Howard did what he could, brought her two tranquilizer pills and poured her some ice water from the pitcher in the refrigerator. She choked on the pills and the water spilled down the front of her old wool bathrobe. Its coldness was stinging and shocking against the warm skin between her breasts. She let out a gasp and clutched the bathrobe tightly around her neck. Her eyes were resentful but they were no longer wild or weeping.
“So the police are looking for me,” Howard said. “Why?”
“They’re questioning everyone, friends, neighbors, anyone who knew — who knows her. They said in cases like this it’s often a relative or a trusted friend of the family.”
“Cases like what?”
She didn’t answer.
“When did she disappear, Virginia?”
“Between ten and eleven. Ellen tucked her in bed at ten o’clock, then she took a sleeping capsule and went to bed herself. Dave was out looking for you. Ellen said she’d locked the back door but when Dave came back it was unlocked. He checked Jessie’s bedroom to see if she was sleeping. She was gone. He searched the house, calling for her, then he woke Ellen up. They came here to our house. We looked all over but we couldn’t find Jessie. I called the police and Dave set out for Mary Martha’s house, using the path along the creek that the girls always took.”
“Kids have run away before.”
“The only clothes missing are the pajamas she was wearing, a bathrobe and a pair of slippers. Besides, she had no motive and no money.”
“She had the twenty dollars I gave her the other night.”
“Why, of course.” Virginia’s face came alive with sudden hope. “Why, that would seem like a fortune to Jessie. We’ve got to tell—”
“We tell no one, Virginia.”
“But we must. It might throw a whole new light on everything.”
“Including me,” Howard said sharply. “The police will ask me why I gave the kid twenty dollars. I’ll tell them because I was sore at you and wanted to get back at you. But will they believe it?”
“It’s the truth.”
“It might not strike them that way.”
She didn’t seem to understand what he was talking about. When he spelled it out for her, she looked appalled. “They couldn’t possibly think anything like that about you, Howard.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a respectable married man.”
“Coraznada State Hospital is full of so-called respectable married men.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his neck. “Did the police question you?”
“Yes. A Lieutenant Gallantyne did most of the talking. I don’t like him. Even when I was telling the truth he made me feel that I was lying. There was another man with him, a Mr. MacPherson. Every once in a while they’d put their heads together and whisper. It made me nervous.”
“Who’s MacPherson?”
“Dave said he’s a lawyer.”
“Whose lawyer?”
“Mrs. Oakley’s.”
“How did Mrs. Oakley get into this?”
“I don’t know. Stop bullying me, I can’t stand it.”
She seemed on the verge of breaking up again. Howard got up, put some water and coffee in the percolator and plugged it in. After a time he said, “I’m not trying to bully you, Virginia. I simply want to find out what you told the police about last night so I can corroborate it. It wouldn’t be so good — for either of us — if we contradicted each other.”
She was looking at him, her eyes cold under their blistered lids. “You don’t care that Jessie has disappeared, do you? All you care about is saving your own skin.”
“And yours.”
“Don’t worry about mine. Everybody knows how I love the child.”
“That’s not quite accurate, Virginia,” he said quietly. “Everybody knows that you love her, but not how you love her.”
The coffee had begun to percolate, bubbling merrily in the cheerless room. Virginia turned and looked at the percolator as if she hoped it would do something unexpected and interesting like explode.
She said, “Where did you go after you left the Brants’ last night?”
“To a liquor store and then down to the beach. I ended up at a motel.”
“You were alone, of course?”
“Yes, I was alone.”
“What motel?”
“I don’t remember, I wasn’t paying much attention. But I could find it again if I had to.”
“Ellen told the police,” she said, turning to face him, “that you were jealous of my relationship with Jessie.”
“That was neighborly of her.”
“She had to tell the truth. Under the circumstances you could hardly expect her to lie to spare your feelings.”
“It’s not my feelings I’m worried about. It is, as you pointed out, my skin. What else was said about last night?”
“Everything that happened, how we quarreled, and the funny way you talked to Jessie as if you were half-drunk when you only had two beers; how you tore off in the car and Dave tried to find you and couldn’t.”
“I didn’t realize what loyal friends I had. It moves me,” he added dryly. “It may move me right into a cell. Or was that the real objective?”
“You don’t understand. We were forced to tell the whole truth, all of us. A child’s life might be at stake. Gallantyne said every little detail could be vitally important. He made us go over and over it. I couldn’t have lied to protect you even if I’d wanted to.”
“And the implication is, you didn’t particularly want to?”
She was staring at him in incredulity, her mouth partly open. “It still hasn’t come through to you yet, has it? A child is missing, a nine-year-old girl has disappeared. She may be dead, and you don’t seem to care. Don’t you feel anything?”
“Yes. I feel somebody’s trying to make me the goat.”
Between four and seven in the morning Ellen Brant slept fitfully on the living-room couch beside the telephone. She’d dreamed half a dozen times that the phone was ringing and had wakened up to find herself reaching for it. She finally got up, washed her face and ran a comb through her hair, and put on a heavy wool coat over her jeans and T-shirt. Then she went into the bedroom to see if Dave was awake and could hear the telephone if it rang.
He was lying on his back, peering up at the ceiling. He turned and looked at her, the question in his eyes dying before it had a chance to be born. “There’s been no news, of course.”
“No. I’m going over to the Oakleys’. I want to ask Mary Martha some questions.”
“The lieutenant will do that.”
“She might talk to me more easily. She and her mother freeze up in front of strangers.”
“What’s it like outside?”
“Cold and foggy.”
She knew he was thinking the same thing she was, that somewhere in that cold fog Jessie might be wandering, wearing only her cotton pajamas and light bathrobe. Biting her underlip hard to keep from breaking into tears again, she went out to the garage and got into the old Dodge station wagon. The floorboard of the front seat was covered with sand from yesterday’s trip to the beach. It seemed to have happened a long time ago and in a different city, where the sun had been shining and the surf was gentle and the sand soft and warm. She had a feeling that she would never see that city again.
She backed out of the driveway, tears streaming down her face, warm where they touched her cheeks, already cold when they reached the sides of her neck. She brushed them angrily away with the sleeve of her coat. She couldn’t afford to cry in front of Mary Martha, it might frighten her into silence, or worse still, into lying. She had seen Mary Martha many times after an emotional scene at home. The effect on her was always the same — blank eyes, expressionless voice: no, nothing was the matter, nothing had happened.