Speaking in Tongues

  She sat down again.

  Tate examined her from across the room. With her long, Pre-Raphaelite face and tangle of witchy red hair, Betty Susan McCall was exotic. Something Virginia rarely offered--an enigmatic Celtic beauty. The South is full of temptresses and lusty cowgirls and it has matriarchs galore but few sorceresses. Bett was a businesswoman now but beneath that facade, Tate Collier believed, she remained the enigmatic young woman he'd first seen singing a folk song in a smoky apartment on the outskirts of Charlottesville twenty-three years ago. She'd performed a whaling song a cappella in a reedy, breathless voice.

  It had, however, been many years since any woman had ensnared him that way and he now found himself feeling very wary. A dozen memories from the days when they were getting divorced surfaced, murky and unsettling.

  He wondered how he could keep his distance from her throughout this untidy family business.

  Bett's eyes had disposed of the fireplace and the furniture in the living room and were checking out the wallpaper and molding. His eyes dogged after hers and he concluded that she found the place unhomely and stark. It needed more upholstered things, more pillows, more flowers, new curtains, livelier paint. He felt embarrassed.

  After several minutes Bett said, "Well, if her car's gone she probably just went out to get something."

  "That's probably it."

  Two hours later, no messages on either of their phones, Tate called the police.

  *

  The first thing Tate noticed was the way Konnie glanced at Bett.

  With approval.

  As if the lawyer had finally gotten his act together; no more young blondes for him. And it was damn well about time. This woman was in her early forties, very pretty. Smooth skin. She had quick eyes and seemed smart. Detective Dimitri Konstantinatis of the Fairfax County Police had commented once, "Tate, why're all the women you date half your age and, lemme guess, a third your intelligence? If that. Why's that, Counselor?"

  Konnie strode into the living room and stuck his hand out toward her. He shook the startled woman's hand vigorously as Tate introduced them. "Bett, my ex-wife, this is Konnie. Konnie's an old friend from my prosecuting days."

  "Howdy." Oh, the cop's disappointed face said, so she's the ex. Giving her up was one bad mistake, mister. The detective glanced at Tate. "So, Counselor, your daughter's up 'n' late for lunch, that right?"

  "Been over two hours."

  "You're fretting too much, Tate." He poked a finger at him and said to Bett, "This fella? Was the sissiest prosecutor in the commonwealth. We had to walk him to his car at night."

  "At least I could find my car," Tate shot back. One of the reasons Konnie loved Tate was that the lawyer joked about Konnie's drinking; he was now in recovery--no alcohol in four years--and not a single soul in the world except Tate Collier would dare poke fun at him about it. But what every other soul in the world didn't know was that what the cop respected most was balls.

  Bett smiled uneasily.

  Tate and Konnie had worked together frequently when Tate was a commonwealth's attorney. The somber detective had been taciturn and distant for the first six months of their professional relationship, never sharing a single personal fact. Then at midnight of the day a serial rapist-murderer they'd jointly collared and convicted was sentenced to be "paroled horizontal," as the death row parlance went, Konnie had drunkenly embraced Tate and said that the case made them blood brothers. "We're bonded."

  "Bonded? What kind of pinko touchy-feely crap is that?" an equally drunken Tate had roared.

  They'd been tight friends ever since.

  Another knock on the front door.

  "Maybe that's her," Bett said eagerly. But when Tate opened the door a crew-cut man in a cheap, slope-shouldered gray suit walked inside. He stood very straight and looked Tate in the eye. "Mr. Collier. I'm Detective Ted Beauridge. Fairfax County Police. I'm with Juvenile."

  Tate led him inside and introduced Beauridge to Bett while Konnie clicked the TV's channel selector. He seemed fascinated to find a TV that had no remote control.

  Beauridge was polite and efficient but clearly he didn't want to be here. Konnie was the sole reason Megan's disappearance was getting any attention at all. When Tate had called, Konnie'd told him that it was too early for a missing person's report; twenty-four hours' disappearance was required unless the individual was under fifteen, mentally handicapped or endangered. Still, Konnie had somehow "accidentally forgotten" to get his supervisor's okay and had run a tag check on Megan's car. And he'd put in a request for Jane Doe admissions at all the area hospitals.

