Second Chance Page 2

  A girl answered in a sharp, distracted voice. “Yes? Who is it?”

  “My name’s Harry Stoner. I’m working for Phil Pearson, Kirsten Pearson’s father.”

  “I know who you are,” the girl said ominously.

  A moment went by then a buzzer went off, unlocking the door. I stepped into the dark foyer. A red-haired girl with a pale, starved, willfully unhappy-looking face appeared at the head of the stairs. She held a book in one hand and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses in the other. It was obvious that she was annoyed by the interruption.

  “Marnee Thompson?” I said to her.

  She nodded. “You’re the detective?”

  “I’m the detective.”

  Marnee Thompson studied me for a moment, bouncing the glasses in her hand. “Kirsten isn’t here, you know. I told Phil that last week.”

  “Have any idea where she’s gone?”

  “No. I’m not in charge of her.”

  “No one said you were.”

  “Tell it to Phil,” the girl said bitterly. “You realize this is ridiculous, don’t you? And borderline illegal? Kirsty’s almost twenty years old. I mean, why do they have to send detectives after her? It’s humiliating.”

  “Her father’s worried.”

  “Her father’s an asshole. Everyone else knows it. Now you do, too.”

  “Miss Thompson, I’m just trying to do a job. If you’ll let me come up and look around, I can be out of your hair in a few minutes.”

  The girl glanced behind her, toward an open door at the top of the staircase. “All right,” she said, turning back to me. “But make it quick.”

  I started up the stairs.

  ******

  The apartment was spare, functional, serious as all hell. Board-and-brick bookshelves stuffed with books and weighted down on top with more books, an easel-desk with a gooseneck lamp clamped to it, a stool in front of the desk, a Camus poster on one wall, a Vermeer print on another, a Goodwill chair with claw legs and a silk throw over it, a gas hearth with a droopy asparagus fern in the fireplace, a tatty rug. No other furnishings. Through an archway I could see a bedroom, with a mattress lying on the floor and a mirror full of grey winter sky propped against the inner wall.

  The bare utility of the place was like an advertisement for Marnee Thompson, for her own seriousness and respectable student poverty. But Kirsten Pearson had lived there, too. And I couldn’t help wondering where she had fit in. There was no second desk in the front room, and when I thumbed through several of the books on top of the bookshelf they all had Marnee Thompson’s bookplate in them.

  “Her room was at the end of the hall,” the girl said, as if she’d read my mind. “She preferred it that way.”

  “Preferred what?” I said, putting down a green-and-black paperback copy of Dubliners.

  “The privacy.”

  Marnee Thompson walked over to the armchair and sat down. The girl had a style of her own—that early in life—a blunt self-assertiveness that was snotty but impressive, too. If Kirsten Pearson had identity problems, I figured this one’d probably been good for her.

  “How long have you and Kirsten lived here?”

  “Since September.” She put on her tortoiseshell glasses, tilted her head, and studied me with pale blue eyes. “She could have lived anywhere, you know. Phil has plenty of money.”

  She said it like a boast, as if she were telling me that, instead of Phil’s money, Kirsten had chosen her.

  “Where did you two meet?” I said, sitting down on the desk stool across from her.

  “We were in several classes together, last year. We hit it off so well we decided to set up this place during the summer, but . . . Kirsty couldn’t move in until the fall.”

  “Kirsten had some trouble last year, didn’t she?”

  The girl didn’t say anything.

  “She had to leave school?”

  “She was taken out of school, yes,” Marnee Thompson said.

  “By her father?”

  She nodded.

  I studied her grave young face, softly shaded by the fading window light. Her pale hollow cheeks, her high brow, her blue lashless eyes, reminded me of the Vermeer on the living room wall—a woman counting pearls. “If Kirsten’s having trouble again, I might be able to help.”

  “How? By taking her away again?”

  “I’ve been hired to find her, Marnee. Not to bring her home.”

  The girl gave me a wary look.

  “Think about it.” I got up from the stool and walked down the hall to Kirsten’s bedroom.

