Beware the Young Stranger (12 page)

Then he swung around and dropped to the porch floor. Nancy was at the sink when he ran into the kitchen.

“We're leaving,” he said curtly.

“I haven't dried the dishes.”

“Never mind the damn dishes. We've got to get out of here! A car's coming around the lake.”

She stood planted at the sink as if she were paralyzed.

He crossed the kitchen and grabbed her arm. “Don't you understand? We came back here because I figured they wouldn't expect us to take cover in the same place twice. But it hasn't worked out. Could be the police coming. Or your father. Somehow, he digs the way my mind works.”

“Keith, it's no good.”

“So what?” he cried. “It's never been any good. But we have to keep trying. Come on. Let's go!”

She arched away from him, looking at him with pity and fright. Resentment boiled up in him.

“I should have taken you last night!”

The words brought no lessening of his pain, merely the turning of the invisible knife inside.

“It isn't me you're striking at, Keith. You don't mean that.”

“I said it, didn't I?” He started to pull her with him. “I don't want to be alone, Nancy. Not now. You'd better hope we get out before your father walks in here.”

“All right,” she said quietly. “You can let go of me. I won't run away.”

He chose the back door. The yard was on a grand scale, with redwood patio furnishings and a barbecue pit. They ran to the stone retaining wall. He jumped up on it, reached for her hand, hauled her up beside him.

“This way!”

They fled across the narrow stretch of open hillside to the cover of the woodland. The shade of the trees fell over them, soft and cool. Against the quiet of the lake and the woods the growl of the approaching car came to them distinctly.

Keith loping ahead, they moved through the trees for about two hundred yards. Nancy was breathing heavily.

“Okay,” he said. “We'll rest a minute.”

She sank to a patch of moss beneath an oak tree, folded her arms about her knees. Her head drooped.

Keith said, head cocked, “The car's stopped.” That brittle clarity struck him again. He thought of the dishes she had left stacked on the sink drain, the cigarette he had crushed out on the spotless floor, the rumpled bed where Nancy had slept. He felt for the short-barrelled revolver hidden beneath his shirt.

“I wish I knew for sure,” he muttered, “who's in that car.”

She raised her face. “You said dad …”

“A guess. But I can't take chances on a wrong guess.”

Tears came to her eyes. She made a gesture, as if to reach for his hand. Then her hand fell to her side, on the moss.

He was looking in the direction of the cottage.

“Could be Aunt Ivy, or her husband. Even Mildred Morgan, the housekeeper, up to ready the cottage so the town house can be closed for a while after the funeral.” Murmuring his thoughts aloud was no help. He was unable to evaluate the risk of returning quickly to the cottage and trying to make off with the car.

“We'll wait,” he said finally. “It's safer. Get up.”

Nancy got to her feet. They worked their way along the spacious curve of the hill, the lake to their left, visible occasionally through breaks in the foliage.

When they had reached a position beyond and around the end of the lake, Keith veered their course downward. After several minutes of walking, they came in view of a house.

The place was smaller and less elaborate than the Ferguson lodge. It was a squat, stout log structure, the woods growing close at the rear, the lakeside road passing to the front of it.

Keith helped Nancy down an embankment. He had already noticed the lack of tire marks in the dirt driveway and the unflattened bunched leaves and pine needles which had drifted onto the back porch.

He inspected the hasp and padlock securing the back door. Nancy watched stolidly, leaning against the porch rail. He slipped the gun from his shirt, inserted the tip of the barrel in the hasp, and snapped the lock. He flipped the flange back and turned the knob. The door opened with a rusty sound. A smell of must flowed out.

“Lots more of the niceties than when the Indians were prowling,” Keith said mirthlessly. “But we don't use them. Catch? The place is deserted. We keep it looking that way.”

He motioned Nancy inside. When she was in, he shut the door.

At the same instant, Ivy Ferguson Conway was rattling her key in the front door of the Ferguson lodge, not noticing that a key was really not needed.

