Nebulon Horror (17 page)

"Maybe later," Lighthill said, knowing Quigley was a bad man to antagonize.

The chief himself concentrated on trying to find someone who had seen Raymond walking home from school. "We know he left school by himself," he told Mr. and Mrs. Hostetter when giving them a progress report at their home Friday evening. "Miss Aube, the second-grade teacher, says she saw him leaving the school yard. No one was with him. Most of the other kids had already gone."

Mrs. Hostetter, whose eyes were red because she had been crying a lot, said, "Why was he one of the last to leave? I told him not to dawdle."

Lighthill shrugged. "So we have to assume he followed this route." He had unfolded a city map on the large marble-topped coffee table in the Hostetter's living room, and now with a felt-tipped pen he drew a red line on it. "What I've done is call at every house along that route. Every single one. But nobody saw him pass."

"He didn't come that way, then," the mayor said.

"Right. So I asked myself where else he might have gone, and of course the first place that came to mind was the Gustave Nebulon house. We'd already questioned Elizabeth Peckham and been through the house itself. You know that. But we hadn't checked the route, so we talked to every resident of those streets. Again no one saw him."

"Somebody was waiting for him right outside the school," Hostetter said. "Somebody dragged him into a car."

"It's a possibility."

"But why in God's name would anyone kidnap my son?"

"Ransom, maybe?"

"But no one has tried to contact me!"

Chief Lighthill said, "There's one other possibility." He exhaled an amount of air that only a chest as big as his could have held. "I hate to say this, but you have to admit Raymond did some peculiar things before he disappeared. That business with the marbles. The way he talked to the principal. The way he accused the Fortuna woman of drowning her baby . . ."

"Do you still maintain she did not drown the baby, Chief Lighthill?" Reatha Hostetter angily demanded. Nerves were raw now.

"Even if he saw her do it," the chief said, "doesn't it strike you folks as odd that a boy his age, always kind of shy, would step right up in a crowd and denounce a woman that way?" He shook his head as though still puzzled. "What I was saying, Raymond did these things before he disappeared. I don't insist they prove anything, but there's at least a possibility he was disturbed about something. And that means he could have just wandered off by himself. Or even run away."

The Hostetters stared at him in hostile silence.

"On the other hand," Lighthill admitted, "everyone knows he's your son, and everyone in town knows we're looking for him. Somebody would have seen him and come forward."

Another thing the chief did was talk to the children whose names he had obtained from Doc Broderick. He had nine names, not counting that of Teresa Crosser whom he had already interviewed. The number increased to twelve as he heard of others who were not Doc's patients. Worth Blair accompanied him on the calls he made. In discussing the results afterward, Lighthill said, "You think those kids were leveling with us, Worth?"

Blair shook his head.

"What's going on?"

"I got the impression they were expecting us to question them and were ready for us, Chief. As if they'd been coached."

"Or got together and decided among themselves what to tell us. Those are smart kids. Maybe not as resourceful as Teresa, but smart enough."

"I don't know much about children," Blair said, "but that lot gives me the creeps. The way they stare holes in you when you're talking to them. You notice the eyes on some of them?"

"Bloodshot? Yes."

"Worse than that. There were times I felt the way a bird is supposed to feel when a snake stares at it." In the report he wrote of the interviews with the children, however, Chief Lighthill did not mention their eyes. He said nothing of the feeling he shared with Blair that these particular youngsters were wise beyond their years. He simply wrote that none of the children admitted having seen Raymond Hostetter after Raymond left school. Most, in fact, claimed they had left before him.

Stephanie Aube, the second-grade teacher, supplied the information that Raymond had not in any way behaved strangely while in school that day. "I would say he was unusually quiet even for him," she said. "But mightn't that be significant in itself? He acted almost scared. Once when he seemed to be daydreaming and I spoke to him, I noticed he trembled."

Chief Lighthill talked to Lois Ellstrom, the principal, but she could tell him nothing. He went to see Ruby Fortuna. Ruby insisted she was not responsible for Raymond's disappearance, although she bitterly hated him for falsely accusing her about her baby.

He talked to Vincent Otto, who told him of having driven past the old Nebulon house one day when a group of children, the same children, were seated in a circle at the rear of the yard. On the strength of that statement the chief sent Leonard Quigley and two other men to search the yard, but they found nothing.

"Have you figured out yet what was wrong in old Gustave's study?" the chief asked Worth Blair.

"I'm working on it, Chief. Something about those books keeps bugging me. Just give me time."

With a shake of his head Lighthill said, "I wonder how much time we have."

Friday night the sand in the hourglass ran out a little faster.

All Nebulon knew Nino and Anna Ianucci. From Italy they had come to Florida when their homeland was ruled by Benito Mussolini, whom they despised and feared. With the little money they had they bought fifty acres of marginal land and planted oranges. It was said of Mama Ianucci that she had a name for each orange tree and loved each one as she would have loved a child.

She and Nino had no children. A tragedy. "I will go to the hospital and find out if it is my fault," Nino said. "No," said Anna. "I don't want to know whose fault it is, ever." So no children. Only orange trees. And now both were in their seventies, and they walked through Nebulon hand in hand, smiling at their neighbors, showing them what it meant to be loving though old.

"I bet they still do it in bed sometimes," the younger people of Nebulon speculated, smiling back at them. If they but knew, Nino and Anna Ianucci did it every night, and slept serenely the rest of the night in each other's arms.

They lived three miles out of town in a house on the fifty acres of orange trees. And on Saturday morning they were found there in bed with their throats cut, staring eyeless at the ceiling.