  3

  THE DOOR at the end of the hall was closed but unlocked. Kirsten, or someone who had lived there before her, had tacked a little handwritten warning to it: NO SECOND CHANCES. I went in anyway.

  It was life on a different block in Kirsten’s room. Dirty clothes hung from the open drawers of an oak dresser and dribbled out the door of a closet. Books, stacked like old newspapers, climbed in crazy towers four feet up each wall. Typed papers, dozens of them, were scattered thickly across the top of a desk, on the desk chair, and the floor. A portable TV with a brassiere dangling from its antenna sat on a stool across from an unmade bed. An ashtray full of cigarette butts, Winstons, was lying on the pillow of the bed. A Soap Opera Digest nestled in the blankets at its feet. A urinous smell of mildewed paper, cigarette smoke, and unwashed flesh hung heavily in the air.

  After the strict order of Marnee Thompson’s life, the rank clutter of Kirsten Pearson’s bedroom startled me. I knew it was just a messy college kid’s messy room, but it still startled me—the way a crime scene can get to you. I had the unmistakable feeling that violence had occurred there.

  I did my job anyway, going through the closet first, sifting the soiled clothes on the floor, searching the pockets of the blouses and jeans left on the hangers. I didn’t find anything but loose change and wadded-up tissues.

  I tried the top drawer of the desk next and found an address book in the rubble of pencil stubs, coins, paper clips, and linty ballpoint pens. None of the names meant anything to me, except for Phil Pearson’s. I found what looked like a manuscript in the side drawer, boxed and sealed with tape. Someone had written “We have to talk about this!” on top of the box and underlined the words twice to show he meant it. I put the box aside with the address book.

  There were some postcards under the manuscript—a dozen of them from a dozen different midwestern towns. Yellow Springs. Madison. Antioch. Columbus. College towns. The postcards were the sort of things that motels give away, along with letterhead stationery and embossed pencils. Each one pictured a mundane motel facade with the words “Greetings From” printed in a corner. Each one was signed “Ethan.” Whoever Ethan was, he had moved around over the past year. The oldest card, from The Green Gables Motel in Forest Park, Missouri, was postmarked November 16, 1988. The latest, November 5, 1989, from The Bluegrass Motel in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky.

  I put the postcards with the manuscript and the address book and moved on to the dresser. A vanity mirror and a glass dish were sitting on top of it. The dish had held makeup judging from the traces of face powder on the glass, but I couldn’t find a makeup kit in the drawer. I did come across an empty birth control pill dispenser, however, stashed among some underwear.

  I also found an old photograph of Papa Pearson, facedown in the panties. Or half a photo. The picture had been torn lengthwise, indicating that someone else had been photographed along with Pearson—someone Kirsten apparently hadn’t liked.

  I left the photo where I’d found it and took the postcards, address book, and manuscript with me back into the living room. Marnee Thompson was still sitting silently in the Goodwill chair. When she saw the booty I was carrying, she looked dismayed.

  “You can’t have that,” she said, leaping to her feet. “That’s Kirsty’s.”

  “I don’t want to take it, Marnee. I want to talk about it.”

  I put the stuff on Marnee’s desk and sat on the stool. The girl sat bac
k down slowly on the chair. It was almost dark outside, and the gooseneck lamp, lighting the desktop and Kirsten’s belongings, was the main light in the room. Marnee Thompson stared forlornly at the little pile of spotlighted things—her friend’s things.

  “When’s the last time you saw Kirsten, Marnee?”

  “Thursday morning. She was packing the car, getting ready to leave. I had a conference to go to. When I got back that afternoon, the car was gone. I assumed she went to the airport.”

  “What kind of car does she drive?”

  “A yellow VW Bug. I don’t know what year it is, but it’s pretty beat up.”

  “Did Kirsten plan to see anyone before leaving for home?”

  “She might have mentioned stopping at a friend’s.”

  “What friend?”

