Mary cracked open the door and peered in.
The room was empty. The windows were blindless and raised an inch or two, and the walls were half-painted. Paint cans rested here and there around the room. Swaths of blue tarpaulin were laid out on the floor, yet there was no carpet to protect, just the bare board lying across two-by-fours.
Mary shut the door and went to the next room. She opened that door and found the same thing. A bare room, paint cans. There was no tarpaulin here, and the painting had not yet begun. Some stray paper blew around in the breeze. Mary felt her heart tugging at her again, pleading to her to get out of this, to stop it somehow.
She went to the third room. The carpet had been stored in this room, wide rolls of it that were still in their cellophane. She was just about to step inside when she heard a voice behind her: “What are you doing?”
It was Norman Collins. He was looking at her solemnly, as if he were disappointed in her.
Laughter exploded from the kitchen.
“I was just-” Mary began, but she couldn’t go on. Lying had never been easy for her. She dealt in truth, and that is what had drawn her to Dennis in the first place.
“We’re doing some work,” Norman explained. His steely eyes were still on her, probing. He smelled like the outside, like sun and breeze, like her own grandfather.
“I like the paint,” Mary managed. He nodded, still searching her with his eyes, his jaw tensing as he breathed.
He was about to say something more when Dennis appeared in the hallway. “I think it’s time that we go,” he said. Mary slipped by Norman and went to the door, and the three of them thanked the Collinses and walked down the landing steps to the Lexus. Mary could feel Norman watching her walk away, and her heart boomed with each step she took. She got in the car and exhaled loudly, sinking down in the seat beside Dennis.
“What’s wrong?” Brian asked from the back. His hand was on Mary’s shoulder, and she liked it there, liked the comfort it afforded her.
She told them about the fake rooms and Norman finding her. She hadn’t trusted his look, that curious gaze he had given her. She thought he knew something that he hadn’t told them.
“Maybe they were really doing a renovation,” Dennis said.
“Come on, Dennis,” Brian huffed. “Where do they live? That house is tiny. If all the rooms are bare, where do they sleep?”
“What is it, then?” Dennis came back. “They knew we were coming? They just happened to be there when we arrived in a…in a fake house? And are they in on this, too? Williams killed Polly-”
“Deanna,” Mary corrected him.
“-and they’re all trying to cover for him? The woman at the school. Cavendish. This Troy guy at Winchester. The fake wife. Now this old couple. How big is this thing?”
“That’s what we’ve been asking,” Brian said flatly.
“How is he doing it?” asked Dennis. “These people are forty miles apart. How is he conducting it on the fly? What, are the Collinses his relatives? Has he paid them to lie for him? Is he trying to-”
Mary had it before Dennis did. She sat up straight and asked, “Is he trying to lead us to something?”
They all thought about that for a moment. The car rolled out During and hit the chip and seal of the connecting road, and Dennis drove back toward Highway 72.
“Maybe Williams didn’t have anything to do with Deanna,” she said, “but he knows who did. Maybe the deadline…maybe it’s still applicable.”
“The deadline?” Brian asked.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “The class was going to end tomorrow. I think something is going to happen.”
“But Deanna Ward disappeared twenty years ago, Mary,” Dennis said.
“I just think…” She trailed off. Her mind was spinning. The answer was somewhere out there; the meaning of all this could be divined, if she could just concentrate hard enough, if she could just focus…
“He knows who did it,” she said.
“Why would he do that?” Brian now. “To withhold evidence like that is criminal, isn’t it? I mean, it makes Williams as culpable as anyone in this thing. In that case he’s an accomplice. If he has information, like Bethany Cavendish said, then why not just say it?”
“Puzzles,” Dennis said. His eyes were on the road, and the sunlight glinted harshly against his sunglasses.
“What?” Brian urged him on.
“He loves puzzles. You should see his study. He had these ancient puzzles from China. They’re called tangrams. You cut out these shapes, these silhouettes, and you place them in the puzzle. He had made some…weird ones.”
“What do you mean ‘weird’?” asked Brian.
“I mean some of them were lurid. Some had decapitated heads. Naked bodies. Rapes. They were disgusting. He saw me looking at them and put them away in a closet, but I had already seen enough.”
None of them said a word. The road trundled beneath them, kicking up gravel against the undercarriage. Dennis met the intersection of Highway 72 and took a right. Toward Bell City.
“So are you saying that Williams is leading us through this just because he likes puzzles?” Mary asked. “I don’t know if I buy that or not.”
“What’s the other scenario?” Dennis wanted to know. “That Williams is Deanna’s abductor? Do either of you believe that?”
Mary thought of his strength when she had pushed him that day in class. His tremendous strength. Did he abduct Deanna Ward and was he now, almost twenty years later, leading them on a wild chase to find her? Or was he intentionally leading them off base, putting up foils to their plan, placing “actors” here and there to drive them away from the truth?
Motive, she then thought. What would the motive be for playing this game?
“Well,” Dennis said, “I don’t believe it. I think what Mary said earlier was right: Williams knows who took Deanna Ward. This is all part of his game.”
“Aren’t games supposed to be fun?” asked Brian, his voice determined and lacing. “There’s nothing fun about a missing girl.”
“I’m telling you,” Dennis said, “Williams didn’t do this. I spoke to him. I know if someone is telling the truth, and he was genuine when he said that Polly was a logic puzzle and nothing more. This other thing, Deanna-I don’t know what that is, but I can assure you that Williams is trying to tell us something. Maybe he can’t say it the way he wants to say it. Maybe there’s someone who knows the truth, and Williams is trying to tell us what he knows without alerting this other person.”
Mary thought of the deadline again. She thought of Deanna Ward, and if this could possibly be about her. In a way, it made perfect sense. No wonder Williams’s logic game had been so easy: he was just preparing them for the real test.