No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [98]
Then, casually, she asked Vince, “What’s the deal?”
“Why don’t you run along, Jane, okay?” Vince said.
“Have you seen my mom?”
“I think she might be up at the garage. Why?”
“I need some money.”
“What for?”
“Stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Stuff stuff.”
“How much you need?”
Jane Scavullo shrugged. “Forty?”
Vince Fleming let go of my hair and reached into his back pocket for his wallet, pulled out two twenties, and handed them to Jane.
He said, “Is this the guy? The one you were talking about? Who likes your stories?”
Jane nodded. She was so relaxed, I had to assume she’d seen others getting this sort of treatment from Vince. The only thing different this time was that it was one of her teachers. “Yeah. Why you fucking him over?”
“Look, honey, I can’t really get into this with you.”
“I’m trying to find my wife,” I said. “She’s with my daughter, and I’m very worried about them. I thought your fa—I thought Vince here might be able to help me.”
“He’s not my father,” Jane said. “He and my mom have been together for a while now.” To Vince, she said, “I don’t mean that like an insult, about you not being my father. Because you’re okay.” To me, she said, “Remember that one story I wrote for you, about the guy making me eggs?”
I had to think. “Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“That was sort of based on Vince here. He’s decent.” She smiled at the irony. “Well, to me. So if you’re just trying to find your wife and kid, why’s Vince here getting all pissed with you?”
“Sweetheart,” Vince said.
She walked up to Vince, got right in his face. “You be nice to him or I’m fucked. His is, like, the only class where I’m getting any decent grades. If he wants help finding his wife, why don’t you help him find her, because if he’s not coming back to school until his wife gets found then I got to look at this guy picking his teeth every day and that’s not good for my education. It also makes me want to puke.”
Vince put an arm around her shoulder and walked her to the door. I couldn’t hear what he was saying to her, but just before she went back down the stairs, she said to me, “See ya, Mr. Archer.”
“Goodbye, Jane,” I said. She was so light-footed I didn’t hear her descend the stairs after the door closed.
Vince walked back over to the table, much of the menace gone out of his posture, and sat back down at the table. He looked a bit sheepish, and didn’t say anything right away.
“She’s a good kid,” I said.
Vince nodded. “Yeah, she is. Her mom, she and I’ve hooked up, and she’s a bit of a flake, but Jane, she’s okay. She’s been needing some, whaddya call it, stability in her life. I never raised any kids, and sometimes, I kind of think of her like a daughter.”
“She seems to get on pretty good with you,” I said.
“She fucking wraps me around her finger,” he said, and grinned. “She’s mentioned you. I didn’t make the connection when you told me who you were. But it’s Mr. Archer this, Mr. Archer that.”
“Really,” I said.
“She says you’ve encouraged her,” Vince said. “About her writing.”
“She’s pretty good.”
Vince pointed to the jammed bookshelves. “I read a lot. I’m not what you’d call a very educated kind of guy, but I like to read books. I especially like history, biography. Some adventure books. I’m kind of amazed by people who can do that, who can sit down and write a whole book. So when Jane said you thought she could be a writer, I thought that was kind of interesting.”
“She has her own voice,” I said.
“Huh?”
“You know how, when you read some writers, you’d know it was them even if their name wasn’t on the cover?”
“Sure.”
“That’s voice. I think Jane has that.”
Vince nodded. “Listen,” he said. “About what happened…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, working up some spit in my mouth so I could swallow.
“People start asking questions about you, trying to find you, that can be a bit worrying for someone like me,” he said.