“She thought there were two little girls,” she said.
“She never saw Annie. He must have waited until two girls were out. That’s why the long delay, why she couldn’t just go back in as soon as she saw him. Or maybe she didn’t see him until he finished and left.”
For a while neither spoke as they considered the problems her scenario solved, and the holes it opened. Finally Frank rose and picked up his hoe again, regarded it as if it were an alien object, and leaned it against the rail once more.
“Gallead was in sight at the range all morning,” he said heavily.
“Dozens of people in and out of there on Saturdays. They’ll alibi him just fine.”
“The more the better,” she said.
“It wouldn’t have taken longer than ten minutes. No one person saw him every second. They were (here to learn how to shoot guns, and he doesn’t give personal instructions. Ten minutes out of sight, who would have noticed that? Remember when he appeared on the driveway the day I first snooped around the Canby place? He can cover ground, all right” “You can make up stories all you want,” Frank said with a new sharpness in his voice.
“Suppose this, imagine that, and it doesn’t matter. You can suppose an army moving in. So what? You can’t prove a thing playing mind games this way.”
“That’s what weekends are for,” she said.
“Damn that Bailey! Where is he? I guess Winnie will do. I have a few notes to make.” She got up to reenter the house.
“I’m going to finish weeding,” Frank said.
“God almighty, God almighty!”
She heard Frank come into the house later and went down to talk to him. He passed her carrying a small basket filled with vegetables—tomatoes, string beans, lettuce, a cucumber.
“No doubt half that jury believes Rich Dodgson is doing God’s work against mighty odds; you might convince half of them that Dodgsons collectively are scum and lowlife,” he growled on his way to the sink.
“But you won’t convince even that many that not liking your neighbors is reason enough to conspire to burn down a house and kill a little girl. And you can’t connect them to whatever scam Gallead’s got going. You can’t bring in a new suspect at your summation, and you know it.
And there’s no cause on earth to call him as a witness.
You can’t subpoena him and just ask outright. By the way, sir, did you commit murder and arson.” He began to wash his vegetables with scrupulous care.
“Dad, relax,” she said.
“I know all that. I can’t prove anything, and I don’t have to. But I do have to present an alternative scenario that will make the jury take no tice. Not just Jack Kennerman. We both know Fierst will make hash out of that.” At least, she thought, if there were two alternatives, she could convince the jury that the state’s case was incomplete and even sloppy.
Enough doubt? Reasonable doubt? She hoped so.
“What are you planning?” he asked gruffly.
She was surprised at the surge of relief that washed over her, and she thought, Good old Dad, he knew exactly how this could work.
“I have a list of things I need to find out. Who was actually at the range that morning? And what is the usual procedure? And to make sure Gallead isn’t a total stranger, I have to find a way to connect him to the Dodgsons. And talk with Reggie Melrose. It’s possible she saw something or heard something and isn’t even aware of it. Maybe she’ll connect the Dodgsons and Gallead. And I have to go out there tomorrow and see just how good the line of sight is from the end of the road to the woods. Why did Kay dally there, why not up farther?”
“Not alone,” he said. He turned to face her; he looked harder than she had seen him in years, tougher.
“Listen a minute,” he said.
“You have to write out everything you guess, everything you surmise, everything you know already. Two copies, two envelopes. One ad dressed to Lewis Paltz, one to Sam Bixby. And a big envelope they’ll both fit in. After dinner we’ll go to the office and put them in the safe.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“I’ve been here before,” he snapped.
“And you don’t go anywhere alone until this is well behind us. Not to the post office, not shopping, nowhere. Especially not out to the Canby place. You’ve been warned off; your house was trashed; pay attention. That man threatened you directly;
if he thinks you’re stepping on his toes now …”
She nodded.
“That goes for you, too. Dad. We stay together until it’s over.”
“Agreed. Go on and write your letter and I’ll make us some dinner.”
“Thanks. And, Dad, I think we’re actually homing in on something. My toes are tingling.”
“Christ on a mountain,” he muttered, and attacked his vegetables again.
