by Doug Allyn
She had been avoiding everyone in her own town all week, and had no idea if reporters were still hanging around, but she drove to the outskirts of Salem to shop. At home again she put away the milk and eggs, fruit and bread, and it was still too early, not yet twelve-thirty. She began to gather up the cut-up newspapers, remembered the clipping about Jordan, and retrieved it from her purse. After regarding it for a moment she added it to the papers to be bundled up for recycling. The only emotion she felt was surprise at feeling so little, even though by the act she had decided it was over with Jordan. If she let him, he would forgive her lack of trust, she knew, but the fact remained that she had not trusted him enough to confide the most dangerous secret she ever had. She wondered if Hilde would discard the clippings that concerned her former husband. Probably Hilde would keep them, she thought, remembering the wall of plaques, citations, certificates.
Then she frowned, trying to recall something she had noticed and forgotten again. Janice had been in the leather chair, Hilde pouring wine, Ellen looking around the personal collection that made the room human. Abruptly she went to the other room and rummaged in a desk drawer for a file folder. She hurried back to the kitchen and found several articles she had tossed because they had appeared in more than one newspaper; she put them in the folder.
Then she drove back to the college, this time to the president’s mansion. She rang the bell. The housekeeper, Mrs. Lawrence, opened the door.
“Has Dr. Melton left yet?” Ellen asked.
“A couple of hours ago.”
“I was afraid of that. I have some papers she wants to have on hand the minute she gets back home Monday. She told me to put them in the private sitting room if I missed her.”
Mrs. Lawrence nodded and stepped back. “Come on in, Ellen.”
“I won’t be a minute.”
Mrs. Lawrence walked with her. “That poor woman,” she said. “All this business has her beside herself, I’m sure. She can use a rest from the telephone.” She remained at the door of the sitting room when they got there.
Ellen crossed to a low table and put the folder down, remembering. Janice over there in the leather chair, Hilde at the table, Ellen trying to avoid both of them, gazing straight ahead at the diplomas, certificates, plaques, one a handsome bronze inscribed, “President American Archaeology Society, May 31, 1980 — May 31, 1986.”
Mrs. Lawrence was still talking, she realized, after they left the room and were back at the entrance. She was only vaguely aware of the puzzled look the housekeeper gave her when she said, “Thanks,” and hurried to her car.
She sat thinking for several minutes and then started her engine and drove out to the road and turned toward the campsite. One more thing, she thought.
She had not been back since that night, although she had driven past countless times on her way to the coast. Today she pulled into the gravel parking area. Few people used the site for camping overnight and only infrequently did anyone use it by day. People stopped to rest a minute, to take a walk, use the toilets, or maybe eat lunch, but it was fifteen miles to the coast from here and that was the destination of most people heading west on Crystal River Road. Today no one was in sight.
She pulled into the same spot Patty had used that night. Two other cars had been there, both of them in the center parking area, facing west, as her car was facing now. She nodded and got out of her car, and slowly walked the trail through the woods to the spot where they had made the fire near the river. The fir trees here were old growth and mammoth; the trail was like a tunnel, in perpetual dusk with glowing green mosses on rocks, trunks, fallen branches. The moss colored the dim light with its green reflection; it was like walking under water, without the water. She reached the clearing and looked all around it. The trail she had used was the only trail; the woods closed in on three sides, the river made up the fourth. Then she retraced her steps. The trail curved around trees; it was hard to find a straight line in the forests here. She remembered how his light had led the way like a living thing moving up and over rocks, a fallen tree trunk... She had been unable to look away from it. If anyone had been ahead of them with another light, she would not have seen it.
The little disk of light had led back to the parking area to his van, in line with the other cars, but facing the opposite way, toward town. If another car had been parked at the far end of the area, she would not have been able to see it. When the van lights came on, only the woods she had just left had been lighted, not the rest of the parking area.
“Blair, you’re playing hookey.” Haliday’s voice sounded close by.
She jerked around to see him leaning against a tree near the road. “Are you following me?” she demanded. Her voice was shaky.
“Yep. Nice day for a walk in the woods.”
She took a deep breath. “Haliday, I have something to tell you.”
He straightened, took the few steps to the road and motioned to someone; when a car pulled up with a strange man driving, he went to it and spoke briefly. The man nodded, turned, and left again.
“Told him I’d hitch a ride,” Haliday said, approaching Ellen. He pointed to a log. “Let’s sit down.”
On the log, plucking pieces of moss from the bark, not looking at him, she told him about that night, everything but names. For a long time he was silent. Then he said, “Show me the clearing.”
She led the way. While he looked at the fire enclosure and examined the woods encircling the space, she stood at the bank of the river gazing at the water. At this time of year it was full to overflowing with rapids, churning white water, falls; it sounded very loud.
“What time did you get here?” he asked, suddenly at her side.
“Nine-thirty or later. It was getting dark.”
“When did he show up?”
She shook her head. “At least two hours later, maybe more. I don’t know.”
He was scowling at the river below. “What made you tell me now?”
“I think someone will try to kill me,” she said.
He looked at her swiftly, then motioned toward the fire enclosure. “One of them?”
