A Cool Breeze on the Underground by Don Winslow Read Free Book Online

served by a staff quite used to serving working lunches. Chicken sandwiches, fruit salad, wheat crackers, and cheeses had been laid out quietly and consumed with no great enthusiasm. Allie’s story had a way of sapping an appetite—except Neal’s. He ate it and enjoyed. Surveillance work had taught him that whenever food appeared, you ate and appreciated it.
    “Why did you wait three weeks to tell anyone that Allie had been spotted?” The more interesting question, Neal thought, was why they had waited three months to do anything at all, but he knew better than to ask. That was a question for later, if at all.
    “We didn’t. Scott did,” Chase said eagerly, finding something for which he couldn’t possibly be blamed. “Teenage loyalty, whatever. He came to us just five days ago. We went to Kitteredge.”
    “Who did Scott call? You or Mrs. Chase?”
    “Me,” said Liz Chase.
    “Was he a boyfriend?”
    “Just a friend.”
    Neal picked a stem of grapes from the plate and popped one in his mouth. Something was screwy here. “And he just happened to run into Allie in London? Why was he there?”
    “A trip with his school.”
    Nice school, thought Neal, whose own class trip had been to Ossining.
    “Anything unusual happen just before Allie took off?” Neal asked, feeling stupid. It was a stupid, pat question, and usually the kind of information parents volunteered.
    Nobody answered. Neal chewed on another grape to kill time. Two grapes later, he said, “Shall I take that to mean that nothing unusual happened, or that something unusual did happen and we don’t want to talk about it?”
    “Allie was home for the weekend,” Liz said. “She just hung around, really.”
    “No, Mrs. Chase, she didn’t just hang around, really. She flew to Paris. You see, in most runaways, there is what we like to call a ‘precipitating factor.’ A fight with the parents, a fight between the parents … maybe the kid had been grounded, forbidden to see a boyfriend … had her allowance cut—”
    “Nothing like that,” said Chase. He sounded really sure about it.
    “Too bad. It helps if there was. If you know what a kid is running from, you have a jump on what she’s running to. But just business as usual?”
    More grapes.
    “When did you last see Allie?” Another stupid, pat question.
    “Saturday night I went to a party, a fund-raiser,” Liz Chase said. “John was in Washington. He got home … when, darling?”
    “Ten, I suppose.”
    “I didn’t get in till late. I imagine it was after one. I looked in on Allie in her room. She was asleep.”
    “Asleep or passed out?”
    Chase said, “I don’t particularly care for your attitude.”
    “Neither do I,” Neal answered, “but we’re both stuck with it.”
    Liz jumped in. “When we got up Sunday … late … Allie was gone. She’d told Marie-Christine—”
    “Who?”
    “One of the staff. Allie told her that she was going for a walk.”
    “Which she did.”
    “Which she did.”
    For a second, Neal felt that he should stand up and pace around the room. One of those “nobody leaves until” numbers. Instead, he sank back into the sofa and said, “All right, so after you have your coffee and omelets and read the Sunday Times, you notice that Allie hasn’t come home yet. Then what?”
    “I drove around looking for her,” Liz said.
    The Senator didn’t say anything.
    “And you didn’t find her.”
    “But I did find the car, parked downtown by the bus station, so right away I thought…”
    She let her thought drop off as if she was trying to think up a new ending. From the looks on everyone’s faces in the ensuing silence, Neal thought this one could be a four- or five-graper. He couldn’t take it.
    “You thought that Allie had taken off again.”
    Liz nodded. She hit him with those brown eyes flecked with green and filled with sadness. What are you trying to tell me, Mrs. Chase? “How many times has Allie run away?” Neal asked. He flipped through