The Summer Bones (19 page)

Turning his face into a small whisper of breeze, he saw that the boys weren't dispersing, but instead they stood in a knot. Some of them were talking. Some of them were laughing. This was Mayville. Undoubtedly they knew.

Pino had noticed his tone of voice. He was staring, and the blood had come up into Hanson's face.

Danny turned away and walked to the patrol car. Pino followed, getting into the passenger seat and fiddling with the air-conditioning controls. Danny pulled away from the curb so fast his tires made a telltale squeal on the hot pavement.

“Am I missing something?” Pino asked conversationally.

“No.” Danny drove stolidly.

“Okay.” Pino adjusted a vent toward his face and breathed in relief as cold air began to creep out. “What a summer. Hell can't be much hotter than this. What do you make of the Knox kid? Was he like that the first time you interviewed him?”

“Pretty much.”

“So …” Pino gave him a sideways look. “Tell me what you think, and I'll give it right back to you.”

Relieved Pino was willing to let go of whatever currents he might have sensed between himself and Dale Hanson, Danny frowned and flipped on his turn signal. Walnut Street stretched out in a haze of sunlight and spotty shade. “He's hostile, but that's not new. His father has been gone for years. I think he left when Randy was pretty little, so he isn't really used to male authority and it bugs him. He's not been in much trouble, just a few speeding tickets and one underage drinking charge. His mother tries, but he goes his own way.”

“A rebel.” Pino grinned lazily. “No cause needed.”

“Mayville isn't exactly a haven for rebels. What's there to rebel against?” Danny's voice was defensive, just like when he talked to Laura about his hometown.

“Like I said, no cause necessary. Anyway, you're saying he's basically a decent enough kid, as far as you know. Is that right?”

“Yes, I guess that's right.” Danny relaxed enough to feel his shoulders droop. “But he isn't telling the truth about the night Hallie disappeared.”

“I agree,” Pino said positively. Sitting in the passenger seat, he tapped on the window restlessly with a finger. His forehead crinkled. “He says he doesn't remember who he was with that night, but he knows it was raining and a small detail like almost slipping and falling down. He doesn't remember the movie, but he knows what day of the week it was. I call it selective memory. Myself, I'd be more likely to remember the movie than the weather, wouldn't you?”

“He didn't like talking to us either. You know what I mean.”

Pino steepled his fingers together. “Yeah. He was scared, but was he just scared of the police, or is there something else?”

“I don't know.” Danny expertly turned the wheel, sliding the car into the traffic on Main. “But I'm not too crazy about his attitude. For one thing, he doesn't show much concern for the girl. He didn't before.”

“That could be the macho male thing. He is seventeen.”

“True.”

“Speaking of which,” Pino put his hands on his knees and coughed gently, “that wasn't your brother back there, was it? Some sort of family feud?”

“Brother?” Danny turned his head and stared.

“The coach? I know you're from here. A real hometown boy.”

He means Dale Hanson,
Danny realized. Incredulously, he pulled the car into his space by the station and shoved the gearshift into park. “Why the hell would you think he was my brother?”

“Sorry.” Pino lifted his hands in apology. “You look alike, that's all. And it was pretty easy to see you knew each other and had some sort of thing going, you know?”

With a sickening feeling, Danny realized he was right. Dale Hanson was his age, his height. They had the same coloring. Laura had chosen someone who looked just like the man she had chosen to leave—a substitute, another hometown boy, but one she could sleep with and walk away from.

The beginning of another headache began to knock timidly at his temples.

“She's twenty-four.” Jane Paulsen slumped against the table. “Can you believe it?”

Victoria eyed her mother with due caution. She deposited a bag of groceries on the counter and went back toward the door. Her grandmother had wandered out of the kitchen, twisting her handbag in her hands.

“In his apartment.” The words were a snarl. “That bastard.”

Hand on the screen door, Victoria glanced outside, then back. It looked like her grandmother had gone into her own bedroom, which was a relief. She turned her attention back to her mother for a second. “He's moving on with his life. What did you expect?”

