for something. Then George remembered. Every morning the van passed Elizabeth Conger as she walked into town to school. And every morning Elizabeth waved to Sarah as the van passed.
But this morning they were too late. There was no one to wave to Sarah.
At the end of the day Mrs. Montgomery would note in her records that Sarah Conger had been much more difficult than usual. It was one more thing she would have to talk to Sarah’s parents about.
5
Rose glanced at her watch as she left the house; she had just enough time to stop at Jack’s office and still not be late for her appointment. As she walked to the garage, she glanced at the scars on the lawn, and shuddered once more at the memory of the van careening toward the cliff. She wondered if she should have kept Sarah home for the day, and felt a slight twinge of guilt at the relief she had felt when George Diller had insisted that it would be better for Sarah to continue the day as if nothing unusual had happened. She made a mental note to devote a little extra time to Sarah that evening.
A quarter of a mile toward town, Rose smiled to herself as she passed the old Barnes place. She had a feeling that today, as she drove home, she would be able to take down the FOR SALE sign that had been hanging on the fence for months. And it’s a good thing, she thought. It’s been on the market too long. Another couple of months and it would take on that awful deserted look and be impossible to sell at any price. But she had a feeling that she finally had the right customers for the house. Unconsciously, she pressed the accelerator, and as the car leaped forward some of the feeling of depression that had been hanging over her all morning dissipated.
She slipped the car into her space behind Port Arbello Realty Company, and dropped her purse on her desk as she walked through to the front door.
“You have an appointment in fifteen minutes,” the receptionist reminded her. Rose smiled at the girl.
“Plenty of time. I’m just going to run across the square for a minute and say hello to Jack.” She knew she could as easily have telephoned, but she liked to keep up the charade of devoted wife. In Port Arbello, solid marriages counted for a lot in the business community.
On her way across the square she glanced quickly at the old armory, standing forbiddingly on the corner just south of the courthouse. Another year, she thought, and I’ll find a way to buy it. Then it would be a simple matter of a zoning variance, and she could go ahead with her plan to turn it into a shopping center—not one that would compete with the businesses already surrounding the square, nothing with a major department store. Rather, she envisioned a group of small shops—boutiques, really, though she hated the word—with a good restaurant and a bar. That way, she could increase the value of the property without taking any business from the rest of tie merchants. In her mind’s eye she saw the armory as she would remodel it: sandblasted, its century-old brick cleaned of the years of grime, with white trim, and a few changes in the façade to give it an inviting look instead of the grim air with which it had always looked down on the town around it.
She jaywalked across the street to the Courier office and went in.
“Hi, Sylvia.” She smiled. “Is my husband in?”
Jack’s secretary returned her smile. “He’s in, but he’s a bear today. What did you do to him this morning?”
“Just the usual,” Rose said. “Tied him up and thrashed him. He squalls, but he loves it.” Without knocking, Rose let herself into her husband’s office, closing the door behind her, and crossed to his desk, leaned over, and kissed him warmly.
“Hello, darling,” she said, her eye not missing the fact that the intercom was open. “I hear you’re having a bad day.” As Jack looked at her in puzzlement, she pointed to the intercom unit on his desk. He nodded and switched it off.
“You seem cheerful enough,” he said sourly.
“I am, now. But we almost had a disaster this morning.” She recounted what had happened with the van.
“George is sure he set the brake?” Jack said when she had finished.