The Photographer II Read online

  “I can’t imagine being excited over having a photo made.”

  “I can’t either. Altman’s really professional when he’s working. I still don’t like him, and it was obvious he didn’t want me there, but that was all I found out by going with Davita. She had on a dress that should be censored, but I’m sure you’ll see it at the Christmas dance.”

  “I can hardly wait.” He grinned. “Listen, here’s something I can’t get off my mind, Vicki. I know you suspect Altman, and it sounds as if my mother does, too. But if he killed SueAnne and Belle, how did he do it?”

  “I thought about that today, too. I have no idea. But if we could snoop around in his studio, we might find out.”

  At least Vicki said we. “Listen, you don’t have any plan to do that, do you? If the police haven’t found anything—”

  “Why don’t I ride with you to pick up your mother?” Vicki ignored Scott’s worrying. “I could use some fresh air. That will give us a few more minutes to talk. Think she’d mind your bringing me back?”

  “I can take her home, then take you to get some barbecue. What do they put in it anyway? It’s addictive.”

  “That’s Southern cooking, manners, and traditions, which are addictive. Didn’t take you long to get hooked.”

  “That’s for sure.” Scott didn’t mean on Southern cooking, and Vicki understood what he meant, but she just smiled and ran for the car. When she got there, though, she leaned on the door for a minute before she opened it.

  Scott opened it for her. “You okay?”

  “Boy, whatever hit me left me as weak as a kitten. I thought I was okay, and I don’t feel sick, just exhausted.”

  “Take two barbecue beefs and call me in the morning. Did you have any lunch?”

  “I don’t remember. I guess I went back to sleep after you called.”

  “Sure you want to go out?”

  “Sure. I hope I’m not exposing you to some weird bug, though.”

  “Couldn’t happen to a luckier guy.” Scott slid into the driver’s seat and started back to town.

  Chapter 14

  They picked up Mrs. Lawrence, invited her to go eat with them, then dropped her off home when she declined their invitation.

  “I just want to kick my shoes off and crash.”

  “Anything new on Goldie?” Vicki asked.

  “She disappeared without a trace, Vicki. Strangest case I’ve ever been on. We have no clue as to what happened, and no idea of how the other two girls died.”

  “I—I guess she’ll show up one of these days.” Vicki gripped Scott’s arm.

  “We think so. We’ve got people alert all over the state, looking for anything out of the ordinary. We have everyone in town watching everyone for us. We’re going to have the whole town suspecting their neighbors, but it can’t be helped. Our only break would be someone seeing this guy bring Goldie back.”

  “If this was New York City, you could double the number of street people,” Scott pointed out.

  “This is confidential, kids, but there are some extra bums in town. We have three hanging out on the courthouse lawn. There are extra old men playing checkers in the park and around the square. And every street in town is undergoing repairs.”

  “Surely no one can slip through that net,” Scott said. “Except late at night.”

  “That’s taken care of, too. There are no longer any unemployed in Sparksville proper. Bye, Vicki, enjoy your dinner. Here, Scott.” His mother dug in her purse and produced a ten-dollar bill. “Bring home as much take-out chicken and slaw as this will buy. There’s no way I’m going to cook anything tonight.”

  Their route back to The Pit led past the back of the Photography Studio. It was dusk, but still light enough to see David Altman come out and get into his old van.

  “Wonder where he’s going?” Vicki said. “He lives in the back of that place.”

  Scott slowed. “Well, there are about a million possibilities. The grocery store, the cafe, a movie—”

  “No, he’s pulling onto Mulberry. That’s not the way to town. It goes up to the highway.”

  “So maybe he’s going for a drive, or to Little Rock for supplies, or—”

  “Let’s follow him.”

  “Why? I’m starved,” Scott protested. “You must be, too. A good meal will have you wanting to go out to the City Limits and dance all night. You might even talk me into learning a little country/western-style dancing.”

  Scott had no intention of taking Vicki dancing, but he could see no reason to follow Altman on an errand.

  “Call it curiosity. Have you seen Altman in town, socializing? Have you seen him in church, at the movie theater, anyplace that a normal person would hang out?”

