Vic nodded, feeling sick at the picture it made.
Masen seemed irritated with Bannerman, perhaps because he hadn't thought of the possibility himself. 'I repeat: to what purpose?'
Bannerman shook his head. Vic himself couldn't think of a single reason why Kemp would want Donna's car.
Masen lit a Pall Mall, coughed, and looked around for an ashtray.
'I'm sorry,' Vic said, again feeling Iike an actor, someone outside himself, saying lines that had been written for him. 'The two ashtrays in here were broken. I'll get you one from the kitchen.'
Masen walked out with him, took an ashtray, and said, 'Let's go out on the steps, do you mind? It's going to be a bitch of a hot day. I like to enjoy them while they're still civilized during July.'
'Okay,' Vic said listlessly.
He glanced at the thermometer-barometer screwed to the side of the house as they went out ... a gift from Donna last Christmas. The temperature already stood at 73. The needle of the barometer was planted squarely in the quadrant marked FAIR.
'Let's pursue this a little further,' Masen said. 'It fascinates me. Here's a woman with a son, a woman, whose husband is away on a business trip. She needs her car if she's going to get around very well. Even downtown's half a mile away and the walk back is all uphill. So if we assume that Kemp grabbed her here, the car would still be here. Try this, instead. Kemp comes up and trashes the house, but he's still furious. He sees them someplace else in town and grabs them. In that case, the car would still be in that other place. Downtown, maybe. Or in the parking lot at the shopping center.'
'Wouldn't someone have tagged it in the middle of the night?' Vic asked.
'Probably,' Masen said. 'Do you think she herself might have left it somewhere, Mr. Trenton?'
Then Vic remembered. The needle valve.
'You look like something just clicked,' Masen said.
'It didn't click, it clunked. The car isn't here because it's at the Ford dealership in South Paris. She was having carburetor trouble. The needle valve in there kept wanting to jam. We talked about it on the phone Monday afternoon. She was really pissed off and upset about it. I meant to make an appointment for her to get it done by a local guy here in town, but I forgot because . . .'
He trailed off, thinking about the reasons why he had forgotten.
'You forgot to the make the appointment here in town, so she would have taken it to South Paris?'
'Yeah, I guess so.' He couldn't remember exactly what the run of the conversation had been now, except that she had been afraid the car would seize up while she was taking it to be fixed.
Masen glanced at his watch and got up. Vic started to rise with him.
'No, stay put. I just want to make a quick phone call. I'll be back.'
Vic sat where he was. The screen door banged closed behind Masen, a sound that reminded him so much of Tad that he winced and had to grit his teeth against fresh tears. Where were they? The thing about the Pinto not being here had only been momentarily promising after all.
'The sun was fully up now, throwing a bright rose light over the houses and the streets below, and across Castle Hill. It touched the swing set where he had pushed Tad times without number ... all he wanted was to push his son on the swing again with his wife standing beside him. He would push until his hands fell off, if that was what Tad wanted.
The voice in his mind chilled his heart. It was like a ghost voice.
The screen door opened again a moment later. Masen sat down beside him and lit a fresh cigarette. 'Twin City Ford in South Paris,' he said. 'That was the one, wasn't it?'
'Yeah. We bought the Pinto there.'
'I took a shot and called them. Got lucky; the service manager was already in. Your Pinto's not there, and it hasn't been there. Who's the local guy?'
'Joe Camber,' Vic said. 'She must have taken the car out there after all. She didn't want to because he's way out in the back of beyond and she couldn't get any answer on the phone when she called. I told her he was probably there anyway, just working in the garage. It's this converted barn, and I don't think he's got a phone in there. At least he didn't the last time I was out there.'
'We'll check it out,' Masen said, 'but her car's not there either, Mr. Trenton. Depend on it.'
'Why not?'
'Doesn't make a bit of logical sense,' Masen said. 'I was ninety-five percent sure it wasn't in South Paris, either. Look, everything we said before still holds true. A young woman with a child needs a car. Suppose she took the car over to Twin City Ford and they told her it was going to be a couple of days. How does she get back?'
'Well ... a loaner ... or if they wouldn't give her a loaner, I guess they'd rent her one of their lease cars. From the cheap fleet.'
'Right! Beautiful! So where is it?'
Vic looked at the driveway, almost as if expecting it to appear.
'There'd be no more reason for Kemp to abscond with your wife's loaner than there would be for him to abscond with her Pinto,' Masen said. 'That pretty well ruled out the Ford dealership in advance. Now let's say she takes it out to this guy Camber's garage. If he gives her an old junker to run around in while he fixes her Pinto, we're back at square one right away: Where's the junker? So let's say that she takes it up there and Camber says he'll have to keep it awhile but she calls a friend, and the friend comes out to pick her up. With me so far?'
'Yes, sure.'
'So who was the friend? You gave us a list, and we got them all out of bed. Lucky they were all home, it being summer and all. None of them mentioned bringing your people home from anywhere. No one has seen them any later than Monday morning.'
'Well, why don't we stop crapping around?' Vic asked. 'Let's give Camber a call and find out for sure.'
'Let's wait until seven,' Masen said. 'That's only fifteen minutes. Give him a chance to get his face washed and wake up a little. Service managers usually clock in early. This guy's an independent.'
Vic shrugged. This whole thing was a crazy blind alley. Kemp had Donna and Tad. He knew it in his guts, just as he knew it was Kemp who had trashed the house and shot his come on the bed he and Donna shared.
'Of course, it didn't have to he a friend,' Masen said, dreamily watching his cigarette smoke drift off into the morning. 'There are all sorts of possibilities. She gets the car up there, and someone she knows slightly happens to be there, and the guy or gal offers Mrs. Trenton and your son a ride back into town. Or maybe Camber runs them home himself. Or his wife. Is be. married?'
'Yes. Nice woman.'
'Could have been him, her, anyone. People are always willing to help a lady in distress.'
'Yeah,' Vic said, and lit a cigarette of his own.
'But none of that matters either, because the question always remains the same: Where's the fucking car? Because the situation's the same. Woman and kid on their own. She has to get groceries, go to the dry cleaner's, go to the post office, dozens of little errands. If the husband was only going to be gone a few days, a week, even, she might try to get along without a car. But ten days or two weeks? Jesus, that's a long haul in a town that's only got one goddam cab. Rental car people are happy to deliver in a situation like that. She could have gotten Hertz or Avis
