"It's not a bad place. Probably very quiet by New York standards. Though that's not necessarily a bad thing."
"No, it's not."
"Ever been here before?"
"Once, and that was years ago. The local police had picked up someone we wanted, so I came up to take him back to New York with me. I took the train that trip."
"How was your flight today?"
"All right."
He was dying to ask me why I had dropped in on him like this, but he had manners. You didn't discuss business at lunch until the coffee was poured, and we wouldn't discuss our business until we were in his office. The Hanniford Drugs warehouse was on the western edge of town, and he had picked me up right in the heart of the downtown area. We managed small talk on the ride out. He pointed out things he thought might interest me, and I put on a show of being mildly interested. Then we were at the warehouse. They worked a five-day week and there were no other cars around, just a couple of idle trucks. He pulled the Lincoln to a stop next to a loading dock and led me up a ramp and inside. We walked down a hallway to his office. He turned on the overhead lights, pointed me to a chair, and seated himself behind his desk.
"Well," he said.
I didn't feel tired. It occurred to me that I ought to, no sleep, a lot of booze the night before. But I didn't feel tired. Not eager, either, but not tired.
I said, "I came to report. I know as much about your daughter as I'll ever know, and it's as much as you need to know. I could spend more of my time and your money, but I don't see the point."
"It didn't take you very long."
His tone was neutral, and I wondered how he meant it. Was he admiring my efficiency or annoyed that his two thousand dollars had only purchased five days of my time?
I said, "It took long enough. I don't know that it would have taken any less time if you had given me everything in the beginning. Probably not. It would have made things a little easier for me, though."
"I don't understand."
"I can understand why you didn't. You felt I had all I needed to know. If I had just been looking for facts you might have been right, but I was looking for facts that would make up a picture, and I'd have done better knowing everything in front." He was puzzled, and the heavy dark eyebrows were elevated above the top rims of his glasses. I said, "The reason I didn't let you know I was coming was that I had some things to do in Utica. I caught a dawn flight up here, Mr. Hanniford. I spent about five hours learning things you could have told me five days ago."
"What sort of things?"
"I went to a few places. The Bureau of Vital Statistics in City Hall. The Times-Sentinel offices. The police station."
"I didn't hire you to ask questions here in Utica."
"You didn't hire me at all, Mr. Hanniford. You married your wife on-well, I don't have to tell you the date. It was a first marriage for both of you."
He didn't say anything. He took his glasses off and put them on the desk in front of him.
"You might have told me Wendy was illegitimate."
"Why? She didn't know it herself."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes."
"I'm not." I drew a breath. "There were two U.S. Marines from the Utica area killed in the Inchon landing. One of them was black, so I ruled him out. The other was named Robert Blohr. He was married. Was he also Wendy's father?"
"Yes."
"I'm not trying to pick scabs, Mr. Hanniford. I think Wendy knew she was illegitimate. And it's possible that it doesn't matter whether she did or not."
He stood up and walked to the window. I sat there wondering whether Wendy had known about her father and decided it was ten-to-one that she had. He was the chief character in her personal mythology, and she had spent all her life looking for an incarnation of him. The ambivalence of her feelings about the man seemed to derive from some knowledge over and above what she had been told by Hanniford and her mother.
He stayed at the window for a time. Then he turned and looked thoughtfully at me. "Perhaps I should have told you," he said finally. "I didn't conceal it on purpose. That is, I gave little thought at the time to Wendy's… illegitimacy. That's been a completely closed chapter for so many years that it never occurred to me to mention it."
"I can understand that."
"You said you had a report to make," he said. He returned to his chair and sat down. "Go ahead, Scudder."
I started all the way back in Indiana. Wendy at college, not interested in boys her own age, interested always in older men. She had had affairs with her professors, most of them probably casual liaisons, one at least other than casual, at least on the man's part. He had wanted to leave his wife. The wife had taken pills, perhaps in a genuine suicide attempt, perhaps as a grandstand play to save her marriage. And perhaps she herself hadn't known which.
"At any rate, there was a scandal of sorts. The whole campus was aware of it, whether or not it became officially a matter of record. That explains why Wendy dropped out of school a couple of months short of graduation. There was really no way she could stay there."
"Of course not."
"It also explains why the school wasn't desperately concerned that she had disappeared. I'd wondered about that. From what you said, their attitude was fairly casual. Evidently they wanted to let you know she was gone but weren't prepared to tell you why she had left, but they knew she had good reasons to leave and weren't concerned about her physical well-being."
"I see."