Blunt Darts

ruled Meade since long before I arrived. Anyway, Stephen’s mother, Diane Kinnington, killed herself about four years ago by driving her Mercedes off a bridge and into the river. Apparently she boozed it up a lot, so no one knows whether it was accidental or intentional. It hit Stephen pretty hard, as you can imagine. I’ve talked with his fifth-grade teacher, Miss Pitts, who’s retired now, and she said that his mother’s ‘activities,’ as Miss Pitts put it, had appeared to be affecting Stephen for a long time prior to Mrs. Kinnington’s actual death. I got the impression from Miss Pitts that by ‘activities’ something more than simple alcoholism was involved, if you know what I mean.”
    “I’ve read of such goings on in France,” I said.
    Valerie made a face and drove on. “Anyway, by the time I got Stephen this year, he seemed to be perfectly normal, though a little reserved around the other kids. By all tests, he was exceptionally bright. I mean a real brain trust. At the beginning of the year, he would ask me whether I’d read certain books. He had obviously read them, and they were way beyond eighth-grade level. He’d missed a year because of sickness, but he’s still only fourteen. I sort of took it on myself to suggest to his father that perhaps Stephen should go to a private school with an accelerated program. But whenever I called his office at the courthouse, he wasn’t available, and he never returned my calls.”
    “Don’t you have some sort of parent-teacher conference during the year?”
    “Yes, but he didn’t appear for the first one I scheduled, and when I called his home that evening, he wasn’t in. I was pretty upset, since those conferences are scheduled on my time, so I kind of demanded to speak with someone—the housekeeper answered the phone, you see—and that’s how I came to meet Mrs. Kinnington.”
    “The judge remarried?” I asked.
    “Oh, no, his mother—that is, the judge’s mother and Stephen’s grandmother, Eleanor Kinnington. Everyone calls her Mrs. Kinnington. She’s a little tower of power, and she was ripping mad that the judge had skipped the appointment. She asked if it was convenient for me to come there for dinner the next evening to discuss Stephen. I said I’d be happy to come, but the judge wasn’t there the next night, either, and Mrs. Kinnington apologized for him through clenched teeth.
    “I had a terrific dinner and talk with her, though. She must be nearly eighty and needs hand braces, the kind polio victims use, to walk around. But she’s really sharp. Anyway, she said the judge would never allow his son to go to a private school. I got the impression that it was for local political reasons, as if it would seem that the local public schools weren’t good enough for a Kinnington. She encouraged me to help Stephen as much as I could. I got the feeling that she thought the wife’s death was really a blessing in disguise.
    “Anyway, after that I began giving Stephen some separate reading assignments that he really enjoyed. I also got to be good friends, in a formal sort of way, with Mrs. Kinnington, because we’d discuss Stephen from time to time.”
    Valerie paused for a moment to take a sip of wine. I found her way of running parenthetical thoughts and sentences together to be a little tough to follow, but oddly not tiresome.
    “Um, I have to stop drinking this wine or I’ll never stay straight enough to finish the story. Anyway, about two weeks ago, Stephen disappeared.”
    “Kidnapped?”
    “Apparently not. It seems that he packed his things one afternoon and, well, left.”
    “You mean he ran away from home?”
    “Well, yes, but not exactly. I mean, no neighbor saw him shuffling along the sidewalk with a stick and stuffed handkerchief over his shoulder. And he packed really thoroughly, as if he expected to go a long way for a long time.”
    “Has he been heard from?”
    She shook her head as she stole another gulp of wine. “No, and the police haven’t found a trace in two weeks.”
    “What police?”
    “The local Meade police. Technically, I guess he’s just a missing person, since there’s no evidence of kidnapping. But there’s been no publicity, so no one is on the lookout for him except some agency that the judge hired. You see—”
    “Wait a minute. What agency?”
    “Oh, somebody and Perkins on State Street.”
    “Sturney and Perkins, Inc. They’re one of the best, Val.”
    She smiled. “But they