"I know. I've got it," Wilson said, holding it up. "What's die rope for?"
"I just happened to find it," Vic said. "Looks practically new." Wilson nodded, looked around him, and Vic saw his eyes fix suddenly on the roll of paper in the water.
"How've you been, Don? How's June?"
Wilson went down on the flat, apparently for a better look. He stopped short as if he, too, were surprised to find it merely a roll of brown paper. Then Vic saw Wilson look down at his feet, trying to see what he had been interested in on the rock. Vic started up the path again. Wilson was Melinda's luncheon companion, Vic supposed, and she had probably asked him to pick up the scarf on the way to Little Wesley. As simple as that. Simple and ghastly.
"Hey!" Wilson called.
Vic stopped and looked back. They had a clear view of each other. Wilson was stooped at the place where Vic had uncovered the stain.
"Is this what you were looking at? These look like bloodstains! I'm pretty sure they're bloodstains!"
Vic hesitated, deliberately. "I thought so, too, but I think they're rust," he said, and started to climb again.
Wilson was trying to trace the stains to the water, Vic saw. "Hey, wait a minute!" Wilson called and walked toward him, his hands in his trench-coat pockets, his upturned face scowling. He stubbed his toe on a rock and came on."What do you know about those stains? Why were you trying to cover them up?"
"I wasn't trying to cover them up," Vic said, and went on climbing.
"Listen, Vic, is this where you killed Cameron? I'm going to have the police take a look at this, you know. I'm going to ask them to take a look in the water. How does that make you feel?" It made him feel naked and vulnerable. He hated presenting his backside to Wilson as he climbed the path. When he got to the top, he saw that Wilson's car was deep among the trees, standing in the lane. Wilson must have recognized his car and deliberately stopped out of earshot to spy on him. "If your car's blocking the lane," Vic said to Wilson as he came up the path, “would you please back it up? Or conic on through?"
Wilson looked confused and angry for a moment, then lurched off in the direction of the lane. It was a minute or so before Vic heard his car start, and he waited a few moments longer to find out what Wilson was going to do, and heard the motor approaching. Vic got into his own car and started it. He was thinking that if he got rid of the other snow chain in the back of his car, the one on Cameron wouldn't be very definitely identifiable. But there was, of course, Melinda, who would be glad to identify it, and who would probably say she could identify it when she really couldn't. Vic moved his car as soon as he could, and gave Don a wave as he went by him.
His one chance Vic thought, was that Wilson might not be able to persuade the police to dredge the quarry. But if the police were convinced that the stains were blood—and, unfortunately, they would be convinced—they wouldn't need any prodding to look in the water. Vic glanced in the mirror for Don's car. He turned off the dirt road into the highway to Little Wesley without seeing it. Don was probably having a hard time getting through the lane.
Wilson would go to the police now, Vic supposed, just as soon as he got to Little Wesley. Vic pictured the police arriving at the house while he was calmly preparing his lunch, perhaps even eating it. He'd try bluffing Wilson again. The police already knew that Wilson was a troublemaker. The police were, after all, on his side. He might be able to discourage the police from going to look at the bloodstains, Vic thought. All it would take would be coolness.
But he knew it wouldn't go like that. The police would take a look at the bloodstains. If they wouldn't, Wilson would inform Cameron's company, or inform Havermal.
Vic did not quite know what to do.
He thought of Trixie. The Petersons would take her, he thought, if anything happened to him. He stopped thinking about that. That was defeatism. Melinda would get her, anyway. That was worse to think about.
But still he did not know quite what to do.
He would go on about his business. That was the only way he could see it.
He had expected Melinda to be gone when he got to the house. Her car was in the garage. Vic got out of his car quietly, without shutting the door, and went into the living room. Melinda was on the telephone in her room, and he heard her trying to end the conversation quickly, because she knew he had come in.
She came into the room, and he knew from her face that she had been talking to Don. Her face was a confusion of surprise, triumph, and terror. Then, as he kept walking toward her, she took a step back. He smiled at her. She was dressed to go out, probably to meet Don at the Lord Chesterfield.
"I've just talked to Don," she said unnecessarily.
"Oh, you've just talked to Don! What would you do without the telephone?" He walked past her into her room, wrapped the wire of her telephone around his wrist and yanked it from the wall box. "Well, now you haven't got one!"Then he crossed the living room to the telephone in the hall and yanked its wire out in the same manner, so hard that the box came off the wall.
Melinda was standing by the phonograph, really cringing against it in an attitude of exaggerated
