Final Assignment: A Promise Falls Novella (2 page)

‘This happened since you’ve been at Promise Falls High?’ I asked. Chandler nodded. ‘And why did you leave the private school?’

‘Oh, that,’ Chandler said.

‘The school failed to meet Chandler’s academic needs,’ his mother said. ‘So we moved him out.’

‘We?’

‘My husband Malcolm and I.’

‘Where is Mr Carson?’ I asked.

‘He’s at work.’

‘What’s he do?’

‘He’s a financial consultant,’ she said. ‘He used to teach business, but then he actually got into it. Those who can
do
, you know.’

‘Does he know you called me?’

She swallowed. ‘I’ll be bringing him up to speed soon enough. And I hardly need my husband’s permission to engage someone’s services. That’s a very sexist attitude.’

‘My apologies if that’s how it came across,’ I said. I needed to get things back on track. ‘What did you mean, the school did not meet Chandler’s academic needs?’

‘They weren’t challenging him enough, and as a result, his grades suffered.’

Back to Chandler. ‘You were failing and they dropped you?’

‘Kinda,’ he said.

‘That’s not how I would characterize it,’ his mother said. ‘So, regrettably, we had to move Chandler to the school in our neighborhood. I think that’s why the teachers are against him, that he came from a private school. There’s a kind of reverse snobbery going on, if you ask me.’

‘I see,’ I said. I put my hands on my knees, getting into position to stand and walk out of here. But I at least had to ask. ‘Just how were you thinking that I might be able to help?’

‘I want you to get those school officials to change their minds and end this suspension, drop their demands that Chandler see someone for this ridiculous psychiatric help, and apologize.’

I shook my head. ‘You’ve got the wrong guy. If anything, what you want is a lawyer. Not a private detective.’

‘No, you’re exactly what I need,’ Greta Carson said. ‘I want you do dig up some dirt on the school.’

Chandler’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling. He sagged back into the couch, looking as though he hoped the cushions might swallow him whole.

‘Excuse me?’ I said to his mother.

‘It’s a big school, lots of staff. I’m sure some of them have done something they wouldn’t want everyone else to know about. Start at the top, with the principal. Maybe she sleeps around. Or that guidance counselor. I hear she has a weird daughter, some kind of learning disability or something. Good heavens, don’t make me do the work for you. This is
your
area. This is what you get paid for, isn’t it? Dig around and see what you find.’

‘To what end?’

She laughed. ‘Seriously? Once you’ve got something on them, I’m sure they’ll be much more amenable to dropping this whole business with Chandler.’

‘You want to blackmail your son’s teachers so they leave him alone?’

‘I wouldn’t put it that way,’ she said. ‘I’d think of it as leverage.’

I stood.

‘It’s been a pleasure, Ms Carson.’ I smiled, nodded, then turned to Chandler. ‘Good luck with your writing career.’

As I moved toward the door, the woman trailed after me. ‘Aren’t you going to help us?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Although I think there’s no doubt you need help, Ms Carson.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Greta Carson asked.

I let myself out.

I popped in to say hello to Naman on the way up to my apartment. I was renting a place over his used bookstore, and he was my landlord. He was sitting behind the counter reading an old Bantam paperback edition of a Nero Wolfe novel by Rex Stout when I walked in.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘You are on a case?’ he asked, grinning. He read a lot of detective fiction and thought what I did for a living was exciting and glamorous. I wished.

‘Turned one down,’ I said.

‘A divorce case?’ he speculated. ‘You don’t do that kind of work because it’s too messy?’

‘Something like that,’ I said.

There was a door off the sidewalk, next to the entrance to his shop, that led up to my place. I trudged tiredly up the stairs, took off my jacket and threw it over the back of a chair, loosened my tie. I opened the fridge, surveyed the contents, and decided it would be tricky to whip up something interesting for dinner with only milk, olives, and strawberry jam.

My cell phone rang.

I found it in my discarded jacket, glanced at the call display.

VAUGHN.

That would be Suzanne Vaughn. I was betting Greta had phoned her to complain that the private investigator she’d recommended so highly had refused to take her case, and insulted her to boot.

I took the call.

‘Hello.’

‘Cal?’

‘Hi, Suzanne. Greta must have called you.’

‘What? No, she didn’t.’

