“That’s a good paternal attitude,” I applauded him. “No wonder both your kids ran away from home.”
Jacqui laughed again, delighted with the rancor. Buffalo Bill snatched his cane from me and stomped up the broken walk to the front door. His wife squeezed my hand before following him, with Mr. William taking her arm again. The chauffeur opened the apartment door for them, then leaned against the building to smoke a cigarette.
I climbed into the middle row of seats, behind Jacqui. “So you called Patrick Grobian at the warehouse to track down the Dorrados? How does he know them?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but you ought to realize that anyone who wants to move ahead in the Bysen operation has to keep track of what’s important to the big buffalo. Pat saw the girl having a Coke with Billy in September; he knew the old man would want that information. He made it his business to find out who she was. So of course he knows where she lives.”
“No one can expect to move too far up the By-Smart ladder if they’re not part of the family,” I said.
“You don’t need to be the CEO to have a lot of power and make a lot of money in a company this big. Pat knows that, and he’s a go-getter. If he was a Bysen, he’d be leading the pack. As it is, when the old man goes, he’s likely to get a good position at the home office.”
“If you’re in charge,” her husband said from the back of the Caddy. “But, my dear Jacqueline, you won’t be. William will be, and he doesn’t like you.”
“This isn’t medieval England,” Jacqui said. “Just because he’s the oldest doesn’t mean Willie gets the throne, although he’s like poor Prince Charles, isn’t he, waiting around for his mum to die, except in this case Willie is waiting for Daddy to die. I’m surprised sometimes he doesn’t—”
“Jacqui.” Gary’s voice sounded a warning. “Not everyone has your sense of humor. If you want to keep doing the work you’re doing, you need to learn to get along with William, that’s all I’m going to say.”
Jacqui turned around in the front seat and fluttered improbably long eyelashes. “Darling, I am doing everything I can to help William. Everything. Just ask him how much he owes me these days and you’ll be surprised by his change in attitude. He finally sees how incredibly useful I can be.”
“Maybe,” Gary muttered. “Maybe.”
I looked over at the apartment, thinking I should go up to give Rose a helping hand. She didn’t have the resources to face the Bysens alone. Before I got to the front door, though, the trio reappeared.
“Did they know anything about Billy?” I asked Mrs. Bysen.
She shook her head unhappily. “I can’t be sure. I appealed to the woman as a mother and a grandmother—I can see how much she loves those children, and how hard she works to give them a decent life—but she said she only ever sees him at Mount Ararat, and the girls said the same thing. Do you think they’re telling the truth?”
“People like that don’t know truth from lies, Mother,” Mr. William said. “It’s easy to see where Billy got his gullibility.”
“You don’t talk to your mother that way while I’m alive, Willie. If Billy got your mother’s sweet disposition, that isn’t a bad thing. The rest of you pack of hyenas, you’re all waiting for me to die so you can eat the company I built.” He glowered at me. “If I find you know where my boy is and you’re not telling me—”
“I know,” I said wearily. “You’ll break me in your soup like crackers.”
I stomped across the street again and turned my car around to head for home.
24
Yet Another Missing Child
In the morning, I went to my office early and put the metal frog into a box, messengering it out to Cheviot, the forensics engineering lab I use. I told Sanford Rieff, the engineer I usually work with, I didn’t know what I was looking for, so asked him to do a full report on the dish—who made it, whose prints were on it, any chemical residues, anything. When he phoned to ask how big a rush I was in, I hesitated, looking at my month’s accounts. No one was paying me; I didn’t even know if the dish was connected to the fire. It was what I’d said to Billy yesterday—my only clue, so I was being enthusiastic about it.
“Not a rush job—I can’t afford it.”