>
Barbara called Winnie Scourby, who arrived at nine, raised her eyebrows at the list of things Barbara needed to know right now, and left again with a noncommittal “I’ll try.”
They talked until nearly midnight, when Frank went to bed, and she paced and thought for another hour or so, too tense and wound up to even think about sleeping yet. Finally, a soaking bath, a cup of cocoa, and exhaustion un kinked her enough to let her drop into bed and instant deep sleep.
Mrs. Melrose lived with her married daughter and her family in the southwest hills. The house was two-story, with a small apartment that had been converted from a garage, her apartment.
She was a plump, birdlike woman, with a comfortable bosom founding out her front, and a comfortable bottom balancing her nicely. Her daughter didn’t want her to keep working, she said, but she couldn’t just sit around, could she? She had a pair of professors now, she said, pointing to chairs for Barbara and Prank, settling herself on a small sofa covered with a handmade quilt.
“Four days a week, not hard work, but they’re messy papers and books everywhere, and none of it can be touched.
Not easy to clean around papers and books,” she said with a nod. Then she asked, “Why did you want to see me? I already told everything I know about the fire and that poor little girl, and what I know is as near nothing as you can get.”
She needed little prompting when Barbara said vaguely, “Just background information. What was it like working for the Dodgsons?”
“Oh, them,” Mrs. Melrose said with a sniff.
“They weren’t easy, believe me. Once when I was about five minutes late, not my fault, but a wreck on the road in front of me why, I thought they’d fire me on the spot.
Eleven to eight, my hours, and they wanted me there at eleven sharp.”
It was a repeat of what Angela Everts had said: they were fastidious and made a fuss out of every little detail they thought wasn’t exactly right.
“But I’m a good housekeeper,” she said complacently.
“They never found much to fuss about.”
The name Royce Gallead meant nothing to her, except that she had seen his sign every day on her way to work.
She never set eyes on the man, she declared positively.
Gradually Barbara steered the conversation to the Saturday she wanted to hear about. Mrs. Melrose told them she always drove around to the side of the house and went in the back door. She didn’t see anyone that day.
“It was like most Saturdays, except she left me a note to clean the refrigerator. She left me notes the days she wasn’t going to be there, but not usually on Saturday.
Lot of nonsense that was. I always cleaned the fridge on Tuesday and it didn’t need a thing. But I got right at it. I knew they’d come in sniffing around to make sure I did.”
“Was the door open to the pool room when you got there? Could you see it?”
“No, you can’t see it down that hall, but it was open.
Chlorine smell all through the hall, and the music was just blasting out.”
“And then what? You were cleaning the refrigerator, but you went out to see what was happening? What made you suspect anything was happening?”
“The music stopped; and I heard Angela on the phone yelling at the fire department man. That was a surprise, I tell you, her going in the front door, tracking in dirt and all. I guess she never gave it a thought.” She didn’t wait for a question this time.
“Well, she finished on the telephone and told me, and then she ran out. And Mrs. Dodfson told Craig to go get some clothes on, and she said she would get dressed, and she said as soon as I got done in the kitchen I might as well go on home. She was too upset for anyone to be messing around all day, she said.”
“Was Craig in the white robe then?”
“Yes, he was. A hundred dollars that robe cost them.
Can you believe it? He came out of the pool and put it on, I guess, and he was standing in the hall in front of the door to the pool. Closed it first, but too late; the smell was already out And he was dripping water down his hair. He went across the rug to his room in his wet bare feet and I thought she’d tell me to vacuum out his foot prints, but she didn’t, and it wouldn’t have done no good anyway, what with all the other footprints already there.”
“Then what?” Barbara prompted.
“Nothing. I went back to the kitchen and finished up, and I checked the dressing room to pick up towels and stuff, but there weren’t any, and I went home.”
“Nothing was disturbed in the dressing room? Were Craig’s clothes in there?”
“Not a thing.”
“How long after that did you quit?”