  “No, but it’s not a crime to be antisocial. To like being alone. The number of photo sessions he’s had for the annual, he has probably spent all his spare time in the lab. He does all the developing and printing himself, I think. His name is stamped on the back of every photo we got for the annual.”

  “Just do it, Scott. Please. Humor me.”

  Scott swung his mother’s Honda into a U-ie. “Okay, lady. But if either of us passes out from low blood sugar, don’t say I didn’t try to warn you. My stomach is rumbling like one of your famous tornadoes.”

  “That’s not your stomach. Look at that cloud. It’s a real storm.”

  Sure enough, even with night approaching, Scott could see the billowing black clouds swirling in from the west. Streaks of lightning shredded the air, followed by a low kettledrum roll.

  He should have turned on his lights, but if he was really going to follow Altman, he’d keep them off as long as possible.

  The blue van kept going when the interstate ramp swung off to the right going east, and under the bridge, to the left going west.

  “There’s nothing out here. He can’t be going for a drive to see the scenery in this storm. And the next town is twenty miles away.” Vicki unbuckled her seat belt and scooted closer to the windshield, peering out into the gloom.

  Huge drops of water splattered onto the glass, first a few, then harder and harder. Along with the wipers, Scott had to turn on the lights. Even then he could hardly see twenty feet in front of him.

  In no time, despite the storm, it was obvious they were following no one. Altman would have turned on his lights, too, but they never caught up to another pair of glowing red spots.

  “He either knew we were following him and turned off, or he’s driving too fast for conditions,” Scott said. “On the other hand, if he was going for a pleasure drive, he was probably smart enough to turn around and go back home.”

  “Wouldn’t we have seen him?” Vicki took a tissue from her pocket and wiped condensation from the inside of the windshield.

  “Not necessarily. He could have pulled off on some dirt lane or a farm driveway, waited a few minutes, then turned around. I can’t see anything now. I’m going to have to pull off. I never saw rain like this in my life.”

  “This is pretty normal rain for around here, but you’re right. It’s not safe to keep driving.” Vicki looked behind them. “Be sure another car isn’t following your lights. They’ll pull off and smash into us. That happens a lot around here.”

  They sat for a minute, listening to the rain pound the hood and roof of the car. Scott felt claustrophobic sitting there.

  “This is kind of cozy, isn’t it?” Vicki turned to him and grinned.

  “Cozy or crazy. I’ll have to admit to being claustrophobic.”

  “How romantic.” She laughed.

  “Did you plan this, Vicki Valentine?” Scott pulled her toward him. “You knew it was going to storm, didn’t you? You’ve been stranded in rain like this before. You devious little sex kitten.” Scott growled and rubbed his face on her shoulder.

  Vicki tried to push him away. “Stop, that tickles.”

  He stopped. “Something has to distract me. I get wild when I’m claustrophobic.” He held her close, distracted all right, but awar
e of the fury of the storm. It pounded the car, while the wind rocked it slightly. He blanked his mind, thinking only of her, feeling her relax into his arms. Finally she spoke, but said only one thing that he wanted to hear.

  “I wish it was last summer, Scott. I wish we could go back, that this fall had never happened. I want to make it all disappear. You’re the only good thing in my life right now, but I’m afraid, afraid for both of us. Don’t ask me why, ’cause I don’t know. I just feel scared.”

  “I think it’s scary to love someone,” he confessed, talking about a completely different scared than she was thinking of. He pushed her away enough to kiss her forehead, both cheeks, then her warm soft lips. At first she responded, but then she went limp in his arms.

  “Vicki! What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  She seemed only half-conscious. “Take me home, Scott,” she mumbled. “I—I think I’d better go back to bed. I’m sorry.”

  “I was stupid—I didn’t realize—”

  “It’s okay, I’ll be okay.” She fumbled with her seat belt.

  Scott reached over, grabbed and buckled it around her. Then he started the car, peered into the pelting rain, and spun the car around, heading back toward town.

  He drove as fast as he could, not wanting to risk going off the road. Vicki was clearly unconscious on the seat beside him.