‘Oh. I thought she might have.’

‘That’s not why I’m calling,’ she said. I noticed, now, an edge in her voice.

‘What’s wrong, Suzanne?’

‘It’s Michael. He hasn’t come home. We haven’t seen him since last night. Elliot and I are absolutely frantic.’

I drove straight over to see Suzanne and Elliot Vaughn. They lived only a few blocks from the Carsons, but this was a different neighborhood. Not that the homes here weren’t nice, but they were more modest – a hundred thousand per house more modest. The Vaughns lived in a one-story house with clapboard siding. The lawn needed some attention, and from the street I could see part of an old rusted swing set in the backyard that didn’t look as though it had been used in years.

Suzanne and my wife Donna had gone through high school together and kept in touch during the years that we had lived in Griffon. Suzanne and Elliot had been among the few from Promise Falls who had come to Griffon for Donna’s funeral.

Suzanne, a short, tiny woman who had always reminded me of a sparrow, had been watching for me and had the door open before I reached it.

‘Cal, thanks for coming.’

‘Have you heard from him since you called me?’ I asked.

She shook her head furiously. ‘I keep trying his cell but he’s not answering.’ She turned her head and called into the house. ‘Elliot! Cal’s here.’

Elliot appeared from the kitchen as I entered the house. He offered a hand and I took it. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said. He was a small man, maybe five-two, and he hadn’t had any hair since he was in his early twenties. I’d often wondered if he’d married Suzanne because she was the only girl he could find who was smaller than him.

‘Have you called the police?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not so sure we need to bring them in.’

‘He stopped me,’ Suzanne said, almost accusingly. ‘I’ve been wanting to call them since three in the morning.’

‘He’s a teenage boy,’ Elliot said. ‘Teenage boys do stupid things. Maybe he’s with a girl, or had too much to drink and he’s sleeping it off somewhere.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ I said, ‘but still, it sounds like it’s been a while.’ I glanced at my watch. It was one in the afternoon. ‘You know for a fact he didn’t go to school today?’

‘We had a call,’ she said. ‘We thought maybe he had spent the night someplace and gone to school from there, but they called, said he hadn’t shown up. I’m sick to death.’

Elliot tried to comfort her by putting a hand on her arm, but she shook it off.

‘When did you last see him?’ I asked.

‘We all had dinner together,’ Suzanne said. ‘Then he said he had some homework to do, and later he went out.’

‘When?’

Elliot said, ‘I guess dinner was around seven, but he didn’t leave until around ten.’

‘Isn’t that kind of late to be heading out?’ I asked. ‘On a school night, anyway.’

‘That’s what I told him,’ Suzanne said. ‘But he said he wasn’t going out for long.’

‘Did he say where he was going?’

They both shook their heads. ‘Just out,’ Suzanne said. ‘That’s about the most you ever get out of him these days.’

‘Could he have been going to see Chandler?’ I asked.

‘I asked him that,’ Suzanne said. ‘He said Chandler was grounded while his parents sorted out what to do about that story he wrote. That’s why you went over there, right? Why Greta wanted to hire you? She said you were going to find something on the school staff that she could use.’

‘Greta’s crazy,’ Elliot said. ‘I mean, we’re friends and all with her and Malcolm, but she can be a complete lunatic sometimes. And Chandler can do no wrong in her book. She’s always made excuses for him.’

I didn’t disagree with any of that, but I steered us back to Mike. ‘So if he wasn’t going to see Chandler, then who was he going to see?’

They shook their heads again.

‘Does Mike drive?’

‘He’s got his license, but he didn’t take the car,’ Elliot said. ‘I think someone might have come by and given him a ride. Just after he went out the door, I thought I heard a car door slam. By the time I looked outside, there was no one there.’

‘When did you start phoning him?’

‘After midnight,’ Suzanne said. ‘I called him around twelve thirty and left a message, and then again at one, and every hour or so after that. I didn’t sleep a wink.’ She gave her husband a disapproving look, which he caught.

‘I guess I went back to sleep after she called the first time.’

‘I woke him up at three and said we should call the police, but he didn’t want to do that.’

‘You didn’t call Chandler?’

Suzanne looked regretful. ‘I didn’t have a number for Chandler’s cell phone. If I’d had that, I would have called or texted him. I didn’t want to call the house and wake his parents. I just kept hoping Mike would come home. I called Greta this morning to see if she’d seen him. She said they hadn’t.’

