“Terry doesn’t give a damn about physicists, brilliant or otherwise, and she didn’t give a damn about me.”
“Are you saying that what’s good enough for me isn’t good enough for your precious Terry?”
Fool or not, Otis could see the folly of going any further in that direction. It was futile, in fact, to go anywhere in any direction. His offense had not been infidelity, but a fatuous gullibility that in her view reflected on his legal bedmate. He would have been in less trouble, actually, if he had done as well in adultery as in physics. He had not, however. He had been involved in a fiasco, not a conquest; and he admitted that he deserved Ardis’s scorn, although he yearned for surcease.
“Nothing of the sort,” Otis said. “I’m just saying that Terry has a beastly set of values. Look at the way she treats Jay. She really has no regard for him, although he’s a very competent economist. It’s a mystery to me why she ever married him. She’s much more taken with animals like Brian O’Hara.”
Ardis sipped her coffee, staring at him slyly over the run of the cup.
“‘O.’ for O’Hara?” she said.
“Must you be so devious, Ardis?” He sat down on the side of the bed, clutching his cup and saucer in his left hand. “I simply don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the Personal ad that appeared in Thursday evening’s Journal.”
“What Personal ad?”
“It was addressed to ‘T.M.’, and it was signed ‘O.’ It arranged a meeting for a certain time and place.”
“What time and place?”
“Three o’clock Friday afternoon. Apparently at the university library.”
Otis stared into his cup. Then he shrugged and looked up.
“It’s absurd. In Terry’s case, what’s more, completely unnecessary. In spite of the initials, I don’t believe it was meant for her at all.”
“That settles the matter very neatly, doesn’t it? Case closed, eh?”
“Didn’t you expect me to deny that it was ‘O.’ for Otis? Very well, I deny it. All right, I’ve been a fool, but not so big a fool as to engage in any damn foolishness like this. Why should I? I could have spoken directly to Terry whenever I chose.”
“So, for that matter, could O’Hara.”
“That’s the point. The Personal wasn’t meant for Terry at all.”
“You can dismiss such coincidence if you care to. I’m not prepared to do so.”
He stared at her with a thoughtful expression, as if his mind, having dismissed one consideration, had gone off on another tangent.
“How do you happen to know about the Personal? I can’t recall anyone’s mentioning it.”
“I read it when it appeared.”
“I didn’t know you read the Personal columns.”
“This time I did.”
“Interesting. And you thought of me the first thing, didn’t you?”
“Not without cause.”
“There’s nothing quite so exhilarating as a wifely faith. I’m wondering what, suspecting me of a clandestine meeting in advance, you would be capable of doing to prevent it.”
“Nothing. I doubt that you’re worth it.”
“Wouldn’t you even spy a little? Just out of curiosity?”
“Not when I had a migraine headache. Friday afternoon, you’ll remember, I had one.”
“I know you said so.”
“And so I had. I came home early and took a sleeping pill. I was here in the apartment all afternoon.”
“At the scene, so to speak.” He laughed without humor and rose abruptly. “Are you actually offering explanations, Ardis? It’s not like you.”
They looked at each other with the closest thing to understanding that they had achieved for a long time.
“More coffee?” he said.
“Yes.” She held out her cup. “Please.”
10
Later that same Sunday morning — the second day after the disappearance of Terry Miles — two boys were discussing seriously a problem of importance. They were in a sparsely settled neighborhood on the eastern edge of a city that was growing westward. No new construction had gone on there for a long time. The houses, all of aging vintage, were for the most part separated by one or more vacant lots; there was plenty of open space for the antics of boys. A short distance eastward the plumbing ended and the open country began. There were no suburbs here. The planners, speculators, and builders of the city of Handclasp concentrated their interests and investments on the other side of town.
The two boys, crossing a vacant lot, had stopped to settle their problem between them, the problem being what to do. They had lately escaped the horror of Sunday school; now, after changing into appropriate clothes, they were determined to salvage what was left of the day. Being of the age that both remembers toys and has premonitions of girls, they earnestly sought an adventure that would include the excitement of the one and the apprehension of the other. As they examined and discarded a number of possibilities, their breath escaped between them in frosty clouds. They were bundled against the cold morning in heavy jackets. Whatever they were called by their peers, they were soon to enter certain official records as Charles and Vernon — names which do not have, among small boys, a greatly used sound.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Charles.
“What?” said Vernon.
“Let’s go explore the old Skully place.”
“We can’t do that. People live in it.”
“Not now, they don’t. Nobody’s lived in it for over a month.”
“Somebody will, though. Some real estate company downtown rents it.”
“What difference does that make? Nobody’s living in it right now. That’s what counts.”
“What do you want to explore the old Skully place for?”
“Wait’ll I tell you what I saw there the other night.”
“What?”
“I saw a light in an upstairs window.”
“You’re just making that up.”
“I am not. It was a little light, like a flashlight. It kept moving around.”
“What night was it? What time did you see it? Come on, make it good.”
“It was Friday night. Real late. It must’ve been one o’clock, maybe more.”
“What were you doing at the old Skully place that late?”
“I was coming home in the car with Mother and Dad. We’d been downtown to a late movie. I just happened to look up and saw the light in the window as we went past. I told Dad about it, but he said I was imagining things.”
“You were.”
“I wasn’t. I bet you I wasn’t.”
Faced with such conviction Vernon, the skeptic, began to waver.
“Who do you think it was?” he asked in an awed tone.
“How should I know? I’ll bet he didn’t have any business being there, though. Are you game to have a look?”
His courage challenged, Vernon agreed, beginning to share Charles’s excitement. Even if they didn’t actually come across anything, the old and empty house would inflame the imagination to any boy’s satisfaction. As they traveled the long two blocks to the house, they convinced each other that they were performing a necessary — and dangerous — service to the community.
The Skully house, named for its orignal owner — a widower who had died there harassed by the unfounded suspicions of other imaginative youngsters like the pair now approaching through unkempt grass from the rear — was two stories tall, but so narrow in construction that it seemed taller. It had a high screened back porch; small windows in the foundation indicated the presence of a basement. Although old and ugly, it was kept in repair by the real estate agency that owned and rented it.
The two young trespassers, after crossing the back porch and finding the rear door locked, retreated and found a basement window that wasn’t. Charles first and Vernon behind him, they scrambled through and dropped.