The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery Read online

  My father and Aunt Dorothy owned the farm together. It had been in the family for about seventy years. My father preferred living in the suburbs of Atherton, but I had spent a lot of time here as a child, especially during the summers.

  I wondered what I was doing here now. I wondered whether the fact that I had been kicked out of Atherton High branded me for life as a bad person. From my father’s reaction, I gathered that he might be thinking that. I wondered whether I would get along with the students at Carter. Sylvia was nice enough to me, but that was her job. I hadn’t really become acquainted with anybody else yet, just said a few hellos.

  I was still awake when the train lumbered slowly past. The peanut railroad—that’s what the locals called it, but I had no idea why. I heard the whistle—actually, it was a diesel horn—as it approached the road crossing. My bedroom was on the side of the house facing the tracks. I had heard the train the night before, too. I wondered whether I was fated to hear it every night. The track ran east and west along the southern boundary of the farm, and the total distance it traveled twice each day was about twenty miles.

  It didn’t carry peanuts, of course. It was much more likely to be carrying wallboard from the gypsum plant down the line. The peanut train had been running for longer than the farm had been in the family. At one time it had made more than two trips a day and had even carried passengers.

  This room had been Ralph’s. Ralph had heard the train at night when he couldn’t sleep. That thought gave me an eerie feeling. Was his ghost still lurking here, waiting for somebody to find out the truth about how he had died? Or had it been as simple as Dr. Graves—and my father and the newspapers—said. I made a silent promise to Ralph to find out the truth.

  CHAPTER 4

  The morning air was crisp, but at least the sun was shining. It would warm up, perhaps even into the sixties. Fall days could be pleasant in Western New York. We had to enjoy the warmth while we could. Winter was coming. And winter in this part of the country was anything but pleasant.

  The red brick school building looked clean and new. Its solid rectangular surfaces exuded an aura of stability. But I felt anything but stable. I had left all my friends behind. And my parents, since it was too far for me to commute from home. Even the fact that my aunt and uncle lived on a farm where I had enjoyed playing in the past wasn’t appealing to me at the moment. For the hundredth time, I rued the day I had gotten myself into this mess.

  There weren’t many cars in the parking lot yet. I went into the building and walked toward the auditorium. Nobody was in the corridor. I looked into the cafeteria as I passed. It was my homeroom now. A couple of students were sitting at the far end, doing homework. Otherwise, it was empty.

  It was dark in the auditorium, but the stage was lit up. Sylvia must already be here. I wondered if she had a boyfriend. If so, would he approve of her meeting me like this? I had better be careful. I looked up at the balcony. It wasn’t that high above the seats on the main floor. A person falling from there might break a leg or two. But get himself killed? And Ralph had been very agile. I remembered how he could walk on his hands. But my stomach turned as I pictured him crashing into the seats. What in the world had he been doing?

  I vaulted onto the stage and headed toward the wing. As I approached the dressing room, I heard voices. Sylvia wasn’t alone. From the pitch of the voices, I could tell that she was with another girl. It was too early in the morning to be meeting somebody new and I wasn’t sure I was up to it. I would be meeting a lot of people during the next few weeks. I braced myself and walked into the little room.

  I stared for a few seconds until I realized that my mouth was hanging open and I looked like an idiot. Sitting beside Sylvia was the most beautiful girl in the world. I hadn’t seen her yesterday and had almost given up on her, thinking she had graduated. But here she was. The cheerleader who had hurt my concentration at the Carter-Atherton basketball game last year.

  She had short black hair with a bit of a wave. Well, it probably was some shade of dark brown as few people actually had black hair. I was trying to figure out her eyes, which I think had both brown and some other color, when Sylvia spoke, bringing me out of my trance.

  “Gary Blanchard, Natalie Porter.”

