Читать книгу Murder on the Road Less Traveled - Robert W. Gregg - Страница 13

It was not until Carol was almost back to her office that she had a thought which should have occurred to her an hour or more earlier. Slocomb’s residence was very close to the route the Gravel Grinder had followed, only a mile or two beyond where Joe Reiger had turned onto a different road on the hill above the eastern arm of Crooked Lake. What if Ernie Eakins had missed the turn and continued on past the dirt track to Slocomb’s place? And had then discovered his mistake. Perhaps he had used the track to turn around. Would Slocomb have seen him? And what if Eakins was having trouble with his bike. Would Slocomb be able to tell her something useful about the other person she was looking for?

Why hadn’t the Eakins case come to mind while she was talking with Slocomb? Carol was annoyed with her preoccupation with the Kennedy case, but it was now too late to go back to revisit the reclusive hog farmer. It would, however, be at the top of her agenda tomorrow. Today she would visit the Kennedys and report on her meeting with Slocomb.

It was at 10:40 the next morning that she set off for the Kennedy residence. The Kennedys were anxious to hear about her conversation with Adolph Slocomb, although Henry was worried that asking for the day off to do so might cost him his job at Jefferson’s Hardware. But he took the risk and was relieved to discover that the manager was surprisingly sympathetic.

The Kennedy house was roughly a mile south of the downtown area. Carol assumed that its location was due to their limited means. In any event, the house showed its age, needed a paint job, and lacked the shrubs and flower beds which made so much of Southport an attractive village. Ruth was at the door almost as soon as the bell announced Carol’s arrival.

“Thank you for searching for Martin,” she said. “We hope you learned something encouraging.”

“It’s too soon to be discouraged. I have seen Mr. Slocomb, talked with him, formed a few impressions. I want to share those with you, and ask you some questions that hadn’t occurred to me when we were in my office. What a charming house you have.”

And she meant it. It was sparsely furnished, and not in a way that she and Kevin would have chosen. But unlike the exterior, the interior was both fresh and neat. The walls had been painted, the furniture, while traditional, was pleasant and looked comfortable. One wall was devoted to a set of framed photos that provided evidence of a happy extended family; even a boy who was certainly Martin wore a wide smile. Moreover, the Kennedys were obviously readers. A wide wooden bookcase across from the couch said as much.

“Come on in and have a seat. I don’t know whether you’re a coffee drinker, but I have some that’s fresh in the kitchen.” Assuming that the sheriff would say yes, Ruth asked if she would like cream and sugar.

“Yes, coffee would be just fine. But I like it black, unsweetened.”

Henry Kennedy spoke for the first time.

“I gather that you didn’t learn anything that tells us much about Martin’s whereabouts. We were hopeful, but not optimistic. You probably were, too.”

“I’m afraid so. In my experience, it usually takes time.” Carol immediately regretted the pessimism this comment would have conveyed.

“I wish I had good news. But Mr. Slocomb had nothing to say about what might have happened to your son. I do, however, have a better picture of the situation up on the hill where Martin was working.”

“What do you mean?” Ruth asked. She was obviously confused as to what the sheriff meant.

“Well, I’ve now seen where Martin was working, and you haven’t. I’m here to tell you about it and why I think you ought to take a trip up to Mr. Slocomb’s. I also have had a chance to talk at some length with him, whereas I believe you only met with him when he expressed an interest in hiring Martin. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have assumed you were pleased that he was interested in doing so. Now the situation is different, wouldn’t you agree? Of course one of you, perhaps both of you, talked with him when he picked Martin up and brought him home. You did, didn’t you?”

It was Henry who knew what Carol had in mind. The Kennedys didn’t know Adolph Slocomb as well as she now did, and they should. He was immediately worried that what she had observed and heard was troubling.

“I take it that you saw something, or heard something, from Slocomb that makes you suspicious of him.”