“I didn’t quit. Oh, I threatened to many a time, but they were gone most days, and I liked the hours, being away when the kids are here at supper. They’re good kids, but they can get loud, you understand? Anyway, on Tues day I never worked on Sundays or Mondays there so when I got there Tuesday, he, Mr. Dodgson, met me in the kitchen and grabbed my arm and steered me right to the pool, yelling like a maniac. Look what you did! he was screeching. One of those gallon plastic jugs that floor stripper comes in was floating in the water. He said the water was ruined, they’d have to have the pool pumped out and cleaned, and it was my fault. He said I didn’t go on home like Mrs. Dodgson told me to, that I was in there messing around and knocked over that jug. But I didn’t.”
“You left right away? You didn’t stay at all?”
“Oh, I left, all right. I told him what he could do with his temper fits and his pickiness, and, I guess, a few other things that don’t come to mind right now.” She looked quite self-satisfied.
Barbara asked a few more questions about what she had seen or heard that day, and listened to her for another hour.
In the car again, driving to the Canby Ranch, she said grumpily, “So, if the Dodgsons and Gallead didn’t want to broadcast that they were associates, they wouldn’t be seen together. All right?”
Frank did not say a word.
At the Canby private road she got out near the pond and watched her father’s car as it continued up the road.
From here, at this time of year, she could not see past the rushes and cattails, which were high, far over her head. She walked up the road until she could see the barn, and stopped almost even with the no trespassing sign. Frank had stopped at the Canby driveway, and he walked up the road and vanished almost instantly, hidden by the trees. She did not see him again until he appeared at the car once more, stepped over the log barrier, and started toward the house site. There, too, as soon as he got past the car, he vanished. Slowly she walked up the private road, pausing only long enough to look at the padlock on the gate to the Dodgson driveway.
A shallow ditch was on each side of the driveway, bone-dry now, but no doubt little rivulets in the spring.
She met Frank at the site of the burned house.
Silently she walked to the edge of the woods and kept going until she was near the end of the barn, not far from the orchard. Nowhere along the walk would she have been able to see anyone leaving the house by the back door, she realized. Shrubbery, the house itself, the barn, all would have been in the way.
“What’s wrong?” Frank asked when she returned and opened the car door to get in.
“Nothing,” she muttered.
“Nothing.” But she knew she would have to tell him that she had just blown her own scenario. Gallead wouldn’t have been able to see when the coast was clear.
It was nearly three when they got back home. They had stopped for lunch, and now Frank said he was going to take a nap. She turned on the answering machine, and they both froze when Bailey’s voice drawled, “Reeling him in. We’ll be there about ten. You’ll need an interpreter.
See you.” Barbara let out a long breath.
“What kind of interpreter?” she muttered.
“Where are they? Why ten?”
“Good God, Bobby, relax! If you can’t relax, run up and down the stairs a few times—with your shoes off.”
He went down the hall to his room and closed the door.
Interpreter, interpreter, she repeated to herself, walking through the first-floor rooms as she thought of who it would be. Roberto, she decided, the young man who was learning how to make false teeth. She phoned him, then went upstairs to the room her father had designated her office by putting a desk, a chair, and a file cabinet in it.
It was a fine office, she had to admit, and then forgot about it as she began a methodical review of her case.
She was jolted when her father said from her open door, “You didn’t hear a thing, did you? For God’s sake, Bobby, leave it be for a while. It’s nearly six.
Let’s talk about dinner over a glass of wine. Downstairs.”
He turned and walked away.
After restacking some papers, she went down.
“Dad, you really don’t have to babysit me,” she said, accepting a glass of wine.
“I mean, I’ve lived all these years without starving myself.”
“Someone has to watch over you,” he said in a growly voice.
“When I was in your state, your mother watched over me like a hen with one chick to guard. She saw to it that I ate, slept, washed. She reminded me to shave. I know where you’re at because I’ve been there.”
Barbara had a flash of memory of how her mother had looked after him, shielding him at times from his only child. How jealous that child, Barbara, had been.
“Every man needs a good wife,” she murmured.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped.