'Don't be silly.'
She rattled the doorknob. `I really have to go now.'
I stepped outside. She followed, and slammed the door hard behind me. She'd probably had a lot of practice slamming doors.
`Where's your car?' she called after me.
`I parachuted in.'
She stood and watched me until I reached the foot of the driveway. Then she went back into her house. I plodded back to the Hillmans' mailbox and turned up their private lane. The rustlings in the woods were getting louder. I thought it was a towhee scratching in the undergrowth. But it was Stella.
She appeared suddenly beside the trunk of a tree, wearing a blue ski jacket with the hood pulled up over her head and tied under her chin. She looked about twelve. She beckoned me with the dignity of a full-grown woman, ending the motion with her finger at her lips.
`I better stay out of sight. Mother will be looking for me.'
`I thought she had an appointment with the hairdresser.'
`That was just another lie,' she said crisply. `She's always lying these days.'
'Why?'
`I guess people get in the habit of it or something. Mother always used to be a very straight talker. So did Dad. But this business about Tommy has sort of thrown them. It's thrown me, too,' she added, and coughed into her hand.
`You shouldn't be out in the wet,' I said. `You're sick.'
`No, really, I mean not physically. I just don't feel like facing the kids at camp and having to answer their questions.'
'About Tommy?'
She nodded. `I don't even know where he is. Do you?'
`No, I don't.'
`Are you a policeman, or what?'
`I used to be a policeman. Now I'm a what.'
She wrinkled her nose and let out a little giggle. Then she tensed in a listening attitude, like a yearling fawn. She threw off her hood.
`Do you hear her? That's Mother calling me.'
Far off through the trees I heard a voice calling: 'Stella.'
`She'll kill me,' the girl said. `But somebody has to tell the truth some time. I know. Tommy has a tree house up the slope, I mean he used to have when he was younger. We can talk there.'
I followed her up a half-overgrown foot trail. A little redwood shack with a tar-paper roof sat on a low platform among the spreading branches of an oak. A homemade ladder, weathered gray like the tree house, slanted up to the platform. Stella climbed up first and went inside. A red-capped woodpecker flew out of an unglazed window into the next tree, where he sat and harangued us. Mrs. Carlson's voice floated up from the foot of the slope. She had a powerful voice, but it was getting hoarse.
`Swiss Family Robinson,' Stella said when I went in. She was sitting on the edge of a built-in cot which had a mattress but no blankets. `Tommy and I used to spend whole days up here, when we were children.'
At sixteen, there was nostalgia in her voice. `Of course when we reached puberty it had to stop. It wouldn't have been proper.'
`You're fond of Tommy.'
`Yes. I love him. We're going to be married. But don't get the wrong idea about us. We're not even going steady. We're not making out and we're not soldered.'
She wrinkled her nose, as if she didn't like the smell of the words. `We'll be married when the time is right, when Tommy's through college or at least has a good start. We won't have any money problems, you see.'
I thought she was using me to comfort herself a little with a story, a simple story with a happy ending. `How is that?'
`Tommy's parents have lots of money.'
`What about your parents? Will they let you marry him?'
`They won't be able to stop me.'
I believed her, if Tommy survived. She must have seen the `if cross my eyes like a shadow. She was a perceptive girl.
`Is Tommy all right?' she said in a different tone.
`I hope so.'
She reached up and plucked at my sleeve. `Where is he, Mister-?'
`I don't know, Stella. My name is Lew Archer. I'm a private detective working on Tommy's side. And you were going to tell me the truth about the accident.'
`Yes. It was my fault. Mother and Dad seem to think they have to cover up for me, but it only makes things worse for Tommy. I was the one responsible, really.'
