Twisted Summer

  I had to go by myself, or forget it. And I couldn’t forget it.

  Slowly I began to move. Goose pimples rose on my arms and I rubbed them, but I kept on going.

  The place that seemed to be the least likely for anyone to be seen was the Wade cabin. I kept a cautious hand ahead of me to make sure I didn’t run smack into a tree, and headed for that isolated spot.

  Before I’d gone a hundred yards, my hunch was confirmed. Ahead of me, someone was walking quickly and carelessly, now, no longer worrying about making a little noise.

  I, of course, moved with less speed and, I hoped, with less sound. By this time I was sure of our destination, so I could afford to put my feet down more carefully.

  And suddenly, making it easier for me, a flashlight came on up ahead. It was pointed toward the ground, and all I could make out was the bottoms of the trees as it bobbed along. The cabin seemed farther in the darkness than it ever had during the day.

  Finally the light blinked out, and I stopped. A moment later, there was a faint glow through the Wades’ cabin window. Whoever I had followed was inside.

  He had to be meeting someone else, I thought. Was that person already here?

  I heard no voices. I hesitated briefly, then edged forward. If there was a conversation, I wanted to hear it. Yet all the time I was acutely aware of what had happened to Zoe in this isolated cabin. If she had tried to scream, to fight, nobody had heard her. No one would hear me, either.

  Close to the cabin I paused again. Maybe the smart thing would be to retreat, not to push my luck. Whatever was going on here, I knew it wasn’t innocent.

  I’d never been so scared, yet I held my ground. Brody was in jail, Jack and Lina were devastated, and someone in my own household was mixed up in something that was probably illegal, even if it wasn’t connected with Zoe’s murder.

  I was unprepared for the familiar voice out of the darkness—not from the cabin, but behind me.

  “Cici?” I was shoved sideways toward the window, so the faint glow from the flashlight there illuminated my face. “I knew it had to be you.”

  My mouth was so dry, my legs so limp, I almost slid down in a heap on the pine needles.

  “Let’s go inside,” the Judge said. He had hold of my arm, and he steered me toward the door I thought I’d seen him enter a few minutes ago.

  I saw at once that he had simply reached inside to put the lighted flashlight on a table, so I’d think he was in there, and then backed out before I got all the way to where I could see his retreat.

  I felt numb, unable to think. Except that it was the Judge I’d followed out of the house, and that no one would hear me if I screamed.

  “Why couldn’t you have minded your own business?” he said.

  I didn’t know the words were coming until I said them. “You shot at me. You tried to kill me.”

  He sighed heavily. “If I’d wanted to kill you, Cici, you’d be dead. I’ve been able to shoot a moving squirrel out of a tree since I was nine years old. I hoped you’d have sense enough to be scared off, to stop poking around.”

  My ears were ringing as if another shot had been fired, and I felt dizzy. I put out a hand to the back of a chair, to balance myself. “Why? Why did you do it?”

  I could barely make out the bulky shape of him as he stood behind the flashlight, but he was much bigger, much stronger, than I was.

  They would find my body in the Wades’ cabin, too, I thought. Who would come looking? Who would be blamed for my death?

  It’s a wonder I didn’t die of a heart attack right then, saving him the trouble of getting rid of me. I tried to remember if I’d ever heard of someone less than fifteen years old who died of a heart attack.

  “Why was Zoe blackmailing you?”

  “I knew you’d been in my desk drawers, you didn’t get things back the way they were. You looked at my check registers, didn’t you, and figured it out? You’d have been better off not to be so smart,” the Judge said. He sounded very tired, but I wasn’t fooled by that.

  If he had a gun, I didn’t see it. I wondered wildly if he’d strangle me, too, and with what? I wasn’t wearing any kind of necklace. Probably a grown man could just use his hands. My throat almost closed, as if it were already happening.

  Outside, a stick snapped.

  Immediately, his weariness seemed to drop away. He straightened and jerked me to one side, thrusting me through the doorway into the small bedroom. I stumbled in the blackness and went down painfully against the end of the old iron bedstead.