Her mother sat bolt upright. “Moving on? Is that what you call it? Living with a girl half his age? That's moving on?”

The farmyard was deserted, thankfully so. Victoria carefully pushed open the door and went back out, retrieving the last bag from the trunk of her car. She had so much more on her mind than her mother's outrage over finding some young woman in her father's apartment. Michael was due to arrive anytime. She'd just gotten back from Rushville, having taken her grandmother into town for some grocery shopping, which had ended up being more of a trial than anticipated. And, of course, always at the back of her mind, there was Emily.

Taking a breath of air, she climbed the steps, arms full of sacks.

She'd called the doctor's office yesterday on her cell phone. Emily Paulsen, not Sims, had indeed missed her appointment earlier in the week. Thank heaven Emily hadn't gotten coy and used a completely false name. The nurse had even confirmed the purpose of the visit to be a routine three-month checkup for pregnancy.

“Retreating into some kind of second childhood,” her mother was saying blackly as Victoria came back into the kitchen. A wineglass sat precariously balanced between her two twitching hands. Her mother must have brought the wine with every intention of complaining and wallowing, because her grandparents didn't keep French vintages on hand. Ignoring her, Victoria put the last bag on the counter and began to unload boxes of cereal and a can of coffee.

“He doesn't care that his daughters are the same age or even a little older than the girl he's sleeping with!” Jane hunched her elegant shoulders under a cream-colored silk suit. For her job, manager of an art gallery in Broadripple, she always wore exquisite clothes that set off her dramatic coloring. Victoria usually felt a little drab next to her mother.

“Why do you care?” Victoria had to ask, though the question was against her better judgment. She wouldn't have dared, except it had been a long day. She'd lain awake worrying about Emily, trying to sort out if her sister had left town because of the pregnancy, or worse, if she left because Ronald had found out and reacted violently.
“Surely
,” she'd asked the ceiling,
“if you lived with a woman you would know if she was
three months gone into a pregnancy
?” The ceiling hadn't provided any decent answers.

And then, early this afternoon, she had come into the kitchen to find her grandmother with the contents of her purse scattered across the kitchen table, rummaging through used compacts, old folded plastic rain hats, and crumpled grocery lists. When asked, her grandmother had informed her that she had lost her car keys. Anxious, faded blue eyes had pleaded worry and confusion. To make things worse, she had even been wearing two different colored shoes, her dress buttoned awkwardly, one hole wrong.

Victoria had offered to drive her grandmother to Rushville, then had gone and found one of the matching shoes from the closet and corrected the buttons. The ride in and the ride back had been a lesson in fielding odd questions and calming irrational fears. It was no treat to return and find her mother drinking wine in the kitchen and singing her song of woe.

Sighing, she lifted out a bag of flour and put it where it belonged in the cupboard.

She refused to even think about the body of Hallie Helms being found in a patch of woods nearby. That news had shaken her world. Her hands felt clumsy as she adjusted the contents of the cupboard and closed the door.

“What?” her mother asked sharply.

“I asked why you care,” Victoria answered. She folded the brown grocery bag and stored it under the sink. “It seems to me that the day the divorce was finalized, you lost all right to criticize Dad's personal life.”

Jane picked up her wineglass and took a compulsive sip, looking away. She set the glass back down again with care. “He'll always be the father of my children. That gives me certain rights.”

“Your grown children,” Victoria reminded mildly. “I'm sure none of us expect him to live like a monk, and it doesn't bother me at all if he has found someone. Good for him.”

Not a popular opinion, apparently. Her mother's face went pink, clashing with her red hair. Manicured fingers plucked at the tablecloth. “He's acting like one of those middle-aged idiots who go out and buy a sports car and dye their hair. It's embarrassing, that's all.”

“And you're acting like a jealous ex-wife,” Victoria pointed out, tired, as usual, of the drama. “For God's sake, Mother, with everything else going on, how can you justify ranting about something like this?”

