I USED TO KNOW HIM

CHAPTER TWELVE

     The farm couple were strangers to Brice, but their type was familiar.

Pennsylvania was full of them. They were, as Cartwell had said, good

people. They were farmers, about three jumps above the witchcraft

believing stock that had given them birth and were hard to understand.

     They were the stay-at-home type, to whom Pittsburgh was the Far West,

and if they were forced to move farther than fifty miles away from home,

their relations screamed that they would never see them again.

     The woman, whose name Callum hadn't caught, was plain appearing, with no

makeup and her hair pulled back into a severe knot at the base of her

skull. From the moment, she asked them in and poured their coffee, he

liked her. In her own, slow way she was a fine person, but her world

was the farm, her life was the soil.

     "Have you found that poor pilot, yet?" She asked, setting the coffee

before them.

"No, ma'am," Cartwell told her.

The heavyset woman made a clucking sound with her mouth. "Honest to

true," she mused. "You'd wonder why a thing like that had to come to

be." She sighed heavily. "There'll be some poor woman in tears tonight.

D'you think he was married?"

"I don't know, ma'am," Cartwell said.

"It's the children that suffer..." she said softly and allowed the rest

of what she was about to say trail off as Dickson came in. He smiled at

the farm wife and she poured him a cup of coffee.

     Dickson pulled off his hat. "I'd like to thank you," he told her, "for

being so kind..."

The woman looked pleased and flustered at the same time; there was a

tinge of flush about her face. "Bosh," she said, smiling. "It's the

least a body can do. I know I'd feel very glad to have someone helping,

was it my boy up there?"

"Your boy flies?"

"He did." The woman looked a bit pained. "He was killed during the war."

"I'm sorry," Dickson said, and reached for a doughnut from the plate on

the table.

     A silence fell over them as they waited for the coming of dawn and a

chance to really look the wreck over. Callum was somehow glad to be

spared of conversation with the others. He felt like a criminal, with

the small gold watch in his coat pocket and he wanted to tell Dickson

and Cartwell about the thing. But he couldn't. For the first time in his

life he was delaying an investigation, hiding evidence. He was well

aware of the whole thing, but he was also aware of what the presence of

that watch meant. It was a personal thing now, and until he knew which

way to go, he had to keep the watch a secret.

     If Nick Danson had somehow come back in that wreck and, if they found no

bodies, he would have gone to Margret ... the whole thing would be

complicated beyond belief. What would such a thing do? What would happen

to the woman he loved, if Nick Danson was back?

He stared moodily into the dark liquid in his coffee cup and wondered

where it would all end.