A Grave Talent km-1

by Laurie R. King

  "Did you see Auntie Vaun?" Teddy asked quickly. "She's sick, isn't she? Is she going to be all right?"

  Spoons around the table stopped in midair. Ned Jameson's jaws went still as he awaited Hawkin's pronouncement, oddly intent.

  "You like your Auntie Vaun, don't you?" Hawkin asked the child.

  "I love her," he said simply. "And she loves me."

  "I could see that in the painting. I hope she'll be okay. I'm not a doctor, but some good doctors are taking care of her."

  "She's in the hospital."

  "I know. I've seen her."

  "I can't visit her, I'm too young," he said, disgusted.

  "Maybe you could make her a drawing, so she knows you were thinking about her." It was the suggestion of an experienced father, Kate realized, and wondered why she always forgot that side of him.

  The child tipped his head, thinking.

  "She likes my drawings. May I be excused, Mommy, so I can make a picture for her?"

  "You don't want the rest of your peaches? Okay, you come up with me and we'll find your crayons."

  Becky Jameson brought in coffee and began to clear the dishes, refusing any help. Kate and Hawkin were left alone with Red and his son, who had not yet spoken to each other. Hawkin stirred sugar into his cup and opened a polite topic of conversation.

  "You grow hothouse tomatoes, Ned?"

  "Not commercially, it's too expensive, but it's nice to have a few of the summer vegetables in winter."

  "What do you do, then?"

  "Farm this place, some experimental stuff I'm doing with the local organic farmers' organization. Fruit mostly, but the last year or so I've been growing those tiny vegetables that fancy restaurants like. Inch-long carrots, beets the size of marbles, that kind of thing. I don't think they have much flavor, myself, but people buy 'em, so I grow 'em."

  "Can you make a living out of that? You hear a lot about farms closing down these days."

  Kate wondered where Hawkin's sudden interest in agriculture came from, or was going to. Ned seemed reluctant to answer.

  "Oh, yes. Well, not a great living. Farmers don't drive Rolls Royces, but the bills get paid. Course, a lot of us have other jobs, too, just to help out, during the slack times."

  "What do you do? Your other job?"

  "I make deliveries." Red was looking oddly at his son.

  "Truck driving, then? Long distance?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Yes, I think your mother mentioned that you were going away next week. Must be hard on your wife."

  "Oh, she doesn't mind; it doesn't happen that often." Here Red interrupted with a snort, and when his son shot him a look of barely controlled rage, Kate realized what Hawkin was after, though she was not at all sure how he had known it was there.

  "It doesn't," he insisted. "And the money's damn good."

  Teddy came back into the room, crayons and paper in hand, and climbed into the chair next to Hawkin, who helped him clear a place for the pad, automatically placing a half-full glass of milk to one side without taking his interested gaze from the young man across the table.

  "The money's not the reason—" began Red, but Hawkin seemed not to hear him and talked over his words.

  "I've always been fascinated by those big rigs—an eighteen wheeler, is it? A refrigerator truck?"

  "Usually. It's owned by the local co-op of organic farmers. Three of us have licenses, so we take turns with deliveries. Usually the truck's only half full, so we fill up with stuff for the other growers." The young man spoke easily, but he seemed to be warmer than the room's temperature would account for.

  "Mostly California?"

  "Yeah, some Oregon."

  "And Nevada, and Utah, and Texas," broke in his father. "It's a crazy thing to mix with trying to grow crops."

  Several things happened at once. Ned shoved his chair back with a crash just as his mother entered, and the oblivious Teddy reached for a crayon just as Hawkin put his own arm out to place his napkin on the table. The anger from one end of the table and the maternal consternation from the doorway were both drowned by a child's horrified shriek as the contents of the glass shot across the drawing, over the edge of the table and all over the front of the young artist. Only Kate, seated directly across from them, saw that it was Hawkin's hand rather than Teddy's arm that had propelled the glass, and by the time it had been cleared and wiped and the child taken upstairs for dry clothes, the air had cleared.

  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

  Contents - Prev/Next

  "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."

  "Why not? You have to be wary of personal reactions, but that doesn't mean ignore them."

  "Well, all right. It's the way he looked at me. A few years ago I began to realize that every time I met a man who looked me over like I was a piece of prime breeding stock, and he the blue-ribbon bull, he would turn out to be the same kind of person—an empty-headed incompetent who was so taken with his own sense of magnificence that he couldn't see that the only prick he had was between his ears. If you'll pardon my French, as Red Jameson would say. Ned is just too stupid not only to pull this off but to see Vaun as any kind of a threat. In fact, I'd doubt he's very troubled by the money. You would be, but he very probably thinks it's his due."

  "You got all that from a look?"

