Dodging and Burning Page 2

Jay brightened. He appreciated my enthusiasm. He raised his eyebrows at Bunny.

  She planted a hand on her waist and glared at me. “I guess you’re all in, aren’t you, Nancy Drew?”

  I nodded my head yes and gave an impatient hop.

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll go, but as soon as you find your camera, and we see this—this crime scene, we’ll go directly to the police. Promise me that. Both of you. Directly to the police.”

  “Agreed,” Jay said. “Let’s drive to your house, Bunny, and walk in from there, the back way up the creek. If the murderer was still there, I bet he went out another way, either toward the train station or up to the road. They’re more direct routes.”

  “Okay,” she said, still reticent. “I suppose the pies will keep.”

  Royal Oak was such a different place then, Robbie. From an outsider’s standpoint, it wouldn’t seem that way, I suppose; small towns change so slow, like the creeping of continental plates. But if you were here now, you’d know what I mean. The energy and pride have seeped out of the place. The downtown is a strip of empty storefronts with grimy plate-glass windows, God-awful vinyl siding slapped on in the ’60s and ’70s to give the town a “facelift,” and rusty signs, letters burned out, neon drained. It’s been sucked dry by the monster stores that sit like fat spiders by the interstate, breeding other little spiders—and no one wants to raise a hand to change things. No one cares. We don’t even talk to one another like we used to. When I walk down Main Street, I look my fellow townspeople in the eye—and usually jowly faces from drinking Big Gulps and eating bottomless bags of Doritos stare back—and I wonder, who are all these strangers?

  If only you’d been here the summer before the end of the war. Royal Oak buzzed with chitchat and goodwill. Peace was on the horizon. We’d lost eleven young men, including you, and many more were still serving, but the war had pulled us together, from the dairy farmers in the valley to the shop owners on Main Street, from blue-collar men like Papa to those wealthy folks behind their hedgerows and columns. Main Street, all pleasant brick storefronts and cleanly swept sidewalks then, was a place people went to get what they needed, and to see one another and to be seen, whether it was at Kessler’s Hardware for feed; or Brickles’ wide linoleum aisles for a new hat; or Hersh’s polished chrome counter for a grilled cheese; or Elroy’s Cafeteria for a Sunday dinner of fried chicken, corn pudding, and roasted potatoes; or the Hoot Owl for a bourbon and Dixie Cola. Oh, I don’t mean to say we all loved one another. That’s far from the truth. But we understood ourselves as belonging to one another. I even belonged to Bunny Prescott, although, at the time, I would never have admitted as much.

  During the car ride through town, Bunny pressed Jay for more details about Lily. “Start at the beginning,” she said. “I want to know everything.”

  He looked back at me, eyes restless, as if tracing a fly around the inside of the cab. “I met her, Lily, on the train coming back from Washington three days ago, and we struck up a conversation, just friendly chitchat.” He gave me a brief nod, like he wanted me to know he was talking about it for my sake, not Bunny’s. “She saw my camera and asked me if I was a photographer. I told her I was, of a sort, and she told me she was trying for a modeling job in the city. She wanted to model dresses, hats, shoes, nylons—that type of thing. She wanted to be on the floor in a big department store like Woodies.” He shifted in his seat and bit his lip. “Could you drive a little faster, Bunny?”

  “Yes, okay,” she said. Her gloved hands tightened around the steering wheel, the motor surged, and a cluster of colorful, freshly painted bungalows whooshed by. We were on King Street, headed to the better part of town, Bunny’s part. “Well, go on,” she said.

  “I told Lily I’d meet her there, at the clearing in the woods, to take some shots for her modeling application.”

  “Really? Why there?” I said.

  “The light is good at that spot midmorning and the mountains make a great backdrop, and, of course, I didn’t have a studio to offer her.” His arm was stretched across the back of the seat, shirtsleeve rolled to the elbow, veins twitching as he fiddled with the raised seam of the leather upholstery. I had the urge to put my hand on his to calm his fidgeting.