The bulky shopping bag in her arms made her entry an awkward one, and she reached with a spike heel to nudge the door shut. She went down the paneled hallway and fumbled under her burden to open the door to the furthermost bedroom.

She set the shopping bag carefully on a bureau. Then she kicked off her shoes, unbelted her expensive polished cotton dress and, consulting the mirror, fluffed her short brown hair with a touch of her fingers.

She saw a trim, girlish woman with rather empty eyes and a haughty expression. She made a face at herself.

She picked up the bulky bag and carried it to the bed. Here she sat down, setting the bag on the floor.

The deserted silence of the cottage caught at her. That Keith … They said he had taken refuge here after Dorcas … after what happened to Dorcas. If somebody had walked in on a boy like him …

Ivy shivered and made an effort to put such ghastly thoughts out of her mind. She stopped and opened the shopping bag. It held a half dozen fifths of Scotch. She babied the first bottle from the bag and opened it.

She held her breath during the first long swallow. Gagging, eyes watering, she placed the uncorked bottle on the nightstand and stretched full length on the bed.

The rebellion in her belly was gradually quelled by the scotch. A wry smile lifted her lips. Why was the first drink always so damn difficult?

She reached toward the nightstand—toward temporary oblivion.

15.

Vallancourt returned to his home from police headquarters in mid-morning. Ralph Hibbs was waiting in his study.

“I heard a newscast,” Hibbs said. “The search is now state-wide.”

“The police think Keith got hold of a car and slipped through. An incident downstate caused the waste of several hours.”

“What incident?”

“A man was found badly beaten, unconscious, near some dive of a bar early this morning. He was lying in a ditch at the rear of the parking lot and it looked as if he had been there for some time. While he had a driver's license and auto registration, he had no keys. Looked promising, but turned out a dud—some sordid business involving two men, a prostitute one of them had picked up, and a drinking bout. The man talked readily enough when they finally brought him around.”

“Nancy may phone you, John.”

“I'm hoping so, but I'm not counting on it. There are a number of reasons why she may not.” Reasons he did not care to think about. For the byways of hindsight, Vallancourt thought, are the hiding places for anxiety, and anxiety saps a man. God knows, he thought, I need everything I've got.

“Have you heard from Howard this morning?” Hibbs asked.

“Early. He came by police headquarters. He was on his way to discuss arrangements with the mortician.”

“Later, he called me. Looking for Ivy. Seems he got back home and found her gone.”

Vallancourt offered cigarettes from the carved box on his desk. “You've known the Ferguson women a long time, haven't you, Ralph?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Dorcas trusted you. I've always had the impression.” Vallancourt struck a match, “that you were more than just her business associate.”

“We all need a father-confessor at times,” Hibbs smiled sadly. “Even Dorcas.”

“Strange that she never married. I wonder why. Dorcas was made for a husband and children.”

“The one man she might have married was killed years ago when his hydroplane flipped during a Miami regatta.”

“I didn't know that,” Vallancourt said thoughtfully.

“She rarely referred to it. I don't know the whole story; never pressed her for it—picked it up by bits. I do know that afterward she went away for a long time to try to forget.”

Idly, Hibbs spun the world globe that stood near the vast desk. He watched continents and oceans spin by under his fingers. “She was a rare woman, John.”

“All people are rare to you, Ralph.”

Hibbs looked up slowly. “I suppose they are. Even characters like Sam Rollins.” He made a queerly appealing gesture. “I know how people feel about me. They see a bumbling, naive sort of slob—good old Ralphie. I don't really mind. I can't help the way I feel about people, and it doesn't cost me anything. In fact, if you believe the best of people, you get the best out of them more times than not.”

“How long ago did that hydroplane accident happen to the man Dorcas was in love with, Ralph?” Vallancourt asked slowly.

“I'm not sure.”

“Twenty-two, three years ago?”

“Just about,” Hibbs said with an odd hiss.

“Keith's age,” Vallancourt said.

The other man stopped the spinning globe with a sudden slap. “So you suspect, too,” he said softly.

