“I’ve been thinking a lot,” he said finally, his gaze still on the road. “From what we know, it could have been the Judge. I never gave a thought to him as a suspect until you brought it up, but you made me consider a few different angles. Remember, I told you that the night Zoe was killed, he and old Toomhy were over in Greenway, and they saw Carl Trafton? He would have been the next likely suspect, if they hadn’t zeroed in on Brody. So not only did the Judge have an alibi—or sort of one—because of Toomhy, but he gave Trafton one, too. The cops did check that much, I know.”
“What do you mean, sort of one? Don’t you think it was a genuine alibi?” I sat up straighter.
“Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, nobody checked the time, not exactly. All three of them obviously were in Greenway that night. But there’s nothing to prove exactly what time. And it’s only a little over half an hour’s drive from here, so they could have come back, and the Judge could have killed Zoe and gone home to bed before she was found and the investigation started. The gate was locked that night, and the people who had to leave their cars outside until morning climbed over. Nobody saw them, so we don’t know when. Fergus says, and Ellen confirms it, that he left his pickup there about eight. All that’s certain is that the Judge’s car was behind it, but who knows when he left it there?”
He slowed for a truck pulling onto the highway, then resumed speed. “Old Toomhy came into the station this morning, and I asked him again about times that night. Like, what time was it when they saw Carl Trafton? He was pretty vague. I reminded him the Judge had said they saw him around eleven o’clock, and he said, ‘Oh, yeah, that was probably when it was if the Judge said so.’ ”
I waited, almost holding my breath, hoping he’d discovered something useful.
“I said, ‘What do you mean, probably? You swore under oath it was just like he said.’ And Toomhy nodded and said, ‘Well, the Judge was the one who looked at his watch. I ain’t got one, but he wouldn’t have lied.’ ”
Jack glanced at me to see if I got the significance of this. “So they both swore to the cops they saw Trafton thirty miles away at the time Zoe must have been attacked. Pretty close to an alibi for both Trafton and the Judge, right? But then Toomhy went rambling on, you know how he does, and he said the Judge had dropped him off at the pool hall after that, and he figured it must have been ‘an hour or two later’ before he left. The pool hall closes at two, and the guys were still playing when he left to walk eight blocks to his brother’s, where he spent the night. He says it was twenty minutes to two when he got there.”
I scarcely noticed where we were, waiting for the rest of it.
“I asked him if he’d looked at the clock at the pool hall—there’s one with a circle of red neon around it, right over the door where everybody goes back and forth into the tavern next door. And Toomhy didn’t remember looking at a clock anywhere, anytime, all evening, until he went to bed. He’s retired, he just kind of bums around, and he never cares what time it is. I asked if he’d told the police exactly what he’d just admitted to me, and he said nobody asked him anything except if he agreed with the Judge when he said they’d seen Trafton working on his car around eleven.”
I felt the frown forming on my face. “You’re suggesting that it might not have been eleven when they alibied each other, but earlier. That one of them had time to go to the lake and strangle Zoe? And still appear to have an alibi?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it? Toomhy doesn’t really have any idea how long he was at the pool hall. He admits he was drinking, so was everybody else in there, and he might have been there half an hour, an hour, or three or four hours, or anything in between. If the Judge left him off there earlier than he told the cops—he was just echoing what the Judge said about the time—either the Judge or Trafton would have had time to drive to the lake to meet Zoe and strangle her. I never pressed old Toomhy for details before because it never occurred to me until now that the Judge could be a suspect. I took it for granted the only thing that mattered was that he gave Trafton an alibi.”
We were coming into the edge of the town of Greenway. I leaned toward him, hoping that maybe he was on to something, not wanting to hear any more bad news about who couldn’t have committed the murder.
“Could anyone have done that? I mean, murdered a girl and then hurried to set up an alibi in a town thirty miles away, counting on misleading an old man who doesn’t pay attention to the time and who was probably drinking anyway?”
