The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (22 page)

Then what was she doing here?

“Anyway, come graduation, he’s going to be
gonesville.”

“If you don’t like him, why wait until
graduation?”

“Because…because I can’t leave him now. I
don’t know what he’d do.”

If she was in physical danger from Joe,
couldn’t she tell her parents? Probably not. And it would be uncool
of me to suggest this.

“I’ve grown up since I went with Ralph. I’m
ready for more. You’re Ralph’s cousin. I suspect you’re a lot like
him. Maybe you and I could meet…”

“I’m going with…” I was going to say Sylvia,
but that was supposed to be a secret now.

“Sylvia? Gary, that girl has no figure. She’s
flat as an ironing board. And I’ll bet she never let you do
this.”

She grabbed my hand and placed it on her
breast. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. This was a first for me. I
felt a long dreamed-of softness with an unexpected hard tip under
my touch. I couldn’t do anything for several seconds. As I was
trying to get up enough backbone to remove my hand, I heard a noise
below.

I jerked my hand away from Natalie’s
sweatshirt and said, “Somebody’s coming up here.”

“Who do you think it is?” She sounded
scared.

“Stay here. I’ll find out.”

I rotated forward on my knees and wiggled out
through the space between the bales that served as an entrance to
the fort. I stood up and looked down toward the hole in the floor
of the hayloft where the trapdoor had just been raised. There,
transitioning from the ladder to the hardwood floor was Ed
Drucquer. He was facing the other way and didn’t see me. Yet.

I half climbed and half slid down the bales
as quickly as possible, scratching my hands on the prickly stalks
of hay in the process. I landed on the floor just as Ed turned
around and saw me.

“Gary,” he said, obviously surprised. “I
didn’t know you were up here. I didn’t see your car.”

I had parked the car in an outbuilding
between the barn and the railroad tracks, anticipating rain during
the night.

“What’s shakin’?” I said, feeling flustered.
I had to get rid of Ed as quickly as possible.

Ed didn’t look like his usual unflappable
self either. He said, “I…just came up here to look around and see
if I could get a better idea of where the necklace might be.” He
glanced up to the top of the bales where I had just come from and
said, “What were you doing up there?”

That was none of his business, but I felt too
guilty to tell him that. He started climbing up the bales.

“Wait,” I said and then stopped, unable to
think of what to say next.

He continued to climb. I could grab him by
the leg and pull him down, but that would start a fight and make
him very suspicious. I followed him up, staying right on his heels
to make sure he didn’t go into the fort. At the top, I stood in
front of the entrance to the fort, as Ed looked at all the bales I
had moved.

“What the hell have you been doing?” he
exclaimed. “You’re trying to get the necklace for yourself. You
bastard.”

I wanted to shush him. Natalie shouldn’t be
hearing about the necklace. At that moment, Natalie burst out of
the fort between my legs, knocking me over in the process. I landed
in a heap, partially on top of her. Ed stared at Natalie, looking
as if he had seen a vampire. Natalie lay panting, hay in her
hair.

“I got claustrophobia in there,” she said,
sitting up as we untangled. “And then you blocked off the light,
and it was pitch black. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“Well, what have we here?” Ed said,
recovering his poise. “Head cheerleader Natalie Porter and my
cousin caught
in flagrante delicto
. How delicious. Perhaps a
gossip item for the Carter Bulldog.”

“If you print or say one word about this,
I’ll kill you,” Natalie said, standing up and approaching Ed in a
menacing manner.

“My, my, the beautiful Natalie has a temper.
I quake at her approach.”

“It’s okay, Nat,” I said taking her arm. “Let
me handle it. You’d better go.”

“With this idiot on the loose? And why does
he say he’s your cousin? How many cousins do you have? He doesn’t
even look like you.”

“I’ll explain later. Go ahead. Everything’s
going to be all right.”

Natalie looked at me and then at Ed. She said
to him, “Remember what I said. I’ll make mincemeat out of you.”

She climbed down the bales. She reached the
floor and went over to the opening. She climbed down the ladder and
disappeared without looking at us again. A few seconds later, I
heard the outside door to the barn slam. Now I had to calm Ed
down.

“I wasn’t trying to cut anybody out of
anything,” I said. “I was just trying to speed up the process of
finding the necklace.” Or prove that there wasn’t a necklace. “But
if you say anything about Nat and me, I will cut you out.”

“Don’t get a burr in your britches,” Ed said.
“You know I can keep a secret. And we’ll work together on the
necklace. But you’re going about it all wrong.”

“What do you mean, all wrong?”

Ed considered. “Well, maybe not all wrong.
But you can’t move all those bales by yourself.”

“Do you want to help me?”

“No, it would still take us too long. I think
the best thing to do is to wait until spring, when the hay is gone.
The necklace has been missing for over a hundred years. A few more
months won’t matter.”

“But what if the farm workers find it?”

“They won’t. It’s too well hidden for
that.”

“How do you know? Let me see the document
that Ralph wrote.”

Ed shook his head. “No, I can’t do that.
You’ll just have to trust me on this.”

I was getting exasperated. “Ed, why exactly
did you come here today?”

“To make sure you aren’t doing exactly what
you’re doing. This necklace belongs to all of us. Not just to you
yanks. Just because we’re not rich like you are doesn’t mean that
we don’t deserve better.”

“If we were rich, instead of penny loafers,
I’d wear quarter loafers. I was loading hay wagons during the
summer for a buck an hour. And if you’re so intent on getting the
necklace, why did you even tell me about it?”

Ed put out his hands, palms up. “Because I
need your help. Because you have access to the barn at any time,
and I don’t. In spite of what I said, I’m afraid that somebody will
find the necklace and run off with it. You’re up here almost every
day. You can keep an eye on what’s happening.”

“You’re sure you won’t say anything about Nat
and me?”

“Of course not.” He grinned. “How is she in
the hay? Pretty nice, eh?”

I pushed him over a bale.

CHAPTER 23

It was Wednesday, and I hadn’t seen Sylvia to
really talk to since Sunday. I hadn’t kissed her or even held her
hand. Natalie had heightened my sensibilities, and I needed to do
those things.

This was an unsatisfactory way to conduct a
relationship, especially since Sylvia was tantalizingly close to me
at lunchtime. Close, but I couldn’t do more than trade a word or
two with her as we turned in our trays and headed our separate ways
to afternoon classes. At least a couple of girls were eating with
her now, so she wasn’t alone, even when Barney and Ed strayed.

Natalie ate lunch with Joe. She didn’t look
in my direction. It was just as well. She was trouble with a
capital T. Ed joined me at lunch and seemed to be intent on staying
on my good side. I assumed this was because of the necklace, but
whatever the reason, if he wanted to be my friend, he wouldn’t be
spreading gossip about Natalie and me.

We chatted about the newspaper business,
since that was a common interest. Ed asked me to write articles for
the Carter Bulldog. I told him I was prohibited from doing that by
Dr. Graves. He said I could use a pseudonym. I declined, figuring
that this was just another way to get into trouble.

“I’m doing a big article on Joe Hawkins,” Ed
said, looking at me to get my reaction. “He’s being wooed by
several universities, including Cornell.”

“Has he got the smarts to get into Cornell?”
I asked.

“Football players get special
dispensation.”

I was about to make a remark about the poor
girls at Cornell if Joe became their idol, but I bit my lip to keep
myself from speaking.

“I’m watching the practices all this week and
interviewing him, of course. I’d also like to get some comments
from Natalie.”

He should have thought about that before he
taunted her. But at least it was another reason for him not to say
anything about Natalie and me. Sylvia got up from her table the
same time I got up from mine. As we handed our trays in through the
window to the kitchen, Sylvia whispered, “Can you come over after
school?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered back. “I’ll let
you know when school lets out.”

