The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (23 page)

Just as I was about to give up my quest to
see Ed’s necklace paper, an idea popped into my head. I cleared my
throat and said, “Would you like to go to the autumn dance with
me?”

Kate looked at me, clearly startled. She
searched my face to see if I was putting her on. She must have
liked what she saw, because she finally said, “Yes, I would like
that.” Then she smiled. Her smile was her best feature.

My plan, still in the process of formation,
was to get Barney to take Sylvia to the dance. Barney liked Sylvia,
but I didn’t see him as a threat to me. Sylvia knew that Kate was
my cousin, so she shouldn’t have a problem with me taking her. That
way, we could both go to the dance. We could even dance together.
Dr. Graves couldn’t ding me for doing that, could he? Besides, I
doubted that Dr. Graves would be at the dance. I would be
safe—unless he had people spying on me the way he had wanted me to
spy on Sylvia.

We walked up the cracked concrete path to the
house. Kate produced a key and let us in. She dumped her books on
the coffee table in the living room and took off her jacket. She
wore a pink sweater underneath that went well with her hair. I had
seen her in that sweater before.

“Would you like something to drink?” Kate
asked, playing hostess.

“I think we’d better get to work,” I said.
Now that we were in the house, I was nervous. What if Mrs. Drucquer
came home?

If Kate had qualms about going through Ed’s
belongings, she didn’t let them show. She led the way into a small
bedroom. In addition to an unmade single bed, it contained a desk
piled high with papers. A big and black old Royal typewriter sat in
the middle of the desk. Ed must use it to write articles for the
school paper.

Every newspaper reporter had a typewriter.
Mine was an Olympia portable. Recently, I had been using it only
for schoolwork. But I had an idea. I grabbed a sheet of scrap paper
from a waste basket and inserted it in the typewriter. Then I typed
the first line of the mysterious limerick I had received.

“What are you doing?” Kate asked.

“Just checking to see how good a typewriter
this is.” I quickly pulled out the paper, folded it, and stuffed it
in my pocket.

Kate opened a drawer of the desk and said,
“Eddie keeps his girlie magazines hidden here. She reached under
some papers and pulled out a nudist magazine. She began leafing
through it and said, “This is funny. I see naked girls all the time
in the locker room.”

I didn’t see naked girls in the locker room,
and Ed didn’t either. To us, this was educational material. Sure it
was. I casually glanced over her shoulder.

She said, “This girl would look good in a
bathing suit.”

I thought the girl looked good without a
bathing suit. I’d better not look any more. I turned my attention
to the desk. The paper had been in a black, three-ring binder. A
quick search told me that it wasn’t on the desk. I sat in Ed’s
chair and went through several desk drawers, but I couldn’t find
it.

“Maybe the binder is in that drawer,” I said,
referring to the one from which Kate had extracted the
magazine.

“I didn’t see it,” Kate said.

I quickly riffled the papers in the drawer
and didn’t see it either.

“Maybe it’s under the magazines,” I said.

I lifted them, avoiding the temptation to
open them, and looked underneath. Sure enough, there was the
binder. I pulled it out and replaced the magazines. With nervous
fingers, I opened the binder. There were a number of papers in it,
which had once belonged to Ralph. School papers. Math homework,
mostly. Signed and dated by him. With marks, many of which were
A’s. He had been a good student.

The necklace sheet of paper had been in the
middle of the binder. I started leafing through the papers, with
Kate looking over my shoulder. I turned the pages slowly, being
careful not to enlarge the holes where the paper went through the
rings of the binder.

“This is it,” I said, turning over a page to
reveal a sheet that looked familiar. It had to be. I felt a thrill,
as if I were discovering a treasure map. In fact, there was a map
and it was of the hayloft. It was drawn in pencil and referred to
something with a capital N. That had to be the necklace. The first
thing I noticed was that the handwriting looked the same as that on
the other papers. Small and neat.

“Do you think this could have been written by
Ed?” I asked.

“No way. Eddie’s handwriting is big and
scrawly.”

