The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery Read online

  We headed toward the baseball diamond and the tennis courts. My plan was to go out for the tennis team in the spring. I ran alongside Willie, but the group was too closely packed for me to talk to him about Dr. Graves. However, the boys gradually strung out enough so that we were separated from the others, although we were in the middle of the pack. I was surprised that Willie was running easily and didn’t seem to be breathing hard, although I was starting to pant.

  It was hard to talk normally while panting, but I attempted to, explaining that another boy had been found who had gone up on the catwalk with Dr. Graves.

  Willie shrugged and said, “Not surprising. He gets around.”

  I explained that the other boy would testify about what had happened if Willie would.

  “What’s the point?” Willie asked.

  “Of testifying? To bring it to the attention of the authorities. Possibly to get him fired.”

  “What would that accomplish?”

  “Well…it would put him out of business. Keep other boys from getting hurt.”

  “One, what makes you think he wouldn’t go and get a job at another school? Two, do you think the boys are hurt all that much?”

  “What about you?”

  “It didn’t exactly stunt my growth.” He laughed. “Or maybe it did.”

  I was no psychologist. And I was having a hard time keeping up with Willie. I said, “Well, what do you think? Will you do it?”

  He looked at me and said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Having accomplished my purpose, I dropped back. I kept running, but I was soon last among the runners and losing ground. Cross-country was harder than I thought. We circled the high school property and then headed toward Main Street. The others obviously weren’t going to stop anytime soon. As we passed the student parking lot, I saw my car beckoning to me.

  I stopped and tried to catch my breath. By the time my heart had slowed down to something approaching normal, the runners were long out of sight. I was glad my sport was basketball.

  ***

  I grunted as I lifted a bale using two hooks, one at each end. This was hard work, too. My plan was to remove enough bales to create steps down to the corner of the hayloft. I had promised Sylvia I wouldn’t try anything foolish. This wasn’t foolish; it just involved massive physical effort. Well, maybe it was foolish.

  I had to carry the bales uphill, and the hill kept getting higher as I needed more places to restack them. I moved a few and then, as the job got harder, I had to stop and rest for a few seconds each time I moved a bale up one tier. At this rate, it would take me hours to complete the job.

  My rest periods became longer and longer. I rationalized that I didn’t have to finish today. Even if it took several weeks, that shouldn’t be a problem. What if Ed came up here and saw what I was doing? I would calmly tell him that I was just helping him out. Helping us all out. I didn’t have to tell him that I was skeptical about his story of the necklace being in the hayloft. And the note supposedly written by Ralph? I hadn’t gotten a close enough look at it to form an opinion. And Ed didn’t seem to want me to look at it closely. I didn’t believe that Ralph was a thief.

  ***

  The horn of the peanut train woke me up. That was unusual; I had been sleeping through the noise. But something about it didn’t feel right. I turned on my bedside lamp and looked at my Baby Ben windup alarm clock. It was almost 3 a.m. The train usually went through about midnight. What had delayed it?

  ***

  I went down to breakfast about eight. On Saturday mornings I was allowed to sleep in a little. Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Jeff were already up, of course. Aunt Dorothy was in the kitchen when I went in to eat breakfast. She had the radio on.

  When she saw me she said, “There was an accident last night. Two boys from Carter were in a car that hit the peanut train.”

  “Who?”

  She hesitated, not wanting to be the bearer of bad news. She said, “The boys whose house you went to last Saturday for the party.”

  “Willie and Dennis? Were they…?”

  She nodded. “They were killed. The police said the car was going about eighty miles per hour when it hit the train. And they had been drinking.”

  ***

  I picked up Sylvia to take her to the football game. When we had discussed the game, yesterday, she had said she didn’t want to go. She had lost her school spirit. Although I didn’t have a lot of school spirit, myself, I saw it as an opportunity to show the student body that she had support in an “up yours” sort of way. She agreed to go if I went with her.

