The Vanished Child Page 19

  Oh, Harry, Harry, I hope you know what I am doing for you!

  And to herself she sounded already strident and unhappy, as though she were accusing him.

  Last words from Victor; a picture

  “We done all the searching in this town that there is to do. We been over the Clinic with a comb. We got Island Hill covered.” Daugherty chuckled. “I sent some guy down the outhouse hole with a flashlight. He wa’n’t best pleased, I can tell you. Standin’ there in his undershirt and waders, plowin’ up old lye with a stick.” Daugherty sighed and went over to the ice chest. “Beer makes you hot,” he commented. “Think I’ll have another. Want one?” He grunted as he knelt down to get his beer.

  Reisden shook his head. Daugherty took a long swallow, sat down at the table again, scratched his neck, and began making circles in water on the table with the bottom of the beer bottle.

  “You been talkin’ to people,” Daugherty mused out loud, “and not come up with anythin’ yet. Anythin’ from Anna Fen?”

  “In no way. Is there any place you haven’t tried except the woods?”

  “Got to get to the barn attic this weekend. I sent a guy up there beginnin’ of this summer, he come back and said there was about four tons of moldy hay and the floor was crunchy with mouse droppings, and could we please leave it till last? You know that hay, underneath the top, it’s going to be pure compost. Four tons a mice and compost.” Daugherty took another swig of beer. “I do purely hate mice, Reisden. Anyway, we got to do it this weekend, ’cause all the little Shakespeare Club folks are going off to some dance and we can tromp around and make a smell. Bob Gosselin and his crew goin’ to come in and start shiftin’ it Saturday. I’d find someplace else to be if I were you, ’cause you’re going to have mice sittin’ on the edge of your plate come breakfast Saturday.”

  “Send the mice to the dance. ”

  “They roped you in for dancin’?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Daugherty swabbed his neck with his handkerchief. “Me, I’m goin’ fishin’ with my boys.” Daugherty was a divorced man and had two sons in Massachusetts.

  “Reisden, when’s your man going to write back with his information about the Knights?”

  “Victor Wills? I don’t know. I told you he was interested; he even wants to write about the Knight case, assuming we find something. But he hasn’t written me at all this summer, which isn’t like him.”