Chapter XII
T he party, if that was the right word for it, broke up shortly after ten. I spent most of the time in the company of June, Summer, and Nyoko, trying to sound like I knew a little about art, and failing, and considerably less time with Jacobs and two of the bankers, trying to sound like I knew a little about finance, and failing there too. Jacobs, the people’s writer, was very knowledgeable about high-risk bonds and currency speculation for someone who claimed to have the common touch. His hypocrisy was so blatant as to be almost admirable, in a way. Slowly, the guests began to drift toward their cars. Harmon stood on his porch, despite the fact that it had grown suddenly colder, and thanked each of us for coming. His wife had disappeared after wishing us a polite good night. Nyoko was excluded from her farewells, and once again I was aware that, despite appearances, Lawrie Harmon was not quite as disengaged from the real world as the young Asian-American believed.
When it came to my turn to leave, Harmon placed his left hand upon my upper arm as his right hand gripped mine.
“You tell Rebecca that if there’s anything I can do for her, she just has to let me know,” he said.
“There are a lot of people who would like to find out what happened to Daniel.” His face darkened, and his voice dropped in volume. “And not just his friends,” he added. I waited for him to continue. He had a taste for the enigmatic.
“At the end, before he disappeared, Daniel changed,” Harmon went on. “It wasn’t just his troubles: the Muller case, the revelations of abuse. There was something else. He was certainly preoccupied the last time I saw him. Perhaps it was research, but what sort of research could have left him shaken in that way?”
“When did you last see him?”
“A week or so before he went missing.”
“And he gave you no indication of what was bothering him, his known difficulties apart?”
“None. It was just an impression that I got.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this back in your office?”
Harmon shot me a look that told me he wasn’t used to his decisions being questioned.
“I’m a careful man, Mr. Parker. I play chess, and I’m pretty good at it. It’s probably why I was a good businessman too. I’ve learned that it pays to take a little time to think before making a move. Back in the office, part of me wanted nothing more to do with Daniel Clay. He was my friend, but after what happened, after the rumors and the whispered allegations, I felt that it was best to distance myself from him.”
“But now you’ve changed your mind.”
“No, I haven’t. Part of me suspects that no good can come of your nosing around in this, but if it uncovers the truth about Daniel and lays the suspicions to rest, and gives his daughter some peace of mind along the way, then it could be that you’ll prove me wrong.”
He released his grip upon my hand and my arm. It seemed that we were done. Harmon was watching the writer’s car pull out of its parking slot on the driveway. It was an old Dodge truck—it was said that he drove a Mercedes back in Massachusetts, where he kept an apartment near Harvard—and Jacobs maneuvered it like it was a Panzer tank. Harmon shook his head in baffled amusement.
“You mentioned some others who might be interested in what happened to Clay, people apart from his friends or acquaintances.”
Harmon didn’t look at me.
“Yes. It’s not hard to figure out. There are people who believe that Daniel colluded in the abuse of children. I have two children. I know what I would do to anyone who harmed them, or anyone who allowed others to do so.”
“And what would that be, Mr. Harmon?”
He tore himself away from Jacobs’s increasingly frantic attempts to make a turn unaided by power steering.
“I’d kill him,” he said, and there was something in the way he said it, something so matter-offact, that I didn’t doubt him, not for one moment. I knew then that for all of his bonhomie, all of his fine wines and his pretty pictures, Joel Harmon was a man who would not hesitate to crush those who crossed him. And I wondered, for a moment, if Daniel Clay might not have been such a person, and if Joel Harmon’s interest in him was not entirely benign. Before I had a chance to follow that train of thought any further, Nyoko came over and whispered something in Harmon’s ear.
“Are you sure?” Harmon said.
She nodded.
Harmon immediately called to those who had reached their cars to stop. Russell, the shrink, patted the hood of Jacobs’s truck, indicating that he should cut the engine. Jacobs looked almost relieved to do so.
“It seems that there is an intruder in the grounds,” he said. “It might be best if you all stepped into the house for a moment, just to be safe.”
Everyone did as Harmon asked, albeit with some grumbling from Jacobs, who clearly felt a poem coming on and was anxious to commit it to paper before it was lost to posterity; that, or he was trying to hide his embarrassment at screwing up a simple turn. We all shuffled back into the library. Jacobs and Summer went to one of the windows and looked out on the expanse of neatly mown lawn at the back of the house.
“I can’t see anyone,” said Jacobs.
“Maybe we should stay away from the windows,” said Summer.
“He’s an intruder, not a sniper,” said Russell.
Summer didn’t seem convinced. Jacobs placed a reassuring arm around her shoulders and let it linger there. She didn’t object. What was it with poets, I wondered? It seemed that there was a certain type of woman who just buckled at the suggestion of an internal rhyme. Harmon’s driver, housekeeper, and maid all lived in quarters adjoining the main house. The waiters, who were huddled together like startled doves, had been hired for the evening, and the cook lived in Portland and commuted to the house each day. The driver, whose name was Todd, joined us in the hallway. He was dressed casually in jeans and a shirt. He wore a leather jacket over the shirt and was carrying a gun. It was a Smith&Wesson nine-millimeter in a glitzy finish, but he held it in a way that suggested he knew how to use it.
“Mind if I tag along?” I asked Harmon.
“I don’t mind at all,” he said. “It’s probably nothing, but best to be sure.”
We walked through to the kitchen, where the cook and the maid were standing by a sink, staring out at the grounds through the little window above it.
“What is all this about?” asked Harmon.
“Maria saw someone,” said the cook. She was an attractive older woman, her dark hair tied back and covered with a white cap, her body lean and athletic. The maid was Mexican, and also slim and good-looking. Joel Harmon clearly allowed aesthetics to influence his hiring procedures. Maria pointed. “Over by the trees, at the east wall,” she said. “A man, I think.”
She looked even more frightened than Summer. Her hands were shaking.
“Did you see anyone?” Harmon asked the cook.