Hawkin accepted another cup of coffee and sat back, meeting Ned's wary glances with the same benign, almost drowsy look Kate had seen him wear in Tyler's upstairs room, just before the coup de grace.
"Tell me, Ned," he said in the same conversational tone he had started with. "Do you think your cousin killed those little girls?"
Ned froze, but with what emotion Kate could not tell. When he spoke he looked slightly ill, nothing more.
"It looks like it, doesn't it? She killed one already, and she's always been a little crazy."
"Ned!" his mother said, horrified.
"Well, it's true, you know it's true, even if you won't say so. Sure she could have killed those girls. Who else would be doing it? Why ask me, anyway?"
"I've already asked your parents about her. I wondered what you had to say. After all, you must have been fairly close as children."
"Vaun was never close to anyone besides herself."
"Not even Andy Lewis?"
"She used Andy and dumped him." He stood up again, this time more gently but with greater finality, and deposited his napkin in his place. "Look, I have work to do this afternoon. If you're through questioning me maybe you'll let me get back to work."
Hawkin smiled up at him, and the smile held the younger man like shackles.
"I wasn't 'questioning' you, Ned," he said gently. "Just talking. If I wanted to question you, you would know you were being questioned. It's been nice talking with you, Ned. Hope to see you again."
He stood up and held his hand out in front of the man, and waited. Ned reached out with reluctance, clasped it briefly, and without another word crashed out through the back door.
Becky Jameson shook her head.
"He's so funny about Vaun. They used to be such good friends, when they were kids, but they had a falling out about something, and before they could patch it up she got involved with Andy Lewis, and then, well, there was never a chance. Sad, really."
"What did you say their age difference was?" asked Hawkin.
"He's three and a half years younger than Vaun, and Joanna's three and a half years younger than he is."
"Kids are funny," he said, as if to himself. "I have two, both in college now, and they're just starting to talk to each other civilly again. Maybe if Vaun comes out of this okay, they'll start to work it out again."
"Maybe," she agreed, "though if anything it's been getting worse lately. They had some kind of a fight about a year ago, but neither of them would say what it was about. The last time she was here, he wouldn't come over until she'd left."
Hawkin shook his head in sympathy.
"Kids are funny," he repeated. He finished his coffee and stood up again. "We must go. I told the principal we'd be there at two-thirty."
"You know how to get there?"
"Yes, no problem. Thank you for lunch, Becky. Good to meet you, Red. I'll be in touch, and feel free to call if I can help with anything."
Mrs. Jameson followed them to the studio and helped them load the canvases into the back of the car. She gave Hawkin an old curtain to cover them and stood watching as they drove off. She looked small, and tired.
18
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"That's one angry young man," commented Kate a few minutes later.
"Isn't he though? Look, pull up at that wide spot. I need to think for a minute."
He got out and went to lean against a neat white fence. A single black cow lay ruminating, and watched him watch her. Kate joined them.
"What did Jameson tell you before I came in?" he asked.
She told him about the installation of the windows, Red Jameson's feelings about Andrew Lewis, what he had told her about the changes in his niece from December to April, the uncertainty he felt concerning her guilt.
"Yes, I heard from then on. Interesting about the missing picture, isn't it?"
"It wasn't in her studio, then?"
"It was not. Even more interesting is the fact that last November the Jamesons had a break-in. A few valuables missing, some money, and assorted odds and ends—including one of the photograph albums. Not the family one, but one in Vaun's room."
"You're saying that someone has made sure we have no pictures of Andrew Lewis?"
"Odd coincidence, isn't it?"
"Could be," she said doubtfully. "What made you go after Ned like you did?"
"I wanted to confirm a suspicion I got from talking with his mother. Ned was fourteen when Vaun took up with Lewis, remember, a boy proud of his new muscles, with a not unattractive young woman living close enough to be always there, but far enough away—both emotionally, and physically often away in her studio—to take away the taint of incest. She was never a sister, after all."
"Becky Jameson told you this?"
"Of course not. If she even thought of such a thing she'd clam up immediately. Just my cynical mind, putting two and two together and getting eight."
"And they had another confrontation, of some kind, last year."
"I wish someone had overheard it." He flipped his cigarette over the fence. "When we get to the school I want you to find yourself a nice quiet office and track down that farmers' co-op. We need to know if any of his trips coincided with the three dates or with the other night's attempt on Vaun."
"You sound decided, then, that it was not a suicide attempt."
"Oh, no. No proof, of course, but nobody who can fill a studio with what I saw yesterday could lie down in front of a fire with a bad novel and a Mickey Finn to commit suicide. It's wishy-washy and uncertain, which she is not. Besides, she'd never endanger her life's work by leaving a pot of beans on the fire. No, it wasn't suicide."
"Does Ned Jameson strike you as being clever enough to do all this elaborate business? And I just can't see a farmer with another job on the side having the time to plan it out and kidnap and murder three children and put their bodies so they'd point to her, and then find her when she's most vulnerable, just when she's cut off by the storm, and somehow get to her and stage a suicide—I'm sorry, Al, but the whole thing seems ridiculous. It would have to be the work of a totally fixated person who has all the time in the world and is within reach of her even when the road's out."
"One of her neighbors, in fact."
"But who?"
"That's why I want a picture of Andy Lewis."
"So you're not looking at Ned Jameson?" She tried not to sound petulant, but her back was hurting.
"Of course we're looking at him. We can't very well leave a loose end like that dangling, not with his attitude and motive."
"The fact that she turned him down nearly twenty years ago? That's a motive?"
"That, plus the fact that his father obviously worships her, and the fact that he got trapped into marriage two months after he graduated from high school by a woman who pretended to be pregnant but who has since proven to be infertile."
"Becky Jameson said that?"
"She said, and I quote, 'Yes, it's such a pity they've never had any children, though she had a miscarriage two months after they were married.' "
"Two plus two…"
"Sounds like eight to me. But I think the thing that galls Ned the most is the money. They live off Eva Vaughn. She keeps the roofs over their heads and the bank paid, and to know that and yet to accept each month's subsidy, from a woman who probably laughed at his overtures—well, it wouldn't be too surprising if he were to wish her dead and have her estate come to them."
"Assuming her will is written that way."
"It is. There was a copy of it in her desk."
"But you still see him as a loose end rather than a prime suspect."
"I do. Don't you? Yes. Why?"
"All the reasons I just gave you."
"And…?"
"And… personal reactions to the man, which I don't think are valid reasons."