The maid opened a door near the end of the foyer and stood aside. I stepped in. The air-conditioning was even more forceful than it had been in the foyer. The room was a man’s study, and it absolutely howled of decorator. Bookshelves were filled with leather-bound books artfully arranged. The walls were done in a dark burgundy. The drapes matched the walls but with a golden triangular pattern in them. There was a fireplace that I could have stood upright in on the wall opposite. There was a fire in it. The ceiling was far above my head. There was a massive reddish wooden desk along the left wall of the room with Palladian windows opening behind it. The deep colorful rugs had been woven somewhere in the far east. A huge globe of the world was on its own dark wooden stand near the fireplace. It was lit from within. Above the fireplace was a formal portrait of a good-looking woman with smooth blond hair and the contemptuous smile of a well-fed house cat.
The maid marched across the rug and put my card on the desk and announced, “Ms. Randall.”
The man behind the desk said, “Thank you, Billie,” and the maid turned and marched out past me and closed the door. The man looked at my card for a little while without picking it up, and then he looked up at me and smiled. It was an effective smile and I could tell that he knew it. The little crinkles at his eyes made him look kind though wise, and the parentheses around his mouth gave him a look of firm resolve.
“Sunny Randall,” he said, almost as if he were speaking to himself. Then he rose and came around the desk. He was athletic-looking, taller than my ex-husband, with blue eyes and a healthy outdoor look about him. He put his hand out as he walked across the carpet.
“Brock Patton,” he said.
“How very nice to meet you,” I said.
He stood quite close to me as we shook hands, which allowed him to tower over me. I didn’t step back.
“Where did you get a name like Sunny Randall?” he said.
“From my father,” I said. “He was a great football fan and I guess there was some football person with that name.”
“You guess? You don’t know?”
“I hate football.”
He laughed as if I had said something precocious for a little girl. “Well, by God, Sunny Randall, you may just do.”
“That’s often the case, Mr. Patton.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
Patton went around his desk and sat. I took a seat in front of the desk and crossed my legs and admired my shoes for a moment. Of course they were uncomfortable; they looked great. Patton appeared to admire them, too.
“Well,” he said after a time.
I smiled.
“Well,” he said again. “I guess there’s nothing to do but plunge right in.”
I nodded.
“My daughter has run off,” he said.
I nodded again.
“She’s fifteen,” he said.
Nod.
“My wife and I thought somehow a woman might be the best choice to look for her.”
“You’re sure she’s run away?” I said.
“Yes.”
“She ever do this before?”
“Yes.”
“Where did she run to before?”
“She didn’t get far. Police picked her up hitchhiking with three other kids... boys. We were able to keep it out of the papers.”
“Why does she run away?” I said.
Patton shook his head slowly, and bit his lower lip for a moment. Both movements seemed practiced.
“Teenaged girls,” he said.
“I was a teenaged girl,” I said.
“And I’ll bet a cute one, Sunny.”
“Indescribably,” I said, “but I didn’t run away.”
“Well, of course, not all teenagers...”
“Things all right here?” I said.
“Here?”
“Yes. This is what she ran away from.”
“Oh, well, I suppose... everything is fine here.”
I nodded. To my right the fireplace crackled and danced. No heat radiated from it. The air-conditioned room remained cold. The windows fogged with condensation in which the rain streaked little patterns.
“So why did she run away?”
“Really, Sunny,” Patton said. “I am trying to decide whether to hire you to find her.”
“And I’m trying to decide, Brock, if you do offer me the job, whether I wish to take it.”
“Awfully feisty,” Patton said, “for someone so attractive.”
I decided not to blush prettily. He stood suddenly.
“Do you have a gun, Sunny?”
“Yes.”
“With you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you shoot it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m something of a shooter myself,” Patton said. “I’d like to see you shoot. Do you mind walking outside in the rain with me?”
Other than the fact that my hair would get wet and turn into limp corn silk? But there was something interesting happening here. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I didn’t want to miss it.
“I don’t mind,” I said.
He took an umbrella from a stand beside the French doors behind his desk. He opened the doors and we went out into the rain. He held the umbrella so that I had to put my arm through his to stay under cover. We walked across the soft wet grass, my heels sinking in uncomfortably. Maybe there should be a new rule about wearing heels when I was working. Maybe the new rule would be, never. On the far side of the croquet lawn, and shielded from it by a grove of trees, was an open shed with a sort of counter across one side and a wood-shingled roof. We went to the shed and under the roof. Patton closed the umbrella. He took a key from his pocket and opened a cabinet under the counter and took out something that looked like a small clay frisbee.
“What have you for a weapon,” Patton said.
I took out my .38 Special.
“Well, very quick,” he said. “Think you could hit anything with that?”
There was a test going on, and I didn’t know quite what was being tested.
“Probably,” I said.
He smiled down at me.
“I doubt that you can hit much with that thing,” he said.
“What is your plan?” I said.
“I’ll toss this in the air, and you put a bullet through it.”
If I did that using a handgun with a two-inch barrel it would be by accident. He knew it.
“I’ll toss it up here,” he said, “it’s safe to fire toward the river.”
He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I nodded. He smiled as if to himself and stepped out of the shed and tossed the disk maybe thirty feet straight up into the air. I didn’t move. The disk hit its zenith and came down and landed softly on the wet grass about eight feet beyond the shed. And lay on its side. I walked out of the shed, and over to the disk, and standing directly above it, I put a bullet through the middle of it from a distance of about eighteen inches. The disk shattered. Patton stared at me.
“I don’t need to be able to shoot something falling through the air thirty feet away,” I said. “This gun is quite effective at this range, Brock, which is about the only range I’ll ever need it for.”
I put the gun away. Patton nodded and stared at the disk fragments for a moment or two; then he picked up the umbrella and opened it and handed it to me.
“Come back in,” he said. “I’d like you to meet my wife.”
Then he walked away bareheaded in the nice rain. I followed him, alone under the umbrella.