"You didn't have any trouble finding us, then?" said Vaun's aunt, in what sounded to Kate like a common greeting. She turned and smiled at the grandmotherly figure and was struck, as she had been at the hospital in the small hours of Saturday, by how precisely the woman fit the image of a farm wife, with graying hair, round figure, full cheeks, and calm brown eyes.
"Not at all, Mrs. Jameson. Your directions were clear, even to a city girl."
"Good. You're looking considerably better. How is your back?"
"Doing very well, thanks."
"I must say I hadn't expected to see you up and around so soon, after how you looked the other day."
Kate grinned. "We old San Franciscans are made tough."
"So I see. I didn't get a chance to thank you, then."
"Not necessary."
"Not for you, perhaps. I have a feeling that your job is thankless often enough, that's no reason for me to add to it. Would you like some coffee? I was just about to put it on." She moved easily from the honest gratitude into the role of hostess, and Kate shifted with her.
"Thank you, that would be nice."
Hawkin had stood oblivious to the exchange, looking out over the distant fields. Turning back from the top of the porch steps, Kate could see a red tractor making its way through a green field, pulling after itself an unrolling ribbon of rich brown.
"You have a beautiful place here," she offered.
Rebecca Jameson looked faintly surprised, and half turned to survey her vista with the new eyes of a stranger. A small, worried frown came between her eyebrows at the sight of the tractor, and she shook her head slightly and turned back to Kate with a smile.
"It is beautiful, isn't it? A person forgets to look at it, somehow, when she's so wrapped up in day-to-day things." She looked again, as if to fix the memory of it in her mind, and then she led Kate and Hawkin through the screen door, which slapped shut behind them, across the throw rugs and gleaming wood floor of the hallway, and back into the big, warm kitchen. A cat slept on a chair in the sun, a clock ticked on the wall, faint smells of breakfast bacon hung in the air, and a man's voice came in monologue from somewhere in the house. The farm wife took a brightly enameled electric coffee percolator and ran water into it, filled its basket with grounds from a green can, and plugged it in. She reached for cups, and paused.
"Did you have breakfast?"
"We did, thank you," Kate replied firmly. Hawkin was still silent, exploring the view from the window, the whatnots on a shelf, a display of trophies and ribbons, the cat on the window seat.
"Then you won't want more than something to go with the coffee for the moment. We'll eat at one," she added. "You wanted to talk with Ned and Joanna too—they'll come then. Meanwhile you've got me and Red to talk to. Red's my husband," she explained unnecessarily, and came to the table with a large bowl of thick oatmeal-and-raisin cookies that instantly transported Kate back into childhood, when she'd lived next door to the neighborhood grandmother. "Did you see her this morning?" she asked abruptly. Hawkin put a small gold baseball trophy back on its shelf.
"Your niece? No, not since last night," he said.
"I talked to the hospital an hour ago. They said there was no change. 'No change.' " She chewed at her upper lip, staring down at the bowl. Kate looked for something to say, but Mrs. Jameson just shook her head and tried to smile. "I think Red's off the phone now. I'll just go get him."
The percolator chuffed and gurgled, Hawkin prowled around, and Kate ate a cookie. Voices from upstairs grew closer, followed by the hum of machinery and then the whisper of tires on the wood floor. Mrs. Jameson came back into the room, followed by her husband.
Red Jameson had once been a big man, and even now his wide shoulders filled the chair, his back was straight, his big hands powerful. Only his legs were small, wasted, and inert on the footrests. His thinning hair hinted at the shade that had given him the obligatory nickname, and though his skin had probably not been pale and freckled since babyhood, it remained finely textured under the weathering, like well-cured deerskin. He was younger than Kate had expected, in his middle fifties. The only heavy lines in his face were those next to his mouth, and they spoke not of age but of an intimate familiarity with pain.
"Red, this is Miss Martinelli, and Alonzo Hawkin."
Jameson's handshake was gentle for such a large man, though the skin was hard with callus. His eyes looked over Kate, then met Hawkin's.
"Becky tells me you've come about my niece," he said. His voice was low and pleasant, and Kate had a brief image of him reading aloud to a group of children. "Are you investigating the murders of those three little girls, or Vaun's… what Vaun tried to do to herself?"
The words were too direct for his wife, who moved off abruptly toward the kitchen. Hawkin met his gaze and gave him an equally blunt answer.
"At present we are working under the assumption that they are related, Mr. Jameson."
The man nodded, and allowed himself to be distracted by his wife putting the pot of coffee and a jug of cream on the table. They sat down at a round pine table set with gingham placemats. Hawkin pulled out the chair next to Kate's and lowered himself into it, fussed with the coffee, refused a cookie, and waited for the social necessities to subside. When they did he continued with his thought.
"For lack of an alternative, as I said, we are forced to assume that what appears to be a suicide attempt on the part of your niece is related to the deaths of Tina Merrill, Amanda Bloom, and Samantha Donaldson. I am convinced that the relationship is there, although I am far from certain about its nature. There are too many uncertainties, most of which have their roots here, in your niece's past."
Red Jameson's blue eyes narrowed at Hawkin's careful choice of words. The inevitable suspicion and mistrust of police investigators he must have had was put aside as he opened his mouth to speak, glanced at his wife, and looked back at an imperturbable Hawkin.
"Are you—what sort of a 'relationship' are you talking about?" he asked cautiously.
"Mr. Jameson, we are beginning to think that she did not try to kill herself."
Kate watched as a series of emotions borne on a wind blew through the room, settling first on the husband's face, then on the wife's, to be replaced by another on his. First puzzlement, as the words sank in, then speculation as he and then she reviewed Hawkin's words and realized that he had not been suggesting an accident, then an instant of relief before the thud of fear hit, and two pinched faces stared at Hawkin, tight with apprehension and battered by the brief storm that had just passed through. The husband found his voice first.
"You think somebody… But who?"
"Yes, Mr. Jameson, I think there's a strong possibility that someone tried to kill Vaun. I don't know who yet— whoever it was is a very clever person. And before you ask, there's a guard on her at all times, and the hospital is exaggerating her condition to anyone who asks. As far as anyone else knows, she's on the edge of dying. You may see it in the papers. It's not true. It's just a way of protecting her."
"You think someone would try again?" Mrs. Jameson sounded appalled.
"If it was an attempt at murder, it was no spur-of-the-moment thing. It was carefully planned, and yes, that sort of person would indeed try again."