16

K
eith Wilding awoke and heard rain falling and was glad. In more than a week there had been only one good shower—the one that had obliterated the diagram in the nursery path and the shoeprints among the uprooted exotics. The rain fell on the roof now with a quiet drumming noise. It would be dropping on all the growing things in the nursery. For days he had been using the sprinklers. Today, Sunday, he would not have to.

Was it Sunday yet? He turned over in bed, quietly so as not to disturb the girl sleeping beside him. He looked at the glowing face of the clock on the dresser.

Yes, it was Sunday. It was twenty minutes to three, Sunday morning. He turned onto his back and looked at the ceiling and listened to the rain.

Because of the dry weather, he had lost many of the exotics pulled up by Jerri Jansen. Fewer than half of the Durantas and tulip trees had caught again after being replanted. A handful of lipstick trees. None of the akees. He was especially sad about the akees. With their bright scarlet fruit they would have been popular with his customers, he was sure.

Why had Jerri done it? He and Melanie had talked about it at some length last evening, and about the many other puzzling things that had been happening. Had Raymond Hostetter killed old Ranney and the Italian couple? If so, why? And where was he now?

Yesterday afternoon Chief Lighthill had come around to ask for the photo. The negative, rather, because Jerri had burned the photo and Keith had not yet had another print made. The chief was a worried man, relentlessly driving himself and getting too little sleep. The photo was a last resort. "It won't do any good. I know it won't. But I have to try."

The rain continued, sweet, cooling rain, heavy enough to give all the plants a needed drink, not so hard it would abrade the soil. At Keith's side Melanie Skipworth breathed softly in deep sleep. They had gone to bed early and made love. She always slept profoundly after making love. But there was another sound now. He raised his head above the muffling effect of the pillow. Straining to hear made him squint his eyes and scowl.

Footsteps. In the front room.

He hesitated. Should he arouse Mel and risk having her wake with a sound that would warn the intruder? If he tried to slide unnoticed out of bed, she might make an even louder sound. He turned and draped an arm across her body. They often did that during the night. She stirred, snuggling back against him. With his mouth touching her ear he whispered all but inaudibly, "Wake up. Don't speak. There is someone in the front room."

She took in a breath and silently sat up, her pale body just visible in the darkness. In the front room someone was moving about very slowly and cautiously, making barely enough noise to be heard above the sound of the rain. Melanie reached for Keith's hand.

He gave her fingers a squeeze and her leg a soft warning pat, and eased himself off the bed. Like her he was naked. It was not a comfortable feeling to be naked at such a moment; had there been something handy to put on, he would have donned it. There was nothing within reach. He walked slowly on the balls of his feet to the bedroom door and halted with a hand on the knob.

On the other side of the door was a brief hall, but the footsteps were not in the hall; they were in the living room beyond. He opened the door a few inches and listened again. It was hard to distinguish the rain sound from the other. Alert for trouble, he went silently along the hall to the living room doorway.

That room was lighter than the bedroom he had come from. It had more windows and, besides, the front door was open. He must have left the door unlocked. It was a habit of his, a bad one, based on the probably false assumption that because the house was deep inside the nursery, it was safe from intruders.

For a moment he was puzzled. He stood there in the doorway trying to see who or what had made the noise. He could see nothing.

Then he became aware of a movement at the other end of the room. Something small and pale was there, partly hidden by the desk at which he took care of his personal correspondence. It was an old desk, an antique, with drawers and pigeonholes; he had a modern flat-topped one in his office for the business of the nursery. Frowning, he watched the prowler step fully into view and begin searching for something.

A stride brought him within reach of a wall switch, and suddenly the room was ablaze with light. The intruder voiced a sharp gasp and whirled toward the click of the switch. She whirled again, this time toward the door. She took two small, stumbling steps and halted, apparently convinced she had no chance of escaping.

Keith strode forward, regretting his nakedness but unable to do anything about it. He caught her by the wrist and held her, peering at her in astonishment. She wore pink pajamas that were soaked through by the rain. Her fluffy slippers were supposed to look like white rabbits but were black with mud.

"Jerri Jansen," he said, "what are you doing here at this hour?"

He needn't have asked. The object of her nocturnal visit was clutched in her free hand: the envelope from Willard Ellstrom's photo studio. He took it from her, remembering he had left it on the desk after giving Chief Lighthill the negative. At that point Melanie Skipworth, in a house coat, came from the bedroom and draped a bathrobe around him.

"You may think I'm crazy, but I had a feeling something like this might happen," she said. "I'd better phone Olive."

Keith nodded.

Melanie went to the telephone while Keith lifted the child and sat her on a chair. He made sure to place himself between the chair and the door. Backing up, he put a hand behind him and shut the door and locked it without taking his gaze off her.

He heard Melanie say, "Olive? Mel, at Keith's house. Did I wake you? . . . I see. You don't know your daughter isn't there, then. . . No, she isn't; she's right here. Must have slipped out without waking you and walked over here . . . What? No, no, she's all right, just wet up a little is all . . . We'll bring her back as soon as we've cleaned her up and got her into something dry. . . What? Well, my guess is she came for the negative of that picture she burned. You know what you told us, how she was eavesdropping when Doc wanted to borrow it, and Vin said he had to turn it over to Keith. What I'm thinking . . ."

"Mel," Keith interrupted gently, "maybe that can wait till we get over there? I'm not exactly up on bathing and dressing small females."

"Sorry. I'm dumb." She said good-bye to Olive and hung up. Taking Jerri by the hand, she said in her low, musical voice, "Come on, it's into a warm bath with you, young lady." Keith followed into the bathroom. The child seemed completely subdued.

Wondering if she might be contrite enough to answer questions, Keith asked a few while Melanie bathed her. "What do you want the negative for, Jerri?"