Deep Water (31 page)

       "Yes," she said, hanging her head like a guilty schoolgirl for a moment, then jerking it up again.

       "How long ago did you decide to marry him?" the detective asked.

       "Just a few days ago," Vic volunteered.

       The detective looked at Vic sharply. "I guess you didn't like Cameron."

       "I did not," Vic said.

       "Cameron, you know, disappeared some time before one o'clock yesterday. He had a lunch appointment he didn't keep," Havermal said.

       "No, I didn't know," Vic said, as if he didn't care either. "Yeah. He did."

       Vic took a cigarette from a pack on his desk. "Well, he was a very strange fellow," he remarked, deliberately using the past tense. "Always trying to be friendly, always trying to keep on the good side of me, God knows why. Isn't that true, Melinda?" he asked ingenuously.

       She was scowling at him. "You had time to—to do something to him between eleven-fifteen and twelve."

       "On Commerce Street in the middle of Wesley?" Vic asked. "You had time to go somewhere else. Nobody saw you drop him back at his car," she said.

       "How do you know? Have you asked everybody in Wesley?" Vic continued to the detective, "I couldn't do anything to Cameron that he didn't want me to do. He was twice as big as I am."

       The detective was keeping a thoughtful silence.

       "He gave me the impression of being scared yesterday," Vic said, "perhaps scared of what he'd started with my wife. I think he may have run out on the whole thing."

       "You didn't maybe tell him to run out, Mr. Van Allen?" asked Havermal.

       "No, indeed. I didn't even mention my wife."

       "Tony doesn't scare, anyway," Melinda said proudly.

       Havermal still looked astounded. "Did you see Cameron at any time again yesterday?"

       "No," Vic said. "I spent the afternoon here."

       "How did you hurt your head?" Havermal asked unsympathetically.

       "Oh, I bumped it on a cabinet in the kitchen." Vic looked at Melinda and smiled a little.

       "Oh." He stared at Vic for a minute with professional inscrutability. The narrow gash of his mouth might have been or smirking, or expressing contempt. One couldn't tell. "Okay, Mr. Van Allen. I guess that's all for the moment. I'll be back again."

       "Any time." Vic walked with the detective and Melinda to the door.

       No doubt the detective was off to ask Melinda some questions about her relationship with Cameron. It would certainly put a different light on the story. Vic sighed and smiled, wondering what would happen next.

       There was a small photograph of Cameron—square-faced, unsmiling, a little startled-looking, suggesting his expression just before he had gone over the edge of the quarry—in the evening edition of the 'New Wesleyan'. It was captioned "Have You Seen This Man?" "Friends" of Cameron had reported his disappearance late the previous evening. His company, Pugliese-Markum Contractors, Inc., of New York, was making a thorough search for him and had sent an investigator to Wesley. "It is feared, in view of the physical nature of his work, that some accident may have befallen him," he paper ventured.

       Horace called Vic a little after seven and asked him if he knew where Cameron might be or what might have happened to him. Vic said that he didn't and after that Horace did not seem much interested in the story. He asked Vic if he and Melinda could come over for dinner, because a friend of theirs who was in Maine had just sent a barrel of lobsters packed in ice. Vic declined with thanks, and said that dinner was already under way at the house. Vic had got the dinner under way, but Melinda was not at home. He supposed she was with the detective or the Wilsons and might not call or be back at all.

       Less than an hour later, as Vic and Trixie were finishing their meal together, a car drove up outside. It was Horace, angry. Vic knew what had happened.

       "Can we go in your room, Vic? Or somewhere? I don't want—" He glanced at Trixie.

       Vic went over to Trixie, put his arm around her, and kissed her cheek. "Would you excuse me, Trix? Got some business to talk over. Drink your milk, and if you have any more of that cake, make it a small piece. Understand?"

       They crossed the garage and went into Vic's room. Vic offered Horace his one comfortable chair, but Horace did not want to sit down. Vic sat on his bed.

       "We've just had a visit from the detective—as you've probably guessed," Horace said.

       "Oh. Was Melinda with him?"

       "No. She spared us that. Well, she's accusing you again!" Horace burst out. "I came very near throwing Mr. Havermeyer, or whoever he is, out of the house. I did throw him out finally, but not before I'd said a few things to him. And so did Mary"

       "His name's Havermal. It's not his fault. It's just his job."

