In my most serious voice, one I didn’t even know I had until right then, I said, “Ethel,
no!
”
Ethel frowned down at me because I was not using my manners, but she came along to the side of the house anyway. I stood back up on the flowerpot, but she didn’t need to do that because she was taller than a lot of men. I pointed at Junie’s picture and figured I didn’t need to say anything else. That picture, like Granny said, was worth a thousand words. When Ethel saw Junie in her little white Communion dress and veil, a mixed-up look came over her face. She looked down at me and said, “What is wrong with you, child?” acting like it was la de da normal that Rasmussen had a picture of dead Junie Piaskowski hanging on his dining room wall.
I got so mad and sad all at the same time that I burst right into tears.
Ethel said, “It’s okay. It’s all right.” She ran her hand carefully down my back, like I was one of Mrs. Galecki’s china dolls. “Miss Junie’s with Jesus in Heaven.”
“Ethel, d-d-don’t you understand?” I pointed at Junie’s picture again. “I saw them together last summer at the Policemen’s Picnic and they were flying a kite and Rasmussen was lookin’ at Junie in a certain kind of way . . . like he loved her or something . . . and he even had his hand on her shoulder and he was touching her and then she turned up dead. He’s the murderer and molester. There’s the p-p-proof.”
Ethel’s mouth dropped almost down to the sidewalk. And then she said in her lowest voice, the one that sounded like a box fan on a hot day, “Oh my, my, my, my, my.”
What was wrong with Ethel? Why wasn’t she running to wake up Mr. Gary, who would call the police on Rasmussen?
Ethel lifted me up off the flowerpot and set me gently down on the ground. “We need to have a talk, Miss Sally.”
I jerked my hand out of hers and whisper-yelled, “Ethel!” “Come here to me.” She pulled me into her bosoms and swatted me a little one on my butt. “Now just settle down so I can tell you what’s goin’ on here. It ain’t what you think.”
I let her lead me around the corner of the house and over to Rasmussen’s green glider that still had a slight smell of that orange aftershave he wore. We sat down and she rocked us a few times and then said, “You have gone and done some jumpin’ to conclusions, which is a bad business to be in.”
“But, Ethel . . .”
“Just hush up for one minute.” I was so jumpy mad that I tried to get up off the swing, but Ethel grabbed me by the arm and reeled me back down. “The reason Mr. Rasmussen was lookin’ at Miss Junie like he loved her was cuz he did. He was Miss Junie’s uncle. I thought you knew that.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, because I was sure I’d heard her wrong.
Ethel said slowly, pronouncing each word very carefully, “Junie was Mr. Rasmussen’s little niece. His sister Betsy’s girl.”
I just couldn’t believe it. This man was the evilest thing walking around on two feet.
Rasmussen had murdered and molested his own niece!
I couldn’t talk for a minute because suddenly I didn’t trust Ethel, which made me feel really deep down slimy. “Poor Dave. Little Miss Junie was the apple of his eye.” She stopped rocking us and said, “For land’s sake, why’d you go and think he’d murdered her? Why, Mr. Rasmussen, he can’t even murder one of God’s worst ideas, that’s what a good man he is.”
“I’m sorry to have to say this, but you are so wrong, Ethel. Rasmussen did murder Junie and he murdered Sara Marie, too.” My mind felt like the inside of a beehive. “And he’s got a picture of me in his wallet so that means he’s coming after me next.”
Ethel let out a little surprised whoop. “Oh, wait ’til I tell Ray Buck.” And then she really broke out laughing hard, maybe because she was tired or maybe to make me feel better because she knew how much I loved to hear that laugh that sounded like a million bucks, deeply rich and no end to it. “I always tol’ you that imagination of yours was goin’ to get you into trouble someday and today is that day, Sally.”
Even though she was laughing I could tell she was a little upset with me because she had forgotten to call me
Miss
Sally. I leaned into her when she put her warm arm around me and said, “I promise you this. Mr. Rasmussen, he’s the best man around here. A true gentleman. He wouldn’t never hurt nobody and somehow you just gotta make yourself stop thinkin’ like that.”