  She came to the front door after I rang the bell, wearing her red skirt. Her first words were, “Did you hear about Dennis and Willie?”

  “Yes,” I said. I was having trouble speaking.

  “Come in. I want you to meet my mother.”

  Sylvia’s mother was a no-nonsense woman with short, graying hair. She was a little taller than Sylvia, but not much.

  “Sylvia’s been talking about you,” Mrs. Doran said after Sylvia introduced us. “I wanted to put a face with the name. She says you’re a good driver and you don’t drink.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. From the way she looked at me, I was sure she could see into my mind.

  “I work in a hospital. I see the results of auto accidents like the one last night all the time. Kids who had been healthy and happy an hour before, arrive in pieces. If you wonder why your parents worry about your safety, that should tell you.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Sylvia said. “That’s enough of a lecture for today. We’re pretty broken up about this.”

  “I know, honey.” She kissed Sylvia. “You two have good heads on your shoulders. I know you won’t forget the lesson. Nice to meet you, Gary.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Doran.”

  Mr. Doran came into the hallway and shook my hand.

  “Thank-you for standing by Sylvia,” he said. “You have a warm place in our hearts just for doing that. Unlike some people I could name.”

  “How are you doing, sir?” I asked.

  “Oh, they can’t keep me down. I’m still in business. I have to be a little clandestine right now, but things will get better. I have great faith in the people of the United States to do the right thing in the long run.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “It’s what keeps me going.”

  After we got in the car, Sylvia gave me a quick kiss and said, “Thanks for putting up with my parents.”

  “I like your parents.”

  “They can be a little preachy at times. I hope I get a chance to meet your parents.”

  “I hope so, too.” Under favorable circumstances.

  ***

  The mood at the game was somber. The chief topic of conversation was Dennis and Willie, with the game, itself, taking a backseat. It overshadowed Sylvia’s ostracism, at least for the moment. Everybody was talking to everybody else. Natalie even came up to us and said how terrible it was.

  I gathered from the gossip that the brothers had been at a party—not at their house, but at the house of a friend. The beer flowed freely, and they were on their way home when the accident occurred.

  I was recognizing more and more faces of the Carter High students. I looked around the stands as we climbed to our seats and thought that, whether I wanted to or not, after three weeks here, I was becoming adjusted to Carter. Perhaps this accident was bringing me closer to the others. Then I saw Kate with a bunch of girls. She was wearing a red skirt, with a pink sweater under her jacket that went with her hair. She knew how to dress well on a limited clothing budget.

  She looked in my direction, and our eyes met, briefly. Then she turned away. I knew she had seen Sylvia by my side. Perhaps Ed had told her about our lunch bunch, but seeing us together would be more forceful to her than picturing us as part of a larger group.

  The public address announcer asked for a minute of silence before the singing of the National Anthem.
The crowd quieted down immediately. The football players of both teams bowed their heads and held their helmets in their arms. Even the cheerleaders stood uncharacteristically quiet and immobile.

  Barney came and sat on the other side of Sylvia. She mentioned something to him about the accident.

  “They called my dad to go to the scene of the accident,” he said, soberly. Barney’s father was one of the few doctors in the town of Carter. “He was the one who pronounced them dead. They looked horrible. Blood and guts all over the place.”

  “All right, Barney,” Sylvia said, covering her mouth with her hand. “That’s enough of that. We already got the lecture from my mother.”

  “Sorry. But there’s a lesson to be learned here.”

  “I think we’ve learned the lesson.”

  To redirect the talk a little, I leaned across in front of Sylvia and said, so that nobody else could hear, “Willie was my witness against Dr. Graves.”

  Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. Then Sylvia said, “That shoots that strategy down.”

  We turned and faced the field as Carter kicked off to the opposing team.

