I was huddled inside a cocoon of myself — all bad nerves and fear and anger and sudden heavy sweat.
Oh, yes; and panting. I sounded like a big old sheepdog on a very hot day.
Then, nothing. I lay there rubbing my sore knee, listening to the tinny sound of the rain on my car roof and hood.
I don’t know how long it was before I heard an aged truck grinding up the gravel hill to the house.
I very cautiously sat up, peered down the hill.
The killer was long gone, of course. No sign of him at all.
The truck had G&H MARKET written on the side of its doors. It was a white Chevy that had to be a quarter-century old. The gearbox sounded awful.
A white-haired man pulled it up to the garage and the door to the side, braked noisily and shut off the engine.
He walked slowly over to me in the rain, his watery blue eyes fixed on the bullet webs in the windows. He wore blue-and-white-striped Oshkosh overalls and had a pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth. He walked with a slight limp.
“I was right. Them was gunshots I heard,” he said, examining the bullet holes more carefully.
“Yes,” I said. “You were right.”
“You called the law?”
“Not yet.”
He grinned. “If I was you, I’d be in taking a good long leak. I was in the South Pacific in World War Two, and every time the Jap fire would get close to me, I’d pee my pants. Wasn’t ashamed to admit it, either. No, sir, I sure wasn’t.” He paused, examined the spider webs again. “You got any idea who it was?”
“Nope.”
He shook his head, then looked at the house. “They home?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hell, she just called me two hours ago and told me to get her order out here as fast as I could.”
“Sorry.”
“Between you and me, she’s kind of a bitch, anyway. High-and-mighty, you know.” Shook his head. “I probably shouldn’t say that about her, with her cancer and all, but that’s how she strikes me.”
I thought of what Mindy had told me, about the good reverend faking his wife’s cancer as a means of raising money.
I decided not to disillusion the old guy.
I leaned forward and started my car. “Guess I better head back to town.”
“Good thing the rain’s let up.”
As, suddenly, it had, not much more than a sprinkle now.
“Yeah,” I said, “good thing.”
I waved good-bye to him and drove off.
4
Eve came to the door after three knocks and peered out through the screening. This afternoon her facial bruises looked even worse: discolored streaks of purple and yellow on left forehead, right cheek, left jawline.
“Have you heard anything about your daughter?”
She shook her head. “I bet she’s dead.”
She needed somebody to talk to. I felt guilty for not having more time.
“I found out some things this morning, Eve. I think I’m finally figuring out what’s going on. I also think that I know who may have kidnapped her and why.”
She touched a trembling hand to her face and started crying bitterly. “You know one time — what I did one time, I mean?”
I couldn’t take it. I opened the screen door quietly and stepped inside and took her in my arms and held her. She was very near the edge. Very near.
“I got mad at her one time and I slapped her right across the face. She couldn’t’ve been more’n five years old. And I slapped her right across the face. I just keep thinkin’ about that now, how I treated her when she was so little. What a terrible mother I’ve been to her.”
Her sobs came in small eruptions now, and she choked on words the way a small child does who is crying too hard to speak intelligibly.
“You’ve been a good mother, Eve. You’ve got to stop thinking that way.”
She had to cry herself out.
I led her over to the couch and plumped up a couple of throw pillows, then found the bedroom and dragged out a blanket and got her covered up. In the bathroom, I filled a glass with cold water and snagged the Excedrin bottle. Sara, the sweet golden retriever, followed me back into the living room and gave Eve three affectionate laps with a big pink loving tongue and then went over on the far side of the room and sat and watched all the human stuff going on.
I got three tablets down Eve and said, “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”
She shook her head, her cheeks red and rough from her tears. Her eyes were watery and forlorn.
“I really have been a terrible mother. You just don’t know. Gabbin’ on the phone when I should’ve been spendin’ time with her. Bowlin’ with the girls when I could’ve been taking her places.”
I knelt next to her and said, “We aren’t perfect, Eve, and it’s too much to expect we ever will be. All we can do is try.”
She looked at me and said, “Maybe he’s dead, too.”
“Your husband?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So you haven’t heard from him?”
She shook her head.
I took a washcloth I’d run lukewarm water over and laid it gently across her forehead. She smelled of tears.
“I’ll check back with you later this afternoon,” I said.
“I wish my husband was like you.”
I smiled. “That’s a nice compliment, but you don’t know me very well.”
“I know you enough.”
“Well, I know you enough, too. And you’re a very decent woman. And a very good mother.”
I kissed her on the cheek. “I need to ask you something, Eve. And you’ve got to tell me the truth.”
She looked at me tearily and nodded.
“Has your husband come into some money over the past few years?”
She nodded.
“A lot of it?”
She paused. “Well, a lot for us, anyways.” She nodded to the new furnishings and the new TV. “And then he bought a brand-new Ford and paid cash for it. He’s in trouble, isn’t he?”
“I’m afraid he could be, Eve.”
“I knew he was. But I was afraid to think it was true.”
She had angled her head away, was getting trapped in her own despair again.
“Did your husband ever work for Reverend Roberts?”
She turned back to me, tried to read my face. “This has something to do with Reverend Roberts?”
“Not necessarily,” I lied. “But I’m curious.”
“Well, sure, he used to have a kind of cleaning service on the side.”
“What kind of cleaning service?”
“Oh, you know, clean rich people’s houses.”
“But Reverend Roberts has a maid.”
“Richard didn’t clean the house. He cleaned the church.”
“I see. How about Sam Lodge?”
The eyes searching my face again. “How’d you know about him?”
“Lucky guess.”
And it was.
“Well, Richard, he used to clean the Lodges’ house, with their antiques and all. Then Lodge started inviting Richard to go along on his antique trips, help carry the heavy stuff. It wasn’t too long after this that he started... well, being unfaithful. I could smell the other women on him. And now he’s gotten Melissa kidnapped.”
She broke again.
I leaned over and put the fresh side of the washcloth on her forehead and held her hands as she gave into her tears, her entire body shaking.
“I was such a rotten mother.”
“C’mon, now, Eve. You know better than that. You really do.”
“You don’t know. You just don’t know. All the times I could’ve spent time with her and—”
Then she fell to crying again.
As if understanding that Eve needed great care and fondness, Sara trotted over and gave her a few more love licks on her teary cheeks.