  “I didn’t want her coming to the house and having to explain her to Grandma,” he continued. “So when she rang up yesterday and told me she’d be passing through, I explained how to get to the clearing from the train station. It seemed easiest to meet her there since it’s fairly close to the station. After all, I was doing her a favor.” He fell silent and pulled his arm back.

  “And?” Bunny prompted, taking a moment to change gears. “What happened when you went to the clearing?”

  “Just wait. You’ll see for yourself.”

  “I’m not sure I want to.” She scrunched her nose.

  “Then why are you here?”

  Creases appeared in her clean, white forehead. “I just need to be prepared. I haven’t seen something like this firsthand.”

  “You can’t prepare for this sort of thing. Trust me.”

  She caught my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Ceola, we should take you home. You really are too young to go with us.”

  “No!” I said, grabbing the back of the seat and thrusting my head between them. “I should go! I wanna go!”

  “She’ll be okay,” Jay said, shooting me a half-smile. “She may be more prepared than you, Bunny.” I knew he was talking about you, Robbie, about me losing you. He knew that loss was a kind of violence; the war was closer to me at that point than to her. A dead body was nothing compared to my nightmares about what had happened to you.

  We turned onto North Street, heading west. The Prescotts’ two-story colonial was wedged between the old Bixby place and the Matthews’ home at the end of the cul-de-sac. With its white bricks and black shutters, its canvas-draped pergola, and its oversize second-story gallery shaded by a navy-and-white-striped awning, it looked like a ridiculous cruise ship; its flat lawn, a stagnant green sea.

  We used to wander through that neighborhood, Robbie, with its tall oaks and elms, whitewashed fences, boxwood bushes, and fancy rose gardens, and dream about what it’d be like to live in one of those ritzy places. You’d say, “Someday, little sis, we’re going to live in a house with columns all down the front and a paved driveway in the back. We’re going to play baseball in our Sunday best and not care, not one bit. We’ll even have a butler in a tuxedo and some maids and eat off silver trays.”

  Well, I never lived on North Street or ate off a silver tray, but I have a paved drive, for what it’s worth.

  Bunny parked the car. We flung ourselves across the lawn, shielding our eyes from the afternoon sun, and clamored into the cool shade of the forest. After scrambling down the bank, we followed the creek upstream, the locust trees, maples, and birches bending over us, casting a tangle of shadows on the shallow water. We did our best to maintain our footing on the slippery limestone slabs and smooth river stones. Bunny sounded off frequently, a namby-pamby Little Red Riding Hood, clutching her dress close to her, shooing away mosquitos and water bugs. Jay struggled with the uneven surface, but he’d trained himself to work through physical adversity, and to my surprise, about a quarter mile in, he leaped to a stone at the center of the creek and balanced on his good leg like a circus performer in a high-wire act.

  “Aren’t you worried about hurting yourself?” I said.

  “Nah,” he said, grinding his teeth together. “I’m fine.”

  “You should be more careful,” Bunny said. “Wounds like that take a long time to heal.”

  “Yes, Mother Dear,” he said. “Now, jump. Come on.”

  “Why don’t we cross over on the bridge?” she said, putting a hand to her chest to calm her breathing. “It’s just upstream a little.”

  “We shouldn’t risk it.”

  “I can’t believe this Lily person would’ve dragged herself all the way out here for a silly photograph. I mean—”

 
; “It’s not that far. Come on.”

  “If I fall, Jay, you’ll have to fish me out of the creek and carry me home.”

  “Come on.”

  “All right. Okay.”

  After taking off her muddy pumps, she skipped to the rock in a bustle of red, like some enormous cardinal trying to take flight. Once she found her balance, she curtsied, pleased as punch, her cheeks pink, a film of moisture coating the ridge of her nose. She held her hand out to me, smiling like she wanted to eat me, but I waved her off. No thank you. As soon as she moved, I jumped.

  “That’s the way to do it, Cee!” Jay called out.

  I smiled at him.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “We need to move faster.”

  I sensed eagerness just under his impatience. What he’d witnessed, it seemed, had cranked something up in him, a brashness as well as an unease. I couldn’t tell if we were running toward something or away from it. I wondered if he had been thinking of you, too, of how you, with your love of detective stories, would’ve reacted to seeing a real murder victim.