  “Be quiet,” the Judge warned, and as I braced myself for the end, he spun away from me.

  “It’s about time you showed up,” he said then, to someone else.

  I crouched there, not quite understanding why I wasn’t dead yet.

  “I had a flat tire.” I didn’t recognize the male voice, but I felt a flicker of hope. Maybe the Judge wouldn’t kill me with someone else there. He’d gotten away with strangling Zoe. He wouldn’t want a witness this time, either.

  I began to get my breath back, and shifted position onto my knees. When I leaned forward, I could make out the midsection of the newcomer, in jeans and a work shirt and a belt with a big silver buckle on it.

  “Where’s the money?” the man said.

  “I’ve got news for you, Trafton,” the Judge responded. “There isn’t any money. Not tonight, not ever again. You’ve had all you’re going to get.”

  He must have picked up the flashlight because it suddenly swung upward, illuminating the other face. I recognized him from Jack’s description: in his thirties, poor complexion, scarred face. Carl Trafton. The man who might have been a suspect in Zoe’s death except that the Judge and a drunken old man had given him an alibi—at the same time they provided an alibi for the Judge, as well.

  Trafton threw up a hand to protect his eyes, then struck the flashlight aside.

  “Aim that somewhere else, you old fool! And don’t give me that ‘no more money’ crap, because you’re not off the hook just because your wife’s dead. You better rethink a few things before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late,” the Judge told him. He still sounded tired, but a new strength came into his voice. “There’s no mistake, Trafton. You’re done with blackmailing me. You’re finished, period.”

  “You think I was bluffing? That I won’t tell people about their precious judge, tell them you’re a liar and a killer?”

  It occurred to me that behind me was a window that might not be locked, that I might be able to climb through and escape before they could catch me. Yet it seemed even more important, right this minute, to hear the rest of this conversation. Dust floated up from the floor, and I prayed I wouldn’t sneeze. The Judge knew where I was, but Trafton didn’t. He sounded ugly.

  “So respectable, so much in control of everything, but you’re not the great man they all think you are. You won’t be worth spit in this county once they know—”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” the Judge told him, the light once again playing over that silver belt buckle. “I’m retired, I’m not on the bench. They can kick me off the school board, and the elders at the church can condemn me and tell me not to come back again, though I hope they’ll forgive me. Whatever anybody does, it doesn’t matter, because Molly’s gone. The kids all live in other places where nobody’s heard of me anyway; they just won’t come back here, and so nothing you say can hurt me now.”

  Trafton’s voice was low and threatening. “No? How about when I tell them I was mistaken about what time I saw you in Greenway the night that girl was killed? You think that won’t matter, that they won’t reopen the case?”

  I was feeling sick, so sick. All the clues I found had pointed to the Judge, but I hadn’t wanted it to be him.

  What did he intend to do with me? Would he risk another murder that would be investigated, or would he get rid of me in a way that would be ruled an accident? And why was Carl Trafton blackmailing him, I wondered suddenly. The check
s made out to cash had begun before Zoe had died. Several months before.

  There was a sound behind me that made me whirl to face the dirty window. I thought there was a blur—a face, lighter than the darkness?—but then it was gone and I wasn’t sure.

  My heart was already going so fast I was feeling faint, but I swear it speeded up some more. Was someone else outside, watching? A rescuer, maybe? Someone who’d distract both Trafton and the Judge, so I might get away?

  I heard the Judge’s words without really hearing them, if you know what I mean. I was listening for another sound outside the cabin.

  “Oh, if you don’t tell them about that, I will,” the Judge said softly. “You’ll ruin my alibi, and I’ll ruin yours.”

  In the following silent seconds, I heard Trafton’s breathing, before he demanded, “What for? They’re not looking for me. They got their killer, at least they think they have.”

  “But they don’t have him, do they, Trafton?”

  “What?” Trafton laughed, but it sounded forced. “You gonna confess, Your Honor? Get that kid out of prison? Take his place?”

