Swan Dive

of him more, doing the things to me. He put all the lights on and buy some kind of film you don’t need special lights for. Then he... take the pictures and watch them on the TV.” She cleared her throat. ”Enough?”
    I wished it were. ”One more question?”
    She nodded without turning to me.
    ”You said he used to take the video things out of the house. Do you know why?”
    Hanna ground her teeth, but spoke evenly. ”When he thought I wasn’t doing... it right, he would yell at me, hit me. Then he wouldn’t want me for... till the marks go away. So he take the things and go see the girl.”
    ”The girl who was killed.”
    ”Yes. He tell me he going to see her, then he go with the things, go to her, then he come back with them, the pictures, and he... put them on the TV and make me watch, watch him and her to make me do better for him.”
    I couldn’t think of anything else to say except ”I’m sorry.”
    She waved a hand at me, the tears beginning to flow. I got up and left her.

    I drove west to Route 1, then took it north to 1-95.1 swung off onto 495 and then exited at Tullbury, stopping at the first public phone I saw. There was only one ”Leo Kelley” with an ”ey” in the book. I dialed, heard Sheilah’s voice answer, and hung up. Ten minutes later, I was outside her father’s place, his red Buick gleaming in the driveway.
    The house was a mini-Victorian. A disproportionate wraparound porch held heavy, old-fashioned wicker furniture. The white paint on the chairs was bright and fresh, but the cushions were dirty and flat. I pictured Leo thinking that he had kept up his side of the maintenance but his dead wife had failed in her attention to the needlework. I knocked on the screen door and heard two voices say ”I’ll get it.” Sheilah arrived first, stopping short when she saw me and causing her father to bump into her from behind.
    ”Christ, Sheilah, what the hell did—” Leo Kelley became aware of me and changed to ”Not you again!” Sheilah said, ”What do you want this time?”
    ”Goddamn it, it don’t matter what he wants. This is my town, and I’m gonna call Tommy down to the station and get—”
    ”Dad, please? Okay?”
    ”I don’t know what you—”
    ”Dad!”
    ”Awright, fine. Fine! I wash my hands of it. You wanna act like a two-year-old, fine. Go off with this guy now. Or the jig drug pusher. I don’t care. Just keep ‘em out of my house and out of my life, okay?” He stomped back into the house somewhere.
    She looked at me. ”Well?”
    ”Your father didn’t say anything about the porch.” She tried to make up her mind, then unlatched the screen door and came out. She was wearing jeans a size too large for fashion and a nondescript short-sleeved shirt that was poorly cut. She plunked herself down in one of the chairs and crossed her legs, foot jiggling nervously. I sat on the railing.
    ”Ms. Kelley, have you seen Braxley or his friends?”
    ”No, and I don’t want to, either. Which is why I’m talking to you.”
    Her logic escaped me. ”I want to ask you some questions about Roy Marsh and his video equipment.”
    A little blood drained from her face. ”Go ahead.”
    ”You and I talked at the house in Swampscott after it was searched. You said the only thing you noticed missing was the videocamera and its case.”
    ”Uh-huh.”
    ”Was the tripod gone, too?”
    She worked her mouth, but just said, ”Yes.”
    ”After I left, did you notice anything else missing?”
    ”No.”
    ”How about Roy ’s suitcase?”
    ”No. I mean, I don’t know. He had a bunch of them, I didn’t really pay any attention, you know?”
    ”So one of the suitcases could have been missing
    too?”
    ”Yeah, could have been. I was upset, you saw me.”
    ”You said the last time you saw Roy was Sunday night into Monday morning, about one A.M., right?”
    ”When I got home from work.”
    ”Before the house was ransacked.”
    ”Before... yeah, of course before. They didn’t search the place till...”
    ”Till after Roy was dead?”
    ”Yeah.” She recrossed her legs, still twitching the dangling foot.
    ”You also said you spent the day, Monday, doing errands and so forth, since it was your day off. You didn’t see Roy at all.”
    ”Right, right. He was up and gone before I was. Like I told you.”
    ”And then you came here, to your Dad’s for dinner.”
    She chafed. ”Right. Look, I’ve got to be in to work by three-thirty and I got a lot of things to do