Honeymoon for Three

CHAPTER 18

The coffee shop was rustic, with wooden benches in the booths. Gary and Penny arrived about a quarter to six, because Penny hated to be late for anything. The sound of a dozen conversations kept the noise level high enough so that they would be able to talk without anybody overhearing.

Rather than sit and wait for Detective Landon, they ordered dinner. Exhausted after a day of sightseeing and hiking, they didn’t have enough energy to cook dinner at the campground.

At least they hadn’t seen Alfred. With any luck, he would be arrested, and the danger would end. Penny certainly hoped so. During the day she had racked her brain, trying to remember whether she had ever led Alfred on. She had been friendly to him, but she had been friendly to everybody at her high school, even the students the snobs ignored. She felt that all human beings deserved fair treatment.

She and Emily had also been friendly to Darren, the janitor at Fenwick High School, and he had killed Emily. Friendship apparently wasn’t any guarantee that the friend wouldn’t turn on you.

Why Alfred would think she had a special interest in him she didn’t know. He had never given any indication of having a crush on her, but apparently he had taken her picture out of the class yearbook and carried it around with him. Plus other pictures. She wondered what other pictures he had. Was it her fault that he was infatuated with her?

“Are you Penny Blanchard?”

Penny started. She had seen the young man come into the coffee shop, but he was too young and preppy to be a detective, with his cable-knit sweater over a button-down shirt. She had pegged him for a college student. She wasn’t used to answering to her new last name, and it took a couple of seconds before she realized that he was speaking to her.

She looked up at his freckled face under reddish hair and said, “Yes, I’m Penny.”

“I’m Detective Landon.” He offered his hand. “You look just like your picture.”

She shook his hand and said, “How do you do? This is my husband, Gary.”

“Don’t stand up,” Detective Landon said as Gary made an effort to unwedge himself from his booth seat.

They reached out and shook hands and murmured greetings to each other. Gary moved over to give the detective room to sit down beside him. He was carrying a briefcase that he placed on the floor.

At that moment the waitress brought their salads.

“We were hungry, so we ordered dinner,” Gary said. “Would you like something to eat?”

“No thanks,” Detective Landon said quickly. “Maybe a cup of coffee.”

The waitress nodded and scurried away.

“Did you find Alfred?” Penny asked.

The detective shook his head. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. No word that he’s come into the park, but I’d still be careful if I were you two.”

“Why did he kill the man in the grocery store?”

“Probably because he needed money. He got several hundred dollars.”

“But killing him. I didn’t think he was violent.”

“The clerk had a gun, although he didn’t get a chance to fire it.”

“Are you sure Alfred did it?” Gary asked.

“Pretty sure. The bullets in his car match the one in the body. From his direction and speed when he was stopped, it appears that he would have been at the store about the time the murder occurred. What I’d like to do now is find out when you last saw him.”

He was looking at Penny. His blue eyes were kindly, but she sensed that she’d better tell him everything.

“Two days ago.”

Detective Landon cleared a space on the table for his briefcase, opened it, and took out a small notebook. He started taking notes with a ballpoint pen.

“We first ran into him in Seattle.”

Penny related that experience while the detective wrote. He asked occasional questions, and Gary filled in some of the details. The waitress delivered the detective’s coffee and then their dinners. The dinners sat uneaten, as did their salads.

They told him about Alfred showing up at Sperry Chalet in Glacier National Park and how they helped him get down the trail. How he pleaded that he was too sore to drive. Penny told how Alfred asked her to run off with him, but not about his threat of blackmail.

Detective Landon wrote busily in his notebook.

“He was with us all day,” Penny continued. “He ate dinner with us and even washed his clothes with us. He got me away from Gary at dinner and made a pass at me. I punched him, but it didn’t seem to bother him. We made him get a separate room at the lodge. I lay awake most of the night. Before dawn I woke Gary up and asked him if we could leave. We haven’t seen Alfred since.”

The detective asked a few questions, which Penny answered, feeling guilty that she hadn’t told the whole truth. Then he said, “I’d like to confirm that the notebook found in his car belongs to you.” He extracted their notebook from the briefcase. “We’ve already checked it for fingerprints.”