That was probably the call she’d taken while I was there.

‘Does Mike have a girlfriend?’ I asked.

‘Who can keep track?’ Elliot said, with what almost sounded like a touch of envy. ‘Every week it’s someone different. The last one I remember was Kate or Karen or something.’

‘So he’s popular,’ I said.

‘He’s a good-looking kid,’ his father said.

‘I can understand your reluctance to call in the police,’ I said to him, ‘but I think it’s time.’

‘I told you so,’ Suzanne said.

‘You can’t help us?’ Elliot asked.

I was thinking, but did not say, that if Mike had been in some kind of accident, the police might already know about it. But if he didn’t have sufficient ID on him, or if it was missing, they might be struggling with who he was.

‘I’m just one person, and I’m happy to help. But the police will put the word out to everyone they’ve got out there. They’ve got a much better chance of finding him than I do, and in a lot less time.’

Elliot nodded resignedly. ‘Okay, I’ll make the call.’

As he walked over to a landline phone on a narrow table that ran along the back of the sofa, Suzanne looked at me wearily.

‘The trouble that boys can get into,’ she said, and then looked at me apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. You know better than anyone.’

I’d lost my son Scott shortly before Donna had passed away.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Hello, police?’ Elliot said. ‘I want to report a missing person. Our son. We haven’t seen him since last night.’

I was still standing by the front door, and my eye caught some movement outside. I turned my head and looked through the glass to see a police car pulling up to the curb.

‘His name,’ said Elliot, ‘is Michael Vaughn. He has brown hair and he’s about five feet, six inches—’

‘Hang on,’ I said to Elliot as a uniformed cop got out of the car and started making his way toward the house.

‘Oh dear,’ Suzanne said.

‘What is it?’ Elliot said, still holding the phone to his ear. When he saw the cop at the door, he placed the phone back into its cradle. ‘Shit,’ he said.

I was closest to the door, so I opened it. ‘Hey,’ I said.

‘Where’s Michael?’ Suzanne asked the police officer. ‘Do you have Michael?’

The cop was stone-faced. He was late twenties, and I did not recognize him. He would have joined the Promise Falls police some time after I’d left it and moved to Griffon.

‘Mr and Mrs Vaughn?’ he asked. He was glancing at all three of us. He wouldn’t have much trouble figuring out who Mrs Vaughn was, but with me standing there, Mr Vaughn was up for grabs.

‘Yes, yes,’ Suzanne said, then put a hand on Elliot’s arm. ‘This is my husband. What’s happened? Is this about Michael?’

‘I was just calling the police,’ Elliot said. ‘Our son—’

‘There’s been an incident,’ the officer said. ‘Michael Vaughn is your son?’

‘Oh God,’ Suzanne said.

‘What’s he done?’ Elliot asked. ‘Has he done something?’

He was obviously hoping so. Right now, the idea that his son had caused some trouble beat many of the possible other explanations for the police being here.

‘Not that we know of,’ said the cop, who was wearing a name tag that read
Osterman
. ‘This is a very difficult thing to have to tell you. Someone going for a jog in the woods near Clampett Park found a body a short while ago, and—’

Suzanne started to wilt. Elliot moved to catch her before she hit the floor. He guided her into a nearby living room chair.

Osterman waited until she was safely seated before he continued. ‘This jogger phoned the police and we went to the scene, and based on identification found on the body, well, we were led here.’

Between sobs Suzanne was saying, ‘No, please no, not my baby, not my baby.’

Elliot said, ‘Someone could have stolen his wallet. It might not be him.’

The cop nodded. ‘That’s true, but …’

He turned to me. ‘May I ask who you are, sir?’

‘Cal Weaver,’ I said. ‘Friend of the family. Also, a private investigator. The Vaughns called me because they’ve been worried about Michael. They haven’t seen him since last night.’

I pulled him aside, slightly out of earshot of Suzanne and Elliot. ‘Why’d you hesitate when he said the wallet might have been stolen?’

‘There was a student ID in it. The picture matches the deceased, at least as best we can tell.’

‘What happened to him?’

Osterman looked between the Vaughns and me. ‘Sir, I really should be dealing with—’