It was easy to see from the detective's expression that Melinda hadn't told him anything about a divorce. Havermal looked from one to the other of them. "Is that true, Mrs. Van Allen?"
"Yes, that's true," she said, sullenly emphatic.
"I don't think there's any need to ask me or anybody else why Mr. Cameron was ill at ease with me," Vic went on. "The wonder is that he could have asked my opinion about his business plans or got in my car at all."
"Or that you would have asked to give him a lift," the detective said.
Vic sighed. "I try to be polite—most of the time. Mr. Cameron has been a frequent guest at our house, you know. Perhaps my wife told you that. If you want to know why I denied having seen Cameron Monday, it was because I was sick of him, and because he'd stood my wife up on a date they'd had that evening, and she was upset and on the way to being drunk. I didn't want to discuss Cameron with her. I think you can understand."
Havermal looked at Melinda. "You say you've known Cameron about a month?"
"About," Melinda said.
"And you intended to marry him?" Havermal was looking at her as if he had begun to doubt her sanity.
"Yes," she said, hanging her head like a guilty schoolgirl for a moment, then jerking it up again.
"How long ago did you decide to marry him?" the detective asked.
"Just a few days ago," Vic volunteered.
The detective looked at Vic sharply. "I guess you didn't like Cameron."
"I did not," Vic said.
"Cameron, you know, disappeared some time before one o'clock yesterday. He had a lunch appointment he didn't keep," Havermal said.
"No, I didn't know," Vic said, as if he didn't care either. "Yeah. He did."
Vic took a cigarette from a pack on his desk. "Well, he was a very strange fellow," he remarked, deliberately using the past tense. "Always trying to be friendly, always trying to keep on the good side of me, God knows why. Isn't that true, Melinda?" he asked ingenuously.
She was scowling at him. "You had time to—to do something to him between eleven-fifteen and twelve."
"On Commerce Street in the middle of Wesley?" Vic asked. "You had time to go somewhere else. Nobody saw you drop him back at his car," she said.
"How do you know? Have you asked everybody in Wesley?" Vic continued to the detective, "I couldn't do anything to Cameron that he didn't want me to do. He was twice as big as I am."
The detective was keeping a thoughtful silence.
"He gave me the impression of being scared yesterday," Vic said, "perhaps scared of what he'd started with my wife. I think he may have run out on the whole thing."
"You didn't maybe tell him to run out, Mr. Van Allen?" asked Havermal.
"No, indeed. I didn't even mention my wife."
"Tony doesn't scare, anyway," Melinda said proudly.
Havermal still looked astounded. "Did you see Cameron at any time again yesterday?"
"No," Vic said. "I spent the afternoon here."
"How did you hurt your head?" Havermal asked unsympathetically.
"Oh, I bumped it on a cabinet in the kitchen." Vic looked at Melinda and smiled a little.
"Oh." He stared at Vic for a minute with professional inscrutability. The narrow gash of his mouth might have been or smirking, or expressing contempt. One couldn't tell. "Okay, Mr. Van Allen. I guess that's all for the moment. I'll be back again."
"Any time." Vic walked with the detective and Melinda to the door.
No doubt the detective was off to ask Melinda some questions about her relationship with Cameron. It would certainly put a different light on the story. Vic sighed and smiled, wondering what would happen next.
There was a small photograph of Cameron—square-faced, unsmiling, a little startled-looking, suggesting his expression just before he had gone over the edge of the quarry—in the evening edition of the 'New Wesleyan'. It was captioned "Have You Seen This Man?" "Friends" of Cameron had reported his disappearance late the previous evening. His company, Pugliese-Markum Contractors, Inc., of New York, was making a thorough search for him and had sent an investigator to Wesley. "It is feared, in view of the physical nature of his work, that some accident may have befallen him," he paper ventured.
Horace called Vic a little after seven and asked him if he knew where Cameron might be or what might have happened to him. Vic said that he didn't and after that Horace did not seem much interested in the story. He asked Vic if he and Melinda could come over for dinner, because a friend of theirs who was in Maine had just sent a barrel of lobsters packed in ice. Vic declined with thanks, and said that dinner was already under way at the house. Vic had got the dinner under way, but Melinda was not at home. He supposed she was with the detective or the Wilsons and might not call or be back at all.
Less than an hour later, as Vic and Trixie were finishing their meal together, a car drove up outside. It was Horace, angry. Vic knew what had happened.
"Can we go in your room, Vic? Or somewhere? I don't want—" He glanced at Trixie.
Vic went over to Trixie, put his arm around her, and kissed her cheek. "Would you excuse me, Trix? Got some business to talk over. Drink your milk, and if you have any more of that cake, make it a small piece. Understand?"
They crossed the garage and went into Vic's room. Vic offered Horace his one comfortable chair, but Horace did not want to
