Rough Weather: A Spenser Novel

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.

 
    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. Aftera 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.
    “She was a very troubled girl. We got her to the hospital and the school doctor arranged for her to see a local pediatrician. With the help of members of our board, we managed to allow the world to think it was an accident.”
    “But it wasn’t,” I said.
    “No,” Ms. Baxter said. “She tried to kill herself.”
    “Do you know why?” I said.
    “I do not. Her mother came out to get her and brought her home, despite, I’m told, Dr. Weiss’s objections. She never returned to school. Perhaps if you talked with Dr. Weiss.”
    “School doctor?” I said.
    “No. Pediatrician. The school doctor, Dr. Feldman, never treated her, really. Just had her admitted to the hospital and arranged for Dr. Weiss to see her.”
    “Is he here in town?” I said.
    “He is.”
    Ms. Baxter took a small piece of lavender-colored notepaper and wrote an address and handed me the paper.
    “I’ll be happy to call him for you,” she said, “if you wish.”
    “Might be helpful,” I said.
    She nodded and stood, and went to her office