***

I had an idea based on the fact that Ed was
going to be at football practice, which is why I told Sylvia I
didn’t know whether I could go to her house after school. My idea
needed Kate’s cooperation, which might be difficult to get. The
first thing I had to do was to track her down, since we didn’t eat
at the same lunch period or, of course, have any classes
together.

The best time to talk to her would be right
after school, when the majority of the students were boarding buses
for the ride home. I found out from Ed which bus he and Kate rode
and went outside to the parking lot where they loaded as soon as we
were dismissed for the day.

The school owned many of the big yellow
buses, because it was a rural district and the homes were spread
out. They stood in a line with their doors open, looking to my
jaundiced eye like yellow sharks, waiting with their mouths open to
gobble up the unsuspecting students. Numbers were painted on them
in black, so I had no trouble finding the correct one. I waited
while the kids poured out of the school, talking, laughing, glad to
be out of jail for the rest of the day.

I spotted Kate walking with two other girls,
looking pretty in a plaid skirt and a light jacket. I hailed her as
they approached the bus and said, “May I talk to you for a
moment?”

She looked surprised. We hadn’t spoken for a
week, not since I had been at her house. And then we hadn’t parted
on the best of terms. I added, “I can drive you home.”

She hesitated. The other two girls were
giving her knowing looks. That apparently did the trick, because
she turned to me with a brilliant smile and said, “Okay.”

She waved to them as we walked away toward
where my car was parked. It occurred to me that she had achieved
some sort of status by being cut out of the pack by a senior, but
it also worried me because it might get her expectations too high.
So as soon as we got into the car and started moving, I started
talking.

“I need your help,” I said. “Is your mother
home this afternoon?”

“No, she’s working.”

“Good. Because what I want to do is to take a
look at the sheet of paper Ed says he got from Ralph that
supposedly tells where the necklace is hidden.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“I guess just because he won’t show it to us.
Don’t you think there’s something fishy about that?”

Kate shrugged her shoulders and said, “Eddie
can be very secretive. He’s always keeping secrets from me.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I do the same with him.”

“But wouldn’t you like to know whether there
really is a necklace? If there is, it could be worth a lot of
money.”

“Eddie is obsessed with money. He’s always
saying that you and the other cousins have a lot of money, but our
family doesn’t.”

“You know that’s not true, don’t you? We’re
not rich.”

“But at least you get new clothes once in a
while. I have to keep mending mine. This morning, I had to fix the
hem on this skirt before I could wear it.”

She lifted up the bottom of her skirt and
showed it to me. Although the gesture barely exposed her knees, it
distracted me enough so that I suddenly found the car drifting
toward the side of the road. I had to jerk the wheel to straighten
it.

To cover my discomfiture, I said, “Will you
help me find the piece of paper?”

Her tone changed. She said, “Why should I
help you?”

“Because you have a stake in this. Your
family would get a share from selling the necklace.”

“Eddie says that if it’s found in the
hayloft, you might try to cut us out, because your dad and Cousin
Dorothy own the farm.”

“I promise that your family will get a
third.” Big words, since I probably had no control over what
happened if the necklace were found. Even if we were the ones to
find it.

We had reached the small house where the
Drucquers lived. It looked sad and uninviting. I could understand
why Ed and Kate wanted something better. I stopped the car in front
and said, “Well?”

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll help you if
you’ll take me to the autumn dance.”

I looked at her to see if she was serious. I
could tell by the firm set of her mouth and the determined look in
her green eyes that she was. The annual semiformal dance was a week
from Saturday. I had already asked Sylvia to go with me. The
problem was that I couldn’t be seen with Sylvia. We had discussed
that on Sunday, when we had walked and talked together. We had
concluded that we wouldn’t go at all, because it wasn’t a dance to
which people went stag.

I was stuck for an answer to Kate. I couldn’t
tell her I was going with somebody else, because that was no longer
true. I couldn’t tell her that even though I wasn’t going with
Sylvia, we were still together. Kate was a member of the family,
and I couldn’t trust her to keep quiet about it. The seconds
dragged into minutes. Kate sat with her hands folded in her lap.
She wasn’t going to budge. I had to say something.