  CHAPTER 20

  On Sunday, I drove home to Atherton to have dinner with my family, amid falling leaves. Dark clouds blotted out the sun and a cool wind blew, but at least it was dry. I drove the car onto the driveway of our modest suburban house and parked it.

  Before I could get out, Tom and Archie raced out of the house and asked, breathlessly, “Did you know the boys who were killed?”

  “I knew them a little.” I wasn’t going to tell them I had been to a party at their house, because that was bound to get to my parents, if Aunt Dorothy hadn’t already told my father. “The younger one was a good athlete.”

  “At first, we wondered if it happened at the crossing beside the farm.”

  “It didn’t, but the train was delayed for several hours and didn’t go by the farm until much later than usual.”

  We chatted about the accident for a couple of minutes. Then Tom said, “Have you seen Kate?”

  “Tommy’s got a girlfriend,” Archie chanted.

  The question stopped me cold. Of all the questions I was expecting, that was one I wasn’t prepared for. They had met two weeks ago, and Tom hadn’t mentioned Kate last Sunday when I was here, so I assumed he had forgotten her.

  “I sent her a letter, but she didn’t answer it,” Tom said, ignoring Archie’s continuing chant.

  “She was at the football game yesterday,” I said lamely. “And she and Ed came over one day after school, and we played a little basketball.”

  “Did she say anything about me?”

  “She said how much fun she had that Sunday,” I said, carefully, not wanting to get Tom’s hopes up too high, but at the same time not wanting to crush them.

  “I guess she’s been busy.”

  I hoped he would leave it at that. In any case, the next time I saw her, I would make it clear to her that I had a girlfriend. We went in the house where I got the usual kiss from my mother and handshake from my father. My father asked me to go upstairs with him. That didn’t sound good.

  I followed him upstairs and into his study where he closed the door. Without even bothering to sit down, he said, “I hear that you’ve been going around with Michael Doran’s daughter.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked, belligerently. If I was in trouble, at least I wanted to know the source of it.

  “What does it matter? I’ve heard it from two people.”

  Dr. Graves and Aunt Dorothy. I was getting hit from all sides.

  “And going to parties where liquor is served.”

  I hadn’t told Aunt Dorothy about the beer. She must have extrapolated from the cause of the accident.

  According to the constitution, I had a right to remain silent. But that hadn’t done Mr. Doran much good, and it apparently wasn’t going to help me, either.

  “If you can’t behave yourself, I’m going to pull you out of Carter and put you in Pratt School where they have some discipline,” my father continued. “And you’ll be living at home where we can keep an eye on you.”

  Pratt was a private school in Atherton. If my father was willing to spend that kind of money, he must be really upset with me. I couldn’t stand the thought of changing schools again. It was time to grovel. I spent the next five minutes telling my father how good I was going to be. I didn’t actually say I was going to stay away from Sylvia, but a strict interpretation would have been that I had agreed to everything he wanted me to do. The fact that I had my fingers crossed mentally would help me about as much as pleading the Fifth Amendment.

  ***

  I stopped at Sylvia’s house on the way back to the farm. I didn’t want to talk to her about this on the phone. Mrs. Doran came to the door in answer to my ring. She smiled at me, but I had a hard time smiling back because I felt like a rat. I said I needed to talk to Sylvia for a minute. She went to the bottom of the stairs and called her. Apparently her rules on allowing mixed sexes in Sylvia’s room were stricter than Mr. Doran’s.

  Sylvia came downstairs in a couple of minutes. Her face lit up when she saw me, but again I couldn’t produce anything resembling a smile. Mrs. Doran had gone into the kitchen, so she gave me a quick kiss and said, “Are you on your way back from Atherton?”

  “Yes.” I stopped. This wasn’t going to be easy. “I had a talk with my father. He laid down the law to me.” I glanced toward the kitchen. “Listen, can we…?”

  Sylvia caught my drift and said, “Let’s go for a walk.” She yelled something to her mother to that effect and took a coat out of a nearby closet.