The smell of Rasmussen’s roses was getting mixed in with that smell of chocolate chip cookies and they made a wave of sweetness that I wanted to do a swan dive into. It woulda been so nice to believe Ethel. To think that somehow I had gotten the idea about Rasmussen being a murderer and molester into my head the same way I’d thought Mr. Kenfield was a spy and that Butchy was the devil in a dog disguise. Seeing Rasmussen look at Junie over at the park when they were flying that kite and thinkin’ he was up to something, and how he was always so nice but looked sad sometimes when you’d walk past his house, and how he never got married and all those other things I’d been thinking . . . it was all my imagination?
“Maybe it’s because your mother is sick. The worry of that can make a body’s brain think somethin’ that might not be right,” Ethel said. “And your daddy dyin’ not that long ago. I seen this happen before. Folks can go off their head for a bit because they’s so upset ’bout somethin’.”
Rocking with her in the moonlight that made everything seem like it was really just a dream, with edges wispy and soft, I couldn’t tell where things started and where they ended. Maybe I had gone off of my head just like she said. But then I realized that if Ethel was right and Rasmussen wasn’t trying to murder and molest me . . . somebody else was. Somebody had chased me down that alley. Somebody had pushed me down in the Fazios’ backyard during red light, green light. You could even ask Nana Fazio.
“You feelin’ an ant’s worth better, Miss Sally?” Ethel said from far away.
I wanted to say, “Yes, Ethel, I feel fine. Everything’s going to be okay. I see now that what you said about Rasmussen is the honest to God’s truth. That he’s not the murderer and molester.” But I just couldn’t do that. I loved Ethel to bits and I never lied to her.
“You just go ahead and sleep, sugar. Best thing for you. Ethel’s gonna go ahead and say ’nother little prayer for you.” Soft and clear in her sweet voice that hung over that garden of goodness, she said, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
Last thing I thought before I drifted off was that I’d need to have a little chat with Ethel tomorrow about her prayer selection.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I woke up in Ethel’s bed the next morning, thinking about last night and what she’d told me about Rasmussen and how he was a good man, a true gentleman. A nice loving uncle to Junie. Definitely not a murderer and molester. That was so hard for me to believe. Impossible, really. I would have to have a case of amnesia to believe something like that.
Ethel peeked her head through the bedroom door and said, “Time to get your tail a-shakin’.” She had some toast on a see-through plate and a cup of milk with Ovaltine in it that she’d bought just for our Wednesday visits because we just adored Ovaltine. Ethel had grown to just adore it, too. Who wouldn’t? She set my breakfast down on the small bedside table right next to her Bible and a Sears and Roe-buck catalog that had some folded-over pages.
Ethel went over to the bedroom window and pulled up the yellowed shade that looked right into Rasmussen’s garden. I already knew he was out there and that Troo was with him because I heard their voices coming through the screen window. I saw that Troo had on a big starched shirt that was probably Mr. Gary’s because it looked like a dress on her. I could tell she’d had a bath from the way her hair looked all fresh with the gold jumping around in it like Mother’s.
“How you feelin’ this morning?” Ethel sat down on the edge of the bed and I rolled her way.
“I’m feelin’ fine this morning, Ethel. Thank you for asking. Did you tell him?” I nodded toward the window.
“No, I most certainly did not. I ’spect that might hurt Mr. Rasmussen’s feelings, tellin’ him you think he’s a murderer and molester, don’t you?” She was out of her nightie and into her Sunday clothes even though it was Tuesday. “I happen to know that Mr. Rasmussen thinks very highly of you, Miss Sally, so you gotta train your mind, get it to stop thinkin’ the way it’s been thinkin’ about him.”
I would have to work very, very hard to train my mind not to think the way it’d been thinking about him. But if Ethel was right, that’s what I had to do. Because if it wasn’t Rasmussen, I hadda start keepin’ an eye out for whoever else it was that was trying to do away with me.
“What time is it?” I asked her. I took a bite out of the toast and it was so good with those strawberry preserves spread on top of it. “Troo and I have that funeral to go to today. I promised Henry Fitzpatrick.”
“It’s just after seven.” Ethel got up off the bed. “I already gave Troo a bath and you’re next. I’m gonna go run the water. You finish up your toast, includin’ the crusts.”
I rolled onto my other side and watched Troo throw the ball for the little collie dog, who looked like it was having so much fun running around Troo’s legs with its tongue hangin’ out. Rasmussen was bent over at his waist, laughing at the two of them.