  Chapter 15

  Vicki woke up in the middle of the night, having a dream that someone was looking at her, someone she didn’t want looking at her. But she couldn’t see who it was. And she couldn’t remember what had happened the night before, so she let it all go and drifted back into oblivion.

  Come morning, however, she remembered being with Scott, passing out, and she felt foolish over it. She sat up slowly, expecting to be dizzy, but she thought she was okay.

  “Hi, puddin’.” Her mother peeked, then slipped into her bedroom, calling Vicki by her old pet name. “You feeling better?”

  “I think so. Geeze, I’ll bet Scott thinks I’m crazy. First for getting out of bed when I was still sick. Then for—” She stopped the thought. She didn’t want her mother to know she had insisted that Scott follow David Altman out of town in that pouring rain. Her mother would just worry. It was a wild goose chase, too, so that made her feel foolish even thinking about it.

  “Scott thinks nothing of the sort. He is really worried about you, though. And when he carried you in here last night, I nearly fainted. Vicki, maybe you’d better check into the clinic and have a complete blood workup.”

  “Oh, Mom, I feel fine today. It was one of those weird flu bugs. You know how I never really get sick, but just feel awful for a couple of days. I’m over it, really I am. This bed feels awfully good, though. Maybe I just needed an early vacation.” She laughed, leaned back, and poured a cup of tea from the tray her mother had brought to her.

  “You needed spoiling, Vicki.” Her mother plumped pillows behind Vicki, felt her forehead, treating her like one of her patients. “I’m sorry I stay so busy. I let my family take care of themselves, and I haven’t even felt guilty for weeks.”

  “I did this on purpose, Mom. I missed your feeling guilty because you work full-time. What’s on your schedule today?”

  “Today I’m the county nurse. Hey, do you feel like making my rounds with me? That wouldn’t take as much energy as going to school, since you’d be in the car most of the time. I’d like you to meet my young mother. She’s due any day now.”

  “Sure, let’s go up there and deliver a baby. I haven’t done that lately.” Vicki laughed. “Come to think of it, I’ve never done that, have I?”

  “Not that I know of. It’s pretty exciting.”

  “You wouldn’t worry that I’d expose her to whatever this is I’ve had?”

  “No, she’s as healthy as the proverbial horse, and I don’t really think you have anything catching.”

  Mrs. Valentine used Vicki’s phone to call the school office and say Vicki would be out one more day. By then Vicki had eaten some of her breakfast and drunk two cups of tea. She felt almost human. Maybe three-quarters, one-quarter beast. She remembered Scott’s growling at her last night and laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny, puddin’?” Her mom was laying out some clothes for Vicki.

  “Oh, nothing. Scott is wonderful, Mom. I’m so glad I met him.”

  “I am too. I was beginning to worry. You never seemed interested in dating. When I was your age, I kept score of how many guys I could go out with.”

  “Mom, you didn’t.” Vicki was glad for some time alone with her mother. Sometimes she didn’t stop to appreciate how great she was.

  Her mother giggled like a ten-year-old. “I did. And I loved every minute of it.”

  “When you met Dad did you stop keeping score?”

  “Yes. I knew he was the right one immediately. It was good to shop around, but something in you says, ‘This is it.’”

  “I’m not ready to say, ‘This is It,’ but Scott is definitely the It of the moment.”

  Riding in the car beside her mom, Vicki was first aware of retracing her steps of the night before. They were driving in the same direction on the same two-lane highway she and Scott had come, following David Altman. Because of the rain, she wasn’t sure how far they’d gotten, though. She didn’t see anything familiar. And the countryside was empty. No houses, no farm roads, mostly wooded areas and unworked fields. Why would Altman be driving out this way? Unless he really was one of those people who get in a car and go for a ride to get out of the house. With a storm coming? That didn’t seem likely.

  Finally she let it go and settled into a cozy warm place that seemed safe for all of time. The morning was rain-washed, the sky sparkling from the storm’s cleansing effect. The temperature was crisp, the air crackling as the leaves had been before the rain.

  As they climbed farther and farther into the mountains, woods surrounded them on both sides. Most of the trees were bare, limbs reaching for November, like skeletal timepieces clawing to bring the year to a close.