       "Oh, no. This fellow's the kind who'd inspire anybody to punch his nose. Of course, it doesn't help to have him sitting in your living room asking you if you don't think your best friend could have got angry enough to kill somebody. Or at least shanghai him out of town. I told him Vic Van Allen wouldn't have bothered. I said perhaps Mr. Cameron saw a blond he thought he'd like better than Melinda and went off with her to another town!"

       Vic smiled.

       "What's this about you being the last person who saw him?" "I don't know. Was I? I saw him at about eleven-thirty yesterday."

       Horace shrugged his narrow shoulders. "They can't seem to find anybody who saw him after twelve. And to think, Vic, I had listen to that juvenile business about Melinda getting a divorce order to marry him! I told Havermal he'd better not spread that around. I told him I knew Melinda as well as I knew you—almost—and I know she makes wild threats when she gets angry."

       "I'm not sure it was just a threat, Horace. Melinda seemed pretty set on a divorce a few days ago."

       "'What'? Well, the fact remains, she didn't start one. I know because I asked. I asked Havermal what he'd found to substantiate die divorce idea. He hadn't found anything."

       Vic kept silent.

       Finally, Horace sat down. "Well, Vic just what happened when you picked up Cameron and drove him around?"

       Vic felt his eyes widen in a protective stare. "Nothing. Melinda wasn't mentioned. He was making conversation. It was the first time I'd seen him act a little unsure of himself. You see, Horace," Vic continued, pushing his luck with Horace just as he had pushed it with Havermal, "that's what makes me think Melinda was telling ne the truth when she said she was going to get a divorce. Matter of fact, she was supposed to start the divorce yesterday. She may not have had an appointment with a lawyer, but she was going to 'start' it yesterday, she told me. Then she mentioned Cameron's having two tickets for Mexico City, and she was going with him. No wonder Cameron wasn't comfortable with me. He didn't have to get in my car, of course, but you know the way he is. He acts first and thinks later, if at all. It crossed my mind that he might have had a date with Melinda at some lawyer's office yesterday afternoon. He'd be just crass enough to go up there and sit with her while they got the papers started."

       Horace shook his head in disgust.

       "But, as I said to the roving detective, Cameron might also have run out on the whole thing. He'd have to run out on his job, too. At least on this assignment. He couldn't have faced Melinda in Little Wesley after running out."

       "No. I see what you mean," Horace said thoughtfully. "That's probably just what he's done."

       Vic got up and opened a cabinet in the bottom of his desk. "I think you could use a drink, couldn't you?" He always knew when Horace could use a drink. "I'll go over and get some ice."

       "No, thanks. No ice for me. I'll take this for medicinal purposes—and it always seems more medicinal without ice."

       Vic got a glass from the top of his desk, washed it in his tiny bathroom, and took his own tooth glass for himself. He poured three fingers for each of them. Horace sipped his appreciatively.

       "I need this," Horace said. "I seem to take these things harder than you do."

       "You seem to," Vic said, smiling.

       "And you're in for another. It's like after the De Lisle business."

       "A big year for the detective agencies," Vic said, and saw Horace look at him. Horace had still not asked him outright if Carpenter had been a detective.

       "It's funny that Cameron's company doesn't look for him in New York, or Miami, or wherever a fellow like Cameron would go," Horace said. "Or Mexico City. Well—maybe they are looking." Vic deliberately changed the subject, slightly, by talking about the likelihood of finding a man who had chosen, say, to go to Australia to hide himself. The chances would be practically nil that he would be found, if he could get round the immigration authorities and enter Australia. They went on into the subject of individual blood chemistry. Horace said they could now identify an individual from a bit of his dried blood found on something perhaps months after his disappearance. Vic had also heard about that.

       "But suppose you haven't the person?" Vic asked, and Horace laughed.

       Vic thought of Cameron's blood on the white rocks of the quarry, and of Cameron some forty feet below in the water. If they found the blood, they would logically look for the body in the water, but perhaps there would be no blood left in the body, and no skin left on the fingertips. But Cameron might be identifiable. Vic wished he could go and take another look at the blood spots, do what he could to obliterate them, but he didn't dare go to the quarry for fear he might be seen. It seemed the only careless, stupid thing he had ever done in his life—to leave a trace where he had not wanted to leave a trace, to have failed to do properly something of such importance.

