“How will you be able to start the search for Jon if you’re at home?”
There’s not likely to be a search, he thought, but said, “I can telephone the station and get someone working on it right away.”
Mrs. Ketchem glanced at Sergeant Tibbet, who yawned. “All right,” she said. “You can drive me home.”
In his car, she perched on the edge of the seat, twitchy, as if she were ready to bolt as soon as he slowed down. Maybe she was more used to a buggy. She had a country look to her. “You and your husband have an automobile?” he asked.
She stilled. “Yes,” she said. “Jonathon took it. He always drove it, not me.” Her skittishness reminded him of the last carriage horse he had had before buying the Studebaker. Half-Thoroughbred mare, wide-eyed and spooky as all get-out. Good wind, though, once you got her in harness. He wanted to settle her some before he got her story.
“Are you folks related to the Ketchems up to Lick Spring?”
“They’re my in-laws.”
He turned down Elm Street. “They’ve got a pretty good-sized farm,” he said.
“Yes.” She was pale, visibly controlling herself. He swung down Burgoyne Street and turned onto Ferry. “This is us,” she said. The Ketchem house was small, but neat, with a barn big enough to house a stall and a buggy attached to the rear of the house by a breezeway. He parked by the curb, got out, and opened the door for his passenger. She walked stiffly up the front steps. It looked to Harry as if she were bracing herself to reenter her home, and for a moment he wondered if her missing husband had been in the habit of knocking her around.
He wiped his boots on the mat before stepping inside. The tiny entry hall opened straight onto the parlor. A heap of painted blocks were tumbled next to the radio. “You have kids?” he said.
She paused in the middle of taking off her coat. “A little girl.”
“She in school?”
“She’s playing at a neighbor’s.” He followed her into the parlor. “She’s been asking where her father is. I just don’t know what to tell her.”
She paused in the middle of the parlor, her glance darting from davenport to easy chair to rocker, as if she had never seen the place before. He had seen other folks acting the same way when calamity had visited their houses. People came unstuck, got lost in the familiar. He made it easier for her by sitting in the rocker and gesturing for her to take the other one.
“So what is it your husband does?”
She looked at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “He’s… been trying out this and that…”
Drink, Harry thought. Or he’s lost his job and is bluffing out finding a new one.
“We used to farm in the Sacandaga Valley until the Conklingville Dam project bought us out the year before last. My husband put some of the money into his parents’ farm and some into his brother’s business. David has a gasoline and service station in Lake George.”
“David’s your brother-in-law?” Speaking of her relations made him realize what seemed out of kilter in the room. There were no family photographs. Not one.
“Yes.”
Harry nodded. “There wasn’t enough for your husband to buy himself a new farm?” He knew some of the folks who had owned property in the way of the dam got pretty well rooked by land speculators before the official condemnation notices went out.
“I don’t know. I suppose there was.” She cut her eyes away. “Jonathon didn’t know if he wanted to go back to being a farmer. It’s a hard life, you know. He thought maybe things would be better if we stayed in town.”
“Things?”
A faint suggestion of color came over her high cheekbones. “He did some work for the electrical company, but he was last hired and first fired when they started cutting jobs. Since then, he’s picked up work here and there, but nothing permanent. He also helps out at Father Ketchem’s farm.”
He decided to ignore the fact that she had skipped over his question. He was forming a picture of a man cut loose from his familiar roles as farmer, and landowner, and provider, relying on make-do work from his old man to keep him and his pride afloat. “Tell me about the last time you saw him,” he said.
She squared her shoulders beneath the blocky cardigan she wore and frowned, distantly, as if looking backward for the exact moment when it all started. “He had been home all day. His stomach was bothering him-it’s been bothering him a lot lately. He was feeling right irritable… I remember trying to keep our girl out of his way.” Her eyes dropped to the blocks on the rug, and the strained look on her face eased for a moment. “Anyways, after she was in bed, we got into a fight. It was one of those silly things, you know, first you say something, and then he says something, and next thing you’re going at it hammer and tongs without really seeing how you got there.” She let out a breath. “He went off in the car that night and I haven’t seen him since.”
Harry reached into his blouse pocket for his notebook. “How long ago was this?”
“Saturday night. The twenty-ninth.”
He paused in the act of reaching for a pencil. “He’s been gone two days?”
“That’s right. I could tell myself he had gone somewhere to settle himself down, but when he didn’t come home last night, either… I know something terrible’s happened to him.”
Harry relaxed back into the polished curve of the rocker. “Mrs. Ketchem, we can’t say a grown man’s missing when he’s only been away from home for a few nights. Have you checked with his family?”
“I used a neighbor’s phone last evening, when he didn’t show up for supper. Mother and Father Ketchem aren’t home, but I spoke to their herd foreman at his house. He hasn’t seen Jonathon.”
“How about his brother up in Lake George?”
“David said he wasn’t there.”
Harry wondered how truthful the brother might be. He could easily imagine the husband pulling in in the wee hours, spending the next day bellyaching about the little woman, and telling his brother to lie through his teeth when she called. Especially if he was going on a toot. “Mrs. Ketchem,” he said, “does your husband drink?”
She blanched. “No! We’re good Christians. My husband has never indulged.”
That had struck a nerve. He’d bet a dollar against a plugged nickel that if he were to go into the cellar right now, he’d find a couple mason jars of 100 proof. Behind the coal bin, or at the back of the husband’s workbench, never where she’d find it, but enough there so she’d wonder about the husband’s long trips downstairs and the smell of Sen-Sen on his breath when he came up again.
“Has he ever gone off before? After you’ve fought? You know, to cool off some?”
She shook her head, absolute in her denial. “No.”
“Any money missing?”
“He has his wallet, of course, but nothing’s been taken from the household money. I didn’t think to ask about our account at the bank.” She looked worried. “The checkbook is still on Jonathon’s desk. He usually takes care of all that.”
“It might be a good idea to stop in at the Farmers and Merchants and see if he made any withdrawals in the past few days. Yours wouldn’t be the first husband to take off in a huff, find an extra few bills in his wallet, and decide to spend them on himself before coming home.”
“But Jonathon isn’t like that,” she said, her voice rising. “That’s why I know something bad’s happened to him. He would never be gone so long without letting me know where he was.” To Harry’s discomfort, her eyes filled with tears. “I just don’t know what to do. Please. Please, find my husband.” The tears overflowed.
Harry leaned up out of the chair, yanking at his handkerchief. “Aw, now, don’t-don’t cry.” He thrust the white fabric at her and prayed she wouldn’t fall apart completely. Growing up the one son amid five sisters had left Harry with a lifelong horror of bawling females. “I’ll tell you what. I can’t put out the alert on him as a missing person. It’s at least five days too early.” Mrs. Ketchem started to cry even harder. “But!” he said. “If you can calm down and write me out a list of your husband’s friends and the places where he’s found work recently, I’ll begin asking around for him.”
Mrs. Ketchem lifted her face, red-eyed and blotchy, from his handkerchief. “Would you?”
“Yes, ma’am, I would. And I want you to try to stop worrying. In all likelihood, he’s holed up with some buddy of his, trying to think of a way to come back and apologize without bruising his pride too much.” He thought it was more likely that the missing man was either on a bender or shacked up with some sympathetic floozy, but Harry wasn’t about to suggest that to a jumpy, frightened wife. Either way, ol’ Jonathon would be back as soon as his
