On the other hand... play the ostrich and you make the showdown tougher. The moment of truth you and Nancy will have to face some time, somewhere...
“John Vallancourt speaking.”
“Oh, Mr. Vallancourt. Have you heard from your daughter?”
“Not directly. But I’ve run across their trail.” Vallancourt gave the desk sergeant the motel woman’s story about the Packard.
He hung up, the steadiness of his hand a passing mockery. He went outside, paid for the gas, and got into the Lincoln.
As the car hissed onto the highway, Hibbs said sulkily, “I’m still here, you know.”
“The roadblocks are ready for him, Ralph.”
Hibbs looked at him a moment longer; then he shifted his gaze to the highway ahead.
The big car pressed over the outer edge of the speed limit.
Suddenly Hibbs jerked forward in the seat. “John! Off there in the ditch!”
Vallancourt had already seen the wrecked car. He eased off, letting the Continental roll onto the shoulder before bringing it to a stop.
He had the door open and was out before Hibbs could hitch himself around.
Vallancourt had swung in several yards past the ditched car. He had completed his circuit of the old Packard by the time Hibbs came puffing up.
“Looks like the one,” Hibbs gasped.
“It is. The license checks.”
“Is she... Are they...?”
Vallancourt shook his head. His eyes were probing the darkness.
Ralph had lumbered around to the front of the jalopy. “Doesn’t look as if they hit anything — until the ditch.” He glanced from the car to the road. “It’s a straight stretch. Funny place for a car to go off the highway. Unless an oncoming car forced them off.”
Or there was trouble inside the car, Vallancourt thought.
“Might as well notify the men at the roadblocks.”
Vallancourt nodded absently. His brain was busy trying to put itself behind the dark, brooding eyes under the fine forehead and widow’s peak.
Newt is driving, he thought. And I’m sitting beside him.... No, that would leave Nancy alone, out of my line of vision, in back. I am in the rear seat where I can watch Newt and lay a steadying hand on Nancy’s shoulder.
Everything is going well. We have the car and Newt to drive us out.
Then it begins to go sour. How? Why? Perhaps Newt wants more money. Or gets cold feet. No... won’t do. It’s something more than a sudden, irrational dissatisfaction with a deal.
Back up...
Newt is driving. He wrecks the car? Deliberately? If so, it was certainly not from greed, but from fear. The only explanation. He’s afraid of what will happen once he’s past the roadblocks. He’d rather take a chance on running the car in the ditch here and now...
Vallancourt moved to the hood of the Packard and laid his palm on it. The metal was still warm.
He suddenly thought, Keith, you haven’t had much time. You may be watching every move I’m making.
Any of the thickets offered a shelter. For Keith — and what else?
“Ralph...”
“What is it?”
“You’ve expressed a desire to be of service.”
“Anything I can do. You know that.”
Vallancourt took the keys from the ignition, moved to the trunk of the Packard, opened it. From the welter of old papers, oil cans and junk tires, he salvaged a jack-handle.
“Turn the Lincoln around. Find a phone and get the highway patrol out here.”
He watched the Continental swing full circle. Then, as the red taillight glow dwindled in the darkness, he stepped off the road to stand in the thickest shadows, listening, waiting.
He won’t like the waiting, Vallancourt thought. He’s an aggressor, not a counterattacker.
Stepping very carefully, inches at a time, he drifted several yards further from the Packard. He carried the jackhandle loosely, ready for instant launching in any direction.
The silence became a heavy question. Had some unwary motorist stopped and found himself impressed into service as a chauffeur? If so, where was Newt?
In the stand of trees ahead, a twig cracked. In the silence, it sounded like a shot.
“Keith,” Vallancourt said quietly. “Before you make a move, listen to what I have to say. You’ve a chance, understand? The cashbox, Keith... the box that belonged to Dorcas Ferguson. I question the way it showed up after it disappeared from Dorcas’s study. It’s a detail that makes me want to hear what you have to say.”
Nothing.
“Nancy — if you’re there with Keith, convince him that I mean what I say. By itself, the cashbox isn’t enough. But it’s a starting point.” Vallancourt’s tone took on an edge of anger. “Keith, you young fool! I’m trying to tell you I don’t think you’re guilty. And I want to help you.”
He held his breath. Twigs cracked. Undergrowth swished somewhere ahead.
And then a human form stumbled into view. The shadow was too tall and rawboned to be Keith’s.
Vallancourt moved quickly to the other man. The man was old, and his face was clotted with blood. He saw that the old man’s nose was broken.
“Are you Newt?”
“Yeah. Where is he? Where is he?”
He took the trembling arm and helped the old man toward the highway. “I don’t know. Neither he nor my daughter was around when I got here. Did he do this?”
Newt cursed steadily and horribly. “If I was younger — so help me I’d break his back. I’d rip—”
“You’ve no idea where they went?”
“No,” Newt stumbled; Vallancourt supported him. “I laid low, scared he was still looking. Then I heard your voice.” He hawked blood from his throat. “The way he hit me... Nearly killed me. I think he busted something loose in my gut.”
“We’ll get you to a doctor, then you’ll have to tell the police what happened.”
“Sure,” Newt croaked. “I’ll tell! One time I got nothing to hide from the fuzz. He made me haul them off. Used the gun.”
Ice water coursed down Vallancourt’s back. “Gun?”
“Belonged to my wife. He took it. Even money they bury the first man catches up to that sonofabitch.”
14
Stabbing between the slats of the Venetian blind, a strip of early sunlight lay across Keith’s forehead like a scar.
The downward creep of the band of light measured the rising of the sun. When the light touched his lids, his eyes opened. He blinked, moving his head away from the dazzle.
He sat up quickly, immediately remembering the long stumbling hike through the night to the lake cottage.
In the familiar surrounding of the lodge’s living room, he sprang from the couch. He had intended to rest, not to sleep. But exhaustion had overcome him.
Noiselessly he moved from the stone and timbered room to the pine-paneled hallway. He stopped at the first door and inched it open.
He stood in silence, looking at Nancy. She was still here; she hadn’t run away. Fully clothed, she was sleeping relaxed, her young body curled like a child’s, one slender arm outflung. He looked at the firm lines of her thighs; the swell of her hips, the cups of her breasts warmed and thickened his blood. He took a step into the room. But then he turned and moved away.
In the stainless steel kitchen, he boiled water for instant coffee and opened a can of condensed milk from the generous supplies that Dorcas Ferguson had always maintained in the lodge.
He sat down to the coffee, playing with his thoughts. What would it be like with her — the long smooth body naked, the lips in fever, the buttocks writhing, demanding? Coffee slopped as he picked up the cup; he had to steady it with both hands. A picture leaped to his mind, of his hands undressing her, the slipping of a button, the slide of a zipper, the tantalizing peeling off of each garment...