“He was. His wife died many years ago. It was hardly unexpected. She was a poor spiritless little thing, life was too much for her. Since her death, of course, every woman in town has set her cap for George. Fortunately, he has me to point out to him some of their wiles and pretenses. He’d never see through any of them himself, he’s hopelessly naive. A very good example of this happened a few days ago. A woman called and said she had to see George about a mysterious letter she’d received—I heard her because I had picked up the extension phone, quite by accident. Mysterious letter, indeed. Why, a child could have seen through a ruse like that. But George, no. In spite of his cough, off he went before I had a chance to tell him that even if she was speaking the truth she was up to no good. The right people just do not receive mysterious letters. When I asked him about it later he blew up at me. I tell you, it’s not easy to be a mother in this age of hard liquor and harder women.” She smiled with a flash of teeth too white and perfect to have been around as long as the rest of her. “I find you restful and simpatico, Mr. Quinn. Do you live in Chicote?”
“No.”
“What a shame. I was hoping you could come to dinner one night with George and me. We eat simple, healthful food, but it’s quite tasty, nevertheless.”
“Thank you for the offer,” Quinn said. “You know, you’ve aroused my curiosity, Mrs. Haywood.”
She looked flattered. “I have? How?”
“That mysterious letter. Did it really exist?”
“Well, I can’t be sure because George wouldn’t tell me. But I think, personally, that she invented it. It was merely an excuse to get George to go over to her house and see her in her own setting, with the two children, and a fire in the fireplace, and something bubbling on the stove, that sort of thing. Deliberate domesticity, if you follow me.”
I follow you, Quinn thought, right up to Martha O’Gorman’s front door.
There was no fire in the fireplace, and if something was bubbling on the stove, none of its aroma was escaping through the locked windows and drawn blinds. The brass lion’s-head knocker on the front door looked as if it hadn’t been used since Quinn’s first visit a week ago. From the yard next door a girl about ten years old, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, watched Quinn curiously as he waited for someone to answer his knock.
After a time she said in a dreamy voice, “They’re not home. They left about an hour ago.”
“Do you happen to know where they went?”
“They didn’t tell me, but I saw Richard putting the sleeping bags in the car so I guess they went camping. They do a lot of camping.”
The girl chewed reflectively on her gum for a minute. Quinn said, by way of encouragement, “Have you been a neighbor of the O’Gormans very long?”
“Practically forever. Sally’s my best friend. Richard I hate, he’s too bossy.”
“Have you ever gone camping with them?”
“Once, last year. I didn’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“I kept thinking of big black bears. Also, rattlesnakes, on account of that was where we were camping, on the Rattlesnake River. It was real scary.”
“What’s your name, young lady?”
“Miranda Knights. I hate it.”
“I think it’s very pretty,” Quinn said. “Do you remember exactly where you camped on the Rattlesnake River, Miranda?”
“Sure. Paradise Falls, where the Rattlesnake flows into the Torcido River. It’s not really a falls, though; it’s just some big boulders with trickles of water falling down. Richard likes it because he hides behind the boulders and makes noises like a bear and jumps out to scare Sally and me. Richard’s ghastly.”
“Oh, I can see that.”
“My brothers are ghastly, too, but they’re smaller than I am so it’s not such a terrible problem.”
“I’m sure you can handle it,” Quinn said. “Tell me, Miranda, do the O’Gormans usually camp at Paradise Falls?”
“I never heard Sally talk about any other place except that.”
“Do you know how to get there?”
“No,” Miranda said. “But it doesn’t take long, less than an hour.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Naturally. Last year when I was with them and I got homesick and scared of black bears and rattlesnakes, Mrs. O’Gorman kept telling me I was less than an hour from home.”
“Thank you, Miranda.”
“You’re welcome.”
Quinn returned to his car. He thought of asking directions at a gas station and setting out immediately for Paradise Falls. But the mid-afternoon heat was so intense that it rose in waves from the streets and sidewalks, and the whole town had a blurry look as if it had grown fuzz.
He went back to his motel room, turned the air-conditioner on full, and lay down on the bed. The more he learned of Martha O’Gorman, the less he felt he knew her. Her image, like the town shimmering in the heat, had become blurred. It had been clear enough at first: she was a woman devoted to her family and still in mourning for a beloved husband, a woman of both sense and sensitivity who dreaded the thought that the inquiry into her husband’s disappearance might be reopened. The dread was natural enough, she’d been through a bad time, harassed by gossip, rumors and publicity. They had all died down now and Quinn could understand why she was reluctant to start them up again. What bothered him was the fact that at the coroner’s inquest Martha O’Gorman had had a chance to resolve the whole case and she had refused it. If she had not claimed that she had put the dent in the rear bumper of the car by backing into a lamppost, the coroner’s jury would probably have decided that O’Gorman’s car had been forced off the road. There could be only one of two reasons behind her claim: either it was the truth, or she couldn’t afford to leave open that particular area of investigation: gentlemen of the jury, I put that dent in the bumper, you needn’t look any further. Apparently they hadn’t looked any further, and only a few skeptics like Frisby still believed Martha had lied, to save her own skin, or somebody else’s.
A dent and a few traces of dark green paint—small things in themselves, made larger in Quinn’s eyes by the contradictions in Martha’s character and behavior. She was too ill to work, yet she went on a camping trip. And the spot she chose, and, according to the girl Miranda, always chose, was not just any old campground. It was the place which, if the police and John Ronda were correct, her husband’s body had floated by. Quinn remembered John Ronda telling him about it: a few miles beyond the bridge where O’Gorman’s car went over, the Rattlesnake River joined the Torcido, which at that time was a raging torrent fed by mountain streams and melting snow.
Why did she keep returning to the same place? Quinn wondered. Did she hope to find him, after all these years, wedged between a couple of boulders? Or was she motivated by guilt? And what did she tell the kids? — Let’s all go out and look for Daddy.
The boy, Richard, had gathered driftwood and pine cones for the campfire and he was itching to light it. But his mother told him it wasn’t cool enough yet and it would be better to wait.
His mother and sister Sally were cooking supper on the charcoal grill, beans and corn on the cob and spareribs. Sometimes the ribs caught fire and Sally would put out the flames by squirting them with a plastic water pistol. She didn’t handle the pistol the way a boy would have, pretending to shoot something or someone. She was very solemn about it, using the child’s toy like an adult, for practical reasons.
Richard wandered off by himself. Some day he wanted to come to this place all alone, without two females around to spoil the illusion that he was a man and that this was a very dangerous spot and he was not in the least afraid of it. Yet he was afraid, and it was not of the place itself but of the change that came over his mother as soon as they arrived. It was a change he didn’t understand and couldn’t put his finger on. She talked and acted the same as she did at home and she smiled a lot, but her eyes often looked sad and strange, especially when she thought no one was watching her. Richard was always watching. He was too alert and intelligent to miss anything, but still too much of a child to evaluate what he noticed.