“I wouldn’t say that. But I would say that he’s a strange man. I cannot understand why he needed a handyman. Unless he’s not telling me the truth, your son had almost nothing to do. It’s possible that in Martin’s time there, Mr. Slocomb discovered that Martin wasn’t really able to do what he had in mind for him, and that accounts for the very limited load he carried. You know much more than I do about what your son can and cannot do, which is why I think you should go and talk with Mr. Slocomb.”

“You’re right. We didn’t pay enough attention to the situation. Left it too much in Slocomb’s hands. I guess we felt so fortunate to have found a place for Martin to spend time out of doors. And Slocomb seemed concerned, a decent man who didn’t seem to have any problem hiring a black boy.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself. Who would have thought this would have happened?” Actually, Carol agreed with Henry that the Kennedys should have been more involved in making the arrangements for their son’s summer. But it was too late to change the past.

“So you didn’t learn what might have happened to Martin,” Ruth said. “What did you learn?”

“Mostly about Slocomb and his dwelling. Sorry. I don’t typically call someone’s house a dwelling, but where Slocomb lives barely qualifies as a house. It’s old, but so is your home and mine. What is unusual is that it serves as living space for both the owner and a bunch of hogs. There’s a shed, or a pig pen, semi-detached from the house where he stays, that makes the house part look somewhat like an afterthought. It seems that Slocomb is a farmer, only he raises hogs, not vegetables. All of this is quite a long distance back from the road - you have to take a winding dirt track to get there. I didn’t get to estimate how large his property is, but it’s big, probably as much as twenty acres. It stretches from a large and deep ravine on one side all the way to another dirt track leading to Slocomb’s nearest neighbor on the other.”

“He raises hogs?”

“That’s what he says. Slaughters them and sells the meat to area stores. Perhaps directly to consumers, although I’m not sure about that.”

Ruth grimaced at the thought of Slocomb as a slaughterer of hogs.

“As for the man himself, he’s a self described loner. Given where he lives, that seems to be a pretty accurate label. He claims that he rarely leaves the hill house, usually to deliver meat to customers. It was on one of his rare trips to town that Martin disappeared. You’ve seen him, of course, so you know what he looks like - a rough man, not large but probably strong. I know I’ve only seen him and talked with him for less than an hour, but he strikes me as a man who is very careful to maintain his privacy. He talked quite a bit about Martin, but almost not at all about himself. Perhaps that’s not surprising, inasmuch as I was there to inquire about your son. But I’d guess that he chose his hill top home in part to hide who he is, or was. I wonder when he moved to this area? I should have asked.”

“So you are suspicious of Mr. Slocomb. Do you have reason to believe that he has some responsibility for Martin being missing?” It was Henry who asked the question.

“No, nothing I heard from him, nothing in his manner, suggested that that’s the case. I’m only telling you what I observed and my impression of him. Like I’ve said, he’s a strange man. That doesn’t mean he could be a factor in Martin’s disappearance. So please don’t look at it that way because you think I do. What I’m anxious to have you do is visit Slocomb, ask him lots of questions, try to get a sense of the relationship he was developing with your son. How do you think Martin would have reacted to Slocomb? Would he have expected him to talk to him, to act interested in him, or would he have been happy to be working for someone who said little, a man who gave him jobs to do and otherwise left him alone? My problem, as must be obvious to you, is that I don’t begin to know enough about Martin to know how he would have reacted to someone like Slocomb. Is your son, too, a loner? How do you suppose he would process instructions from Slocomb? How would you suspect he would deal with that environment?”

“Off hand, I don’t think we could answer those questions. But we’ll take your advice and visit the hog farmer. And I’ll try very hard to keep an open mind, even if it isn’t easy. Ruth, too.”

“Good. And I promise to stay in touch. You’ll do the same, won’t you?”

“Oh yes, and thank you for standing by,” Ruth said.

Carol gave them a road map she had sketched, hoping they would be able to find Slocomb’s without too much trouble. Then she did what she almost never did in the course of an investigation. She leaned over and kissed Ruth.