“Before or after they said they saw Trafton. It could have been either way. Yeah, I think anybody planning a murder might very well be that cool-headed, making sure he wasn’t a suspect when the body was found.”
It made me feel sick, hearing a girl I’d known referred to as “a body.” Thinking about a man cold-bloodedly planning to kill her. “He’d have to have known Zoe was going to be at the cabin.”
“Right. They’d have to have arranged to meet there. And she told her family she was going to town with Brody—knowing it wasn’t my brother she’d be meeting at all—much earlier in the evening. She knew her killer, she had to have known him. She didn’t realize he intended to strangle her. She went for her own reasons. Either she was meeting the guy for what she considered romantic reasons . . . or she could have been blackmailing him.”
I’d pretty well lost my appetite, but when we stopped for hamburgers it revived a bit. We didn’t really know any more than we had before, but we’d made some guesses that might be close to the target.
“I’d rather it was that Carl Trafton, and he sounds the type,” I said finally, putting my wrappers into the paper bag for disposal. “But I don’t know why they would give him an alibi if they didn’t see him when they said. Nor why he’d say he saw them at that time, if he hadn’t. I don’t think they’d have been conspirators, Trafton and the Judge. It sounds like he was the kind of person the Judge has always despised.”
“He has a record,” Jack confirmed, swinging into the parts house’s parking lot. “That came out when the cops rousted him out of Timbers in the first place; he was a petty thief, a small-time hood. He’d been fired from several jobs down around Detroit for pilfering, that kind of thing. He’d been accused several times, though he only served a few months’ jail time.”
He turned off the ignition and picked up the list of parts between us on the front seat. “It shouldn’t take long to get this stuff. Listen to the radio if you want to.”
The car began to warm up as soon as we stopped. The windows were down, and the breeze helped a little, blowing my hair around my face.
I didn’t care about the radio. I was going over everything in my mind, trying to figure out how it could have been done. How long it would have taken to drive between Greenway and the lake. How Zoe might have gone cheerfully to her rendezvous with death, never dreaming that whatever game she’d been playing might prove fatal.
Jack came back with a sack of parts that he threw in the backseat. I cleared my throat.
“Did you remember I told you that Zoe swiped Fergus’s pickup one night? She put seventy-three miles on it.”
“Yes.” He glanced at me briefly.
“She went about as far as Greenway and back.”
He nodded. “Trafton lived in Greenway. Of course, so did a lot of other guys. All you can figure for sure is she went to see some guy. That’s probably all we’ll ever know.”
I guess I’d hoped he’d have some magical way to determine the truth. I slouched in the seat, disappointed.
We drove back through Timbers to the lake without talking much. We’d already said what there was to say about the whole sorry situation.
I tried to pretend that I was with Jack just because we liked each other. That he’d invited me out on a date, and when we got home he’d kiss me good night.
Of course it wasn’t night, and he didn’t even touch my hand before he let me out of the car. Instead, he gave me a long look and said, “I wish you’d gone home with your folks. It might have
been safer.”
“If I’d known Dad was leaving so soon, I might have convinced him that I should,” I said ruefully.
“Well, watch your step,” he said, and then he was gone.
Ilona was reading again on the back porch. She turned the book over in her lap when I went up the steps. “You’re getting pretty chummy with him, aren’t you?”
I stared at her coldly. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”
She shrugged. “I suppose not, if you don’t care about being associated with the Shuriks in other people’s minds.”
I stared her straight in the eye. “A lot of people don’t believe Brody killed Zoe, and even if they did, they wouldn’t condemn the whole family. Jack had nothing to do with any of it.”
She didn’t answer, picked up her book again, and I walked past her into the house, steaming.
Mrs. Graden looked at me when I reached the kitchen door. “You might have told me, Cecelia, that you weren’t going to be present for lunch.”