I could hear Ethel start up the bathwater on the other side of the wall. Before Mother got sick, I didn’t care much for baths and would complain the whole time, but now the idea of getting clean in that tub sounded just heavenly to me. Ethel would put bubble bath in it because that was what she always did for Mrs. Galecki. Bubble bath that came in a little yellow Avon bottle and made the whole house smell like vanilla ice cream. So I stuck the rest of the toast in my mouth, includin’ crusts, and got up to see if Mrs. Galecki was around. I thought I could read her a quick story or something for lettin’ me and Troo stay overnight at her house.
“Well, good morning, Sleeping Beauty.” Mr. Gary was sitting at the kitchen table with his mother. He was dressed in a nice white shirt and shorts. Mr. Gary almost always wore white clothes. He took such pride in his appearance.
Mrs. Galecki said, “Good morning, Sally.”
“Morning,” I said to her smiling face. She absolutely adored her son and talked about him all the time when he wasn’t here, told me little stories about him. Like how Mr. Gary was something called a late bloomer. And how he used to get picked on at school by bad boys who called him a ninety-eight-pound weakling. But how her Gary was doing so well after such a rocky start and she was so proud of him. So, of course, Mrs. Galecki musta been just Christmas-morning excited that Mr. Gary was sitting next to her at the round wooden breakfast table with cups of tea and toast and even some grapes.
“Come join us,” Mrs. Galecki said, and waved at me with her little gnarled-up hand.
“Just for a minute would be okay cuz I really gotta take a bath.” I could barely stand to be around myself, that’s how bad I had begun to smell, and sitting in Rasmussen’s green bean tepee in the dirt last night had not helped one bit.
I sat down next to Mrs. Galecki, who had a lot of lines on her face, especially around her mouth. But she had pretty eyes of a brown color that I had never seen before. Like the water down at the lagoon. Light muddy colored.
Mr. Gary was reading the newspaper to his mother. His ears didn’t look quite as bad as they had in that high school graduation picture in the hidey-hole. They still stuck out but his face had grown wider. “Today is the funeral of that little girl they found in the park. Did you know her, Sally?”
“Not really,” I said, popping a grape in my mouth. “Sara was younger than me and Troo. A third-grader.”
Mrs. Galecki shook her wobbly head back and forth and said, “How sad for her mother. You remember Cathy Miller, don’t you, Gary? She married Frankie Heinemann. Sara was Cathy and Frankie’s little girl.”
Mr. Gary shook his paper and said, “Of course, I remember Cathy Miller. Prettiest girl in school. Lovely, lovely girl.”
“I think the whole world is heading to you know where in a handbasket, don’t you?” Mrs. Galecki said. “What kind of monster would hurt poor defenseless children?”
Yesterday I woulda thought right away that Rasmussen would, but I was trying not to think like that anymore. Just as a favor for Ethel. But I was pretty sure this mind training would take some time. Like learning a new card trick.
I was getting ready to ask Mr. Gary about Mother and what kind of girl she was in high school and were her and him friends when Ethel called, “Miss Sally . . . bath is ready!”
“Thank you for lettin’ Troo and me stay over.” I pushed my chair back and said, “We appreciate it so much.”
Mr. Gary set his paper down on the table and said in that soft, light voice of his, “What nice manners you have, Sally.”
I must have blushed because he added, “And such wonderful coloring. You know what that means?”
I shook my head.
“You have green eyes and blond hair and skin with the nicest bit of peach tone,” Mr. Gary said. “That’s called your coloring.” He picked up his paper and said from behind it, “You’re a beautiful girl.”
“Miss Saaallly, get your behind in here ’fore this water gets cooled down,” Ethel called.
Then Mr. Gary said something behind his hand to Mrs. Galecki. I caught the words “Troo” and “coloring,” and they had a little laugh about that.
I went to the bathroom door and there was Ethel sitting on the edge of the tub waiting for me. “Just take off them clothes. I’ll wash ’em for you.”
“But what’ll I put on then?” I handed her my shirt and shorts and undies. Granny woulda said those clothes looked like something the cat dragged in.
“I called Nell. She’ll be here in a shake of a lamb’s tail with some clean clothes for you and Troo. She’ll be takin’ you to the funeral in Eddie’s car and givin’ me a ride, too.” So that’s why Ethel was in her Sunday clothes. She was going with us to the funeral, which shouldn’ta surprised me because Ethel never missed a funeral. She said it was important for the dead person’s family to know how many people were gonna miss ’em.