  Tate ushered them into the living room. Bett asked, "Would you like some coffee or . . . ?" Her voice faded and she laughed in embarrassment, looking at Tate, undoubtedly remembering that this had not been her house for a long, long time.

  "Nothing, thanks, ma'am," Beauridge said for them both.

  In the time it had taken Konnie to arrive, Bett had called some friends of Megan's. She'd spent the night at Amy Walker's. Bett had called this girl first but no one had answered. She left a message on the Walkers' voice mail then called some of her other friends. Brittany, Kelly and Donna hadn't seen Megan or heard from her today. They didn't know if she had plans except maybe showing up at the mall later. "To, you know, like, hang out."

  Konnie asked Tate and Bett about the girl's Saturday routine.

  "She normally has a therapy session Saturday morning," Bett explained. "At nine. But the doctor had to cancel today. His mother was sick or something."

  "Could she just've forgotten about coming here for lunch?"

  "When we talked yesterday I reminded her about it."

  "Was she good about keeping appointments?" Beauridge asked.

  Tate didn't know. She'd always shown up on time when he took her shopping or to dinner at the Ritz in Tysons. He told them this. Bett said that she was "semigood about being prompt." But she didn't think the girl would miss this lunch. "The three of us being together and all," she added with a faint cryptic laugh.

  "What about boyfriends?" Konnie asked.

  "She didn't--" Tate began.

  Then halted at Bett's glance. And he realized he didn't have a clue whether Megan had a boyfriend or not.

  Bett continued, "She did but they broke up last month."

  "She the one broke it off?"

  "Yes."

  "So is he trouble, you think? This kid?" Konnie tugged at a jowl.

  "I don't think so. He seemed very nice. Easygoing."

  So did Ted Bundy, Tate thought.

  "What's his name?"

  "Joshua LeFevre. He's a senior at George Mason."

  "He's a senior in college?" Tate asked.

  "Well, yes," she said.

  "Bett, she's only seventeen. I mean--"

  "Tate," Bett said again. "He was a nice boy. His mother's some executive at EDS, his father's stationed at the Pentagon. And Josh's a championship athlete. He's also head of the Black Students' Association."

  "The what?"

  "Tate!"

  "Well, I'm just surprised. I mean, it doesn't matter."

  Bett shrugged with some exasperation.

  "It doesn't," Tate said defensively. "I'm just--"

  "--surprised," Konnie repeated wryly. "Mr. ACLU speaks."

  "You know his number?" Beauridge asked.

  Bett didn't but she got it from directory assistance and called. She apparently got one of his roommates. Joshua was out. She left a message for him to call when he returned.

  "So. She's been here and gone. No sign of a struggle?" Konnie looked around the front hall.

  "None."

  "What about the alarms?"

  "I had them off."

  "There a panic button she could hit if somebody was inside waiting for her?"

  "Yep. And she knows about it."

  Bett offered, "She left the house keys here. She has her car keys with her."

  "Could somebody," Konnie speculated, "have stole her purse, got the keys and broke
n in?"

  Tate considered this. "Maybe. But her driver's license has Bett's address on it. How would a burglar know to come here? Maybe she had something with my address on it but I don't know what. Besides, nothing's missing that I could see."

  "Don't see much worth stealing," Konnie said, looking at the paltry entertainment equipment. "You know, Counselor, they got TVs nowadays bigger'n cereal boxes."

  Tate grunted.

  "Okay," Konnie said, "how 'bout you show me her room?"

  As Tate led him upstairs Beauridge's smooth drawl rolled, "Sure you got nothing to worry about, Mrs. Collier--"

  "It's McCall."

  Upstairs, Tate let Konnie into Megan's room then wandered into his own. He'd missed something earlier when he'd made the rounds up here: his dresser drawer was open. He looked inside, frowned, then glanced across the hall as the detective surveyed the girl's room. "Something funny," Tate called.

  "Hold that thought," Konnie answered. With surprisingly lithe movements for such a big man he dropped to his knees and went through what must have been the standard teenage hiding places: under desk drawers, beneath dressers, wastebaskets, under beds, in curtains, pillows and comforters. "Ah, whatta we got here?" Konnie straightened up and examined two sheets of paper.