Samples of Ed’s handwriting abounded on the
papers on the desk. I also glanced at the other papers in the
notebook, written by Ralph. I had to agree with Kate. This couldn’t
have been written by Ed, but it could easily have been written by
Ralph. The map was the genuine article.

The paper had crease marks and showed other
signs of wear. Somebody had sloppily folded it into four sections
at one point. It appeared to have been created sometime ago and
perhaps carried around for a while. It hadn’t always been in the
binder.

I read what it said. “N hidden in blue box in
the hayloft, southwest corner, hole in the floor under the bales.”
The map clearly labeled the “N” that marked the necklace as being
in the southwest corner also.

“But Eddie told us the necklace was hidden in
the northwest corner of the hayloft,” Kate said.

I had spotted that discrepancy at the same
time.

“Eddie lied to me—to us. I’m not surprised.
He’s always lying.”

“Is that your mother?” I asked, hearing the
sound of a car in the driveway.

“She’s home early. Quick. Put the notebook
back where you found it.”

I complied, closing the notebook and placing
it under the nudist magazines. Then I slid the drawer shut. We
scurried out of the room. As we did, I saw the magazine Kate had
been looking at sitting on the bed. I picked it up.

“There isn’t time to put it away,” Kate said.
“Hide it and take it with you.”

She shut the door to Ed’s room. The only
place I could think of to hide the magazine was under my shirt and
undershirt, stuck into my belt. It felt cold against my stomach. I
quickly tucked my shirt back in and realized that I had to be
careful how I moved or the pages of the pulp magazine would
crackle.

“Will your mother be okay with me being here
with you?” I asked, belatedly, as we heard her at the front
door.

“Sure. You’re my cousin. You’ve been helping
me with my homework.” She pulled me into the living room and sat me
down beside her on the sofa. She flipped open one of her
schoolbooks.

“Besides, you’re taking me to the autumn
dance.” She gave me a quick kiss just as the door opened.

***

Aunt Dorothy got home before I did. She
parked her car in a garage-like room at the end of the barn beside
the road. I saw her car through a barn window as I walked past,
after parking my car in the shed on the side of the barn nearest
the railroad track. Uncle Jeff parked his car in the old carriage
house, located at the end of the driveway where it curved behind
our house and became the start of the lane. One advantage of living
on an old farm was that there were lots of buildings in which to
park cars.

I walked around the house and went in via the
kitchen door, which Aunt Dorothy had left unlocked. She had changed
from her good clothes into a housedress and was already preparing
dinner. I said hello to her and took a cookie from the cookie jar.
Now that I was convinced Ralph had created the paper that told
about hiding the necklace, I had more questions.

“Did you ever talk to Ralph about the diamond
necklace?” I began, tentatively.

“I might have mentioned it once or twice,”
she said, “but I think I told you that I never put any stock in
those stories. I don’t believe there ever was a necklace in the
family, or if there was, it’s long gone.”

“So there is no reason to believe that the
necklace actually existed.”

“No reason. In fact, I had forgotten all
about it until the Drucquers showed up a year ago and started
talking about it. If there are any rumors being spread, you can
credit them with doing the spreading.”

She said this so positively that it was hard
not to believe her. And I had never known Aunt Dorothy to lie. So
how did Ralph find the necklace, if indeed he did? And if not, why
did he draw the map and write about the location of the
necklace?”

“By the way, I’ve asked Kate to the autumn
dance a week from Saturday.”

“Kate Drucquer? Well, she is a sweet girl,
although perhaps a little young for you. But didn’t Tom take a
liking to her? Of course, he’s only seen her the one time.”

Tom. I had forgotten all about him. Well, it
was too late to do anything now. I needed to make a phone call to
Barney, to talk him into asking Sylvia to the dance. I took the top
off the cookie jar and extracted another cookie.

“What’s that rustling noise I hear whenever
you move?” Aunt Dorothy asked. “It sounds like somebody turning the
pages of a newspaper.”

