“I see,” Mr. Vargas said. “Just as well. School isn’t for everybody, you know.”
“I know,” Frank said matter-of-factly, then launched into his spiel about Winston Churchill, Ansel Adams, No?l Coward, and their fellow dropout luminaries. He offered to show Mr. Vargas the list with all the names on it that Mimi kept in her bedside table drawer.
“After Mimi comes back I’d love to see it,” Mr. Vargas said. “A gentleman doesn’t go through a lady’s drawers without permission.”
“Ah.” Frank nodded. “Now I’m wondering if you’re the gentleman Alice always references.”
“He is, Frank,” I said. “Mr. Vargas is the gentleman.”
I SAW NO point in involving Mr. Vargas in our search for Xander since we were only doing it to occupy Frank’s mind and, okay, mine until Mimi was back from her mysterious hiatus. So I was glad when he shut himself away with my notebook after breakfast.
I made the kid wait until 10:00 A.M. to call Sara’s number. Which gave him plenty of time to decide what ensemble would be most appropriate for this type of investigative work, as he lacked the requisite gumshoe trench coat and fedora. The E. F. Hutton suit, or the Clarence Darrow? Overcoat with top hat, or without? His good white tie and tails? I’d started out the morning exhausted and exasperated with Frank, but if trying on clothes kept him calm and happy while his mother was out of pocket, I was willing to play along.
“The Thin Man, I presume,” I said once he settled on a smoking jacket over pajamas, a pencil-thin fake mustache from the set I’d given him for Christmas, and a plastic martini glass. The martini glass was the clincher.
“The ‘thin man’ is the skeleton in the movie The Thin Man, so if I were portraying that character I’d be holding a beer and mop. This,” Frank said, waggling the fingers of his free hand in front of his smoking jacket, “is an homage to Nick Charles, society detective, as portrayed by William Powell, brother of Eleanor Powell.”
“I don’t think they’re actually siblings,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Frank said. “But I like to imagine they are.”
When the time came to phone Sara-whoever-she-was, I brought the portable handset into Frank’s bedroom. While we sat on the bed together, Frank declaimed the numbers while I tapped them in. When I entered the last one and put the receiver to my ear, Frank put an arm around my shoulders and pressed his left ear to my right one.
I hung up. “Frank,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Listening in.”
“Really? Do you think I have nothing in between my ears but air and a piece of string?”
“That’s right. Your brain is fairly dense. Maybe I should listen in on the other handset.”
“Fine.” I handed the receiver to Frank, put the paper with Sara’s number in my pocket, and went into the kitchen to get the other handset. When I came in he had the phone to his ear and was saying into it, “My name is Frank Banning. I’m investigating the disappearance of Xander Devlin. Where were you on the night of February eleventh and the subsequent morning of February twelfth? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”
I sat on the bed beside him, took the paper with Sara’s number from my pocket, and punched the numbers into the kitchen handset. When I held it to my ear a woman’s voice said, “Frank, please tell whoever that is that you’re already using the phone.”
I grabbed Frank’s receiver and pressed “end call” on both his and mine. “You memorized Sara’s number, didn’t you?” I asked.
“What a ridiculous question, Alice. Next I imagine you’ll ask me to recite the multiplication tables for you. Please. Pressing ‘redial’ works much faster than inputting all those digits. You should try that when you call her back.”
IT DIDN’T TAKE us long to establish that Sara was Tattoo Girl, the young woman who’d delivered Xander’s box to Frank.
“Did Xander tell you what was inside the box before you delivered it?” Frank asked.
“Your birthday present,” Sara said. “That’s all I know. What was in it?”
“Roman candles.”
“That sounds about like Xander,” Sara said. “Please tell me he had enough sense to come and set those fireworks off for you, Frank.”
“He came,” Frank said. “But I’d set them off already and the Dream House was well on its way to burning to the ground by the time he arrived. Before I could explain what had happened the police hauled him away in handcuffs. We haven’t heard from him since, so we’re worried he feels responsible for destroying his home away from home.”
“He ought to feel responsible,” I said. “Who gives fireworks to a child?”