  Natalie said hi and smiled, melting me and leaving me tongue-tied. I had to say something. Finally I croaked a hello. Then I noticed her blouse, which was one of the transparent ones in style at the time. Of course, the girls wore full slips under them, but still, to a seventeen-year-old boy…

  “Natalie would like to learn how to play nim,” Sylvia said. “Do you mind teaching her, too?”

  “Sure…why not?”

  “I didn’t think you’d mind,” Sylvia said, in a tone that told me I wasn’t hiding my reaction to Natalie very well.

  “I hear that Joe challenged Barney to a game yesterday,” Natalie said. “That was sweet of him, but he shouldn’t have.”

  “Joe is Natalie’s boyfriend,” Sylvia said, in answer to my puzzled expression.

  Of course he was. He was the quarterback. She was wearing his ring on a chain around her neck. Whatever hopes I had conjured up were already dashed. But that wasn’t an explanation of what Natalie meant. I noticed that she was wearing braces, just as I did. We had something in common.

  “If I had been there, I would have stopped him,” Natalie said. “But I had to go for that college interview.”

  I still didn’t understand, but no more information was forthcoming. I had better do what I had come for. I put on my professorial hat and said, “Would you like the mathematical explanation of nim?”

  “We just want to learn how to win,” Natalie said.

  So be it. I wouldn’t get to expound on binary numbers. Regrouping, I said, “Okay, a quick review of the rules of nim. The layout is rows of seven, five, three and one. The pieces can be milk cartons, checkers, coins, matches, toothpicks, eyeballs, whatever. On your turn, you can remove one or more pieces from a single row. If you are forced to remove the last piece, you lose.”

  “So far we’re hep,” Sylvia said with a smile. “Although I haven’t seen Barney play with eyeballs.”

  “That’s only done in smoke-filled back rooms,” I said. “There are four rules for winning at nim.” A small blackboard was attached to one wall. Picking up a piece of chalk, I wrote, “1. Always let your opponent start.”

  “Why should it matter who starts?” Natalie asked.

  I hadn’t expected questioning of such a simple rule. “Because if you start, you will lose. Like Joe did yesterday.”

  “Nat, let him talk,” Sylvia said, with a laugh. “If his rules don’t work, we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Have you ever seen Barney start a game?” I asked.

  They shook their heads.

  “Bingo.” I wrote, “2. IF your opponent starts by removing one piece from a row, THEN remove one piece from any other row.”

  I looked at them both. No objections were forthcoming. They were both writing. Good students, taking notes. Maybe I should be a teacher. Ha. I chalked rule three on the board: “3. IF #2 occurs AND your opponent continues by taking one piece from either of the remaining two rows, THEN remove one piece from the last untouched row.”

  The rules were getting more complicated. The last rule was multi-part and contained a list of all the positions that a player could leave and win. I put it on the board and they dutifully copied all the combinations. Did they understand? The proof, of course, was in the execution. We needed to play some practice games. I was sure Sylvia would catch on quickly. I wasn’t so sure about Natalie. And I gathered that she was the important one.

  I pulled whatever coins I had out of my pocket. When I explained what I was doing, Sylvia and Natalie took coins from small purses. Together we came up with sixteen coins. “Keep track of what you put into the pot,” I said. That money represented a number of lunches. I arranged the coins on the shelf in front of the makeup mirror. “Who wants to play?” I asked.
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  “Nat, you play,” Sylvia said, confirming my suspicions.

  “Gary, I am going to let you start,” Natalie said, giving me her most brilliant smile.

  I doubted that any boy could withstand that approach. At least she had Rule One down pat. And I enjoyed sitting beside her where I could look at her, smell her clean scent, with our arms touching at times. However, she played slowly, reading from her notes and asking questions.

  After watching her for a while, Sylvia said, “When you play Barney, you can’t use notes, and Gary isn’t going to be there to prompt you.”

  “I’ll get it,” Natalie said, irritated. “I just need a little practice.”

  “We’d better come back here tomorrow morning,” Sylvia said, looking at her watch. “Gary, are you okay with that?”