“No. The one who killed Philip, if not directly, then through them, by goading one of them to do it. I think I was supposed to break before now, tell the whole story with names, and then a lot of people would have been involved and I would have been the chief suspect and she would have been out of it.”
Very slowly Haliday said, “Who is she, Blair? Who are you talking about?”
Keeping her gaze on the frothy water below, she said, “Hilde Melton.”
He let out a breath. “Ah, Blair, how we’ve all underestimated you. Give. Why?”
“She lied about her husband being home that weekend. He was in New York being inaugurated as president of the American Archaeology Society. She lied about having days off after that weekend. If Pryor had gone to Hawaii, she would have had to stay on the job. There’s too much to do at the end of the school year for both of them to be gone. She would have known Philip had rented the apartment through the middle of June. That’s the kind of detail work we flunkies keep track of. She could have gone any night to get the manuscript and letters. So many little things, like the way the van was parked as if it had come from the coast, not from town.”
“What about the van?” Haliday asked.
“She talks about the cottage on the coast, but it’s a big house, with a two-car garage. I think she hid the van there until late one night when she drove down the coast somewhere and ran it off the road into the ocean. And her husband’s car was always kept out there, so she could have used that to get back to town. The faculty houses have small garages,” she added. “With glass panes. It would have been seen by the mailman or someone.”
He sighed. “We’re having the deep coves searched,” he said. “Nothing so far, but we’re still looking. I sure hoped something would turn up linking her to Seymour. No luck yet.”
This time she looked at him in surprise. “You suspected her? Wh
y?”
“You,” he said. “I told her I wanted a crack at the files and she came on like a matchmaker, pushing you at me. After that note, it seemed curious. And I had to wonder why she hired you,” he said almost apologetically. “You said it yourself, you’re not presidential timber. A month or so after Langford bought that land and his plans became known, she hired you after getting along fine without an assistant for years. It seemed almost as if she did it just to keep you around, in case.” He paused and added, “And her husband’s schedule. I checked that as a matter of routine. He came out the following weekend.”
They were both silent until she said, “None of this is very conclusive, is it?”
He laughed harshly.
After a moment she asked, “What are you going to do about me?”
“You planning to run away?”
“No.”
“Then I’m going to think about it. How did you find the exact dates of her husband’s inauguration?”
She told him about the private sitting room in the mansion filled with Walter Melton’s proofs of achievement.
“Something of a pack rat?” he asked.
“Something...” She glanced at him, but he seemed absorbed in watching the swift river. “She might have kept anything from Philip, too. Not in the mansion, but in her private residence at the coast. Why did she go out there this weekend with so much going on?”
“Let’s take a ride, Blair. Let’s go look at the ocean.”
He complained about her driving on the steep winding road, and she snapped that she knew every curve in it. The road was narrow, posted the entire length for no passing, for fifteen miles an hour, ten miles; the forest pressed in close. The road descended precipitously. “Why do you keep telling me things?” she demanded, taking a curve too fast.
“Like I said, the more you know, the more help you are. A tight community like this one, if the door closes, it takes dynamite to get it open again. An insider helps. Don’t go near her house. Head into the village. I want to use a telephone.”
As they drew near the village of Crystal Beach, more and more young people appeared on the road, some walking, some on bicycles. “Spring break,” she said, slowing to a crawl. She stopped at a filling station a few minutes later and watched him go to the telephone.
“Something to eat,” he said when he got back. “A place with a view would be nice.”
Crystal Beach had a population of five hundred, but today there were dozens of college students on the streets making it appear much more populous. Weekend traffic on 101 was heavy. Haliday shook his head at a Dairy Queen, and again at a hamburger joint, and then pointed to Cap’n John’s Seafood House. So they were going to be here for a while, she thought, and pulled in to park.
It was a strange meal. They ordered, clam chowder for him, crab salad for her; he gazed out the window and said, “Pretty,” and then became silent and remained silent.
This was a rugged section of coast, with cliffs, many rocks jutting up from the water, rocky tide pools, and a narrow strip of sand. The restaurant was seventy-five feet above the beach. Down there kids were flying kites, tossing Frisbees, clambering over mountainous piles of driftwood that from here looked like a giant’s jackstraws carelessly abandoned. The water was deep blue and calm.
When the waiter came with coffee, he nodded, then ignored it. She sipped hers, waiting. He glanced at his watch several times, and the last time, got up. “Right back,” he said and left. Fifteen minutes after he returned, he grinned at her. “Time to go. Whoever taught you to keep quiet so a man could think did a good job of it.”
Her father, she thought, as they left the restaurant. Poor Dad had tried hard to teach her mother, who never had learned that particular lesson. She drove again, up 101 to Crystal River Road, back the way they had come for half a mile, and then she turned onto a narrow winding road, past two driveways, and into Hilde Melton’s drive.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked then, reluctantly eyeing the house ahead. It was a low, rambling, unpainted cedar building, the rustic look of the wood offset by stained-glass windows on this side. Trees misshapen by the wind, wind-carved boulders, a few pieces of silvered driftwood made up the yard. Beyond, the ocean was visible.