  "From a lot of looks over the years, Al."

  He started to laugh, and as before it changed him into someone she could begin to like a great deal.

  "Casey, I think I'm going to like working with you," he chuckled, and as he moved to the car he reached out and slapped her shoulder with a large hand, and then his face collapsed at her reaction.

  "Oh, God, I'm sorry, I forgot. Are you okay?"

  It took her a minute to catch her breath.

  "Oh, yeah," she finally gasped, "just great. I always stand around with watering eyes, gritting my teeth. Makes me look tough."

  At the high school the final bell had just rung, and Kate steered toward the visitor's parking against a surge of yellow buses, overladen cars, and clusters of long-legged students with the bodies of adults and the clamor of second-graders. Nothing like a high school to make a person feel short, clumsy, staid, and totally conspicuous. It seemed to affect Hawkin the same way.

  "I never feel so much a cop as when I come to a high school," he muttered.

  "Flat feet and a truncheon," Kate agreed.

  "Just the facts, ma'am." He raised his voice. "Pardon me, ladies, can you tell me where I'd find the principal's office?"

  The answer came as multiple giggles and a flurry of vague waves as the collective of females fluttered away. At the next junction he directed the same question to a group of males, and got vague thumb gestures and deeper guffaws, and the same mass sideways movement. He was drawing breath for a third inquiry when Kate nudged him and pointed to a sign saying Office. They pushed slowly inside to the desk.

  The harassed secretary gradually realized that Hawkin was not a student and turned her stubby nose and small eyes in their direction. Her piercing voice cut across the din and caused it to slip several notches as the student bodies took note of the nature of these two intruders.

  "Are you Detective Hawking? Mr. Zawalski said that you and Officer Martini would be here and that he'd be back in ten minutes if you'd like to wait in his office."

  The waters parted and the two of them moved meekly under the speculative eyes and the beginning of whispers into the inner sanctum marked Principal. A burst of voices was set off by the closing of the door, and Kate grinned at Hawkin.

  "Well, Detective Hawking, what do you bet there's a scramble for lockers and many flushings of toilets in about two minutes?"

  "Sorry for the janitor tomorrow when they're all backed up."

  The office was large and cluttered, the lair of a proponent of hearty camaraderie and school spirit. Plaques and group photographs of bulky young men in shoulder pads, cheerful young men in baseball hats, and unnaturally tall young men in basketball shorts crowded every inch of wall space. Bookshelves held trophies, a dusty, much autographed football on a stand, a shelf and a half of multicolored and multisized yearbooks, and several generations of the school mascot, a bear. On the wall behind the door was a yellowed list of scholarship students, three years old. Thr
ee small photos of a women's basketball team huddled together in the corner.

  Hawkin moved directly to the bookshelves, pulled out an old yearbook, and took it to the cluttered table. After flipping through it for a moment he opened it flat at the formal portraits of the senior class.

  The third photograph was of Vaun. To her left smirked a pair of sun-bleached twins named Aaronson; to her right another blond face looked out, a chubby boy with the euphonic name of Alexander Alarzo. Framed by the blond, tan, smiling faces, Vaun's hair seemed immensely dark and her startling eyes were a luminous near-white on the page. The photographer had caught the hint of amusement in her still face, and she looked an exotic creature set down inexplicably amongst the oblivious natives. Down the page the pattern of black and white rectangles of near-adults was broken by a famous, or perhaps infamous, picture of Richard Nixon gesturing a V-for-victory sign. Beneath that picture it said, "Marie Cabrera," and under that, "Escaped our Camera."

  An uncomfortable premonition stirred in Kate. Hawkin turned the page. Marcia Givens to Richard Larson. One more page, and again the presidential visage grinned up at them. "Andrew Lewis. Escaped our Camera."

  "Damnation." Hawk slammed the book shut.

  On cue, the door opened, and the flustered pink face looked in. The upturned little nose twitched.

  "Would either of you like a cup of coffee?" She spoke in a more normal voice, the masses in the outer office having miraculously departed. (To their lockers? wondered Kate. Surely not all of them!)

  "Not right now, thanks," said Hawkin. "Maybe later. We do need a telephone, though. Is there a direct outside line, one that doesn't have any other extensions?"

  "Oh!" The pink face got pinker, and she sidled into the room and planted her solid backside against the closed door. She looked so like some television caricature of a blue-rinsed lady thrilled at the chance to assist a professional sleuth that Kate had to bite down a giggle. The secretary spoke in a whisper that could be heard in the hallway.

  "Oh, yes, Mr. Zawalski has a private outside line, right in his phone. You just punch the last button, number nine, on the bottom, and he's the only one that has access to it. I mean, his phone is the only one. I mean, it's perfectly private."