  Outside it was blustery, but not too cold. Yet. As soon as we got to the sidewalk, we started holding hands. We put our spare hands in pockets to keep them warm and walked slowly up the hill.

  I didn’t want to tell her that my father was a rabid anti-communist, but there didn’t seem to be any way to avoid it. First I told her about his threat to put me in a private school and said it was because of the drinking party. She had a look of horror on her face until I said that I had talked him out of it, at least for now. Then I said, “He knows that I…know you. And he knows about your dad.”

  “I imagine all of Buffalo knows about Daddy,” Sylvia said. “But I think what you’re trying to tell me is that he doesn’t approve of Daddy. Or of me.”

  She was too smart by half. But at least it got the subject on the table. “I have no intention of staying away from you,” I blurted.

  She looked at me and squeezed my hand. “You have to watch out for yourself, Gary. You don’t want to get into any more trouble. And if that means staying away from me…”

  Was she willing to let me go that easily? “Look. We can still see each other. We just have to be careful. I can’t drive you to school. We can’t sit together at lunch. And you won’t be able to go to the farm.”

  “Ah, the light dawns. So who is it, Dr. Graves and your aunt who are the stoolies?”

  “You should be a detective,” I said, managing a thin smile.

  “Okay, we can’t fight city hall. And I understand from my father that your father works for the city of Buffalo. But he’ll find out how difficult it is to separate two people who don’t want to be separated. Or, hopefully, he won’t find out. We’ll just have to ‘kiss in a shadow,’ as the song from The King and I goes.”

  Now I knew why I liked her so much.

  CHAPTER 21

  On Monday, I went to chess club for the first time. It was held during last period, which was set aside for student activities. Clubs met this period, and Sylvia’s student council met, and anybody who wasn’t a joiner could take study hall. I had decided that the best way for me to improve my chess game enough so that I could beat Uncle Jeff was to play more chess.

  I didn’t sit with Sylvia, Barney, and Ed at lunch. I didn’t give the boys a reason why not, leaving that to Sylvia. I knew she would be discreet, especially in regard to Ed, who we didn’t want passing
on any sensitive information to his parents that might get to Aunt Dorothy. I sat with two boys from my math class who I knew wouldn’t talk about how horrible the communists were and how they shouldn’t be allowed in the school.

  I felt that chess club was safe in that respect. I knew that Barney was a member, so it was a way for me to stay in touch with him. The classroom used for the club had wooden tables in it instead of individual desks. I glanced around as I walked in late and noticed that most of the members were boys, but there were a few girls also.

  Games were already in progress, with the players concentrating on their moves. If only they would concentrate like that in the classroom, their grades would be much improved. That thought wasn’t original with me; I had heard it from several adults, in reference to me. I spotted Barney in the corner setting up chess pieces on a board. He looked up, saw me, and motioned for me to come over and sit in the chair opposite him.

  “I’ve been wanting to play a game with you,” he said as I sat down. “Pick a color.”

  He held out both his hands, each containing a pawn. I managed to pick black, giving him the right to start. He moved his king’s pawn two squares forward, and I countered with the same move. He moved rapidly, and because we were in a limited time situation, I did the same. He seized the advantage, and before I knew it, I found myself in an endgame in which we each had a king and a queen. Unfortunately, he also had several pawns, and I wouldn’t be able to stop at least one from queening.

  My king was in a position in which it couldn’t move, so I checked Barney’s king with my queen by placing it right next to the monarch. If he took my queen with his king, the game would be a stalemate, which was a draw. When he moved his king, I moved my queen to keep them together. Perpetual check, also a draw. Kissing your sister. I didn’t know about that, not having a sister. But better than a loss.

  “I thought I had you,” Barney said, conceding the draw. “I’ll get you next time.” He started to put the pieces into a box, since the period was nearing an end. He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “I understand you can’t be seen with Sylvia.”