  “I really appreciate you helping me,” Natalie cooed.

  I was okay with it. I said, trying to sound casual, “Why do you want to beat Barney so badly?”

  Sylvia and Natalie looked at each other. Natalie said, “You have a right to know. Everyone else in the school knows. Barney humiliated me.”

  “She challenged him to a game last May and lost,” Sylvia said.

  That wasn’t the smartest play of the century. “May I ask why you did that?”

  “Because he was always taunting me…”

  “Barney is hot for her bod,” Sylvia said, “and she won’t give him the time of day. He doesn’t like being ignored. So he got on her back until she agreed to play him. And he got even with her.”

  “He made me run around the school naked,” Natalie said.

  So that’s where that came from.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” Natalie said. “He didn’t specify a time, so I did it at night. And he didn’t say I couldn’t wear shoes. Only a few people were there, and most of them were girls. And I can run fast.”

  “I would have been your bodyguard,” I said, before I could stop myself.

  Both girls smiled and Sylvia said, “I’ll bet you would.”

  This kind of happening was beyond my teenage experience. Maybe I had been missing out on life. Or maybe there weren’t any girls like Natalie at Atherton. There certainly weren’t any in the looks department. She didn’t seem to have suffered any psychological damage from her humiliation, but there was definitely bad blood between her and Barney. And I could get in good with her by helping her beat him. She was on Sylvia’s list, but I had my own reasons.

  “Everything that transpires within this room has to be kept secret,” Sylvia said, looking at us.

  We nodded in agreement. A few more secrets wouldn’t matter. I was already waist-deep in secrets, including the one with Dr. Graves, caught in a web of intrigue I hadn’t imagined a week ago.

  “And you two don’t know each other, at least not yet.”

  More nods. It was important that Barney didn’t catch on to what we were hatching, but in addition, I didn’t think Joe would like Natalie being holed up with me.

  I asked, “Did Joe beat up Barney or something?”

  Natalie said, “I wasn’t going with Joe when I played Barney. I-I wasn’t going with anyone. I didn’t have a white knight to protect me. But I got myself into this mess. And with your help, I’ll get even, myself.”

  Sylvia put out her hand and said, “Everybody swear to keep these meetings secret.”

  I placed my hand on top of hers. Natalie placed her hand on top of mine. It was exciting to have a secret with the most powerful girl and the most beautiful girl in the school. Until I remembered that I was the school stool pigeon. Dr. Graves had seen to that. Well, I wouldn’t tell him everything about Sylvia. And I hoped he wouldn’t find out that I was withholding information.

  “We’ll leave separately,” Sylvia said. “Gary, you go first. Make sure nobody is looking when you exit the auditorium.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I went through the lunch line, paid my money to Dolores, the cashier, noted that her sweater of the day was black, and wondered for the second time in as many days what it would feel like to touch said sweater. I quickly tried to banish this thought from my head, before it became obvious to everybody what I was thinking, and wondered where I should sit today.

  As I hesitated, a boy who had gone through the line behind me caught up to me and said, “Aren’t you Gary?” When I admitted as much, he said, “I’m your cousin.”

  I almost blurted out that my cousin was dead. Then I realized who he was. He certainly didn’t look like a cousin. He was shorter than I was and stockier. Not in an athletic way but in a pudgy way. He did have a somewhat pronounced nose, as I did. His hair was light brown, like mine, although a little longer. He had an English accent.

  “I’m Edward Drucquer—Ed,” he said. “Sit with me and I’ll explain.”

  As an athletic upperclassman, I could hold my tray with one hand, so I released my right hand to offer to shake hands with him. However, he continued to grip his tray with two hands, apparently not having enough confidence in his strength. I followed him to an empty section of a table, and we sat down, side-by-side. His clothes looked somewhat shabby. His flannel shirt was frayed at the cuffs. His corduroy pants had signs of wear at the pockets.