  You’d been beside me the entire journey, my hand in yours, pulling me along, whispering in my ear, transforming the woods into the set of a matinee thriller. I was no longer a twelve-year-old girl but a PI, a Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade sort, ducking limbs and skirting dead trees, headed to the scene of a crime and the clues that would lead us to the black-hearted killer. There was an evil out there that we would wrestle to the ground, handcuff, and bring to justice.

  “That’s it,” Jay said, nodding to a bend in the trail just ahead. “That’s where I dropped it.” I took a step forward, and he held out a hand to stop me. “Let me.”

  Jay scanned the trees and undergrowth—so he did think the murderer could still be nearby!—and staggered to the spot: the rim of an old sinkhole stuffed with debris, mostly branches and rotten leaves. “I almost fell in when I was running away,” he said. He smacked the side of a spindly, leafless locust. “Here’s the tree that caused the problem.” Using it to brace himself, he kneeled and began rummaging through the leaves and twigs just over the edge. The muscle underneath the soft fabric of his pants trembled, and he recoiled in pain.

  “Cee, could you get it?” he said. A foot or so beyond his reach, I spotted the ripped leatherette casing of his Speed Graphic. Without much trouble, I scooted down the incline, grabbed the shoulder strap, and dragged the clunky camera up. He took it and slung it over his shoulder. “Thanks, Cee.”

  Down the trail a few hundred feet, we passed through a row of feathery pines and, still being watchful of movement in the woods, approached a small clearing about thirty yards wide, a wasteland of rocks and dry grass. A narrow path passed east to west through it. In the center was a large, igloo-shaped boulder, like the skull of a half-buried giant.

  “That’s where she is,” he said, stopping abruptly. “Over there. Behind the boulder.” He looked at me, his eyes urging me on. “When I first saw her, I didn’t know what I was looking at. For a split second, I thought she might be asleep, like she’d been waiting for me and dozed off. That was stupid, of course. Blood was all over her and the ground. I stood there for the longest time. Then instinct kicked in, like I was back on the front, and I started shooting photos.”

  “You took pictures of the body?” Bunny said with a little gasp.

  “I feel safer behind the camera, you know, looking through a viewfinder.”

  Bunny’s stunned glare dissolved into a sympathetic frown. But he didn’t like her pity, not at all, because that’s when I first saw it, or at least became aware of it—the actual shifting of his mood, like a cloud passing over the sun. His eyes darkened, his features fell quiet, and his adventurous spirit retreated, pulled back through a thick curtain of anxiety. The bone structure of his face seemed to change. His skin grew pale, his eyes flickered, his muscles contracted, pulling and pinching the flesh in his cheeks, at his temples, and across his forehead. I didn’t really understand what it meant. Was it the murder? The war? Bunny? Some blurred combination of the three?

  “Go and tell me what you see,” he said.

  Bunny gave me a quick glance and swallowed. Was she waiting for me to make the first move? Or was she going to object to my age again and hold me back as soon as I took a step forward? She opened her mouth but said nothing. Maybe she thought the killer was still lurking in the woods, or maybe she thought Jay was playing an elaborate joke, or maybe she was just as caught up in the moment as I was and was frightened by her own curiosity.

  “Go ahead,” he said softly. “Please.”

  In front of me, the boulder’s smooth, sun-warmed surface promised so much—a corpse, a mystery, a chance for me to put my detective skills to use. On the other side was something, I just knew, that would change my life, but I was confused. Jay had been protective of me, of us, and now he wanted us to go ahead of him and expose ourselves to whatever was waiting. My heart was running laps around my lungs.

  “We’ve come this far,” he said in a whisper. “I need you to tell me what you see. I’ll watch out for you. I promise.”

  I edged forward with Bunny inches behind me, her shadow falling over mine, gobbling it up. Was I ready for the shock, the strange thrill of the dead woman on display? Unlike losing you to the ocean, there would be a body—something real, someone to bury. Worried that Bunny would grab me, I shot ahead and clambered up the giant’s skull.

  But there was nothing. No woman. No blood. Not a damn thing.