  “No. I don’t expect to go to prison,” the Judge said, his voice dropping so much I almost couldn’t make out the words. “But I figured it out some time back, you know. I really thought he was guilty there for a while, but when I realized the truth I couldn’t take a chance on telling about my part in it while Molly was alive. The only thing that mattered was my wife. I’m an old man, Trafton. What happens to me now is of no consequence. What happens to you is something else.”

  Confusion swept over me. He had thought Brody was guilty? But then . . . What did it all mean?

  Something brushed the window. I distinctly heard it, but when I glanced wildly backward, the window was black, nonreflective, empty.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Trafton stated, and the bravado was back. “You ain’t telling nobody nothing, old man. I wouldn’t be surprised if you just had a heart attack and dropped dead, and when they find you, they’ll wonder what you were doing out here in this cabin. The Shurik kid will serve out the rest of his sentence, and I’ll make out just fine. With or without your money.”

  “You’ve done a lot of manipulating,” the Judge told him, throwing the light up into Trafton’s face again, so that the younger man cursed at him. “Including of me. But it’s done now. And when they reopen the murder case, as I promise you they’ll do, they’ll put the right man in prison. When I figured it out, I was sorry about Brody, but right then it was more important to protect my wife. Now she doesn’t need protecting anymore. And I don’t think you can manipulate me into a heart attack, tonight or any other time. So you might as well go home and wait for them to come and get you. Or take off, if you want to run, though I don’t think you can run far enough, fast enough.”

  “Oh, I won’t need to run,” Trafton said. “I expect they’ll just think you went fishing all alone, real early in the morning, and somehow you fell overboard and drowned. It don’t matter if it ain’t a heart attack, long as you’re dead. And the boat will be found floating, and they’ll drag the lake until they find your body, and it won’t matter one dang bit how you died.”

  Between listening intently for sounds beyond the window, and trying to make sense out of what Carl Trafton and the Judge were saying to each other, I forgot to stay on guard.

  I had leaned against the side of the bed, and the bedding released a smothering cloud of dust.

  I sneezed, and the voice in the other room stopped, and I sneezed again, and cowered away from what would surely happen now.

  chapter sixteen

  The light hit me squarely in the face, only it was Trafton holding it now, not the Judge.

  I turned my head aside because it hurt my eyes, and the light came closer as I was jerked to my feet.

  Trafton’s breath hit me in the face, and I cringed away from it. “Who’s this?” he demanded.

  “My granddaughter. Let her go.”

  “After she hid here and listened to all we said? You must be daft. Stand up, girl. What you doing here?”

  I tried to say I’d followed the Judge, but my voice wouldn’t work.

  “Don’t matter,” Trafton said. “She can go fishing with you. Don’t get any funny ideas, either one of you, because I wasn’t stupid enough to come out here unarmed.”

  He let go of me, shifted the flashlight to the other hand, then showed us the pistol. Not very big, but it had a deadly look to it.

  “Come on, both of you walk ahead of me, and don’t try anything funny.”

  “You shoot us, and you’ll wake up everybody at the lake,” the Judge said. “Nobody’s playing any music to cover the noise this time of night. And if you kill either of us, you’ll set off another murder investigation. This time they’ll get the right man.”

  Trafton was herding us toward the door that stood open to the night. “The sound of this thing won’t carry very far, and it won’t matter to you anyway, because you’ll be dead.”

  I remembered that nobody heard the rifle that had been fired at me, and I thought he was probably right that it wouldn’t wake anybody up, even without the cover of loud music. Not this far from all the other cottages.

  “So stay alive as long as you can,” Trafton went on. “Take the path down to the lake.”

  “Nobody’s going to believe Cici went fishing in her pajamas,” the Judge told him.

  “Move,” Trafton ordered, and we moved.

  I went first, my mind racing, wondering if I could suddenly start running once I felt the sand under my feet. Nothing to run into on the beach, and it was dark enough so he might not be able to see well enough to shoot me. But if I did that, then what about the Judge? What would Trafton do to him?

  I was all mixed up. The Judge was guilty of something, but I was no longer sure what it was.

