Robert Parker - Family Honor

“I don’t know anything. Why don’t you just hop right onto that couch and we’ll see how much woman you are.”

“I love it when you’re poetic,” I said. “Am I still working for you?”

He grinned. It was a very ugly grin for a man so handsome. It was a grin without humor, or friendliness. It was only a gesture he made with his mouth as he stared at a fresh piece of meat.

“Depends,” he said, “On how quick you hop on the couch.”

“Does your wife cheat on you?” I said.

Again the fresh-meat grin. His blue eyes seemed smaller, and the pupils seemed shrunken.

“Why would she?” he said.

“Women are so flighty,” I said.

He stood up.

“Maybe you like it rough,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just toss you onto that couch.”

I stood up, too.

“Remember the clay pigeon,” I said.

“You saying you’d shoot me?”

“Right in your little peenie,” I said.

He took a step around his desk. I pulled the gun from under my coat. He stopped. We looked at each other. Then he snorted and sat back down.

“You missed your chance, bitch.”

“And I hope to miss it again,” I said, and went to the office door and opened it and walked out and left it open behind me.

I got the address of her shrink from Millicent, and made an appointment.

Her office was on the second floor of a small commercial building in Wellesley next door to a physical therapy center. Sound in mind and body, one-stop shopping. The sign on her door said Marguerite Sandborn, Family Counseling. I went in and sat in her empty waiting room for maybe ten minutes before her inner office door opened, and a woman I assumed to be Marguerite held it open while a much younger woman came from the inner office and walked past me and out with her eyes fixed firmly on the floor ahead of her. When the young woman was gone, Marguerite invited me in, and told me to call her Marguerite.

“I must warn you, Ms. Randall, that transactions between myself and a client are strictly confidential.”

“Strictly,” I said.

“Within that guideline, I am happy to help.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Millicent Patton was your patient.”

“I prefer the term client,” Marguerite said.

She had long, graying hair. She wore a shapeless dress with big flowers on it, and no makeup. The only jewelry was a narrow gold wedding band on her left hand. She looked exactly the way a mental health professional ought to look, one who had rejected the artifice of ordinary women to embrace the deeper beauty. I was very glad I hadn’t done the same thing.

“She was your client?” I said.

“She is still my client,” Marguerite said. “She just isn’t coming to see me at the moment.”

“Right. Did you know that she had run away from home?”

Marguerite paused for a moment. Then she said, “I’m not surprised.”

I raised my eyebrows and looked interested, and waited.

“She was...” Marguerite paused thoughtfully. “She had failed to live up to her parent’s expectations. Her parents were disappointed. Millicent resented their expectations and their disappointment and was very angry.”

“And what was your job?” I said.

Marguerite smiled at me the way professionals do when an amateur asks them a question. “To help her see that her parents’ expectations were not unreasonable, to see that she was perfectly capable of achieving them, and to help her deal with her anger.”

“She have any expectations for herself?” I said.

Marguerite shook her head very slightly, as if a fly had landed on her ear. She didn’t answer. Apparently the head twitch dismissed the question.

“She a good patient?” I said.

Marguerite smiled sadly, “She was resistant.”

“To the idea that her parents’ expectations weren’t unreasonable?”

“If you wish,” Marguerite said. “It is a bit more complex than that.”

“Of course,” I said. “How did you do with her anger?”

“We were making some progress. We took a few moments every session to help her drain some of it off.”

“How,” I said, “if it’s not privileged?”

“No, no. It’s not privileged,” Marguerite said. “I use it with many clients.”

She nodded toward the corner of the room where a small body bag stood on a pedestal with a pair of boxing gloves hanging from a hook next to it.

“She hit the body bag?” I said.

“Yes. She was free to imagine it was anyone she wished.”

“She say anything when she was punching the bag?” I said.

“I’m sorry, that would be privileged.”

“But she did say things?”

“Not very much,” Marguerite said. “It was a rather silent fury.”

“But she did give the bag a good punching out?”

“Yes.”

“Like she liked it?”

“Yes.”

“Do we call that displacement?” I said.

Again the indulgent smile. How sweet the way I tried to understand the magic she performed.

“How’d she get here?” I said.

“I believe one of the servants drove her. A maid.”

“Can you tell me if she was close to anyone?”

“We didn’t spend much time on such matters,” Marguerite said. “I think she might have liked the maid who drove her, maybe a little.”

“You know her name?”

“I don’t recall.”

“You have any notes, whatever, that might tell us?”

“I never take notes,” Marguerite said. “I try to give myself fully to the client. Empathy is crucial.”

I was pretty sure that a certain amount of distance was also useful, but I didn’t think it would be productive to argue that point. As we talked I glanced at the framed document on the wall. The best I could make out from the Latinate mumbo jumbo in which they were written was she had a B.A. from North Dakota State, and an M.Ed. from Lesley College.

“Do you happen to know if there is more than one maid?”

“I believe there is a butler and a maid.”

“And the butler is a guy?”

“That is my impression.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me that will help me to understand her?”

“Perhaps you should be more concerned with finding her,” Marguerite said.

“I have found her.”

“Then why on earth...?”

“I’m trying to figure out what to do with her.”

“You haven’t returned her to her parents.”

“She doesn’t want to go.”

“And you feel that her wishes are sufficiently mature.”

“Yeah.”

“And you feel that it is your responsibility to honor them?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you do not exceed your expertise,” Marguerite said.

I thought about taking a turn on the body bag. But I had too much detecting to do. Displacement would have to wait.

“Me, too,” I said.

Most of the time when I tail somebody, it’s in the city, and on foot, and it’s not especially hard to do if they don’t know you by sight. But out in the wilds of South Natick, near the Dover line, where no one is on foot, and the Pattons would recognize me on sight, it was a somewhat larger proposition. I got out my collection of street maps and drove around the area until I had a pretty good idea of what roads led where and what was parallel to what. Then I parked off the road at the end of the dead-end street that ran past the Patton’s long driveway and waited. It took about two hours before a Natick Cruiser pulled up behind me and a young cop got out and walked up beside the car, staying a little behind me on the driver’s side. By the time he got there I had my papers out and the window down.

He said, “May I see your license and registration, please.”