Twisted Summer

  He didn’t have any ideas, so I left him there finishing his supper and walked home along the lake. I’d always felt so at home in this place, so safe, and now I felt as if something terrible lurked in the woods, driving me out in the open. I was afraid in this community for the first time in my life.

  Ilona had caught me marking the map. I didn’t know if she’d seen what I marked, but if either of those two adjoining towns meant anything to her, she might have noticed.

  And there was the fact that I’d left my list on top of the desk in the study, where anyone using the phone might have seen it and easily figured out what it was. So in truth, anyone in our house might have seen it before it was thrown in the wastebasket.

  And lastly there was the knowledge that was stuck in my mind, like a pin caught in a new blouse, that pricks and pricks until you find it and take it out.

  The figures in the Judge’s checkbook, those one thousand dollar withdrawals, in cash, once a month for fourteen months.

  Some legitimate expense to take care of? Or something more ominous?

  Blackmail payments would be made in cash, I thought. And I wouldn’t put blackmail beyond what I’d learned of Zoe.

  On the other hand, Zoe had been killed almost a year ago. And the checks for cash had continued to be made out every month, well beyond the time she had died.

  So what possibilities did that leave? None that didn’t make me feel sick to my stomach. My eyes were stinging as I walked through the dusk.

  chapter twelve

  We didn’t go to church regularly as a family. If we were home and we didn’t have an outing planned, we went part of the time. And on Easter and Christmas. And for the past year I’d been attending Youth Fellowship meetings on Wednesday nights, because my friend Becky went, and the kids did fun things.

  When we were at the lake, it was taken for granted that the entire family would go to the Community Church in Timbers, because the Judge had always insisted on it.

  I remembered one time when Ilona didn’t want to go with the rest of us, because she and Brody had been out late the night before. She begged to sleep in.

  “I guess skipping just once won’t hurt,” Aunt Mavis decided.

  But the Judge didn’t agree. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he’ll not depart from it,” he quoted. “So get up, child, and go to church as you should. You can take a nap this afternoon.”

  Ilona had groaned, and Aunt Mavis had made a face behind the Judge’s back, but nobody argued with him.

  He had more to say, anyway. “We are leaders in this community,” he pronounced as we left the house in our Sunday finery, “and it’s up to us to set standards, examples. So we sit in our front pew every week, without fail.”

  Nobody liked sitting in the front pew, where everybody else could see if we picked our noses or poked our cousins or let our attention stray from the sermons. But what the Judge decreed, we did.

  And so it was on the Sunday after Grandma Molly died. Of course everyone in Timbers—probably in the county—knew the Judge had just lost his wife. Maybe, Dad tried to suggest, they wouldn’t expect the clan to attend services so soon. They would think that we would want to nurse our grief in private.

  “The community will expect dignity and propriety,” the Judge said, and, as usual, that was that.

  In the backseat, while Dad drove, Ginny whispered, “Dignity? Does that mean that we can’t even cry while anyone’s looking?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “How do you keep from crying when you need to?”

  For the most part, we did fairly well. I’ll admit I didn’t hear much of the sermon, and during the hymn singing my eyes stung. I knew that “Amazing Grace” had always been one of Grandma Molly’s favorites, and though Mom and her sisters wiped their eyes a few times, I didn’t see anybody actually lose control.

  Especially not the Judge. He sat at the end of the pew, on the center aisle, and set an example for us and the townspeople.

  It was even worse when we left the church, because people came up to the family and expressed condolences. Ginny and I didn’t mingle; we ducked around everybody else and went back to the car.

  “How are we expected to stand this?” she demanded in a fierce undertone. “If they didn’t mention it, it wouldn’t be quite so bad, but when they talk about Grandma Molly . . .” She dug for a Kleenex and blew her nose.

  “If they didn’t mention her, I suppose it would seem like nobody cared,” I offered forlornly as we slid into the backseat of Dad’s car. “And it’s going to be worse tomorrow, at the funeral.”

