Chapter 2

2:30 PM Wednesday: After a morning of making arrangements and doing some background research, I drove to Testament County, the scene of the crime. From my office to the former residence of the hooker, Mary Cole, was fifty-one miles, but only fifty-two minutes. That really didn’t say anything about X, though: I was probably less concerned about being pulled over and being asked where the fire was.

Sure enough, out behind her house, where her corpse was found, was a dense woods. I didn’t stop to look it over. The road it was on was nice straight blacktop with almost no traffic, and I figured I could go to the house I would be renting, settle in, and still make it back before dark, if I wanted.

A few miles later, I neared the county seat, the town of Testament. The trees became stalks of corn, already knee high in mid March. The fields were huge, extending miles back in both directions. Occasionally, a row of trees two hundred feet long or so, would run from the road into the middle of the field. As I passed one, I saw that it was actually a double row, with a gravel driveway winding between on its way to nowhere.

Testament itself wasn’t much more of an interruption of the fields than the driveways were, consisting of a gas station, general store, town hall, small school, church, two warehouses, two stop lights and four streetlights. Again, I avoided temptation, staying on the road and postponing a look around, and in a flash, I was out of town.

Soon the road forked, the left becoming dirt, the right making an upward grade. Forewarned, I stayed right, and started looking. It was five minutes before I saw what I was looking for. As agreed, my landlords-to-be had left their yellow porch light on, telingl me that the next house was about to be mine.

The rental was a porchless red brick, new looking, like a development house. There was a battered green station wagon parked on the gravel driveway. I pulled in beside it, up onto the grass. As I climbed out of my car, the front door opened and a woman, an okay looking thirty year-old brunette, came out to greet me. "I see you found it all right," she said in a pleasant voice.

"How do you know it’s me?"

She smiled a nice smile. "I’ve seen your picture in the paper. Stephen Stack, famous detective." She held out a hand. "My name’s Cherie, your landlady. Come on, I’ll show you around."

I followed her through the rooms. I let her finish her latest observation, then broke in. "On the way up, I noticed the cornfields north of town. What are the driveways for? Who owns them?"

She started nodding before I had finished, and apparently saw no reason to stop when I did. "Those used to all be family farms. Back in the sixties, the farmers that owned them got some very generous offers for the land. At that time, remember, jobs were good - and farming is hard work. Eventually every single one of them sold out and moved away. The company that bought them out knocked down the houses and all the fences so they can plant it wholesale." She smiled wryly. "I reckon most of them boys wished they hadn’t sold, now."

"What about the driveways?"

She lifted her shoulders. "I don’t know. I guess clearing out the gravel and rooting the trees would have been more work than it was worth. Anyway, they use them to bring the wagons and tractors off the fields and onto the road. I suppose you noticed how quiet that road is."

I answered yes, and told her I’d take the house. She handed me the keys as I peeled off thirty of X’s thousand. She explained about the water well, woodshed, and outhouse, and turned to go. "Well, I hope you like it," she said. "Let me know if you want it another week." I answered I would, and thought that was the end of it, but then she turned back at the door. "I guess this is none of my business, but... are you working on something around here?"

I smiled my warmest. "Oh, no, this is just a vacation: my way of getting away from it all."

"Oh," she said, sounding thoughtful. "Then you’ll be staying around the house mostly?"

I smiled less warmly. "I might go meet some of the townspeople."

She brightened. "Oh, then maybe you’d like to go to the prayer meeting tonight."

I told her politely that I’d think about it, but that I was a little tired right now, and she caught on quick enough. I waited till the station wagon was headed down the road before I dropped onto the couch. A week should be enough to at least get a handle on this thing, to decide if the answer was even in Testament. The puzzle looked like it would either be very simple or very hard. I figured the killer for one of the johns, somebody who had fallen for the her, and wanted exclusive rights. Maybe that would explain why she’d walked out into the woods with him. According to the report that X had, there was no struggle to speak up. She’d gone to her death under her own power.

I sighed, slapped my thigh, and got vertical. In a place like Testament, there were only three places an outsider had any hope of getting information: the sheriff’s office, the local watering hole, and church. Getting the bags from the car, I decided the scene of the crime could wait. After I unpacked, I called my landlady to see what time services start.