The morning after he had cut his head, while he was breakfasting with Trixie, the telephone rang and he answered it, but hearing a murmur from Melinda and then a voice say, "Good morning, Mrs. Van Allen. This is Bernard Ferris," he hung up. A few minutes later, Melinda stormed through the dining room on the way to the kitchen for her orange juice.
"That was Tony's client," she said to Vic. "He says Tony's company's going to make a 'thorough' investigation."
Vic said nothing. He felt a trifle weak from loss of blood, he thought, or it may have been the sleeping pill the doctor had given him last night that made his head a little fuzzy. He had slept so soundly he had not even heard Melinda conic in.
"What's the matter?" Trixie asked Vic. She was still round-eyed with surprise at seeing the bandage on his head, though Vic had made light of it and told her that he bumped it in the kitchen.
"Tony seems to be missing," Vic said.
"They don't know where he is?"
"Nope. It looks like they don't."
Trixie started to smile. "You mean he's hiding somewhere?" "Probably," Vic said.
"Why?" Trixie asked.
"I don't know. Can't imagine."
From Melinda's haste around the house that morning, Vic supposed that she had an appointment with somebody, perhaps Mr. Ferris. He supposed Cameron's company would send a detective up, today or tomorrow. Vic went off to work at the usual time. Stephen and Carlyle and the garbage collector who removed scraps from the printing plant asked Vic about his head, because he was sporting a fat, disk-shaped bandage in the very spot where monks usually have their heads shaved, and Vic told them all that lie had raised up under a metal cabinet door in the kitchen and given himself an awful dig.
Around five o'clock in the afternoon Melinda arrived with a detective who introduced himself as Pete Havermal from the Star Investigation Bureau in New York. The detective said that a Mr. Grant Houston of Wesley had seen Cameron getting into a car which Vic was driving on the main street of Wesley at some time between eleven and twelve yesterday morning.
"Yes," Vic said. "That's correct. I ran into Tony after I'd dropped a friend off at the—"
"What do you mean, you ran into him?" the detective interrupted rudely.
"I mean that I saw him, coming out of a tobacco store, I think, crossing the street almost in front of my car, and I stopped and said hello to him. I asked him if I could give him a lift anywhere."
"Why didn't you tell me that last night?" Melinda asked in a loud voice."He told me he hadn't seen Tony all day!" she informed the detective.
"He said his car was right there:' Vic went on, "but he wanted to talk to me about something, so he got in."
"Uh-huh. And where did you go?" asked Havermal. "Well—nowhere. We wouldn't have moved at all if we could've stayed there. But I wasn't parked."
"Where did you go?" the detective repeated, beginning to make notes in a tablet. He was a pudgy yet tough-looking man, pig-eyed, businesslike, somewhere in his early forties. He looked as if he could get rough, if he had to.
"I think we circled a couple of blocks—to the south-eastward, to be exact." Vic turned to Carlyle, who was standing by the door to the pressroom, listening spellbound, with his spittoon in hands. "This isn't important, Carlyle. You can go," Vic said.
Carlyle limped back into the pressroom with the spittoon.
"You went around a couple of blocks," said the detective. "For how long?"
"Oh, possibly fifteen minutes or so."
"And then what?"
"Then I dropped Mr. Cameron back at his car."
"Oh, really," Melinda said.
"Did he get into the car?" the detective asked.
Vic pretended to try to remember. "I can't say, because I don't think I watched him."
"And what time was this?"
"I'd say eleven-thirty."
"And then what did you do?"
"I drove to Ballinger to hear my daughter sing in a school contest."
"Uh-huh. What time was that?"
"Just before twelve. The contest started at twelve."
"Were you there, Mrs. Van Allen?"
"No," Melinda said.
"See anybody you knew at the school contest?" asked the detective, squinting at him out of one pig eye.
"No ... Oh, yes, the Petersons. We chatted a little bit." "Petersons," Havermal said, writing. "And what time was that?"
Vic was tired of it. He gave a laugh. "I just don't know—exactly Maybe the Petersons would know"
"Um-m. And what did Cameron want to talk to you about?"
Vic again pretended to try to think. "He asked me—Oh, yes, whether I thought there was going to be more building around Ballinger or around Wesley in the next few years. I told him I honestly couldn't say. There hadn't been much lately"
"What else did he talk about?"
"You're wasting your time!" Melinda put in to Havermal.
"I don't know. He seemed a little nervous to me, a little ill at ease. He said something about starting his own contracting business around here because he liked the country. He wasn't very definite."
Melinda snorted with disbelief. "I never heard him say anything about starting a business up here."
"How did he seem nervous?" Havermal asked. "Did he tell you why he was nervous or mention anything he was going to do that day?"
"I'll tell you one thing he was going to do, Mr. Havermal," Vic began, deliberately letting his anger show. "He was going to meet my wife, who was going to start divorce proceedings against me for the purpose of marrying