  While he was opening his milk carton and inserting a straw, he said, “Your Aunt Dorothy told my father that you were transferring here. Since I pretty much know everybody in the senior class, you stuck out like a fox in a chicken coop.”

  Because of his accent, I had to strain to understand him, especially over the hubbub caused by students talking and shouting and the jukebox belting out the nonsensical lyrics to “Sh-Boom.”

  “Are you a senior?” I asked, before I remembered that he had been a sophomore last year.

  “No, I’m a junior. But I’m the editor of the Carter High Bulldog. So I talk to a lot of people.”

  That was the name of the school newspaper, as I had found out from Sylvia. Since we were Carter High and our nickname was the Bulldogs, it made sense to call the newspaper the Carter High Bulldog. To some people, anyway. He must be pretty good if he was editor of the school paper as a junior. I jacked him up a notch on my first-impression scale.

  While I digested this information, Ed ate a couple of bites of his sloppy joe burger and then said, with a smile, “I hear you got expelled from Atherton.”

  I cringed and quickly looked around to see if anybody else was within earshot. Couldn’t anything be kept secret?

  He saw my reaction and said, “Sorry. I guess I put my foot in my mouth. And I don’t want to get started on the wrong foot with you.” He chuckled.

  To get off this subject, I said, “How are we related?”

  “Well, my last name is Drucquer. Does that ring a bell?”

  I thought about the name for the first time. Then I remembered. “My grandmother’s maiden name was Drucquer.”

  “Right. Our two sides of the family were separated for over seventy years. Your ancestor, Thomas Drucquer, came across the pond from London to the U.S. in 1881.”

  “The pond?”

  “Sorry. The Atlantic Ocean.”

  “My grandmother was born in this country.”

  “In 1883, to be precise. My family only made it here two years ago, as you can tell from my accent. My father took an interest in genealogy and found out about your ancestor who had come over. Everybody on our side of the family had forgotten about him. Probably because he was drummed out of the family when he left.

  “Well, there was some contact. Dad found letters from him that had been written to his cousin in England—my great grandfather. Thomas said he was living on a farm in Carter. When my parents decided to come over, they came to Carter because it sounded like a good place to live.”

  “Based on seventy-year-old letters?”

  “You’re right; my parents are a little naïve. Anyway, about a year ago we found out that the descendants of Thomas were still living on the farm. I knew Ralph for a year before I realized that he was my cousin.”

 
“I wasn’t at Ralph’s funeral,” I said. “I was sick.”

  “I know. But I got to meet the rest of your family.”

  “Ralph was my first cousin. But you…”

  “My father said that Ralph and I are fourth cousins. That is, we are three more generations removed from our common ancestor than you and Ralph. I assume that means you and I are also fourth cousins.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Apparently, Ed had known Ralph quite well. “I’ve been trying to find more out about how…Ralph died. All I know is what my dad has told me, which isn’t much. I did see the obituaries in the Buffalo Express and the Carter Press, but they weren’t exactly fountains of information, either.”

  Ed looked solemn. “Poor Ralph. That was a tragedy. Because there were no witnesses, nobody knows exactly what happened. But I have a theory.”

  “I’m ready to listen to anything.”

  “On the fatal afternoon, there was an assembly. The whole student body gathered in the auditorium for a talk by somebody forgettable, and when it ended, we were supposed to return to class. Ralph cut his class. He obviously went back into the auditorium or, perhaps, he never left.”

  “So he couldn’t have been drinking or something like that.”

  “Of course not. It was right in the middle of the school day. Okay, so Ralph was on the football team, and football players have been known to hoist a pint, but nothing like that happens during school hours. No, I believe Ralph was despondent because he and Ruthie—she was his girlfriend—were breaking up.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she told me. We’re friends.”

  “Are you saying that Ralph jumped off the balcony?”

  “Nothing that deliberate. I shouldn’t tell you this, but you’re his cousin, and you have a right to know. But promise you won’t breathe a word to anyone else.”