       By the time Horace got up to leave he was laughing. But it was not quite like Horace's usual laughter. He said with an effort at cheerfulness, "Well, we've weathered a lot, haven't we, Vic? They'll find Cameron somewhere. The police must have been alerted in all the big towns. They always are."

       Vic thanked him for his visit, and then he was gone. Vic stood in the garage, listening to his car going into the distance and thinking that Horace had not asked him where Melinda was or when she was coming back, knowing that Vic probably wouldn't have known and that questions would have embarrassed him. Vic went over to his snail aquaria.

       Hortense and Edgar were making love, Edgar reaching down from a little rock to kiss Hortense on the mouth. Hortense was reared on the end of her foot, swaying a little under his caress like a slow dancer enchanted by music. Vic watched for perhaps five minutes, thinking of absolutely nothing, not even of the snails, until he saw the cup-shaped excrescences start to appear on the right side of both the snails' heads. How they did adore each other, and how perfect they were together! The glutinous cups grew larger and touched, rim to rim. Their mouths drew apart.

       Vic looked at his watch. Five minutes to ten. It struck him as a strangely depressing time of the evening. The house was utterly silent. He wondered if Trixie was asleep? He cleared his throat and the small, rational sound was as noisy as a foot over gravel.

       The snails made no sound. Hortense was shooting her dart first. She missed. Or was that part of the game? After a few moments, Edgar tried, missed, drew back and struck again, hitting the right spot so that the dart went in, which inspired Hortense to try again, too. She had a harder time, aiming upward, but she made it after three deliberate and patient tries. Then as if shocked into a profounder trance, their heads went back a little, their tentacles drew almost in, and Vic knew that if they had had lidded eyes they would have been closed. The snails were motionless now. He stared at them until he saw the first signs that the rims of their cups were going to separate. Then he walked up and down the garage floor for a minute, suffering an unaccustomed sense of restlessness. His mind turned to Melinda, and he went to the snails again to keep himself from thinking of her.

       A quarter to eleven. Was she at the Wilsons'? Were all the jaws working at once? Was the detective there, or would he have gone to bed after his hard day? Would anyone possibly think of the quarry?

       Vic bent over the snails, looking at them now through a hand magnifying lens. They were connected only by the two darts. They would stay like this for at least another hour, he knew Tonight he hadn't their patience. He went into his room to read.

Chapter 24

Hortense spent twenty-four hours laying her eggs about five days later, and Detective Havermal was still prowling the community, doing a far more thorough and out-in-the-open job than Carpenter had done on the De Lisle case. Havermal visited the Cowans, the MacPhersons, the Stephen Hineses, the Petersons, old Carlyle, Hansen the grocer, Ed Clarke the hardware store proprietor (Vic was highly respected at Clarke's Hardware and probably spent more money there than any other of Ed's customers), Sam at the Lord Chesterfield bar, Wrigley the newsdealer who delivered papers to the Van Aliens, and Pete Lazzari and George Anderson, the two garbagemen who collected from the printing plant and the Van Allen house, respectively. Havermal visited them with his purpose more or less obvious, Vic gathered—to make Vic responsible for Cameron's disappearance—and he asked direct questions. The general attitude of the interrogated, Vic learned, was one of extreme caution in making any statements to Havermal arid also one of resentment. It was unfortunate for Havermal that his personality was so antagonizing. Even the garbage collectors, simple men, grasped the import of Havermal's insinuations, and reacted negatively.

       Said Pete Lazzari to Vic, "I ain't interested in what Mrs. Van Allen does, I sez. I know she drinks some, that's all. You're tryin' to nail a guy for murder. 'That's' pretty interestin'. I known Mr. Van Allen six years, I sez, and you won't find a nicer guy in town. I beard of punks like you, I sez to him. You know where you belong? I sez. On my truck along with the rest of the muck!" Pete I Lazzari was all torso and no legs, and could toss loaded ashcans of garbage twelve feet into the air over the rim of his truck like nothing.