to feel responsible,” I said. “Who gives fireworks to a child?”

“Wait a minute,” Sara said. “February twelfth? Did all this happen last week? If you're thinking of suing Xander for giving Frank fireworks or me for delivering them, you're wasting your time. He has nothing and neither do I. We don't even own a car.”

Before I could assure her we had no such intentions, Frank muscled in with, “That's not true. You have Alec. I don't know him personally but he looks like a keeper.”

“I have Alec. Yes. He is a keeper. You're right.” She sounded less hostile after Frank said that.

“Tell me,” Frank said, “was Xander in jail long enough to be fitted for an orange jumpsuit?”

“I pawned my wedding ring as soon as he called so I could bail him out as fast as possible. Xander hates being in jail. Listen, everything
you're saying is news to me. All Xander told me was that he'd punched a cop.”

I was still grappling with
wedding ring
and so had fallen a couple of paces behind. “Wait,” I said. “Xander's been in jail before?”

After a longish pause, Sara asked, “Exactly how well do you know Xander?”

“Well enough to know he doesn't have a driver's license, doesn't do birthdays, and that he never graduated from Julliard because he broke his arm in two places during his last year there.”

“He never graduated because he broke his arm? Did he tell you how he broke his arm?”

“No,” I said.

“I didn't think so.”

“How did he break his arm?” I asked.

“He needs to be the one to tell you that,” she said.

BEFORE WE LEFT
the next day for the fancy department store where Sara told us Xander had a gig playing piano, I stopped by my former bedroom to let Mr. Vargas know we were leaving. I didn't invite him along because I knew Frank would be absolutely against that.

When Mr. Vargas opened the door to my knock he was wearing a rumpled dress shirt with the tail untucked, a pair of suit pants, and socks. The guy's hair was a mess. I'd never seen him look untidy before. “Did you sleep in your clothes, Mr. Vargas?” I asked.

“I forgot to pack pajamas,” he said. I saw that he had my notebook in his hand and that he'd flagged a number of pages with yellow Post-it notes.

Frank elbowed me aside and said to Mr. Vargas, “I like what you've done with your hair.”

Mr. Vargas was enough of a student of Frank already to know the kid was incapable of sarcasm. “Thank you, Frank,” he said. “I call this style ‘the Albert Einstein.'”

Frank's eyes lit up. “If you borrowed one of my mother's cardigan
sweaters and a fake mustache from my collection you could star in a biopic of Albert Einstein,” he said. “May I loan you one of my mother's cardigan sweaters and one of my fake mustaches?”

“Sure,” Mr. Vargas said.

“You'll need shoes,” Frank said. “But no socks. Einstein didn't wear socks.” He skedaddled off.

When Mr. Vargas sat on the red love seat to pull off his socks, I noticed the imprint of his body on top of my fluffy white comforter. He hadn't even bothered to get under the covers last night. From the looks of him, I wasn't sure he'd been to sleep at all.

Mr. Vargas asked, “How does Frank know about Einstein's socks?”

“His lack of socks, you mean?” I asked. “How does Frank know anything?”

Mr. Vargas rolled his socks into a ball and tucked them into the corner of the suitcase he hadn't unpacked. He put my notebook away in the desk drawer.

Once Mr. Frank of Bel Air was done with Mr. Vargas, he did kind of look like Albert Einstein. Frank was so pleased by the results that he said, “I think he should come with us on our adventure today, Alice, don't you?”