  At first, I thought I hadn’t looked in the right spot. I dashed to a clump of grass at the far end like a frantic squirrel searching for nuts. I saw something white—maybe a hand?—but it was only quartz in a piece of sandstone. I swore at it.

  By this time, Bunny had seen the big nothing too. “This isn’t funny,” she said.

  “What is it?” Jay said, rounding the side of the boulder.

  “I’m going home. It’s just a game, Ceola. A lark, to make fun of us.”

  He stopped cold and furrowed his eyebrows. “She was right here. Lily’s body was right here.” He pointed to a rough mess of weeds, twigs, and rocks a few paces in front of him. His tone was flat, drained of energy. “I know what I saw. She was beaten and bloody. I’ll develop the photos and you can see for yourself.”

  “Someone must’ve moved her,” I said. “Someone was in the woods.”

  “The ground is damp where her body was,” he said, bending down and pressing a finger into a large, oval-shaped patch of mud. He showed us the evidence on his fingertip. “The murderer could’ve cleaned up, washed away all the blood.”

  “Do you think he saw you?” I said. “If he watched you take the photos, you could be in danger.”

  “I’d like to see these photos, Jay,” Bunny said. She searched his face, like she was looking for a tell, but he didn’t move, not even a twitch or a blink. I wanted to kick her in the shins and give her a shove. Leave Jay alone. But she gave up soon enough, wobbled on her heels over to the boulder, and leaned against it with a huff. She smoothed out her dress and began picking milkweed pods out of its folds, flicking them away.

  I leaped to action, combing the area for clues, hoping I would find an incriminating matchbook or torn piece of cloth from a coat or dress. The matchbook would have a phone number scrawled on the inside flap, or the scrap of fabric would smell like cheap drugstore perfume that, using my bloodhound nose, I’d identify with just a whiff.

  In a patch of Queen Anne’s lace near the edge of the woods, I spotted a dark, triangular shape wedged between the long stalks. As I reached down, a group of butterflies sprang to life and spiraled into the trees. When I glanced back to the shape, I saw that it was a woman’s shoe. I hooked it with my forefinger and brought it to eye level. I held it away from me, the open toe pointing toward the ground, its ripped bow hanging by a thread, its black velvet dirty. It was a classic clue. All we needed now was a smashed watch and a broken strand of pearls, and we were on our way to pulp magazine paradise.

  �
��I found something,” I said.

  Jay was sitting on top of the giant’s skull, his eyes far off, his arms crossed tight over his chest. Bunny was leaning back and holding her face to the sun like some ridiculous postcard—“Come to Royal Oak and Stay A-While!” Neither of them made a move.

  I called to them again, this time louder. They popped out of their daydreams and came quick.

  “See, Bunny, there’s blood on it,” Jay said, jabbing his finger at a rust-colored stain that covered up the size and make on the insole of the shoe. “I’m not inventing this.”

  Bunny wrinkled her nose as if it was the woman’s foot itself and took a step back.

  “Was there another shoe?” Jay asked me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where did you find this one?”

  I pointed to the spot. He rooted around until he found the shoe’s mate. He gave it a quick once-over and set it on the ground by his feet. He pulled his camera strap over his head and stripped off his linen shirt, leaving him in a T-shirt with sweat stains at the armpits. He spread his shirt on the ground and wrapped his new discovery in one side of it.

  “We need to keep these safe,” he said. I offered him the other shoe, still dangling from my forefinger, and he took it and folded the shirt over it.

  “So you can take them to the police?” Bunny said.

  “I can’t go to the police,” he said. “The body’s gone. The blood’s washed away.”

  “But the shoes,” Bunny said. “You can show them the shoes. And the photos. What about the photos?”

  “The photos make me look guilty. They won’t understand why I took them. I’ll just be crazy Letitia’s grandson, back from the war, murdering helpless women and taking their pictures. And the shoes. We’ve tampered with them. Cee’s fingerprints are all over one of them.”

  She hesitated, sizing him up, her lips separated but motionless. “You are too frustrating,” she finally said. “You really are. The truth is, I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “I believe you!” I chimed in. “I do.”