Murder on the Road Less Traveled. Robert W. Gregg
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place for Martin Kennedy to have been working. She found herself wondering what he could have been doing to earn whatever Slocomb paid him. Based on what the Kennedys had told her, it seemed unlikely that he could have been much help with the hogs. What is it anyway that people have to do to raise hogs? In any event, she saw nothing else that justified a handyman. Maybe the inside of the house would provide the answer.
The straightening up of the interior took less than ten minutes.
“Okay,” Slocomb said. “It’s still no palace, but it will have to do.”
Carol followed him into a dark room that had a few places to sit plus a dining room table that still had some dishes on it. At least they were stacked neatly near what was apparently the door to the kitchen. There was no bookcase, much less any books, and the walls were bare. A thoroughly depressing place.
“Here,” he said, pointing to a chair which had seen better days but at least looked moderately comfortable. Once she was seated, he moved a dining room chair away from the table and straddled it. She had always hated it when men sat like this, but she hadn’t come to Slocomb’s home to find fault with his habits.
“Inasmuch as I’m the sheriff, I imagine that you know why I’m here,” she said, taking the conversational initiative. “A family named Kennedy has a son who has been working for you. The boy - his name is Martin - recently disappeared. I gather that you called them and reported him missing. His parents are understandably worried about him, and thought that perhaps I could help locate him. What can you tell me about Martin and his disappearance?”
Slocomb leaned forward as if he were having trouble hearing the sheriff.
“Not much,” he said. “The boy was with me for less than two weeks and then one day he suddenly wasn’t here. I’d picked him up at his parents’ place that morning - Monday, I think it was, and he went to work like he usually does. I had to go into town, and when I got back I called out his name and he didn’t answer. That didn’t surprise me much. He never talked a lot. So I went around the yard, the pen out there, places where he might be. No sign of him. It made no sense, so I drove around a bit, over toward the ravine and back to where Lew Guernsey’s road marks the end of my property. Never did find him. I called the Kennedy house, but they must have been at work. So I didn’t reach them until evening. I figured he’d just wandered off, gone home. But if he had, he wasn’t there.”
No, Carol thought, he almost certainly hadn’t gone home - too far, the route too difficult for someone with the problems the Kennedys had described.
“Did you leave Martin alone very often?”
“No. He was a strange boy. I didn’t worry much about what he’d do or where he’d go if I wasn’t around, but my business was here, not in Yates Center or Southport, or along the lake. I didn’t have many reasons for going into town, but that day was an exception.”
“What was it that Martin Kennedy did for you?”
Slocomb blew his nose into a large blue handkerchief which looked as if it badly needed a washing.
“Not much, really. He’d bring me coffee, clean up like I just did, once in a awhile help me lug things from the back room down to the pen. Oh, and pump water for the trough, sometimes the kitchen. He didn’t have the wits to do much, as the Kennedys probably told you.”
Carol didn’t wish to tell Slocomb what the Kennedys had told her about their son’s problems. But she was puzzled that he had taken this young man on and used him to do what he himself could almost certainly have done easily without help.
“If young Martin wasn’t able to be of much help, why did you hire him?”
“In the first place, I didn’t get many replies to my call for help. But frankly I felt sorry for him. And for his parents. I guess I thought maybe I could introduce him to the real world. And believe me, my hilltop is the real world, more so than any city, even a small city like Southport. I don’t suppose you see it that way, but I do. Always have. Any way, the boy seemed to like what he was doing. He did what he was asked, never complained. I can’t imagine what happened to him. Or why.”
“You say he was a good worker. Yet you said he was strange. Can you tell me more about that? What do you mean by strange?”
“I’m sure his parents told you he was retarded. Slow to understand what I was telling him, or asking him to do. Probably inherited. You know what I mean. And he had those funny features. Mongoloid, that’s the word.”
The more Slocomb talked about Martin Kennedy, the more Carol found it hard to picture the arrangement he had worked out with the boy and to understand how it had lasted for as long as it had. Unfortunately, she had never met Martin. Had she done so, his relationship with Slocomb might be easier to understand.
“Did Martin ever say anything that hinted that he might be contemplating running away?”
“Never. He always seemed happy, and I never pushed him to work harder, to do anything which might get him to think about quitting. Why, did his parents tell you something different?”
“No, they didn’t. They seem to be as puzzled as I am.” It was time to change the subject. “By the way, what is your job?”
“I thought that was obvious. I raise hogs, slaughter them, sell different cuts to stores in the area. It’s not a great living, but it lets me live up here where nobody can bother me.”
Carol assumed that, without saying so, Slocomb was hinting that her visit was beginning to bother him.
“So, Martin didn’t do much, but what he did he did well, or at least he followed instructions and didn’t cause you any trouble.”
“That’s what I said.” The hog raiser again sounded as if he were tiring of the sheriff’s questions.
“You seem to like it up here, nobody living close by. Although you did mention somebody named Guernsey. Do you ever see him or others who might be called neighbors? It’s occurred to me that somebody might have seen Martin. Have you asked around?”
“No, and why should I? Lew’s a quarter of a mile away, and there’s nobody on the other side, just a wide ravine that the boy wouldn’t dare try to cross. He tends to stick to the house and the shed unless I’m with him.”
Yes, of course, except that you weren’t with him the day he disappeared. Carol decided that she had had enough of Slocomb, a loner whose manner was becoming increasingly unpleasant.
“I think I should be heading for my next appointment.” Carol had no other appointment calling her away, but saying she did gave her an excuse to leave. Adolph Slocomb would be happy to have his privacy back. “I hope that young Mr. Kennedy reappears soon, for everybody’s sake. Here’s my card. Please give me a call if you find him or learn something which might explain what happened to him. In the meanwhile, thanks for your time. If I were you, I’d put up a sign telling visitors that this is the road to your house. As it is, you’re really hard to find.”
“I’ll be doing that, sheriff. Nice talking to you. But sorry I haven’t been more help.”
Carol considered suggesting that he may have been more help than he realized, but thought better of it. In the first place, it wasn’t true. In the second, it might unnecessarily put him on alert.
CHAPTER 10
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