“Sorry. I ate in town, and I didn’t know ahead of time that I was going,” I said. I didn’t want to talk to her and walked on past. I met Ginny on the stairs.
“Did you have something for lunch that I spoiled by not being here?” I asked.
“We ate sandwiches and leftovers,” Ginny said. “Want to go swimming with us? Randy’s dad bought a new boat, with an inboard; after he’s checked it out, maybe he’ll let Randy take it out by himself.”
I started to say no, I was feeling antisocial, but I changed my mind. With Mom and Dad gone, probably the safest place to be was in the middle of a bunch of other kids.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll put on my suit.”
* * *
The Judge was the same as ever in the way he treated me: just the same as he treated everyone else. He told Aunt Pat and Aunt Mavis that he didn’t feel up to handling Grandma Molly’s belongings, for them to go ahead and do it. The sooner they were sorted and disposed of, they told him, the easier it would be for everyone.
I was glad nobody asked me to help. While Ginny and I were changing, we heard them talking in the big room the Judge and Grandma Molly had shared. They were deciding what to do with her clothes. She’d been much smaller than any of her daughters, so they couldn’t divide those between them. “Scarves, purses, we can split those,” Aunt Pat said. “I’ll bet Vivian would like that scarf; she always admired it.”
I didn’t want to listen to them discussing each item, along with their memories as to when Molly had bought it or who gave it to her. I was glad to get away from the house.
It was actually a good afternoon on the water, and the new boat the Donners had bought was a nifty one. Mr. Donner insisted on each passenger’s wearing a life jacket, which all of us swimmers thought was unnecessary, but we dutifully put them on. I even got to steer the boat for about ten minutes, and it was fun.
Dinner wasn’t as subdued as I’d expected it to be, though none of us kids said much. My aunts went on talking about sorting Grandma Molly’s belongings, and once in a while one of them wiped her eyes, but sometimes they laughed, too.
“You wouldn’t believe what she saved, over the years,” Aunt Mavis said. “Our report cards from elementary school, imagine!”
“And every greeting card anyone ever sent her,” Aunt Pat added. “There are cards you kids made her in kindergarten, Ginger. A charming one from Cici, when she was about seven—made with dried flowers stuck on. Maybe your mom would like to keep that one, Cici.”
I thought about having to sort through all this stuff again, when Mom and her sisters died someday, and I wished they’d get rid of all of it, but I didn’t say that. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to remember the good things about Molly, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it.
Shortly after we’d left the table, Nathan Cyrek showed up at the front door. He was good-looking in the dark, rather flashy way his sister had been, though he’d never been the pushy flirt Zoe was. His brown gaze swept over the bunch of us.
“We’re getting up some live music tonight,” he said to all of us at large. “Going to bring out some guys from town who want to practice before they play their first professional gig next weekend. They’ll be setting up on Fergus’s dock about eight. Everybody’s welcome, to listen or to dance.” His attention settled on Ilona. “Why don’t you come, too, Ilona? It’ll be fun.”
He didn’t give her time to respond. “Bring lawn chairs if you just want to listen, you old people.”
Aunt Pat made a face at him. “Thanks a lot, Nathan. We’re not that old. But maybe it’s just a bit . . . too soon.”
She glanced toward the Judge, who was trying to read the paper. He lowered it now and spoke over it. “No, go along, all of you, and have a good time. Molly would join you if she were still here. She always loved seeing the kids having a party.”
So we all went, except for the Judge himself. It was a five-piece group, guys about Nathan’s age, in their early twenties. They were pretty good, and a lot of people danced. To my surprise, Ilona did go, and she even danced a couple of times, first with Nathan, then with a stranger who had come with the musicians.
If I had been able to relax, to forget all the dark forces that seemed to hover around me, I would have had a wonderful time. Especially if Jack had been there. He was home; I saw him for a few minutes, standing by his front door back there in the woods, but though he saluted back when I waved, he didn’t join us.
