Page 134 of Head Room

“Nance said...”Some people when they make a decision to talk, rush forward like they’re leaping a chasm.He advanced word by word, like testing a rope bridge over that chasm.“...some things.Seemed to me, with him talking like that, about pulling something off, he’d gotten involved in something.Something financial.Over his head, maybe.He wouldn’t share with me.”

“Anybody else he’d talk to?”

“No.I tried pushing.He got mad.I hoped he’d come around, waited for him to come to me.He didn’t.That’s when I came here.No sign of him.”He shot a look around at each of us.“No sign of anybody messing with the campsite, either.Whoever did this to him didn’t catch him here.”

For an instant, I thought he meant to emphasize he hadn’t messed with a crime scene.

Then I realized his focus was that Nance had been safe here and only caught by his killer or killers when he went to the sergeant’s cabin.

Frank Jardos felt responsible.

Or was pretending.

“Setting your home on fire can’t be easy.Risking everything in it.”I paused.“Though you’d primed Hannah to retrieve the metal box after you set it where it was most likely to survive.”

He didn’t respond this time.

“Frank, why did you tell Hannah to give your wife’s manuscript to me?”

“I didn’t—” He broke off as he met my look.“I read the whole thing through three, four times.Sure she’d have picked up something if there was anything to pick up.But never could see anything in her pages.

“Irene was the smartest person I ever knew.Any puzzle, any kind she figured out.If she’d been around, she’d have gotten it all out of Nance no matter whether he told her or not.But me?Nothing.Not from him.Not from her story.I mean, it’s a good story.Great story.But nothing that connects to what’s happened to Nance and whatever was bothering him.”

“Why give it to Elizabeth?”Tom said quietly.

“She reminded me of Irene.Way she is on TV.She sees connections a lot of the rest of us don’t.”

Mike made a confirming sound, despite knowing I’d gotten absolutely nothing from the manuscript to date.Except as Frank Jardos said, a good story.

“Different approach with the quilts,” I said.“They could have stayed in Hannah’s attic a long time.”

He could also stay silent a long time.

I shifted.

“When you came up here that day you were looking for Nance, what were you going to do?”

“Get it out of him — what was going on.He’d let a little slip and I’d dug—”

“About registered agents.”

I made it a statement and was glad I did when his look edged closer to what resembled respect.

I followed up with, “What did he say about registered agents?”

“Nothing concrete.He talked a lot.It was like the words were there, then they were sinking under a sea of more words and I couldn’t keep up.He couldn’t keep up.But after, when I was trying to sift through, I rememberedregistered agent.Tried to find out about them.”

“James Longbaugh.”

“Yeah.He didn’t know much.Found basics at the library, but nothing fit in with Nance that I could see.”

I shared his frustration at that.

He continued.“So, I got things squared away, thinking he might come around.When he didn’t, I came here.Waited hours.Like I said, when he didn’t return, I went home.And found him.”

“Swapped boots to delay identification—”

He looked at me.I wouldn’t go as far asadmiring.