Before the concert was over, Melinda came out of her room, went out to his car and came in again. "Vic, I left my scarf. I put it under a rock and I guess I forgot it."
"Would you like me to go back for it?" he asked.
"Oh, not now, you're listening to the concert. Maybe you can get it tomorrow on your way to or from work, if you don't mind. Or I will. I kind of like that scarf. I folded it and put it under a rock pretty close to the fire, on the left facing the fire."
"All right, honey. I'll bring it home at lunch." Vic remembered it with the stone weighing it down. It showed how upset he was, he thought, that he had not noticed it when they were packing up everything else.
After dinner that evening, when Vic was reading in the living room, Melinda came in from her room and asked Vic if he wanted a nightcap. Vic said he didn't think he did. Melinda went into the kitchen to fix herself one. On her way back through the living room she said, "You don't have to get that scarf at noon tomorrow, if you don't want to, because I have a lunch date and I won't be in at noon, anyway."
"All right," he said. He wasn't going to ask any questions. She had made at least two telephone calls from her room that evening, he thought.
Chapter 27
The next day, Vic left the printing plant about a quarter of an hour earlier than usual to go home for lunch, though his times for leaving at noon and in the evening were so irregular that no one would have remarked a fifteen-minute difference one way or the other. He drove to the quarry between Wesley and East Lyme. This time he had taken a length of strong rope—clothesline—with him from the garage, and he intended to use one end of it to secure a good-sized rock and the other end to circle Cameron's body under the arms. It was a bright sunshiny day, and Vic did not tarry to have another look at the corpse in the water before he descended the path. He was careful going down, not wanting to tear his trousers on the brush or to scuff his shoes.
Once on the flat, he approached the place slowly, avoiding looking at the corpse until he was almost at the edge of the step.
It was a roll of paper—water-soaked pulp paper frayed at the end and tied in two places that he could see with twine. The surprise, the absurdity of it made him almost angry for a moment. Then he sighed, and the ache that went through his body made him realize how tense he had been.
He looked up at the blue sky and over at the rugged crest of the opposite side of the quarry. Nothing looked down at him but a few trees. He looked back at the roll of paper. One end was lower than the other, and it was about four-fifths submerged. Vic wondered idly what kept it afloat, wondered if it had a wooden spool of some sort in its center. If he had been able to reach it with his foot, he would have shoved it out of the corner, but it was just beyond his reach. It had probably been in the quarry for months, drifting here and there with the wind. He moved closer to the edge, and stared straight down at the spot where Cameron had gone off. He could faintly see the horrible-looking step, yards below in the water, and it looked quite pale, as if nothing rested on it.
He turned around and looked for the bloodstains. There weren't any. It was as if another trick had been played on him. Then he saw the slight reddish discoloration between some little stones. What had happened, he realized, was that the rain or the wind had spread quite a bit of limestone dust and little fragments of stone over the stains. Pushing the stones aside with his shoe, he could see the stain now, a streak about four inches long and an inch wide, this one. But it was so pale by this time. Not worth bothering about. He looked around his feet critically. Not a single stain showed except the one he had deliberately exposed. He really might have saved himself a trip down here, he thought. Carefully, using his hand, he brushed the stones and the dust back over the stain that he had uncovered.
"Hi, there!" called a voice, and the other side of the quarry echoed it.
Vic looked straight up and saw a man's head and shoulders above the edge of the cliff, and recognized him almost instantly as Don Wilson. "Hi!" Vic called back. He had stood up. Now he began to walk casually back toward the path that led up, stiff with terror and shame suddenly, because he remembered hearing—less than two minutes ago—a small, very distant-sounding impact which he had decided to ignore, and which he now realized must have been Wilson's car door closing. He might have been prepared if he had paid attention to it, but he had thought it came from farther away than the flat above where his own car was.
Wilson was moving toward Vic along the top, obviously looking for a path. He found it and plunged down. Vic, already on the path at a place too narrow to pass anyone, went back down the distance he had climbed. Wilson was down quickly, skidding and clutching.
"What're you doing?" Wilson asked.
"Oh, taking a
