“Why not?”
“She might cry, and crying gives her a headache.”
“We mustn’t let that happen, must we?”
“No, sir.” Mary Martha executed another of her stiff little curtsies, picked up the cat and departed.
“She’s a funny kid,” Gallantyne said. “Is she always like that?”
“With adults. I’ve never seen her in the company of other children.”
“That’s odd. I understand you’re the old family friend.”
“I’m the old family friend when things go wrong,” Mac said dryly. “When things are going right, I think I must be the old family enemy.”
“Exactly why did you invite yourself to come with me this morning, Mac?”
“Oh, let’s just say I’m curious.”
“Let’s not.”
“All right. The truth is that Kate Oakley’s a very difficult and very vulnerable woman. Because she is difficult, she can’t ask for or accept help the way an ordinary vulnerable person might. So I’m here to lend her moral support. I may criticize her and give her hell occasionally but she knows I’m fond of her.”
“How fond?”
“She’s twenty years younger than I am. Does that answer your question?”
“Not quite.”
“Then I’ll lay it on the line. There’s no secret romance going on between Kate Oakley and myself. I was her father’s lawyer when he was alive, and when he died I handled his estate, or rather the lack of it. I am officially Mary Martha’s godfather, and unofficially I’m probably Kate’s, too. That’s the whole story.”
“The story hasn’t ended yet,” Gallantyne said carefully. “Surely you’re not naïve enough to believe we can write our own endings in this world.”
“We can do a little editing.”
“Don’t kid yourself.”
Mac wanted to argue with him but he heard Kate’s footsteps in the hall. He wondered what her reaction would have been to Gallantyne’s insinuations: shock, displeasure, perhaps even amusement. He could never tell what she was actually thinking. When she was at her gayest, he could feel the sadness in her, and when she was in despair he sensed that it, too, was not real. Everything about her seemed to be hidden, as if at a certain period in her life she had decided to go underground where she would be safe.
He thought about the wild creatures in the canyon behind his house. The foxes, the raccoons, the possums, the chipmunks, they could all be lured out of their winter refuge by the promise of food and the warmth of a spring sun. There was no spring sun for Kate, no hunger that could be satisfied by food. He watched her as she came in, thinking, what do you want, Kate? Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you if I can.
She hesitated in the doorway, looking as though she were trying to decide how to act.
Before she had a chance to decide, Gallantyne spoke to her in a quiet, confident manner, “Please sit down, Mrs. Oakley. We’re hoping you’ll be able to help us.”
“I hope so, too. I was — I’m very fond of Jessie. If anything’s happened to her, it will be a terrible blow to Mary Martha. Do you suppose it could have been a kidnaping?”
“There’s no evidence of it. The Brants are barely getting by financially, and they’ve received no ransom demand. We’re pretty well convinced that Jessie walked out of the house voluntarily.”
“How can you know that for sure?”
“There were no signs of a struggle in Jessie’s bedroom, the Arlington’s dog didn’t bark as he certainly would have if he’d heard a stranger, and the back door was unlocked. It’s one of the new kinds of lock built into the knob — push the knob and it locks, pull and it unlocks. We think Jessie unlocked the door, accidentally or on purpose, when she went out. I’m inclined to believe that she unlocked it deliberately with the intention of returning to the house. Someone, or something, interfered with that intention.”
He paused to light a cigarette, cupping his hands around the match as though he were outside on a windy day. “We’ll assume, then, that she left the house under her own power and for a reason we don’t know yet. The two likeliest places she might have gone are the Arlingtons’ next door, or this house. Mrs. Arlington claims she didn’t see her and you claim you didn’t.”
“Of course I didn’t,” she said stiffly. “I would have phoned her mother immediately.”
“What I want you to consider now is the possibility that she might somehow have gotten into the house without your seeing her, that she might have hidden some place and fallen asleep.”
“There’s no such possibility.”
“You seem very sure.”
“I am. This house is Sheridan-proof. My ex-husband acquired the cunning habit of breaking in during my absences and helping himself to whatever he fancied — liquor, furniture, silver, and more liquor. I had a special lock put on every door and window. When I go out or retire for the night, I check them all. It would be as much as my life is worth to miss any of them.”
“Jessie knew about these locks, of course?”
“Yes. She asked me about them. It puzzled her that a house should have to be secured against a husband and father... No, Lieutenant, Jessie could never have entered this house without my letting her in.”
That leaves the Arlingtons, he thought, or someone on the street between here and the Arlingtons’ house. “Would you call Jessie a shy child, Mrs. Oakley?”
“No. She has — had quite a free and easy manner with people.”
“Does that include strangers?”
“It included everyone.”
“Have you had any strangers hanging around here recently?”
She gave Mac a quick, questioning look. He responded with a nod that indicated he’d already told Gallantyne about the man in the green coupé.
“Yes,” she said, “but I never connected him with Jessie or Mary Martha.”
“Do you now?”
“I don’t know. It seems odd that he’d show himself so openly if he were planning anything against Jessie or Mary Martha.”
“Perhaps he wasn’t actually planning anything, he was merely waiting. And when Jessie walked out of that house by herself, she provided what he was waiting for, an opportunity.”
A spot of color, dime-sized, appeared suddenly on her throat and began expanding, up to her ear tips, down into the neckline of her dress. The full realization of Jessie’s fate seemed to be spreading throughout her system like poison dye. “It could just as easily have been Mary Martha instead of Jessie. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Think about it.”
“I won’t. It’s unthinkable. Mary Martha wouldn’t leave the house without my permission, and she’d certainly never enter the car of a strange man.”
“Some pretty powerful inducements can be offered a child her age who’s lonely and has affection going to waste. A puppy, for instance, or a kitten—”
“No, no!” But even the sound of her own voice shouting denials could not convince her. She knew the lieutenant was right. She knew that Mary Martha had left the house without permission just a few nights before. She’d run over to Jessie’s using the short cut across the creek. Suppose she’d gone out the front, the way she often did. The man had been parked across the street at that very moment. “No, no,” she repeated. “I’ve taught Mary Martha what it took me years of torment to learn, that you can’t trust men, you can’t believe them. They’re liars, cheats, bullies. Mary Martha already knows that. She won’t have to find it out the hard way as I did, as Jessie—”
“Be quiet, Kate,” Mac said in a warning tone. “The lieutenant is too busy to listen to your theories this morning.”
She didn’t even glance in his direction. “Poor Jessie, poor misguided child with all her prattle about her wonderful father. She believed it, and that fool mother of hers actually encouraged her to believe it even though she must have been aware what was going on.”