At least this time people didn’t entirely ignore me. Hal Powell asked me to dance, and my cousin Errol, and so did Daryl Atterbom. At nineteen, he was definitely one of the big kids, and he was fun, but he wasn’t Jack.
I guess I did manage to relax a little bit before the evening was over. Some of the other kids sang as we walked home along the lake, and I thought I was tired enough to go to bed and go to sleep.
I did, for a little while.
And then I woke up suddenly in nearly pitch darkness, disturbed by sounds I didn’t recognize immediately.
I flopped over in bed, listening.
Footsteps, so soft that I’d never have detected them if there hadn’t been a creaky board just outside my door.
Did they pause there?
My heart began to race. There was no lock on the door. I hadn’t thought to put a chair under the knob to keep someone from coming in while I slept.
I slid out of bed, hoping there weren’t any creaking boards in my floor, and eased toward the door, staying to one side, straining to hear any further sounds. Why hadn’t I invited Ginny, or even Freddy, to come and sleep with me tonight? We used to do that all the time, and they wouldn’t have thought anything of it.
But it was too late now. I held my breath, waiting. After a moment I sensed that the person in the upper hallway had moved on, and then I heard another creaky step on the stairs. Whoever it was went all the way down, careful not to make any more noise than he had to.
Well, of course, even someone on the way to raid the refrigerator would be quiet so as not to wake anyone up. Ginny or Ilona, maybe.
Somehow I knew it wasn’t one of my cousins looking for a snack.
I waited a few minutes more, hearing nothing. And then, in the absolute stillness of the night, I heard a definite snick as the backdoor closed. My window was open, and I moved toward it, willing the pounding in my ears to stop, so I could hear better.
For a few moments I thought I wouldn’t catch another sound, and then I did. The crackle of a twig under a heavy foot.
There was no reason I could think of why anybody would legitimately be leaving the house at what must be at least two o’clock in the morning. And there wasn’t much time to think about it.
If I was going to find out who it was, and what he or she was up to, I had to move at once.
Without taking time to scare myself about how dangerous it might be, I groped for shoes beside the bed and slipped my feet into them. There was no time for getting dressed.
In pajamas and canvas slip-on s
neakers, I eased open the door and made my way down the stairs as quickly as I could.
Moments later, I heard it again, the snick as the backdoor closed behind me. I hoped whoever was ahead of me hadn’t heard it, too.
chapter fifteen
I stood for a few seconds trying to adjust to the lack of light. Nobody at the lake used yard lights, and except for a few stars, there wasn’t a glimmer anywhere. It was too late for anyone to be up.
Yet after a short time, I began to make out various shapes. The Judge’s car, Aunt Mavis’s, the shed where winter wood was stored.
It was surprisingly chilly, and I wished I’d grabbed a sweater, but I couldn’t go back for one now. If I moved slowly, I didn’t think I’d trip over anything or run into a tree.
Subconsciously I hoped the person I was following would be wearing something light colored, so I could still see him ahead of me. I saw nothing moving. My pajamas were pale yellow, and it was possible that if he looked back he’d spot them.
There were no sounds, no hint of movement around me. I’d have to guess where the escapee from the house had gone.
No car was missing. We were far enough from the main road, so I wouldn’t hear one if someone were coming to meet him at the gate. So how to decide which direction to take?
Briefly I considered just hiding and waiting until he came back, whoever he was. It would be safer. It wouldn’t scare me so much.
Yet what would it prove if the Judge, for instance, showed up? There was no law against taking a walk in the middle of the night, if he couldn’t sleep.
I certainly couldn’t go back to bed and sleep. And I needed to know if he was up to something.
If Mom and Dad had been there, I’d have wakened them and told them. But I was on my own. And I wanted desperately to know what was going on—what had gone on before.
It was probably foolish, but I had to find out. Jack had warned me, and he’d undoubtedly tell me I’d been stupid to come out like this alone, but there wasn’t time to walk all the way to his place and wake him up.