“Mrs. Ketchem said your brother invested in your business here.”
“He did, and it was a smart thing, too. I’m going to get him a good return on his money. It’s quiet now, ’cause it’s spring, but you should see this place during the summer. From June through September, the pumps never stop ringing and we have cars parked around the building waiting for garage service.” He came around the counter and opened the red door. “You see that lot across the way?” He stepped out onto the macadam and Harry followed. The sun was sliding fast toward the mountains, and a cold breeze had sprung up, reminding Harry that they were still just a few weeks past the rawest nights of the year. He hunched his shoulders inside his wool jacket as Ketchem pointed across the road, where a tired-looking farm stand leaned in on itself, empty except for a few bunches of rhubarb propped in buckets and a tin can for customers to put their money into. “You know what oughtta be there?” Ketchem said. “A restaurant. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just someplace clean and fast where folks driving to the lake or up into the mountains can pull over and eat. I got my eye on the property. I tried to get Jon to think about it, buying the land and building a place.” He shook his head again, this time with the frustration of a man navigating by a map that everyone else ignores. “I told him, you’ll get more for cooking and selling food to tourists than by growing it. He’s not interested.”
“What is he interested in?”
David Ketchem frowned at Harry, as if he had lost track of the purpose of their talk. “Huh?”
“Your brother doesn’t seem to drink. No one can place him with a girlfriend. And he’s never gone off and left his wife and kid with no word. But he’s been missing two days now. Where do you think he is?”
Harry could see the exact moment when Ketchem realized he had no answer for the question that his brother might really, truly be gone, in one of the ways that have no relieved reunion, no happy ending. A thought had been swimming around in Harry’s mind, hard to catch, like a fish in a shady brook. Just glimpses, as it darted into the sun-clear water. It was one of those silly things, you know, first you say something, and then he says something, and next thing you’re going at it hammer and tongs.
After the children passed, he just sort of spun free.
Having to sell the farm, that was hard on Jon.
He leaned in closer to Ketchem, dropped his voice. “How blue do you think your brother really was?”
David Ketchem’s mouth sagged open. Then he snapped it shut. “No.”
“Dad?”
Both men turned to see the boy, framed in the archway of the first service bay.
“Is Uncle Jon missing?”
Ketchem looked at Harry, an edge of panic sharpening his features, his question as clear as if he’d spoken it. What do I say?
“Your dad says your name is Lewis,” Harry said.
“Yessir.”
“Did you overhear us talking in the office, Lewis?”
The kid ducked his head. His cheeks pinked up, but he managed to look Harry in the eye. “Yessir. I’m sorry, Dad. It’s just, without a car running in the garage, it’s easy to hear through the door-”
“And you were curious what a cop had to say to your father?”
“Yessir.” The kid ducked again, then looked at his father. “Dad, what if Uncle Jon was out at night and ran into some bootleggers?”
This, his father seemed to know the answer to. “That’s not very likely, Lew. And even if Uncle Jon happened to be on the same road as a bootlegger, they wouldn’t be bothering with him. They want to get their liquor to where it’s going as fast as they can, not have shoot-outs with folks driving by.”
“But you wouldn’t let me go out last Saturday with Boyd and Morrie in his jalopy ’cause of the rumrunners. You said we might wind up in serious trouble.”
Harry had used enough spurious reasons to say no to his kids to recognize one when he heard it. Any serious trouble Ketchem expected came from the idea of three half-bearded kids gallivanting around the countryside on a Saturday night. “Your dad’s right. Bootleggers aren’t likely to pick on a grown man, but kids could be an easy target. But that’s still an idea worth looking into. If your uncle doesn’t show up in a few more days, I’ll send a wire to the other police stations all along Route 9, and have ’em keep an eye out for your uncle’s car.” He turned to Ketchem. “Any hunting cabins, fishing shacks, someplace he might have gone to”-put an end to it-“be alone?”
Ketchem shook his head. “No.”
Harry glanced over at the future restaurant site. He kind of favored the old farm stand himself. He looked back to David Ketchem, held out his hand. “Thanks for your help. If you think of anything, give me a call. Millers Kill six-four-five.”
Ketchem gripped his hand a little too tightly. “Do you really think-,” he said, his voice shrunken, then shook himself and released Harry’s hand. “I’m sure he’ll turn up soon,” he said, in a normal tone. “And when he does, I’ll be first in line to kick his keister for making us worry.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Harry said.
Pulling out of the gas station and turning onto the road back to Millers Kill, Harry could see David Ketchem had gone to his son’s side. He watched them in his rearview mirror, watching him, until they disappeared in the distance, Ketchem’s arm wrapped tight around his son’s shoulders. Keeping him safe at home.
Chapter 18
Monday, March 20, The Feast of St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne
Did you ever find out what happened to your father?” Clare shifted in the passenger seat of Mrs. Marshall’s Town Car, taking pains not to move the dish towels shielding her thighs from the hot casserole dish balanced on her lap. She had wheedled her way onto the delivery, in part because she had a guilty need to extend her sympathy and support to Allan Rouse’s wife, and in part because she didn’t know, if she cut off the tale in its telling, if Mrs. Marshall would ever open up this way about her family again.
“No. Although there was no lack of theories. My mother was convinced he was dead, though she never speculated whether it was by accident or some misadventure.” She glanced away from the road briefly, smiling an old smile. “I suspect it was easier for her for him to be dead than for him to be alive somewhere, making a new life without us.”
“How about you?”
“When I was a girl, I was definitely in my mother’s camp. I was sure he had been set upon by brigands and murdered after fighting like a lion to escape. Later, as an adult…” She flicked on her turn signal and swung the car majestically onto Main Street. “I came to believe he ran away. He certainly wasn’t the only man to take that way out during the depression. I didn’t notice it much as a little girl, but those were hard times. The year he disappeared, two of the four banks in town closed. I remember the Ladies Auxiliary started coming by my school with box lunches because some children had nothing but a hard roll or an apple to eat. I found out later, from my grandmother, that by the time my father had been ruled dead, his life insurance was gone. The company went bankrupt. That happened far too often in the thirties.” The light turned red a block ahead of them, and Mrs. Marshall braked, reducing the speed of the boat-sized car from thirty-five miles an hour, to twenty-five, to something Clare could have matched during a good run. Clare tried not to twitch.
“How did you and your mother get on without your father? Did she have a job?”