  He pointed to Megan's open dresser drawers and the closet. "These're almost empty, these drawers. They normally got clothes in them?"

  Tate hesitated, concern on his face. "Yes, they're usually full."

  "Could you see if there's any luggage missing?"

  "Luggage? No . . . Wait. Her old backpack's gone." Tate considered this for a moment. Why would she take that? he wondered. Looking at the papers, Tate asked the detective, "What'd you find?"

  "Easy, Counselor," Konnie said, folding up the sheets. "Let's go downstairs."

  Chapter Five

  What would Sidney Poitier do?

  Joshua LeFevre shifted his muscular, trapezoidal body in the skimpy seat of his Toyota and pressed down harder on the gas pedal. The tiny engine complained but slowly edged the car closer to the Mercedes.

  Come on, Megan, what the hell're you up to?

  He squinted again and leaned forward as if moving eight inches closer to the Merce were going to let him see more clearly through his confusion. He assumed the man, not Megan, was driving though he couldn't be sure. This gave him a sliver of comfort--for some reason the thought of this guy tossing Megan the keys to his big doctor's car and saying, "You drive, honey," riled the young man beyond words. Made him furious.

  He nudged the car faster.

  Sidney Poitier . . . What would you do?

  LeFevre had seen In the Heat of the Night when he'd been ten. (On video, of course--when the film had originally come out, in the sixties, the man who would be his father was doing basic training pushups in Fort Dix and his to-be mother was listening to Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross while she worked on her 4.0 average at National Cathedral School.) The film had affected him deeply. The Poitier character, Detective Tibbs, ended up stuck in the small Southern town, butting horns with good-oldboy sheriff Rod Steiger. Moving slow, solving a local murder, step by step . . . Not getting flustered, not getting pissed off in the face of all the crap everybody in town was giving him.

  Sure, the movie didn't have real guts, it was Hollywood's idea of race relations, more softball than gritty, but even at age ten Joshua LeFevre understood the film wasn't really about black or white--it was about being a man and being persistent and not taking no when you believed yes.

  It choked him up, that flick--the way important movies always do, those films that give us our role models, whether it's the first time we see them or the hundredth.

  Oh yes, Joshua Nathan LeFevre--an honors English major at George Mason University, a tall young man with his father's perfect physique and military bearing and with his mother's brains--had a sentimental side to him thick as a mountain. (The week that students in his nineteenth-century-lit seminar were picking apart a Henry James novel like crows, LeFevre had slunk back to his apartment with a very different book hidden in a brown paper bag. He'd locked his door and read the entire novel in one sitting, crying unashamedly when he came to the last page of The Bridges of Madison County.) Sentimental, a romantic. And accordingly, Sidney Poitier--rather than Samuel L. Jackson or Wesley Snipes--appealed to him.

  So, what would Mr. Tibbs do now?

  Okay, he was saying to himself, let's analyze it. Step by step. Here's a girl's got a bad home life. None of that talk-show abuse, no, but it's clearly a case of Daddy don't care and Momma don't care. So she drinks more than she ought and hangs with a bad crowd--until she meets LeFevre. And seems to get her act together though she falls off the normal wagon every once in a while. And then one night she climbs up to the top of a water tower (and why didn't she call me, dammit, instead of guzzling a fifth of Comfort with Donna and Brittany, the Easy Sisters?). And once she's up there she does a little dance on the scaffolding and the cops and fire department come to get her down.

  And she goes to see this shrink . . .

  Who tells her she's got to break up with him.

  And so she does.

  "Why?" LeFevre had asked her a few weeks ago as they sat in his car, parked in front of her house, on what turned out to be their last date.

  "Why?"

  "It's not the differences . . ." Meaning the age, meaning the race. It was . . . what the hell was it? He replayed Megan's little speech.

  "It's just that I'm not ready for the same kind of relationship you want."

  And what kind is that? I don't remember proposing. I don't think we've even talked about our relationship. We just have fun together.