  It wasn’t far to the lake, where the sand shifted under my canvas shoes. I glanced back when Trafton snapped, “Head toward the dock.”

  The dock in front of our cottage was the only one at this end of the lake; the one at MacBeans’ was nearly three quarters of a mile beyond that. Afraid to try anything with that light focused on me, especially in those darned yellow pajamas, I did what he said. The Judge came along behind me. And it was a long walk.

  The boat he and Fergus used for fishing was pulled up onto the shore near our dock. “Get in,” Trafton said, and I didn’t know what to do but obey. “Shove it off, Your Honor.” The mocking note in his voice was chilling because I knew he wasn’t kidding at all. “Not all the way! Just enough so I can push it the rest of the way by myself. You get in, and both of you move back away from me. Don’t try anything.”

  The Judge sat down as if he were going to row, but I remained standing, just behind him in the back of the boat. There wasn’t much we could try, but I wasn’t going to let him murder us if I could help it.

  Trafton bent forward to balance the flashlight on the bow, aimed at the Judge’s middle, but he kept a hand free to hold the pistol as he used the other arm to push.

  I waited until he shoved us the rest of the way into the water and started to step aboard. And then I shifted my weight sharply to the right. At the same time, I pushed the Judge in the same direction as hard as I could.

  There was a sharp crack as a rifle spat into the darkness, and the flashlight splintered and went out. “Run, Cici! Run!”

  The boat went over, Trafton swore, and the Judge hit the water partly beneath me. I went under, then struggled to my feet in the shallow water.

  It was black all around us, only a few stars overhead, and then a powerful beam of light split the night. It came to rest on Carl Trafton, swung toward the Judge and me ever so briefly, then centered once more on Trafton.

  I spit out the water I’d taken in and managed to get enough breath to choke out, “Jack? Is that you, Jack?”

  “Get back away from this guy. Hold it, Trafton! Stand right where you are! Cici, you and the Judge come out of the
water, way off to your left, so you don’t get between me and Trafton!”

  We did as he said. I’d been chilly already, and now that I was wet my teeth were chattering, though maybe that was partly nerves.

  “He has a gun,” I called. “Be careful, Jack.”

  “He’ll never raise it before I can shoot him.” Jack sounded perfectly cool. “Drop it, Trafton. I won’t kill you, unless my aim is bad, but I can sure cripple you before you bring up the gun. Drop it!”

  Reluctantly, the man in the spotlight let the pistol slip from his fingers.

  “Go call the cops, Cici,” Jack said. “Judge, are you up to helping me stand guard until they get here?”

  “Certainly,” I heard the Judge say, and then I fled toward the cottage. Down along the shore, I saw lights coming on, and then in our own place Aunt Mavis appeared in the lighted doorway. They might not have heard shots at the Wades’ cabin, but they’d obviously heard Jack’s shot in front of our place.

  “Call the police!” I yelled to my aunt. “Tell them . . . Judge Baskin needs them!”

  Without replying, Aunt Mavis retreated to the house, and I returned to the beach.

  It was easy to tell where Jack was, and when I showed up beside him, he handed me the flashlight. “Keep this on him so he can’t make a move without me knowing it,” he said, and shifted the rifle to hold it in both hands.

  For a few moments it was absolutely still. Trafton didn’t even bother to swear anymore but stood there, hands spasmodically knotting at his sides.

  “Sit down, Trafton,” Jack said. “No, move away from that pistol, sit in the edge of the water.”

  After a second’s hesitation, Trafton obeyed, and I felt a little of the tension go out of me. Especially after the Judge, dripping wet, walked over and picked up the gun Trafton had dropped.

  While we waited for the Sheriff’s deputies to show up, we talked.

  “How did you know what was happening?” I demanded of Jack, remembering to keep Trafton in my circle of light.

  “I figured you were going to do something stupid,” he said. So much for hoping I’d risen from a child to a near-adult in Jack’s estimation. “So I was sleeping, if you can call it that, in the back of the Judge’s car. Ever since I found out how many people could have known you were poking around, I’ve been keeping an eye on things, in case you needed help.”