The directions sounded complicated, and she wrote them down: Take the left fork after the feed store and then another left; there was a dirt road which was really a private driveway, so skip that and continue about a quarter of a mile to a big field on the right. There were other horses there, and at last view the palomino had been standing under trees at the edge.
Amanda thanked the aloof voice and hung up distractedly. Drougette was a valuable mare and had been entrusted to Mrs. Balsam. Had that earlier whinny been by way of farewell? Or—all pale horses must look pretty much alike at night—was it Drougette at all?
She would have to go and see. She put on her coat, got the flashlight, went out again into the frigid dark.
The stars were gone. She walked in a moving pocket of stillness broken only by her own footsteps, and when she left the reflected glow from the house and switched on the flashlight a baby owl on a fence post subsided out of its feathers and glided away. Amanda felt as if she were emerging onto the blackest of stage sets, with countless eyes aware of her and some thunderclap thing to come.
No friendly shape stirred in the corral. It didn’t need a strand-by-strand inspection of the wire, which she had no intention of making in this bone-piercing cold, to tell her that the mare had indeed found a way out.
For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder if her aunt had acquired an enemy without realizing it. Amanda had once declined an offer of yard work by three boys, explaining that she did it herself for exercise, and found the front seat of her car strewn with fiberglass the next morning. There was no proof that that had been a retaliatory gesture, even though the boys had stared at her in sullen disbelief, and there were horses who were escape artists. Still, twice in one week seemed odd, as Mrs. Balsam could not have enjoyed her after-dark expedition and would have taken steps to see that it did not happen again. Or maybe— Christmas week—she hadn’t been able to get anyone and had simply done some amateur repairs herself and hoped for the best.
Call Justin, thought Amanda, returning to the house with a beleaguered impulse to cry. First the Afghan, now the mare. Rosie at least was here, switched over onto her other side, silky black hair straying across her face. Amanda tucked it gently back and closed the window.
She dialed Justin. She warned herself after the first two unanswered rings that he was not going to be home, so as to prepare herself, and it didn’t help at all.
Up until seven o’clock that evening everything had been going well, with the ride East tomorrow arranged for Claude out of a mixture of bribes and threats. Sweet hadn’t dared go near the Balsam house since delivering his half brother there the night before last, but Mrs. Balsam would be leaving as usual at one-thirty. Meanwhile, there was water in the shelter, and in his own kitchen Sweet had filled his pockets, after that frantic telephone call, with a welter of candy bars and boxes of raisins intended for the Christmas stockings of Teresa’s nieces and nephews.
The police artist’s sketch bore very little resemblance to Claude. He had gone too faithfully by the “flattened features” described by Beryl Creen, which did not take into account a wide sharp mouth, and the other witness had overestimated Claude’s height by nearly two inches.
In any case, cautious inquiries indicated that no one had come looking for Claude. There was no employer to wonder at his nonappearance for work. The news bulletins—and the Sweets’ radio stayed on habitually from the time they woke in the morning until they went to bed—were beginning to emphasize the delay in getting a police car to the scene, and, tacitly, the probability that the fugitive and his captive had been out of the area before there was even an official report.
So far, so good, even though there were things that Sweet blocked out of his memory. Still, he had belatedly realized tonight that a lot of businesses closed at noon on Christmas Eve. Would Mrs. Balsam’s? Easy enough to find out, by indirection; he would offer to come around tomorrow afternoon and measure for some shelves she wanted put up in her plant room.
The strange voice, belonging to the niece he hadn’t even known existed, had given him a shock. On top of that, like a sustaining brick pulled out from under, Patch, provider of the ride—Sweet did not know his real name, but had reliable information about participation in a recent liquor store holdup—had telephoned to say tersely that his own plans had changed and it was tonight or not at all. Although he was unaware of his passenger’s identity he was suspiciously take-it-or-leave-it, and Sweet had already pushed him to the limit.
To duplicate the action of two nights ago—setting the mare loose with a sharp spank and then making a lightning descent on Mrs. Balsam’s house as soon as she had left it—seemed dangerous, but there wasn’t time to arrange an alternative plan. There would soon be an even broader hue-and-cry, and Claude had to be out of the state, equipped with a blondish wig which Sweet had acquired yesterday, when it started.
Now, from above, he watched Mrs. Balsam’s house, and waited. Teresa would have made her call about the mare ten minutes ago, but nothing was happening. There was a phone booth a mile and a half down the road, and after a further five minutes Sweet used it, and was stunned.
The fact that Mrs. Balsam was in the hospital could only mean that Claude had emerged from the shelter against all prohibitions, been discovered, and attacked her. Why hadn’t there been anything in the news? Ellie Peale was very much on the