“I'm reasonably certain Sam Rollins isn't Keith's father. Sam's always known it. So he's hated the boy, refused to assume any measure of responsibility. But he never broke the relationship, because Keith is his meal ticket.

“If it had been Sam's wife, Maggie, who had borne a child by another man, Dorcas could have taken care of her sister and nephew and cut out a brute like Sam Rollins. But she didn't. It adds up, Ralph.”

Hibbs was pale about the lips. He said nothing.

“I'm speaking of a good woman who was young and full of life and loved a man. It happens every day, Ralph. Dorcas was carrying his child, and they intended to marry—I don't believe she would have given herself to any other kind of man. But he was killed, and she was building an outstanding business career. She was afraid of scandal and disgrace. And she was human.”

Hibbs stirred. “So you figure that, rather than give the child to strangers, she turned him over to her sister and brother-in-law.” He looked unhappy.

“It would explain several things,” Vallancourt nodded. “The strong physical resemblance between Keith and Dorcas. Same hair, same eyes, same quick intelligence and fighting spirit, which in the boy has been battered and misdirected.

“It would explain Dorcas's undiscourageable interest in Keith, her providing for him indirectly all these years, even bringing him here after the Florida rape-murder thing. It would explain Sam Rollins's following Keith here. It would explain Sam's inside track even after the boy came of age and Maggie died. Need I go on?”

“No,” Hibbs said. “I thought I was alone in suspecting. My case was built on watching Dorcas with him, her eyes, her expressions, little things she said about Keith, the way she said them.”

“You were never sure?”

“I didn't think it my business to try to confirm my suspicions.” Hibbs wiped his face with a damp handkerchief. “I don't think Keith suspects at all. Sam Rollins was too solidly real in Keith's life for the boy to dream he was another man's son.”

“So what we have done,” Vallancourt said, “is reduce this affair to matricide.”

Hibbs shuddered. “What a ghastly word!”

“It's in every dime-store dictionary, I'm afraid, Ralph.”

“But John, the boy didn't know! Anyway, how sure are we that he's guilty?”

“Not sure at all,” Vallancourt said. “But that's damn little comfort. The fact is, guilty or innocent Keith is on the run, with the whole world chasing him. With his temperament, that could make him try to bring everything down with him.”

“I know,” Hibbs said miserably. “That's what I'm most afraid of, John. It keeps haunting me.”

“And time is working against us,” Vallancourt said. “If he did get hold of a car, he's probably out of reach. If not, we have a chance. He may have returned to the lake cottage.”

“We knew he was there earlier. We almost caught him. It's the last place he'd choose.”

“Which would make him think of it as the first,” Vallancourt said.

When they reached the lodge, Vallancourt recognized the two cars in the driveway.

Ralph did also. “Howard's and Ivy's,” he said. “So Howard's run her down.” He seemed depressed.

They approached the cottage slowly. Howard Conway had come out on the porch and was waiting, gray and tired. His eyes, however, reflected annoyance.

“She's in there drunk.” Conway's heavy lips pulled themselves into a mockery of a smile. “Family skeleton, boys, secret of the country club queen. Once in a great while, when the accumulated pressures of living get too heavy for her, Ivy goes for the bottle. She'll be fine in a day or so. She always is.”

“It isn't news to me,” Hibbs said gently. “But I've never found it worth talking about.”

“Good old Ralph,” Conway said grimly.

“We were playing a long shot,” Vallancourt said, “coming out here.”

“Keith and Nancy?”

“Any sign of them having returned here?”

“Someone has been here.”

“Are you sure?”

“There are used dishes and a rumpled bed in the first bedroom off the hallway. Butts in an ashtray near the living-room couch. I started noticing after I'd found Ivy and calmed down.”

“Only the one bed mussed up?” Vallancourt asked with an effort.

“I think he spent the night on the living-room couch, John. They both smoked a lot. The butts in the bedroom ashtray show lipstick smudges. Those near the couch don't.”

Vallancourt gave silent thanks. For the first time he began to realize that he was an old-fashioned father. If they had gone to bed together, did it really matter? All other factors excluded, they were in love with each other—or had been.