Free Blunt Darts by Jeremiah Healy Page B

picnic anymore, do you?”
    Valerie and I were back in the car, and hers were the first words spoken since we’d left Miss Pitts.
    “Actually, I’d love a picnic,” I said. Valerie beamed. “So long as the conversation level is low enough to give me some time to sort things out.”
    “Terrific!” she said, and shook her hair down onto her shoulders.
    “But first,” I said, “let’s be sure we can reach this Thomas Doucette character, class of ’61.”
    Stopping at a gas station, I called Boston information. No Thomas Doucette nor T. Doucette. Then I tried the elder Doucettes. Again, no listing in Meade. Valerie suggested we stop at Moody Street and, with luck, see the Doucettes on our way to the beach.
    She directed me up/down and left/right through semi-rural, increasingly narrow roads. If there was a poorer section of Meade, we’d found it. I pulled onto Moody Street and up to a small and old, but neatly kept, ranch house to which someone had added a little greenhouse. The mailbox had “Doucette” in paste-on letters. There were three or four similar homes on the street, but no sense of development or planning. It was as though the distance between houses was less a function of privacy or exclusivity and more a reaction to the undesirability of the intervening and uneven scrub-pine land.
    A small, four-door American subcompact sat in the driveway, and a petite woman behind a screen door. We left our car and started up the path toward her.
    She had watched us leave the car and approach her. Then she stepped outside, light blue hair and a troubled expression. “May I help you?”
    “Yes,” said Valerie. “Are you Mrs. Doucette?”
    “Yes.”
    “Mrs. Doucette, I’m Valerie Jacobs. I teach eighth grade at the Lincoln Drive School. This is a friend of mine, John Cuddy. We’d like to contact your son, Thomas.”
    By the time Valerie had finished, we were nearly to Mrs. Doucette. At the mention of her son’s name, however, mother stiffened, eyeing us both warily.
    “Thomas doesn’t live here anymore,” she said carefully.
    I felt I should “walk point” on this one. “We know.”
    “He also likes his privacy,” Mrs. Doucette continued.
    “Something everyone’s entitled to enjoy.”
    Before I could continue, Valerie broke in. “Mrs. Doucette, we simply need to speak with him about a news story he covered years ago. A child’s safety is at stake.”
    Mrs. Doucette’s eyebrows shot up. “The Kinnington boy?”
    “That’s right,” said Valerie, flashing an ingratiating smile.
    “Goddamn him!” Mrs. Doucette bit off the words in lieu of her tongue. “Goddamn him and his whole family!” She stormed into the house, slamming the screen door behind her. Mrs. Doucette then whirled. “And Goddamn you for reminding me of them!” She slammed the inner door.
    “What the … ?” Valerie’s voice quavering.
    “Val, you might not be cut out for this kind of work.”
    I was back in the car and had it started by the time a frowning, frustrated Valerie Jacobs tired of knocking at the Doucettes’ door and began walking down to me.
    She’d gotten over my teasing by the time we reached the parking lot of Meade’s swimming beach. We respectively entered a rustic, large cabin, “Men” on one side and “Women” on the other.
    Coming out of the women’s side of the locker building, Val’s legs looked a little thicker than they had in the other outfits I’d seen her wear to date. The rest of her looked triple A, however. I got a slight flush when she flickered an appraising eye over my new physique. This was the first time I’d worn a pair of trunks in quite a while, and I decided I liked sporting the results that jogging, etc., had produced. We angled toward the water.
    The long, man-made swimming beach edged into trees and picnic tables at one end and into a second parking lot at the other. The beach itself was nearly empty, most people being under the trees at the tables. Owning no sandals, I