“You don’t do a thing,” Haliday said. “Not a peep.”
They walked to the front stoop and he rang the bell.
Hilde was still wearing jeans and a sweater. She looked at the lieutenant, then at Ellen, and said angrily, “This is just too much! What are you doing out here? What do you want?”
“A couple of things came up,” Haliday said. “Can we come in?”
“Ellen, I told you you don’t have to work for this man any longer. Who is your superior, Lieutenant?” She moved aside to let them enter and slammed the door.
The room they entered was spacious and bright, with the stained-glass windows on one side and sliding glass doors on the other. A deck was beyond the doors with a view of the ocean. The furnishings inside were rattan and bentwood, with Indian print throws on chairs and a sofa, colorful cotton rugs on a wide plank floor with a nice gloss. On the deck the furniture was heavy wood, massive terracotta planters with greenery, nothing that would blow away.
“Captain Hersholt,” Haliday said. “Dr. Melton, you said you and your husband came out here Saturday morning after the big party. Are you sure? Our information is that he was in New York and didn’t get back here until the following week.”
“You asked me about an event that happened thirteen years ago. I told you what I believed was true. We always came out here after the party, I assumed we did that time, too.”
“I understand that your husband never attended college functions, that he stayed here on the coast when he was home.”
“Your informant is mistaken.”
“What kind of a car did your husband drive back then?”
Hilde was looking more and more angry; her face flushed deep crimson. She threw up her hands and turned her back on him, crossed the room to stand at the sliding door and gaze out. “This is insane,” she said. “I don’t remember what kind of car he had. He had a car and I had one.”
Ellen had not moved from the door; she watched miserably. Haliday was strolling around, looking at things, a vase with pampas grass plumes, a bowl of seashells, a magazine...
“Was it a green seventy-nine Dodge two-door?”
“I don’t know,” Hilde snapped.
“You see, our information is that you took a Dodge like that to a body shop in Salem on Friday following the death of Philip Seymour. You told them your husband had driven it off the road into bushes or something and banged it up.”
Hilde didn’t move. After a moment she said, “I did one year. I don’t remember when it was.”
“The problem is I can’t figure out how you managed to get it in town from out here and still have your own car available. I mean, if you drove out here and drove the Dodge back to town, your car must have stayed here. But on Saturday that week you went up to Portland and picked up your husband at the airport. Didn’t you?”
She turned toward them; the low sun behind her was so brilliant that she was only a black shadow. “Whatever point you’re trying to make, Lieutenant, just make it.”
He nodded. “I think Seymour followed you out here to the coast the night of the party, and for a time your car, your husband’s car, and his van were all here. When he went back to town in the van, you followed in your husband’s car, and later drove the van back out, leaving your husband’s car in the garage at the faculty residence. The following week you drove your car back to town, took your husband’s car to the shop, and all the pieces were accounted for, or will be when you tell us where you dumped the van.”
“And I don’t give a damn what you think,” she said coldly. “Now if you’ll get out of here, I have things to do.”
“I’m afraid I have to search your house, Dr. Melton,” Haliday said.
“Just exactly what do you think you’ll
find?” she demanded. She went to the telephone on an end table. “You said Captain Hersholt, I believe.”
Haliday nodded. “I’d be looking for Seymour’s manuscript, personal letters, probably a lot of photographs, maybe a blue tuxedo, and a gold ring that looks like a snake.”
Hilde looked past him at Ellen then. “You finally talked,” she murmured. She stood with her hand on the telephone, then slowly removed it.
“I told him everything except names,” Ellen said.
“Why stop there?”
“Why ruin a lot of other people? They were helpless, under his spell, as I was, and you were.”
“This has been interesting,” Hilde said, moving to the front door. “When you get a proper search warrant, Lieutenant, then we can talk about searching my house. Now leave.”
She opened the door and stopped moving. Winona Kelly and a uniformed officer were on the porch. Winona held out a paper; Haliday reached past Hilde and took it, and then closed the door again. Hilde had turned waxy and pale.
She walked stiffly to the glass door and out to the deck. Haliday motioned to Ellen and they followed her. Another man in a gray suit was on the edge of the cliff facing the house. Hilde ignored him. “Lieutenant,” she said, looking toward the ocean, “there’s no need to tear up the house. In my bedroom, a cedar chest, locked. The key is in my purse on the dressing table.”
When he left Hilde said in a low voice, “That Saturday, we played all day and ate out here at sunset. Such a beautiful day. Then he said he was going. I thought he would stay until Monday or Tuesday.” She glanced at Ellen. “I wonder that you didn’t break early. I thought you would. The need to tell someone is so terribly strong, isn’t it?” She moved to the edge of the deck and stood with her head against a support post. “When he held your face and kissed your forehead, I hated him. I realized then that what he had planned involved women, sex, a ritual of some sort. I said you couldn’t drive, you were drunk, or high or something. I told him if you crashed, if you killed yourself, he would be up against manslaughter. We followed you, watched you park and start to walk home. He wanted to stop, to get the van, but I kept driving.” The wind was very cold coming in from the ocean; she seemed unaware of it. Ellen was shivering.