  "Oh, Josh, honey, don't cry . . . I need to see things, do things. I feel, I don't know, all tied down or something . . . Living with Bett's like living with a roommate. You know, her date for Saturday's the biggest deal in the world. All she worries about is her skin getting old."

  Old skin? I like your mom. She's pretty, smart, offbeat. I don't get it. What's her skin got to do with breaking up? LeFevre had been very confused as he sat in his tiny car beside the woman he loved.

  "Oh, honey, I just need to get away. I want to travel, see things. You know."

  Travel? Where was this coming from? I've got a trust fund, Mom and Dad're loaded. I've lived in Jeddah, Cyprus, London and Germany. I speak three languages. I can show you more of the world than the Cunard Line.

  "Okay. What it is is this therapist. Dr. Hanson? See, he thinks it's not a good idea for me to be in a relationship with you right now."

  Then we'll back off a bit. See each other once a week or so. How's that?

  "No, you don't understand," Megan had said brutally, pulling away from him as he tried to take the Southern Comfort bottle out of her hand. And she'd climbed out of the passenger seat and run into her house.

  Cruising down I-66 now, LeFevre leaned over and sniffed the headrest to see if he could smell her perfume. Heartbreakingly, he couldn't. He pushed the accelerator harder, edging up on the gray Mercedes.

  "No, you don't understand."

  No, he sure as hell hadn't.

  Joshua LeFevre had waited a tormented three weeks then--this morning--woke up on autopilot. He hadn't been able to take the girl's silence and the suffocating frustration anymore. He'd driven to Hanson's office around the time Megan's appointment would be over. He'd parked up the street, waiting for her to come out. Josh LeFevre could bench-press 220 pounds, he could bicycle 150 miles a day. But he wasn't going for intimidation. Oh no. He was going to Poitier the man, not Snipes him.

  Why, he was going to ask the doctor, did you talk her into breaking up with me? Isn't that unethical? Let's sit down together. The three of us. Josh had a dozen arguments all prepared. He believed he could talk his way back into her heart.

  "No, you don't understand."

  But now he did.

  God, I'm an idiot.

  The doctor had her break up because he wanted to fuck her.


  No psychobabble here. No inner child. Nope. The shrink wanted to play the two-backed beast with LeFevre's girlfriend. Simple as a shot in the head.

  From where he'd been parked near the office he hadn't been able to see clearly but suddenly, before the appointment was supposed to be over, Megan's Tempo was pulling out of the lot--with the shrink himself driving, it seemed, and heading north.

  He'd followed the car to Manassas--to Megan's dad's farm--where LeFevre'd waited for about twenty minutes. Then, just when he'd been about to pull into the long drive, the car had sped out again and they'd driven to the Vienna Metro parking lot. They'd switched cars--taking the German shrinkmobile--and headed west on I-66.

  What was it all about? Had she picked up some clothes from her father's place? Was she going away for the weekend?

  LeFevre was crazed. He had to do something.

  But what would Sidney Poitier do? The script had changed.

  Wait till they got to the doctor's house? The inn they were going to? Confront them there?

  No, that didn't seem right.

  Oh, hell, he should just go home . . . Forget this crap. Be a man.

  His foot eased up on the gas . . . Good idea, get off at the next exit. Quit acting like a lovesick loser. It's embarrassing. Go home. Read your Melville. You've got a presentation due a week from Monday . . .

  The Mercedes pulled ahead.

  Then the thought burst within him: Bullshit. I'm going to deconstruct motifs in some fucking story about a big-ass whale while my girlfriend's in bed whispering into her therapist's ear?

  He jammed his foot to the floor.

  Would Poitier do this?

  You bet.

  And so LeFevre kept his sweating hands on the wheel of the car, straining forward, and sped after the woman whom he loved and, he believed somewhere in a portion of his sloppy heart, who loved him still.

  *

  "She's run away?" Bett whispered.

  The four of them were in the living room, like strangers at a cocktail party, knees pointed at one another, sitting upright and waiting to become comfortable. Konnie continued, "But y'all should consider that good news. The profile is most runaways come back on their own within a month."

  Bett stared out the window at the misty darkness. "A month," she announced, as if answering a trivia question. "No, she wouldn't leave. Not without saying anything."