It was the magazine. I made some lame comment
about my underwear being too stiff and headed for the stairs, which
I took two at a time. Once up in my room, I removed the magazine
and slid it through the crack between the bottom of my dresser and
the floor. I hoped Aunt Dorothy wouldn’t find it there. I needed to
examine it more closely to get some answers to questions I had.

But the next thing I did was to compare the
typed sample from Ed’s typewriter to the copy of the limerick,
using the magnifying glass. I was becoming an expert at this.
Within a couple of minutes, I found four distinct differences in
the typing. So the limerick definitely hadn’t been typed on Ed’s
typewriter.

CHAPTER 24

As I got out of my car the next morning in
the high school parking lot, Sylvia came striding up, looking
upset. I had arrived later than usual, and her bus had beaten me. I
quickly glanced around to make sure that Dr. Graves or somebody who
might be one of his spies wasn’t watching us.

Without preamble, she said, “I need to know
what’s going on with us.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, suddenly feeling
guilty without knowing exactly what I was feeling guilty about.

“First you stand me up at my house without
telling me you can’t come. Then Barney calls me and asks me to the
autumn dance and says it’s all right because you’re taking Kate
Drucquer. Kate Drucquer. Who the hell is Kate Drucquer? The only
thing I know about Kate Drucquer is that she’s Ed’s sister. I’m not
sure I would even recognize her if I tripped over her in the
hall.”

“She’s my cousin.”

“The whole damn world is your cousin. Don’t
tell me she’s your cousin. I know about kissing cousins.”

I had some explaining to do. First I
apologized for not telling Sylvia I wasn’t going to her house. It
had completely slipped my mind. Then I explained to her that it was
my idea of how we could be together without arousing Aunt Dorothy
or Dr. Graves. I didn’t tell her that Kate had extorted the promise
that I would take her to the dance in exchange for helping me find
the necklace map. That would make it sound as if I had justified my
actions after the fact by rationalizing that it would get Sylvia
and me together. Although of course this was close to the
truth.

After some talking, Sylvia seemed to soften a
little. I asked her if she had said yes to Barney.

“Of course I did. I’ve never missed the
autumn dance, and I don’t intend to start now in my senior year.
And Barney’s a good dancer. Besides, I have to keep an eye on you
and Kate Drucquer. I remember who she is now. She doesn’t look a
thing like Ed. She’s much too good looking to be your cousin.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

“My pleasure. Now give me a kiss before we
are again torn asunder by the winds of fate.”

***

Ed tackled me at lunch time. He had no sooner
set his tray of food down opposite mine when he said, “You’d better
be nice to Katie.”

Surprised because he had never shown an
interest in her welfare before in my presence, I said, “I’ve always
been nice to her.”

“You know what I mean. I know what you and
Natalie were doing in the hay fort and it wasn’t math
homework.”

I looked around to see if anybody was close
enough to hear Ed speak Natalie’s name. It was a good thing that
the noise level in the cafeteria was high and that the haunting
strains of “Where is Your Heart?” from the movie
Moulin
Rouge
, issued forth from the jukebox and made it even higher.
Could that song be an indictment of me? I shushed Ed and told him I
would take good care of Kate.

I had something I wanted to talk to Ed about.
“We agreed to wait until the hay bales are gone before we look for
the necklace, but I wonder if that’s a good idea. Anything can
happen to it. The bales may get taken out when I’m not around and
one of the farmhands may find it. Maybe you and I should continue
what I started and dig down to the northwest corner.” I accented
the word “northwest.”

Ed looked off into space. He fidgeted. He put
a bite of the goulash on his plate into his mouth and took his time
chewing and swallowing it. Finally he spoke. “It’s supposed to be
well hidden. That would be a lot of work. I think we can wait until
spring.”

So he wasn’t willing to admit his lie. He
didn’t trust me. Actually, it was more than that. All he wanted me
for was to alert him when the hay bales were removed. Then he would
sneak up to the hayloft when nobody was there and find the
necklace. And keep it for himself. And lie to me about finding
it.

I prompted him several times, giving him a
chance to admit the truth, but he didn’t break character. I had
found out what I wanted to know.

***

“I thought you brought me up here to neck
with me, but now you want to put me to work.”