  “I’ll never get through it,” Ginny asserted.

  But when we came back to the same church for the funeral the next day, she did survive it, and so did the rest of us. Maybe the service, with Molly’s favorite hymns and the pastor saying gentle words about a gentle lady, did something to bring peace to some of those attending, but to me it was pure misery. I didn’t want to be reminded, so publicly, about the kind of person Molly had been. I didn’t want to feel guilty because I hadn’t wanted to go see her while she was in the hospital, nor for staying in my seat with Ginny instead of walking past the open casket when most everyone else did.

  I didn’t want to feel guilty for wondering if the Judge was the person Zoe had been blackmailing, and if so, why, and who else knew, who had gone on getting money from him.

  Worst of all, I didn’t want to think about whether he had been the one who killed her. It was unthinkable, of course. Judge Arnold Baskin was a pillar of the community, even if it was a small one. He was admired and respected, deferred to by almost everyone.

  He had been a lawyer when Grandma Molly married him, and by the time Mom and Aunt Mavis and Aunt Pat began to have families, he had become a county judge. People asked his opinions and followed his advice. He was an influential man, not just in Timbers or the county, but in state politics. He was a friend of the governor’s; they’d gone to college together.

  Yet even as I remembered those things, the suspicions continued to squirm in my mind like a nestful of worms.

  To whom had he paid the cash from those thousand-dollar checks? What possible use could he have had for that much cash money over the past fourteen months?

  It gave me a headache, and it didn’t take much urging to get Ginny to duck around all the people talking to the older members of the family and head for the car. It was hot; we rolled down the windows so we could breathe and hoped Dad would come to take us home soon. I closed my eyes and tried not to think.

  “Cici?”

  I hadn’t heard him coming until Jack spoke through the open window beside me. “Hi,” I managed. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Me and Ma. We wouldn’t have missed paying our respects. Miss Molly was a good friend to us.”

  I wondered if Molly had tried to persuade the Judge to step in to help Brody, or if she, too, had believed Brody was a murderer.

  I wished I’d seen the Shuriks, but of course I hadn’t felt like turning around and checking out the church, though I could feel that it was full. I might have felt a little better knowing Jack and Lina were there behind me, supporting me.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said softly.

  “Yeah. I’m taking the rest of the day off. I just wondered if you’d like to sneak over to the cove for a swim this afternoon instead of hanging around the house where they’ll be telling Molly stories the rest of the day. It’ll be what some of them need to do, but maybe it’s a little too soon for you.”

  “It is!” I agreed at once. “I’d love to escape from the whole atmosphere at home. What time?”

  “Everybody at the lake was sending over food, so you better try to eat when you get back. When you can get free, come on along. I’ll be puttering around Fergus’s dock whenever you get there.”

  “Okay. See you then.”

  I watched him walk away from the car, straight and tall and looking elegant in slacks and a navy blazer with gold bu
ttons. I’d never seen him dressed up before.

  Ginny watched him, too. “He’s a really good-looking guy, isn’t he? You got something going with Jack, Cici?”

  I sank back into the seat. “Don’t I wish. No, we’re just old fishing and swimming buddies. I’d rather do anything than hang around the house the rest of today and listen to everybody talking about things that’ll make me cry some more.”

  “I know what you mean. If you can break away, probably I can, too. Randy said to go over if I got the chance.”

  The crowd outside the church was breaking up at last. Within a few minutes we were heading back to the lake; up front Mom and Dad talked about seeing people they hadn’t talked to in a long time, and how nice everyone was, how kind and caring.

  And I thought about the Judge, who had always been kind—if rather stern—and caring. He had taken the place of Mom’s father, and my grandfather, and he’d been Molly’s husband.

  They were concerned about the Judge, my folks, the aunts, everybody. He’d cared deeply for Molly, and now she was gone, and they worried about how he’d make it without her.

