“The next driveway, John.”
“We’ll park on the road.” He stopped the car, leaving the headlights burning. His glance made a rapid orientation, marking the boathouse and dock to his left, the driveway toward his right, the outlines of the lodge with its long open gallery crouching on the hillside.
The three got out. Vallancourt and Hibbs carried flashlights.
“We’re making a social call,” the diplomat reminded them.
He was first up the driveway, keeping to its center. He held the flashlight steady.
“Keith,” he called in a clear, calm tone. “If you’re here, we came alone. We’d like to talk to you. You may show yourself safely. We’re not armed and we’ll keep our distance.”
A breeze, surly with the last chill of spring, snapped through the pines. Gravel crunched beneath the footsteps of the three men.
“Nobody’s here,” Hibbs whispered.
Vallancourt continued to climb toward the cottage. He raised his light to play the beam across the front of the building. The windows shone blackly. A hoseful of wind swept a shower of pine needles from the porch.
Vallancourt spoke over his shoulder. “Got a key, Howard?”
“Nope.”
“Does Keith?”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen,” Ralph Hibbs said.
“What is it?”
“I heard something.”
They stood listening.
“You’re hearing things,” Conway decided.
“No,” Hibbs insisted. “I tell you I heard movement up there. On the hill above the driveway.”
Unbidden, Vallancourt’s mind created an imaginary scene, Nancy up on the dark hillside realizing now what a foolish and terrible mistake she had made... Nancy helpless against Keith’s strength... Keith’s arm locked about her throat, his breath hot against her ear as he warned her not to make a sound...
“I don’t hear a thing,” said Conway.
“Neither do I, now,” Hibbs said. “But I know damned well I did a minute ago.”
“Probably a dead branch blowing off a tree.”
“We’ll have to make sure,” Vallancourt said. He raised his voice again: “Keith, we’re not armed. We have not brought the police. Let’s have a word with you, that’s all.”
“Hell, John,” Conway said, disgusted, “he isn’t up here. He’s probably getting wrapped up by a roadblock while we stand here like idiots talking to the wind.”
“We’ll have to make sure, Howard.”
He walked quietly forward, then stopped with a jerk. His flashlight ray had fallen across the MG. The car sat empty. It looked like a toy.
The light probed, swung, stopped, swung back to the MG.
“At least we know he was here,” Hibbs said. “That means the two of them are in Nancy’s car.”
Vallancourt crossed the driveway to the MG and aimed the light. The key was not in the ignition. A glint of gray metal in the farther seat caught his eye.
“Howard, Ralph, will you come here?”
His tone brought Conway and Hibbs lumbering over.
“Take a look.”
“Looks like a cashbox.”
“The one Dorcas kept in her study, Howard?” Vallancourt asked.
“Could be.”
“Its disappearance was discovered right after her murder. The city detective seemed to consider it an important find.”
“Don’t you?” Conway asked.
“I’m not sure. We reached her place at about the same time, Howard. You were passing the MG when I pulled up. Did you get a look inside?”
Conway knuckled his chin. “I think I did. It’s natural to glance inside a convertible when it passes with the top down.”
“Did you see the cashbox?”
“No, John, I think there was a coat or jacket lying on the seat. Trenchcoat, maybe.”
“The cashbox might have been under the coat,” Hibbs said. “Anyway, the police can lift fingerprints from the box and determine if it really is... was Dorcas’s.”
“Yes,” Vallancourt said, “I’m sure they can. I’m sure they will.”
I’m equally sure, he thought, that Keith didn’t have the cashbox with him when he went out the window of the Ferguson living room. He was in there with a murdered woman, and the box was outside, in his car.
Why didn’t he keep going when he carried the box out? Why should he return to her lifeless body?
9
From the advantage of the cottage porch, Keith watched Nancy’s sedan crawl along the lake and disappear into the distant woodland.
It would be getting dark soon now. The lake was as peaceful as a church.
Keith told himself he should be feeling better. He knew the worst now. He knew what he had to do. Always in the past, when he realized the full extent of his predicament, a strange calm had come over him, an ability to crouch down within himself, watchful, ready.
The old man used to say he had a streak of bulldog in him.
Maybe I do have, Keith thought.
He scuffed at the porch floor with his toe, remembering.
It was some consolation to know how many times he had denied his father victory. The experiences went as far back as Keith could recall. The old man would freeze him out, cut his allowance, humiliate him, pile ridiculous chores on him. Like the time he’d made Keith spend a Saturday carrying leaves from the front yard a bucketful at a time.
And then the resort to physical violence. Keith would vomit in private, but facing his father he was stolid, prepared for pain, knowing whose endurance was the greater. The ending was always the same, with his father sweating, backing away finally with a curse. And the boy carrying a heavier load of hatred and contempt.
Keith walked to the top of the porch steps and sat down.
Of course, it hadn’t been uninterrupted war between him and the old man. Mother was an angel, he thought. Vague, helpless, unable to cope with the old man; but she was jake, george, and number one, all put indefinitely together in a little woman everybody called Maggie.
Elbows on knees, hands knotted, he rubbed his forehead against his knuckles.
Mom, I’m glad you don’t have to wonder and worry. About this thing now... and that Cheryl Pemberton mess in Florida.
They thought they had me. But I knew I could stand it. The nerves all dissolved, leaving nothing for them to get to. Like with the old man. Sixty hours of it. One after another of them. I worked them in shifts, Mom. And there weren’t enough of them...
He jerked his head up, jumped to his feet, grabbed the porch post. A fluttering went through his chest. Too soon for Nancy. She hadn’t had time to get to the drive-in and back.
He stood listening. He was certain the breeze had carried the faintest sound of a car down the trough of the long, shallow valley.
He vaulted the porch rail, dropping like a cat to the yard. After a moment’s hesitation, he ran toward the lake.
They’ve got her, he thought. They’ve made her talk. I should have gone myself, the way I wanted to. Why did I let her talk me into her going?
Far down the lake, twin shafts of light stabbed across the water.
Keith faded across the road into the shadows. He stood breathing hard, studying the dark hills behind him, the road ahead.
He had to decide quickly.
He jumped a drainage ditch with an easy flow of movement and started dog-padding parallel to the road, in the direction from which the car was coming.
He could hear it quite clearly now. Far ahead of him, the car’s lights danced, closing the distance rapidly.
He reached a cave of darkness beneath a giant spreading oak. He dropped in a crouch, hands spread on the rough bark.
He recognized the Continental as it surged past. John Vallancourt was driving. He wasn’t sure how many people were in the car. Three, he thought. At least one man in the suicide seat, and an impression of another in the rear.