Alan Cook - Honeymoon for Three

“Are you Penny Blanchard?”

Penny started. She had seen the young man come into the coffee shop, but he was too young and preppy to be a detective, with his cable-knit sweater over a button-down shirt. She had pegged him for a college student. She wasn’t used to answering to her new last name, and it took a couple of seconds before she realized that he was speaking to her.

She looked up at his freckled face under reddish hair and said, “Yes, I’m Penny.”

“I’m Detective Landon.” He offered his hand. “You look just like your picture.”

She shook his hand and said, “How do you do? This is my husband, Gary.”

“Don’t stand up,” Detective Landon said as Gary made an effort to unwedge himself from his booth seat.

They reached out and shook hands and murmured greetings to each other. Gary moved over to give the detective room to sit down beside him. He was carrying a briefcase that he placed on the floor.

At that moment the waitress brought their salads.

“We were hungry, so we ordered dinner,” Gary said. “Would you like something to eat?”

“No thanks,” Detective Landon said quickly. “Maybe a cup of coffee.”

The waitress nodded and scurried away.

“Did you find Alfred?” Penny asked.

The detective shook his head. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. No word that he’s come into the park, but I’d still be careful if I were you two.”

“Why did he kill the man in the grocery store?”

“Probably because he needed money. He got several hundred dollars.”

“But killing him. I didn’t think he was violent.”

“The clerk had a gun, although he didn’t get a chance to fire it.”

“Are you sure Alfred did it?” Gary asked.

“Pretty sure. The bullets in his car match the one in the body. From his direction and speed when he was stopped, it appears that he would have been at the store about the time the murder occurred. What I’d like to do now is find out when you last saw him.”

He was looking at Penny. His blue eyes were kindly, but she sensed that she’d better tell him everything.

“Two days ago.”

Detective Landon cleared a space on the table for his briefcase, opened it, and took out a small notebook. He started taking notes with a ballpoint pen.

“We first ran into him in Seattle.”

Penny related that experience while the detective wrote. He asked occasional questions, and Gary filled in some of the details. The waitress delivered the detective’s coffee and then their dinners. The dinners sat uneaten, as did their salads.

They told him about Alfred showing up at Sperry Chalet in Glacier National Park and how they helped him get down the trail. How he pleaded that he was too sore to drive. Penny told how Alfred asked her to run off with him, but not about his threat of blackmail.

Detective Landon wrote busily in his notebook.

“He was with us all day,” Penny continued. “He ate dinner with us and even washed his clothes with us. He got me away from Gary at dinner and made a pass at me. I punched him, but it didn’t seem to bother him. We made him get a separate room at the lodge. I lay awake most of the night. Before dawn I woke Gary up and asked him if we could leave. We haven’t seen Alfred since.”

The detective asked a few questions, which Penny answered, feeling guilty that she hadn’t told the whole truth. Then he said, “I’d like to confirm that the notebook found in his car belongs to you.” He extracted their notebook from the briefcase. “We’ve already checked it for fingerprints.”

Gary took it and flipped through the pages. “This is ours.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t let you keep it. We need it for evidence. If there’s any information from it that you need, you can look at it now.”

“I think we successfully reconstructed everything. He took it from our tent at Crater Lake.” Gary handed the notebook back to the detective.

“Which proves that he’s followed you throughout the trip.”

“We think he’s the one who tried to stop our wedding in Reno,” Penny said. “Gary was taken to the police station.”

She and Gary elaborated on the police incident while Detective Landon took more notes. When they finished that recital, he looked at Penny.

“When was the last time you saw Alfred before your trip?”

She thought. “I saw him a few times while I was going to college. Not very often. Usually during the summers when I was home. I think he was working in Fenwick. As far as I know, he didn’t go to college. But we never did anything together. I don’t remember saying more than a hundred words to him all the time I was in college.”

“When did you go to California?”

“June 1962, right after I graduated from college.”

“You didn’t know that he was living close to you in Lomita, California?”

“No.” She still couldn’t believe it, although the evidence indicated it must be so.

“He’s probably been keeping tabs on you for some time. Your mother told me he called her from California before you left on your trip. He was looking for you.”

“She didn’t tell me that.” Sometimes her mother could be exasperating.

“She told him you were going on a trip.”

“Great.”

“What about the phone calls and the notes?” Gary asked.

Penny explained about those to the detective. Alfred knew where she lived. She shivered, realizing that he had been watching her, and she didn’t even know it.

“Now I’d like to show you the pictures that were found in his car.” Detective Landon hesitated, looking sideways at Gary. “You might find one of them a little…shocking.”

Penny didn’t think she could be any more shocked than she already was. Detective Landon pulled a sketchpad out of the briefcase with pages approximately equal to legal size stationery. He lifted the cover and extracted a black-and-white photograph that Penny recognized immediately. She was in her cheerleader uniform. Her sweater had a large F on it, and she had a smug smile on her face and one hand raised into the air, as if she were in the middle of a cheer.

“That’s from my high school yearbook.”

Detective Landon nodded. “It was hanging from his rearview mirror.”

“It wasn’t hanging from the mirror while I was driving his car.”

“He probably hid it in his trunk. He didn’t want to reveal too much about himself to you. People like him are very secretive. The note below the picture mentions your high school. That’s how we found your parents. There aren’t many Singletons living in Fenwick, Connecticut. It turns out that Alfred is something of an artist. Take a look at this.”

He pulled a loose page out of the sketchpad and held it up. The pencil drawing was a very good likeness of the cheerleader picture, even to Penny’s smile.

“When did he do that?” Penny asked.

Detective Landon shrugged. “It could have been anytime since you graduated from high school. I have one more to show you.” He hesitated. “I’d rather not get it out in here with all these people around. Go ahead and finish your dinners. Then we’ll go outside, and I’ll show it to you there.”

Penny hardly ate anything. What was so bad about this picture? She wanted to take the detective outside right now without Gary, but that was impossible. Gary, however, didn’t seem to have any trouble eating.

While they ate, they talked about what Alfred might do next. Detective Landon was of the opinion that he would keep following them, if he could. He asked them where they were staying. When they told him they were camping, he said that the National Park Service was cooperating with the police. They would keep a watch on the campground. He wrote down their route for the rest of the trip in his notebook. He gave them a number where they could call him collect, any time, day or night.