  I wished I dared talk to someone about what I’d found out, but how do you tell your parents something you’d learned poking around—however innocently it had begun—in someone else’s private desk drawers?

  No, I couldn’t tell Dad or Mom, but maybe I could tell Jack, I thought.

  * * *

  I hadn’t realized that a lot of people who went to the funeral would be following us back to the cottage to share all that food that had been brought in. Ginny and I took one look at the casseroles and salads and cakes overflowing the big table in the dining room and exchanged meaningful glances.

  No way, we said silently to each other. We raced up the stairs and changed into shorts and T-shirts.

  “Let’s see if there’s anything edible in the kitchen and get out of here,” Ginny muttered as we came back down the stairs, hoping no one would notice us.

  Nobody did. The Judge had his back to us at the bottom of the stairs. An elderly woman in a wide-brimmed black hat with a cluster of roses on it was saying earnestly, “She was a wonderful, wonderful woman, Your Honor. And she was lucky to have found you after poor George died all those years ago.” George had been my real grandpa, the one who died before I was born.

  We moved fast, before the Judge could turn and see us. I knew all these people meant well with their condolences, but I couldn’t bear to hear any more of them.

  There were several women we didn’t know in the kitchen. They didn’t pay any attention to us. We took a couple of paper plates and filled them with Jell-O and potato salad, slices of cold turkey, and slabs of chocolate cake that hadn’t yet made it to the main table. As an afterthought, in case Jack hadn’t had anything but a sandwich for lunch, I doubled the quantities of turkey and cake and slipped out the back door.

  Jack was waiting for me on the dock. I offered the plate, and he took a slice of white meat in his fingers. “Better than my jelly sandwich. You always did take good care of me, Cici. Remember the time you swiped fried chicken for me?”

  “And got caught and spanked because it was for a potluck dinner nobody told me about. Yeah.” Already I was feeling better, just being away from the cottage, and with Jack.

  Yet underneath lay the big problem. I didn’t spoil our trip to the cove by bringing it up while we were out on the water, nor during our swimming session, either. I’d worn a suit under my clothes this time, and Jack wore cutoffs, and we swam hard until we were both tired.

  It was when we had stretched out on the warm sand to dry that the words that had been stuck in my throat finally broke loose.

  One of the things I’d always liked about Jack was that he didn’t interrupt all the time with questions that you were going to answer anyway, as soon as you got the chance. He listened intently, watching my face, until I finally ran out of words.

  “You left your list of suspects on the Judge’s desk,” he summed up. “Do you think he saw it, before he threw it out?”

  “I don’t know who threw it out. He could have seen it. Or Mrs. Graden could have dropped it in the wastebasket.” With or without realizing what it was, I thought silently. “Jack,” my voice cracked with strain, “do you think I could be right? That Zoe was blackmailing the Judge?”

  “Zoe could have blackmailed anybody if she found out something they didn’t want known.”

  “It would have to be pretty serious, if he . . . if the Judge killed her to keep her from talking about it.” There was an ache in my chest that made it increasingly hard to breathe.

  He nodded, gazing out now over the lake. “Yeah. Anybody might have strangled her on the spur of the moment if she taunted him about whatever she knew. Remember what a tease she was? She was always tormenting somebody about something.”

  “I don’t want to think anything bad about the Judge,” I said miserably. “He’s always been good to all of us. And maybe there’s a reasonable explanation of what he’s been doing with a thousand dollars a month in cash . . .”

  I couldn’t think of a reason, and Jack couldn’t, either. And he wasn’t ridiculing my speculations about the Judge, which was more frightening than just thinking about it myself.

  I had wanted someone to take my ideas seriously, and now that Jack had, I wished he’d been able to explain everything, tell me I was wrong.

  If there was a villain, a blackmailer, I would just as soon it had been Zoe, though I didn’t want the Judge to have strangled her. And there was the matter of those checks for cash continuing after Zoe had died. Even if Zoe had started it, someone else had continued it.

