'Isn't he though? Look, pull up at that wide spot. I need to think for a minute.'
He got out and went to lean against a neat white fence. A single black cow lay ruminating, and watched him watch her. Kate joined them.
'What did Jameson tell you before I came in?' he asked.
She told him about the installation of the windows, Red Jameson's feelings about Andrew Lewis, what he had told her about the changes in his niece from December to April, the uncertainty he felt concerning her guilt.
'Yes, I heard from then on. Interesting about the missing picture, isn't it?'
'It wasn't in her studio, then?'
'It was not. Even more interesting is the fact that last November the Jamesons had a break-in. A few valuables missing, some money, and assorted odds and ends—including one of the photograph albums. Not the family one, but one in Vaun's room.'
'You're saying that someone has made sure we have no pictures of Andrew Lewis?'
'Odd coincidence, isn't it?'
'Could be,' she said doubtfully. 'What made you go after Ned like you did?'
'I wanted to confirm a suspicion I got from talking with his mother. Ned was fourteen when Vaun took up with Lewis, remember, a boy proud of his new muscles, with a not unattractive young woman living close enough to be always there, but far enough away—both emotionally, and physically often away in her studio—to take away the taint of incest. She was never a sister, after all.'
'Becky Jameson told you this?'
'Of course not. If she even thought of such a thing she'd clam up immediately. Just my cynical mind, putting two and two together and getting eight.'
'And they had another confrontation, of some kind, last year.'
'I wish someone had overheard it.' He flipped his cigarette over the fence. 'When we get to the school I want you to find yourself a nice quiet office and track down that farmers' co-op. We need to know if any of his trips coincided with the three dates or with the other night's attempt on Vaun.'
'You sound decided, then, that it was not a suicide attempt.'
'Oh, no. No proof, of course, but nobody who can fill a studio with what I saw yesterday could lie down in front of a fire with a bad novel and a Mickey Finn to commit suicide. It's wishy-washy and uncertain, which she is not. Besides, she'd never endanger her life's work by leaving a pot of beans on the fire. No, it wasn't suicide.'
'Does Ned Jameson strike you as being clever enough to do all this elaborate business? And I just can't see a farmer with another job on the side having the time to plan it out and kidnap and murder three children and put their bodies so they'd point to her, and then find her when she's most vulnerable, just when she's cut off by the storm, and somehow get to her and stage a suicide—I'm sorry, Al, but the whole thing seems ridiculous. It would have to be the work of a totally fixated person who has all the time in the world and is within reach of her even when the road's out.'
'One of her neighbors, in fact.'
'But who?'
'That's why I want a picture of Andy Lewis.'
'So you're not looking at Ned Jameson?' She tried not to sound petulant, but her back was hurting.
'Of course we're looking at him. We can't very well leave a loose end like that dangling, not with his attitude and motive.'
'The fact that she turned him down nearly twenty years ago? That's a motive?'
'That, plus the fact that his father obviously worships her, and the fact that he got trapped into marriage two months after he graduated from high school by a woman who pretended to be pregnant but who has since proven to be infertile.'
'Becky Jameson said that?'
'She said, and I quote, 'Yes, it's such a pity they've never had any children, though she had a miscarriage two months after they were married.' '
'Two plus two…'
'Sounds like eight to me. But I think the thing that galls Ned the most is the money. They live off Eva Vaughn. She keeps the roofs over their heads and the bank paid, and to know that and yet to accept each month's subsidy, from a woman who probably laughed at his overtures—well, it wouldn't be too surprising if he were to wish her dead and have her estate come to them.'
'Assuming her will is written that way.'
'It is. There was a copy of it in her desk.'
'But you still see him as a loose end rather than a prime suspect.'
'I do. Don't you? Yes. Why?'
'All the reasons I just gave you.'
'And…?'
'And… personal reactions to the man, which I don't think are valid reasons.'
'Why not? You have to be wary of personal reactions, but that doesn't mean ignore them.'
'Well, all right. It's the way he looked at me. A few years ago I began to realize that every time I met a man who looked me over like I was a piece of prime breeding stock, and he the blue-ribbon bull, he would turn out to be the same kind of person—an empty-headed incompetent who was so taken with his own sense of magnificence that he couldn't see that the only prick he had was between his ears. If you'll pardon my French, as Red Jameson would say. Ned is just too stupid not only to pull this off but to see Vaun as any kind of a threat. In fact, I'd doubt he's very troubled by the money. You would be, but he very probably thinks it's his due.'
'You got all that from a look?'
'From a lot of looks over the years, Al.'
He started to laugh, and as before it changed him into someone she could begin to like a great deal.
'Casey, I think I'm going to like working with you,' he chuckled, and as he moved to the car he reached out and slapped her shoulder with a large hand, and then his face collapsed at her reaction.
'Oh, God, I'm sorry, I forgot. Are you okay?'
It took her a minute to catch her breath.
'Oh, yeah,' she finally gasped, 'just great. I always stand around with watering eyes, gritting my teeth. Makes me look tough.'
At the high school the final bell had just rung, and Kate steered toward the visitor's parking against a surge of yellow buses, overladen cars, and clusters of long-legged students with the bodies of adults and the clamor of second-graders. Nothing like a high school to make a person feel short, clumsy, staid, and totally conspicuous. It seemed to affect Hawkin the same way.
'I never feel so much a cop as when I come to a high school,' he muttered.
'Flat feet and a truncheon,' Kate agreed.
'Just the facts, ma'am.' He raised his voice. 'Pardon me, ladies, can you tell me where I'd find the principal's office?'
The answer came as multiple giggles and a flurry of vague waves as the collective of females fluttered away. At the next junction he directed the same question to a group of males, and got vague thumb gestures and deeper guffaws, and the same mass sideways movement. He was drawing breath for a third inquiry when Kate nudged him and pointed to a sign saying Office. They pushed slowly inside to the desk.
The harassed secretary gradually realized that Hawkin was not a student and turned her stubby nose and small eyes in their direction. Her piercing voice cut across the din and caused it to slip several notches as the student bodies took note of the nature of these two intruders.
'Are you Detective Hawking? Mr. Zawalski said that you and Officer Martini would be here and that he'd be back in ten minutes if you'd like to wait in his office.'
The waters parted and the two of them moved meekly under the speculative eyes and the beginning of whispers into the inner sanctum marked Principal. A burst of voices was set off by the closing of the door, and Kate grinned at Hawkin.
'Well, Detective Hawking, what do you bet there's a scramble for lockers and many flushings of toilets in about two minutes?'
'Sorry for the janitor tomorrow when they're all backed up.'
