“I know,” Van Meer said.

“Talk about that,” I said.

“We had a big fight,” he said. “She went to Bucharest. When she came back, we made up. In fact, that’s when Adelaide was conceived.”

He sipped his drink. He was sedate. No guzzling.

“What was the fight about?”

“Oh, God,” he said. “I don’t know. We had fights all the time.”

“You know she was cheating on you?”

“Yes.”

“With Bradshaw?”

“Yes.”

“Might it have been a fight about that?” I said.

“Coulda been,” Van Meer said.

“How’d you feel about that?” I said.

Van Meer shrugged.

“Hell, she cheated on me all the time, with anybody available,” he said, and sipped again.

“How’d you feel about that?” I said.

He laughed.

“You sound like all of my many shrinks,” he said. “Why do you want to know all this?”

“If I knew ahead of time what was important to know and what was not…” I said.

He nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can see that.”

He had another swallow. Like a lot of experienced boozers, he could go a long time before he began to slur his words. He held his glass up a little and looked at his drink.

“Not too long after we got married, we had some wiring done at our new house,” he said. “She fucked the electrician.”

I nodded.

“She needed sex, and she needed variety,” Van Meer said. “She was fucking me while she was married to that art professor. She was fucking Bradshaw when she was married to me.”

“Busy,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Looking for Mr. Right?” I said.

“Mr. Feels Good,” Van Meer said. “As far as I could tell, she fucked plumbers and limo drivers and delivery men, and for all I know doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs.”

“One man would never be enough,” I said.

“That is correct.”

“And you could live with that?” I said.

“Better than I could live without her,” Van Meer said.

“And now you have to do both,” I said.

Van Meer nodded and took another sip.

“Yup,” he said.

44

It was the Thursday after Thanksgiving, the last day of November, with a gentle but persistent rain falling all along the south coast. In Padanarum, Hawk waited in the car for me while I went up on the porch and rang the bell for Harden Bradshaw. I could hear the surf from the waterfront side of the house. I could smell wood smoke, and when Bradshaw opened the door, I could look past him and see the fire burning on the big hearth in his living room.

“You again,” he said.

“Glad to see you, too,” I said. “May I come in?”

“What do you want?”

“Several things,” I said. “Like where your stepdaughter attended college.”

“She went to Penn for two years before she dropped out,” Bradshaw said. “Before that she went to Miss McGowan’s School in Ashfield, western Mass,” he said.

“Prep school?”

Bradshaw nodded.

“For young ladies,” he said.

He sounded a little scornful.

“Why’d she drop out of college?” I said.

“You’ll have to ask her mother,” Bradshaw said. “Is that all?”

“Can we discuss you and Heidi in Bucharest in 1984,” I said.

“I have nothing further to say to you,” Bradshaw said, still blocking the doorway. He had on a plaid flannel shirt today, and wide-wale corduroy pants.

“I wonder if she might have met a man named Rugar while she was there.”

“I don’t know,” Bradshaw said. “I had nothing to do with the events at Tashtego. I have no idea where my stepdaughter is. I don’t know anything about this Rugar fellow, and I am quite frankly tired of you.”

“Then you’ll be tired of dreaming,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Allusion to a song,” I said. “I could sing it all for you.”

“I do not find you amusing,” Bradshaw said.

“What a shame,” I said. “So you probably don’t want me to sing, either.”

“I believe we’re through here,” Bradshaw said.

“Before you go,” I said, “lemme tell you what I think. You and Rugar were working out of the American embassy in Bucharest. I think you knew Rugar from there. I think maybe Heidi met him there as well.”

“The American embassy in Bucharest is not a ma-and-pa store,” Bradshaw said. “Many people worked there. I didn’t know most of them.”

“And yet nearly twenty-five years later, Rugar shows up at your wife’s home and kidnaps your stepdaughter,” I said. “Is it really that small a world?”

“For the record, Tashtego belongs to me,” Bradshaw said.

Then he closed the door in my face and I heard the dead bolt turn. Some people have no sense of humor.

45

Miss McGowan’s School was on top of a hill in western Massachusetts. It occupied all of a big old Civil War-era estate in Ashfield. Which is not too far from Deerfield, where there had been a massacre once. It was, as far as I could tell, the last excitement they’d had out there.

Hawk parked his Jaguar in front of the main building near a sign that said Administration.

“You be safe in there without me?” Hawk said.

“No,” I said. “But you better wait here anyway; I don’t want you scaring the girls.”

“I keep doing this,” Hawk said, “I going to get me one of those dandy-looking chauffeur’s hats.”

“I been hoping,” I said, and got out of the car.

The building was probably the original statehouse, with a big porch that wrapped around three sides, and in the autumn sunshine offered a splendid view of the countryside. If you like countryside.

The headmistress was a tall, slim woman who looked a little like Charles de Gaulle. Her name was Isabel Baxter.

“A private detective,” she said. “How utterly fascinating.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you carry a, ah, a gat?” she said.

“I wouldn’t risk the McGowan School without one,” I said.

She laughed. Sort of a high, fluty laugh, but genuine.

“Tell me what you can,” I said, “about Adelaide Van Meer.”

“The girl who’s missing,” Ms. Baxter said. “Heidi Bradshaw’s daughter.”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying to find her?” Ms. Baxter said.

“Yes.”

“The poor girl,” she said.

I waited. Ms. Baxter thought about it. The way she was thinking told me there was something to learn, if she’d tell me. I began to assemble my every charm, the smile, the twinkle in the eye, the manly profile, maybe even a little flex of my biceps, if I could sneak it in. She wouldn’t have a chance. I would lay it all on her like a tsunami, should she hesitate.

“I went to the McGowan School,” Ms. Baxter said. “When I graduated, I went on to Mount Holyoke. When I graduated from Mount Holyoke, I came back here to teach French. After a time I became dean of students. After another while I became headmistress. I have spent nearly all my life here. I care deeply about the school.”

“I can see why you would,” I said.

She was going someplace, and I wanted to let her go there.

“But a school isn’t buildings, or even headmistresses,” she said, and smiled slightly at herself. “A school is the girls who come here, and flourish, and move on to college and careers and marriage, and when they have daughters they send them here and the school continues, organically, almost like a living thing.”

I nodded. I’d had no such experience with schools, but it was touching to see someone who had. Even if it was illusory.

“So,” she said, “to shortchange the children in order to preserve the school is oxymoronic.”

I made no comment. She wasn’t really talking to me anyway.

“ Adelaide did not flourish here,” Ms. Baxter said. “In her second year she took too many sleeping pills and nearly succeeded in killing herself.”

“How old?” I said.

“Sixteen.”

“What the hell was a sixteen-year-old girl doing with that many sleeping pills?” I said.