  The girl balked. “Look, I don’t know what to say. I don’t want anything bad to happen to Kirsty. But I don’t want to feed her dad’s obsessions, either. If you knew what he’s done to her, what he’s put her through . . . ”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  Marnee Thompson bit her lower lip so hard it turned white. She’d started to look younger, less cocksure of herself. More like a nineteen-year-old girl who was worried about a friend and didn’t know what to do about it.

  I smiled reassuringly. “I just want to find Kirsty, Marnee. If she’s okay, I go home and make my report to her dad.”

  “And if she isn’t okay?”

  “Then we can talk about what to do—you and me and Kirsten.”

  “You’re not going to . . . de-program her or something?”

  I laughed. “Somebody’d have to re-program me, first.”

  The girl half smiled. I had the feeling that that was all she ever permitted herself—half a smile—like it was a kind of dieting.

  “We could get some coffee, maybe,” Marnee Thompson allowed.

  “Okay,” I told her.

  ******

  The coffee shop was on 54th Street and Lake, a little storefront with an icy awning over its window. It was a student hangout, warm, trendy, and virtually empty on a Sunday night. We sat at a wooden table with a big bowl of unshelled peanuts in its center. The hardwood floors were covered with peanut shells that crackled underfoot. Peanuts seemed to be the theme.

  I said, “I wouldn’t want the job of sweeping up in here.”

  Marnee Thompson gave me her Weight Watchers grin. “They don’t sweep up. They harvest.”

  I laughed. “Are you from Chicago?”

  She shook her head, no. “Cleveland, Ohio. I came here because I didn’t want to go east.”

  The way she said it, “east” sounded like the place where the rich snobs congregated.

  “Chicago’s a serious school,” she said, unbuttoning her topcoat. “And, believe me, I’m serious about my education.”

  I believed her.

  “What’s your major?”

  “English Lit,” she said. She stored her mittens carefully in the pockets of her coat. “Kirsty’s an English major, too, but she’s a writer not a scholar.”

  “What does she write?”

  “Poetry. Several of her pieces have been published in small magazines. TriQuarterly. Antioch Review. Last spring, one of her poems was almost accepted by The New Yorker. Kirsty’s very talented—the most talented person I know.”

  I was surprised and impressed by Kirsten Pearson’s achievements. I was also impressed by the pleasure that Marnee Thompson took in her friend’s success. In my day students weren’t quite so gracious about each other’s accomplishments. “The manuscript I found in Kirsten’s room,” I said, “is poetry?”

  Marnee shook her head, no. “Kirsty’s been working on a novel. She completed the first draft right before the break. I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Someone must have read it. It had a message written on it in big letters.”

  “That’s from Dr. Heldman,” the girl said. “He’s Kirsty’s adviser.”

  “Maybe I should talk to him?”

  “It couldn’t hurt. He lives in Hyde Park. His address is in Kirsty’s book.”

  Marnee Thompson toyed with the bowl of peanuts, while I sipped coffee.

  “If I talk to you about her,” she said, without looking up, “it’s because I’m worried. I don’t want to do Phil any favors. And I don’t want to get Kirsty in trouble. But I am worried.”

  “Why?”

  Marnee Thompson cracked open a peanut between her thumb and forefinger. “I think she started to see Jay again a few weeks ago.”

  “Is Jay the friend she said she was going to visit before leaving on Thursday?”

  Marnee nodded. “He’s the one who caused all the trouble last year. Jay Stein. He’s an adjunct instructor in the department. He and Kirsty . . . they had an affair last spring.” She dropped the cracked peanut shell back in the bowl and looked up at me nervously. “Nobody’s supposed to know that. I don’t even think Phil knows it. If he did, he’d probably kill the son of a bitch.”

  “This guy, Stein, teaches at the university?”

  “Creative writing,” Marnee said with a forced laugh. “He’s just a thirty-year-old swinging dick—one of those perpetual grad fellows who hang out in English departments instead of singles’ bars. If Kirsty hadn’t been so damn naive, it wouldn’t have happened. Jay hits on everybody in the world, but Kirsty didn’t understand that. She thought he was someone special, and he took advantage of her. Christ, she didn’t know anything about sex.”

