“Yes,” Lisa said. “Well, the thing is, there may be another complication.”
“What complication?”
“David Asch is here to see you.”
“Who’s David Asch?”
“Diane Asch’s father.”
Nancy’s head snapped up. “He’s here? Waiting outside someplace? He didn’t call for an appointment?”
“No, he didn’t call for an appointment, and I don’t think that’s a good sign. He looks like the kind of man who does call for appointments. He’s—well, you’d have to see him.”
“I don’t intend to see him. Go right back out there and tell him I don’t have any time today. Make him make an appointment.”
Lisa hesitated. “I’ve tried that,” she said. “I tried it several different ways. He said he’d wait. ‘Nobody schedules every breathing minute of the day,’ is what he said.”
“Was he belligerent?”
“Oh, no. He was quite pleasant.”
Nancy drummed her fingers on the desk again. “What about Diane? Is she in school today?”
“Same as always. I saw her on her way to biology.”
“Has there been any trouble?”
“Nothing unusual.” Lisa shrugged. “I mean, I heard a couple of people call her ‘fart face’ in the hall, but that’s—”
“Par for the course,” Nancy finished. She stood up. If she had been one of the students this year, she would have called Diane Asch “fart face,” too. She wondered what Mr. Asch was like. Maybe he was Rick Moranis. “Send him in,” she said. “Tell him I’ve got exactly five minutes. It’s a busy day. When I buzz, I want you back in here faster than you can think about it. And I’m going to want him out.”
“Right,” Lisa said.
She hurried out of the room, and Nancy remained standing. A moment later, Lisa returned ahead of a tall, elegant-looking man in a good tan suit. He was far too elegant, and the suit was far too good, for Hollman. Nancy held out her hand.
“Mr. Asch,” she said.
“Ms. Quayde.”
Lisa retreated out the door and closed it behind her. When she was gone, it seemed too silent. The rain outside was too loud. David Asch had an attache’ case. He was smiling.
“Well,” Nancy said. “I suppose you’re here to talk about the trouble Diane has been having, getting along with her classmates.”
“No,” David Asch said. “I’m not.”
“You’re not?”
“There wouldn’t be any point, would there? I’ve heard enough conversations of that kind—not about Diane, mind you, but about me—to know how they go. I complain. You tell me it’s really mostly Diane’s fault, we need to get her a therapist, she has a problem, and besides, there’s nothing you can do to make people like her. That is the way the conversation would go, isn’t it?”
Lisa was right, Nancy thought. This man was pleasant, but it was not a nice pleasantness. “If you don’t want to talk about Diane,” she said, “what do you want to talk about?”
“You.”
“Excuse me?”
David Asch’s smile became wider. He sat down himself, in the visitor’s chair, and put his attache’ case on the desk. “You,” he repeated. “Because there are things you can do about the situation with Diane, although you won’t do any of them. It’s true you can’t make people like her, but you can stop collaborating in their bullying. Because we both know, don’t we, that this kind of ostracizing behavior does not occur in isolation. It does not occur where there is not adult support.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.”
Nancy watched in fascination as David Asch snapped open the brass fixtures on the attache’ case. “You’re not from around here, are you?” she said. “If you were, I’d know you. You look like you come from someplace far more cosmopolitan and—”
“I come from Armonk, New York.”
“Well,” Nancy said.
“Armonk is not what I’d call cosmopolitan,” David Asch said. “Although it certainly is a good deal more sophisticated than this area around here. We moved here so that I could teach at UP-Johnstown. I have another year to go on my contract and then I’ll be gone. That will be Diane’s senior year.”
“What do you teach?”
“Psychology,” David Asch said. “But I’m not a clinical psychologist. I’m a behavioral one. I deal in statistics and probabilities. I don’t have much use for touchy-feely. Do you know what this is?” He took a thick wad of paper out of the attache’ case and dropped it down on the middle of her desk.