Gary took it and flipped through the pages. “This is ours.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t let you keep it. We need it for evidence. If there’s any information from it that you need, you can look at it now.”

“I think we successfully reconstructed everything. He took it from our tent at Crater Lake.” Gary handed the notebook back to the detective.

“Which proves that he’s followed you throughout the trip.”

“We think he’s the one who tried to stop our wedding in Reno,” Penny said. “Gary was taken to the police station.”

She and Gary elaborated on the police incident while Detective Landon took more notes. When they finished that recital, he looked at Penny.

“When was the last time you saw Alfred before your trip?”

She thought. “I saw him a few times while I was going to college. Not very often. Usually during the summers when I was home. I think he was working in Fenwick. As far as I know, he didn’t go to college. But we never did anything together. I don’t remember saying more than a hundred words to him all the time I was in college.”

“When did you go to California?”

“June 1962, right after I graduated from college.”

“You didn’t know that he was living close to you in Lomita, California?”

“No.” She still couldn’t believe it, although the evidence indicated it must be so.

“He’s probably been keeping tabs on you for some time. Your mother told me he called her from California before you left on your trip. He was looking for you.”

“She didn’t tell me that.” Sometimes her mother could be exasperating.

“She told him you were going on a trip.”

“Great.”

“What about the phone calls and the notes?” Gary asked.

Penny explained about those to the detective. Alfred knew where she lived. She shivered, realizing that he had been watching her, and she didn’t even know it.

“Now I’d like to show you the pictures that were found in his car.” Detective Landon hesitated, looking sideways at Gary. “You might find one of them a little…shocking.”

Penny didn’t think she could be any more shocked than she already was. Detective Landon pulled a sketchpad out of the briefcase with pages approximately equal to legal size stationery. He lifted the cover and extracted a black-and-white photograph that Penny recognized immediately. She was in her cheerleader uniform. Her sweater had a large F on it, and she had a smug smile on her face and one hand raised into the air, as if she were in the middle of a cheer.

“That’s from my high school yearbook.”

Detective Landon nodded. “It was hanging from his rearview mirror.”

“It wasn’t hanging from the mirror while I was driving his car.”

“He probably hid it in his trunk. He didn’t want to reveal too much about himself to you. People like him are very secretive. The note below the picture mentions your high school. That’s how we found your parents. There aren’t many Singletons living in Fenwick, Connecticut. It turns out that Alfred is something of an artist. Take a look at this.”

He pulled a loose page out of the sketchpad and held it up. The pencil drawing was a very good likeness of the cheerleader picture, even to Penny’s smile.

“When did he do that?” Penny asked.

Detective Landon shrugged. “It could have been anytime since you graduated from high school. I have one more to show you.” He hesitated. “I’d rather not get it out in here with all these people around. Go ahead and finish your dinners. Then we’ll go outside, and I’ll show it to you there.”

Penny hardly ate anything. What was so bad about this picture? She wanted to take the detective outside right now without Gary, but that was impossible. Gary, however, didn’t seem to have any trouble eating.

While they ate, they talked about what Alfred might do next. Detective Landon was of the opinion that he would keep following them, if he could. He asked them where they were staying. When they told him they were camping, he said that the National Park Service was cooperating with the police. They would keep a watch on the campground. He wrote down their route for the rest of the trip in his notebook. He gave them a number where they could call him collect, any time, day or night.

They paid their bill and went out of the restaurant. Detective Landon took them to his unmarked car, which was parked in a lighted area. He placed the briefcase on the top of the car, opened it, and pulled out another sheet from inside the sketchpad. He turned and held it up so they could see it.

Penny gasped. It was a nude drawing of her. “I never posed for that.” She glanced at Gary. He was gazing intently at the picture.

“He could have drawn your head with somebody else’s body,” Detective Landon said. “Maybe from a magazine like Playboy.”