  She knew now, judging from what I’d found in her bureau drawer.

  “What happened this spring?” I asked.

  “What always happens with a guy like Jay,” Marnee said sarcastically. “She got attached to him and he dropped her. He stopped seeing her. He wouldn’t take her calls. Kirsty was so emotionally vulnerable anyway . . . Jay just pushed her over the edge.”

  “She had a breakdown?”

  “That’s what Phil called it. She did get pretty violent for a while, but I think she would have been all right if he’d given her a chance to recover on her own. She was under medication and seeing a therapist at the university clinic. But that wasn’t good enough for Phil. He came storming up here like God Almighty and just . . . took her away. She didn’t have a choice. He just did it to her.”

  Marnee Thompson gave me an incredulous, accusatory look, as if that was what men always did to women.

  “If she was suicidal . . . ”

  “You don’t understand,” Marnee said angrily. “It goes way beyond paternalism with him or concern for her health. It’s sick the way he spies on her and interrogates her and runs her life. He acts like he owns her soul.”

  Some kid at a nearby table laughed loudly, and Marnee scowled at him as if she thought he was laughing at her.

  “Drink some coffee,” I said to the girl.

  “Don’t patronize me!” she snapped.

  “Don’t drink, then,” I said. “You’re a hard person to be nice to, Marnee.”

  “I don’t want to be made nice to. Christ, you’re just doing a job.” She dropped her head. “And I’m helping.”

  “You’re helping Kirsty.”

  “I hope so,” she whispered.

  4

  MARNEE THOMPSON didn’t have anything more to say to me at the restaurant. She was feeling guilty, and she wasn’t trying to disguise it. But then she loved Kirsten and despised Papa Phil. Her hatred of the man was so intense that it made me wonder if she’d told the whole truth about the past summer. It was possible that Marnee had taken it upon herself to phone Phil Pearson when Kirsten became distraught over her failed love affair. It would have been the natural thing to do under the circumstances. If so, she’d unwittingly put her friend in a mental ward—and that would have made anyone vengeful. Her anger toward Pearson had that kind of feel to it—the feel of betrayal.

  It occurred to me that, even if I was only half right, Marnee Thompson had to be more worried about Kirsty than she’d let on or she wouldn�
��t have said anything at all.

  I didn’t force the issue. As it was, she’d given me enough to get started. More than enough.

  So we finished our coffee in silence, then walked in silence through the bitter cold to the apartment house. Upstairs, I found Kirsten’s address book and looked up Jay Stein and Professor Heldman. Stein lived at 8550 Kenwood, apartment 917. Arthur Heldman lived on 56th and Blackstone.

  While I was waiting for a cab, I thumbed through the postcards I’d found in Kirsty’s desk. There were no messages on any of them—just the name Ethan. Marnee Thompson watched me from the living room chair.

  “They’re from her brother,” she said, breaking the long silence between us.

  “He seems to travel around a good deal.”

  “I think that’s all he does. He’s sort of a Gypsy. Kirsty’s the only person in the family he talks to. In fact he called the other night to talk. Kirsty says he’s got a terrible grudge against Phil.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Phil put him in a mental ward, too.”

  “It’s an odd family,” I said, putting the stack of cards back down on the desk.

  “It’s a tragic family,” she said solemnly.

  “Fathers get panicky and do stupid things, Marnee. It happens.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” She shook her head, instead of completing the thought.

  A car honked outside, making the girl jump.

  “That’s the cab,” I said.

  As I put on my coat and hat, Marnee stood up and came over to me.

  “I haven’t been much help, have I?” she said, biting her lip.

  “Enough.”

  “If she isn’t with Jay . . . ”

  “I’ll find her, Marnee.”

  ******

  It was past six when the cab dropped me in front of Jay Stein’s apartment building on Kenwood. It was a modern high rise set on pylons sunk into a concrete plaza. The ground floor was all glassed-in lobby, with a bank of brass mailboxes and elevators in its center. A border of potted ferns and chrome-and-plastic benches ran around the edges like selvage.