  I asked Jack what he thought about that. Maybe he could make sense of it.

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “Two blackmailers? First Zoe and then maybe someone else found out and took over after she was dead? Maybe. She had the kind of big mouth that made her want to brag about things she was getting away with. She could have told Trafton—or any of the other guys she ran around with. So somebody took advantage of the opportunity when it happened.”

  “So then who killed her?”

  After a long silence, Jack spoke quietly. “If it was the Judge, he’s gone to a lot of trouble to cover up whatever he was being blackmailed for. It would have to be something really important.”

  “His reputation is important to him. He’s . . . I guess he’s the big frog in the small puddle, and if there was anything negative about him, he wouldn’t want people to know. But it doesn’t seem like he’d murder anyone for such a reason.” I was still hoping Jack would tell me it was only my wild imagination, that it was all a mistake on my part.

  “So if he did, then it wasn’t a simple thing. Not a minor transgression of some kind.”

  “But he’s such an . . . ordinary kind of man,” I said earnestly, leaning forward. “He’s lived what Dad would call an exemplary life—doing his job, being a stepparent and grandfather, seeing that kids got the schooling they needed, entertaining all of us here every summer, paying for things the rest of us couldn’t afford. What could he have done that would make him vulnerable to a blackmailer?”

  I didn’t expect Jack to come up with a real answer to that, but he did. “Something to do with being a judge,” Jack said slowly.

  I worked that around in my mind. “Like what?”

  “Anything a judge might do that would tarnish his image,” Jack said bluntly. “You said it yourself—he values his reputation and his standing in the community.”

  It was hard to think of the Judge this way. “You don’t think he might be protecting someone else, maybe?”

  “Who? Molly was the one he would have protected. I can’t imagine her doing anything that would have gotten her blackmailed.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. Not gentle, sweet-natured Grandma Molly.

  “But he himself wouldn’t have done anything unethical, do you think? I mean, he’s been law-abiding all his life.”

  “A real straight arrow
,” Jack allowed. “And maybe there’s a good reason why he took a thousand a month out of his checking account. Something that has nothing to do with Brody or Zoe or blackmail.”

  I fervently hoped so. “But if the Judge wasn’t involved in Zoe’s death, we need to know who was. So I guess I’ll just have to keep poking around and see if anything else turns up.”

  “I ran out of ideas six months ago,” Jack said, idly sifting the pale sand through his fingers. “There’s just one thing, though, Cici.” He looked directly at me, and there was something in his hazel eyes that produced an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “If somebody killed once, and framed Brody for it, he’s not a nice guy. Watch your step. Don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t get caught snooping.”

  It was a warning I intended to heed.

  Yet when the danger came, it was out of the blue.

  I’d spent the entire afternoon with Jack out in the cove, just talking and sunning ourselves on the beach. It was late when I went back to the cottage. All the strange cars had gone. Freddy was sitting on the steps with one of Sunny’s puppies in her lap, stroking it and murmuring to it.

  When I was a little kid, I’d sometimes been comforted by hugging a dog when I was sad. I wished it were that simple now.

  “Everybody gone?” I asked, pausing beside my sister.

  “Yeah.” She lifted the pup to brush its soft fur against her cheek. “You think Mom and Dad would let me have one of these puppies?”

  “No. Is there anything left to eat?”

  “Tons. Aunt Pat and Mom put a lot of it in the freezer. The stuff that couldn’t be frozen is in the refrigerator. Mom said Mrs. Graden won’t have to cook for a week.”

  I looked toward the house, seeing no movement inside, hearing no voices. “What’s everybody doing?”

  “Some of them are taking naps, I think. Aunt Pat and Aunt Mavis went to town for the mail and bread and milk. I don’t know where Misty went, maybe with Ginny and that silly boy she likes. Nobody asked me to go along.”

  I remembered what Dad had said about Freddy maybe needing someone to talk to, or to listen.