“No, that’s me.” There was the mole on her left breast, prominently displayed. Gary saw it too, so there was no sense trying to cover it up. “I haven’t told you everything.” Better to tell the truth than let Gary’s imagination soar. She proceeded to tell the story of the Halloween party when she was in high school. She admitted that she passed out from drinking and was naked when she came to. Alfred could have drawn her then. Or done something worse.

“Your hair in this picture is shorter than it is in the cheerleader picture,” Detective Landon said. “More like it is now.”

“He could have drawn the picture recently, based on his memory. When we were together, he mentioned my mole. He threatened to tell Gary about the mole and the Halloween party. That was his way of trying to make me do what he wanted.”

“He’s obsessed with you,” Detective Landon said. “That’s obvious.”

“He exaggerated your navel,” Gary said.

Penny had noticed it, too. “Alfred likes navels.” For some reason, it was more embarrassing for her to talk about that than if he had touched her breasts. She knew her face had turned scarlet, but she struggled on. “When he took me to see the sunset at the campground, he…he…played with my navel.”

“And that’s when you hit him?”

“Yes. And when we were driving together, I think he was playing with his own navel.”

“This boy has a naval fetish,” Detective Landon said. “It may sound weird, but I can tell you from personal experience that people are weird. In my business, you see people as they really are.

“In addition, you’re his obsession. People with obsessions will go to any lengths to attain the object of their obsession. They behave compulsively, doing crazy things the rest of us can’t imagine doing. It’s not your fault, Penny. You just have to stay away from him. Since he’s wanted for murder, if we catch him, the problem will end. But don’t feel guilty about him.”

“I was feeling guilty,” Penny admitted. “I thought I might have led him on somehow.”

Detective Landon didn’t have any more questions. He replaced the drawing in his briefcase and put it in his car. He left them, telling them that they should call him if they had any contact with Alfred, or remembered anything else that might be pertinent.

After he drove away, Penny avoided Gary’s eyes. What did he think of the nude picture, or of her behavior at the Halloween party?

“Let’s go back to the campground,” Gary said.

To Penny, his voice sounded stiff. They rode in silence. Penny wondered if this would affect their relationship. She felt scared and sad at the same time.

“I need to take a walk,” Gary said when they got there.

Penny didn’t try to stop him. She went into the tent and bundled herself into the sleeping bag where she cried silently.

Gary walked fast, partly to keep warm, partly to get the devils out of him. He circled the campground, looking for a blue Ford Falcon as he went. He saw only one car that came close to matching that description. The owners were at a picnic table nearby, playing cards and drinking by the light of a lantern. That was not Alfred’s car.

After an hour of hard walking, Gary was exhausted-from the walk and from the activities of the day. He knew what he had to do. He walked back to their campsite and called to Penny from the door of the tent so that she wouldn’t be alarmed. She gave a soft response. He opened the flap and saw her face dimly lit by the light from his flashlight. She looked unhappy, and her face was streaked. He crawled inside and closed the flap. He couldn’t see her now. It was just as well.

“I have a story to tell,” he said. “I told you that when I was a second-semester senior in college I fell in love with a first-semester freshman. She was seventeen, like you were at the time of the Halloween party. That was in the days of segregated dorms. Girls lived in one set of dorms, boys in another. Our dorms were a mile apart. Girls couldn’t go upstairs in our dorm except during special events, and I don’t remember ever seeing a room in a girls’ dorm. When girls were allowed into our rooms, we had to keep the door open and four feet on the floor.

“With all the rules, you would think that life there would be pretty chaste. So perhaps it was especially bad that we found a way to shack up on weekends.”

Gary paused to let that sink in.

“Did she love you?” Penny asked, softly.

“She loved me physically, although not with her heart and soul, which perhaps makes her sin worse. But the point of this whole thing is, should she be tainted for life for what she did? Should I? Should you for what you’ve done? Who is to judge? All I want you to know is that I love you.”

There was silence for a few seconds. Then Penny said, “Give me a kiss.”

He kissed her and felt the wetness of her tears. He kissed them away. Her lips were soft.

She said, “Get undressed and come to bed.”