“I'm hardly ranting.”

Victoria had always marveled at her mother's capacity for self-delusion. She had deluded herself into marriage with someone completely incompatible, and then deluded herself into thinking she had stayed with him for twenty-plus years out of duty to her children. Victoria knew that wasn't the truth. She had known it growing up. Unfortunately, the truth was something she didn't understand.

Thoughtfully, she regarded her mother's irate face. Leaning back on the counter, she folded her arms. “You are jealous,” she said slowly. “I find it hard to believe, the way you two treat each other, but you are jealous, aren't you?”

“No, of course not.” It was more a snarl than an answer.

“Don't lie about it, Mother. Not to yourself and not to me.”

Her mouth thinned. “I can barely stand the sight of the man.”

“That's why you went to his apartment so early in the morning that you caught them barely out of bed?”

“I went there,” Jane replied defensively, her eyes narrowing, “to talk about Emily. I went to ask your father if he thought I should tell the police that Ronald had been following her. That he was convinced she was seeing someone else and obsessing over finding out who. That's why I went.”

Victoria stared, diverted by the new topic. “He was following her? How do you know? Did she say so?”

Her mother snapped, “Yes, she told me about it. You know Emily, she was laughing about it, but I wonder if she finally got spooked and is hiding somewhere. Ronald has a vicious temper.”

Nothing could compel Victoria to tell her mother what she had discovered about Emily's pregnancy. Her mother's reaction would be explosive. But this new information was interesting. Emily had taken some pains to hide her doctor's visits, and now there seemed a logical reason why. Ronald suspected, reasonably so, that his wife was having an affair. He started following her. Emily started dodging him. It was easy enough to imagine the two of them, so given to melodrama, playing that sort of game.

The counter was digging into her back. Victoria shifted her weight, thinking hard. Damon had denied outright knowing of Emily's pregnancy, but had admitted to suspecting something was going on. She had been, he'd said, showing up at the farm at odd times in the past few months. At least twice she'd come in the middle of the afternoon and showered, changing back into the same clothes afterward. She'd call her house from the farm, anxious perhaps, to prove she was actually there.

Then, of course, there was the most damning piece of evidence. The discarded box of a home pregnancy test left in the trash can of the upstairs bathroom. Damon was the only person in the house who used that particular bathroom besides the family members who came and stayed overnight in the upstairs bedrooms. Emily had been over that afternoon, chatting away, brightly smiling, fussing over some noise her car was making. He remembered, he told Victoria somberly over their lunch plates, because she had asked him to look at it and he'd found a crack in the exhaust system.

“Did you ask her about it?” Victoria had demanded in amazement, still irritated with him for keeping such information to himself. “Surely you don't find something like that in the trash can every day.”

“No.” Dark eyes had met hers with straightforward awareness of her anger and frustration. “I didn't. I wouldn't. It wasn't exactly my business. In fact, I was waiting for Em to come to me and pour her heart out. She usually does, you know that. I was surprised when she didn't.”

Big brother Damon. Victoria was surprised she hadn't either. And it was very much in character for Emily to not worry about Damon asking uncomfortable questions. He simply wouldn't.

“You told me you didn't know if she was having an affair, Damon,” she'd said instead, quite bitterly.

“I didn't
know
it,” he responded reasonably.

“Oh come on.” She had speared a piece of potato and waved it in the air with her fork. “Tell me you didn't suspect.”

“I suspected.”

“Then?”

“Tori, really, I'm supposed to give you a bunch of suppositions and half guesses?” His eyebrows arched upward in disbelief. “What good would it have done?”

She said stubbornly, “Considering the circumstances, I think you should have said something.”

He leaned back in the booth, and said seriously, “I think you'd better consider the possibility that if Emily was pregnant and so obviously hiding it from Ronald, she's gone off voluntarily. Which is what I've thought all along.”

Emily
was
pregnant. They knew it now. And Emily was gone. The possibility of her running away took on more weight as the facts rolled in.