  October, when the woods blazed with fall color, was Vicki’s favorite month. November brought the reality of winter closer, but wouldn’t give them the gray, dreary days of January. She remembered loving to tramp through the woods at Thanksgiving, especially when Grams had been alive and they’d trekked to the farm for turkey and all the trimmings.

  “I miss Grams, Mom, don’t you?” she said suddenly.

  “I was thinking the same thing, Vicki. I guess it’s coming into the woods like this. I’m almost sorry we sold the farm. But since we didn’t want to live there, it seemed right to let someone else have that pleasure.”

  Elsie Lee Saubough lived in a cabin that leaned toward the east, indicating the direction of the prevailing winds. It was set at the top of a hill in a grove of walnut trees. The yard had become a depository for every old car and truck her family had owned for the last fifty years. Rusted-out steel skeletons, they suggested better times for the Saubough family.

  “Is she married, Mom?” Vicki asked, suspecting she wasn’t.

  “She said she was, but her husband disappeared two weeks after the ceremony. She lives here with her mother, but Mrs. Clower is afflicted with severe arthritis. Her hands are almost useless, and her body not much better. Elsie will have two people to take care of soon.”

  Elsie wasn’t one to dwell on her burdens, Vicki realized the minute she met her. Standing on the front porch in a faded cotton dress, she clutched an old sweater around her.

  “Hi there, Vicki Valentine. I’m powerful pleased to meet you. Your mother talks about you all the time.”

  “How much trouble I’m in, I suppose,” Vicki teased.

  Elsie grinned. “Yeah, and your good grades, and now I hear you got yourself a boyfriend.”

  Vicki glanced at her mother, who smiled and shrugged.

  “I try to keep Elsie up on the gossip from Sparksville,” her mother apologized as she explained. “Since all the company she has here is the
television.”

  “I cain’t believe the county has got a murderer loose, though,” said Elsie, rubbing her ballooning stomach. “I’ve been locking up at night for the first time ever.”

  “Are you afraid up here with just you and your mother?”

  “Not so much. I got me a shotgun, and I’m good with it. Daddy saw to that before he left us.”

  “Ma is watching the first of her soaps, Vicki, if you want to join her. Or go outside and pick yourself some walnuts. They’re shore good in candy and cakes this time of year. Get yourself enough for your Christmas baking.” Elsie handed Vicki a folded paper bag that looked as wrinkled as old leather. Used and reused, it was soft, suedelike. Isolated as she was, recycling wasn’t a new-age fad, but a way of life for Elsie and her mother.

  Vicki’s mother nodded that outside was fine and probably the better choice. “Sit in the car if you get tired, Vicki, or on the porch. I’ll probably be here for a half hour or better. I want to check on how Mrs. Clower is doing, too.”

  It was warming up fast, and Vicki felt better all the time. She filled the paper bag with walnuts in five minutes. Most were still in their greenish hulls and would need drying out.

  The woods beckoned, whispering softly with a drying breeze. A well-worn path led to an outhouse, then headed for a tunnel of saplings mixed with blackberry bushes. A cardinal, like a scrap of red ribbon, rode a skinny bare limb up and down, singing, “Don’t you think I’m a pretty bird? Pretty bird?”

  Footsteps muffled by the soggy ground, Vicki slipped up on a bunny, who froze in place when it saw her. Making as little movement as possible, she walked on, trying not to frighten it further.

  An outcropping of granite, stained with black lichen, rested at an overlook. Vicki sat down for a minute and breathed deeply of the mountain air. In the distance a soft blue haze hovered over a peak, suggesting smoke. She couldn’t smell it, but she imagined the rich, wood-burning smell.

  A fruity earth smell rose with every footstep, the soil rich with rotting leaves and wild persimmons. One lone fruit clung to a low branch as if waiting for her to sample. She couldn’t wait. Making sure it was soft, since if it wasn’t ripe her mouth would draw up like an old woman’s, she bit into the plump flesh. Sweet juices trickled over her chin, and she wiped at them ineffectively. The treat finished, she wiped her sticky fingers on damp moss beside the trail.