Where are the children?

CHAPTER TWO

Some mornings Jonathan Knowles walked to the drugstore to pick up his morning paper. Other days he pedalled on his bike. His outing always took him past the old Nickerson house, the one that Ray Eldredge had bought when he married the pretty girl who was renting it.

When old Sam Nickerson had had the place it had begun to be rundown, but now it looked snug and solid. Ray had put on a new roof and had painted the trim, and his wife certainly had a green thumb. The yellow and orange mums in the window boxes gave a cheerful warmth even to the bleakest day.

In nice weather, Nancy Eldredge was often out early in the morning working on her garden. She always had a pleasant greeting for him and then went back to her work. Jonathan admired that trait in a woman. He'd known Ray's folks when they were summer people up here. Of course, the Eldredges had helped settle the Cape, Ray's father had told Jonathan the whole family line right back to the one who had come over on the Mayflower.

The fact that Ray shared enough love for the Cape to decide to build his business career here was particularly exemplary in Jonathan's eyes. The Cape had lakes and ponds and the bay and the ocean. It had woods to walk in, and land for people to spread out on. And it was a good place for a young couple to raise children. It was a good place to retire and live out the end of your life. Jonathan and Emily had always spent vacations here and looked forward to the day when they'd be able to stay here the year around. They'd almost made it, too. But for Emily it wasn't to be.

Jonathan sighed. He was a big man, with thick white hair and a broad face that was beginning to fold into jowls. A retired lawyer, he'd found inactivity depressing. You couldn't do much fishing in the winter. And poking around antique stores and refinishing furniture wasn't the fun it had been when Emily was with him. But in this second year of his permanent residency at the Cape, he'd started to write a book.

Begun as a hobby, it had become an absorbing daily activity. A publisher friend had read a few chapters of it one week-end and promptly sent him a contract. The book was a case study of famous murder trials. Jonathan worked on it five hours every day, seven days a week, starting promptly at nine-thirty in the morning.

The wind bit against him. He pulled out his muffler, grateful for the watery sunshine he felt on his face as he glanced in the direction of the bay. With the shrubbery stripped, you could see clear to the water. Only the old Hunt house on its high bluff interrupted the view – the house they called The Lookout.

Jonathan always looked at the bay right at this point of his trip. This morning again, he squinted as he turned his head. Irritated, he looked back at the road after barely registering the stormy, churning whitecaps. That fellow who rented the house must have something metallic in the window, he thought. It was a damn nuisance. He felt like asking Ray to mention it to him, then ruefully brushed the thought away. The tenant might just suggest that Jonathan check the bay somewhere else along the way.

He shrugged unconsciously. He was directly in front of the Eldredge house, and Nancy was sitting at the breakfast table by the window talking to the little boy. The little girl was on her lap. Jonathan glanced away quickly, feeling like an intruder and not wanting to catch her eye. Oh, well, he'd get the paper, fix his solitary breakfast and get to his desk. Today he'd begin working on the Harmon murder case – the one that he suspected would make the most interesting chapter of all.