“But what has this got to do with our father?” demanded Joe.
“I’m comin’ to that, see? Give me time. Give me time. As I was sayin’, I’m pretty sure it was on a Monday, for it was wash day, and the wife never washes except on Monday. I mean she never washes clothes except on Monday. She herself, why, she washes every day, of course. Anyway, it was Monday.”
“That was the day dad disappeared,” prompted Frank.
“You don’t say! Well, I saw him that day.”
“Where?”
“I’m comin’ to that. As I was sayin’, it was Monday, and when I went down to the garage the boss, he says to me, says he, ‘Sam, I want you to run a truckload of furniture down the shore road.’ So I said, ‘Well, boss, I guess that’s what I’m here for,’ so he told me that this here load of furniture had to go to one of them farmhouses away down near the Point. So we loaded the truck and I filled her up with gas and away I went. It must have been about nine o’clock by then I guess.”
“And you went down the shore road?”
“Sure. And it was a nice mornin’ for drivin’ too. Anyway, I went out past the Tower Mansion—you know, Hurd Applegate’s place, them people you and your father got back the Tower treasure for—and I was drivin’ along without a care in the world and whistlin’ away, quite happy-like, when I sees that I was comin’ near that haunted house up on the cliff. You know the place—where old Polucca was murdered.”
“The Polucca place!”
“Yeah! Well, anyway, I was comin’ by there and I didn’t drive slow either, for they say there’s ghosts in that place and I ain’t takin’ no chance with nothin’ like that, so the truck was going along at quite a clip, when what should I see but a man walkin’ along the road.”