Sunset Beach(93)

Drue winced. “Yes.”

Vera began leafing through the yearbook pages, stopping when she reached the page she was searching for. “Campbell,” she said, dragging a finger down the rows of photographs. “Campbell.”

She stabbed a photo with her finger. “Here he is,” she said triumphantly, holding up the yearbook. “Brice Campbell.”

Drue knelt on the floor beside the recliner and stared down at her father’s senior class picture. William “Brice” Campbell. JV baseball, V baseball, wrestling, Key Club, said the caption under the photo.

The boys of the class of 1968 were mostly a clean-cut group, and Brice was no different. His short blond hair was neatly combed and side-parted, and he was clean-shaven. Like the other boys, he wore a dress shirt, narrow striped tie and a familiar smirk that suggested he knew more than he should.

The surprise was that her father had signed his class photo, scrawling his name and PIRATES 4EVER across his own face.

“Looks like your father knew Colleen,” Vera said. She flipped back toward the front of the yearbook, to signature pages filled with inscriptions of dozens and dozens of Colleen Hicks’s classmates.

“He didn’t sign anyplace else in the yearbook,” Vera commented. “I’ve cross-referenced all the names of all her friends who wrote inscriptions, and I certainly would have remembered if I’d seen Brice Campbell’s name on my list.”

“You made a list of everybody who signed her yearbook?” Drue asked, at once fascinated and repelled by the older woman’s obsessive knowledge.

“Now you think I’m crazy,” Vera said, closing the book and setting it aside.

“Oh no, I don’t think that at all.”

“Well, everybody else does, including my sister and my nieces,” Vera said. “Not that I give a tinker’s damn. The fact is, I’m the last known person who saw Colleen Hicks alive. I don’t take that responsibility lightly.”

“I think that’s a good thing,” Drue said, choosing her words carefully. “If somebody I cared about disappeared, I’d want somebody to find out the truth. If it were my mother, say, instead of Colleen, I’d make it my business to find out what had happened.”

“There you go,” Vera said approvingly. “So you do understand.”

“I think so,” Drue said. “Would you mind talking to me, about Colleen? And about that day she disappeared?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Vera said. She heaved herself up from the chair again. “But first, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have some coffee. Won’t you join me?”

“That’s a good idea,” Drue said. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“How do you take yours?”

“Black, one sugar,” Drue said.



* * *



Vera returned with a small tray holding a pair of bone-china coffee mugs. She handed one to her guest and settled back into her lounge chair. “Now, where were we?”

“You were about to tell me your theory. About what happened to Colleen,” Drue said.

“Right. At first, I was convinced she’d run away. I never liked her husband. None of her friends did. He was cold and bossy, you’d call him controlling today. They were total opposites in every way. Colleen was so lively and vivacious. Very popular with the patients. Especially the male patients.” She winked at this last statement.

“One of my father’s old friends was a detective who worked on the case, just in a marginal way, and he said there were rumors back then that Colleen and Allen were … swingers?”

Vera blinked. “That’s a new one. I could maybe see Colleen being interested in that. She was … frisky, shall we say? But Allen Hicks? No. I just can’t imagine him doing anything that unconventional. Colleen told me confidentially that he hit the ceiling one time when she suggested they try something different in the bedroom.”

“This retired detective,” Drue said. “He also said Colleen might have stolen pills, from the dentist’s office.”

Vera smiled as she gazed out the window of the bungalow at a white egret picking at something in the grass at the edge of the seawall. “Did he, now?”

“Was that true?”

The older woman shrugged. “Does it surprise you that we experimented with drugs back then? We were young and curious. And it wasn’t like we were selling them. Don’t tell me you’ve never tried an occasional controlled substance.”

“No, I couldn’t say that,” Drue admitted.

“I’m curious. What’s the name of this detective you’ve been chatting with?”

“Um, well, I’m not sure he’d want me sharing his name. He sort of told me this in confidence.”

“Not fair,” Vera said, wagging a finger at Drue. “Here I am, opening up to you, and yet you seem very reluctant to share what you know. I wonder why that is?”

“I’m in an awkward position,” Drue said. “I wouldn’t want my father or his friend knowing I’m poking around in this old case.”

Vera sipped her coffee and her pale blue eyes drilled into Drue over the rim of her mug.

She sighed as she set the mug down. “Then I think we’ve reached an impasse. Trust goes both ways, you know.”