"Yeah. He graduated with Ron and me in the accelerated program."
"Let's tell Ron and Cory Joe what we think and see if Don Francisco can talk Preston Richards into letting Blake look in his grandmother's garbage cans. If that doesn't work, though . . ." Pam frowned. "If they won't assign someone else to do it, if they think we're nuts for suggesting it, or if there's nothing in those particular cans—then, yeah, I guess we are."
Blake Haggerty reported that there was nothing in the garbage can behind his grandmother's house except garbage. He had avoided all things associated with such formalities as search warrants simply by dropping by and offering to take out the garbage while he was there, which gave him a perfectly good reason to take the lid off her garbage can.
Then he said, "But."
"But what?"
"Dad has a whole batch of stuff belonging to the Garbage Guys stored in her garage. It's locked. I looked through the window. There are three more garbage cans in there."
"We can do it Sunday morning," Pam said. "That makes sense. Veda Mae does go to church every Sunday. She leaves in time to catch the nine o'clock brunch and say a few cutting sentences about people who aren't there. Then she sits in on the Bible class for adults to make sure that if Simon Jones says anything liberal that she doesn't agree with, she'll be there to correct him. Then she goes to the eleven o'clock service to check to see if the organist is playing any modern hymns. Then she goes out for lunch to make sure she has a chance to spread a little vicious gossip before she goes to work."
"Do I detect some sarcasm in your description?" Missy asked.
"Maybe a trifle. Veda Mae palls on closer acquaintance." Pam made a face at her younger friend. Missy could come up with an amazing number of excuses not to accompany her to the Willard and talk to Veda Mae. A little of Veda Mae had gone a really long way with Missy.
"But it's accurate. That's what she does. She'll be out of the way. Neither of us goes to church, so we won't be missed if we don't show up. It's a perfectly ordinary old garage. No foundation. Just posts stuck into the ground, and the weatherboarding starting to rot where it gets damp at the bottom. We sneak along the alley where the snowbanks are still piled up where people shoveled and make like Peter Rabbit. Wriggle, wriggle, under the boards. We could probably even pull one loose, if it's too tight a fit. She'll blame it on raccoons. People blame everything peculiar that happens in sheds and outbuildings on raccoons. It's one thing that the Ring of Fire hasn't changed."
Chapter 45
Grantville, March 4, 1635
"I called Ron and told him."
"Missy, this is one thing at least that we could have done on our own. You don't have to tell Ron everything. Do you phone him at bedtime and tell him you're brushing your teeth?"
"No. The upstairs extension is out in the hall, so it's not really handy for pillow talk."
Pam stared. As she often did, Missy had taken a purely hypothetical query at face value. If someone asked her a question, she would provide an answer. Or try her best, at least. Born to be a reference librarian. She'd found her niche. "Okay. Why did you tell Ron?"
"So somebody would know where we were going. I couldn't very well tell Mom and Dad that we intended to go digging around in Veda Mae's garage this morning, and you're always supposed to check in before you go somewhere, so people can find you if an emergency comes up. Just to say where you're going, who you're with, and when you'll be back."
Pam nodded. In spite of their genuine friendship, the chasm, the abyss, between the way Chad and Debbie had brought up Missy and the way Velma had brought her up yawned very wide at times.
"Ron thought it was sensible," Missy said a little defensively. "He and his brothers were always expected to check in with their dad before they went off somewhere, too."
Pam stopped pulling on her boots. It . . . it actually hurt a little, somewhere, to realize that for all the reputation Tom Stone had as a hippie before the Ring of Fire, that even his kids had been more protected and sheltered and cared about than she and Cory Joe had been. Much less Tina and Susan.
She shouldn't have left home when she did. At the time, all she was interested in was self-preservation. She had to get out, she had to get out, she had to get out. Maybe—maybe if she had stayed, Tina wouldn't have turned into the kind of risk taker that the little sister who had drowned at the quarry last spring had been.
"Pam," Missy said. "Pam, what's the matter?"
She blinked back the tears. "Nothing, really. I was thinking about Tina, for some reason."