My heart took a hopeful lurch. At least he’d cared enough for that.
“I heard the Judge come out of the house, and I followed him. And then darned if you didn’t show up and get dragged inside. You came close to screwing up everything, when I had to worry about what was going to happen to you, too.”
He sounded like he was mad at me. But he’d cared enough to try to protect me by spending the night outside the house where I was sleeping.
Jack had had enough of talking about me for the moment, though. He addressed the Judge. Who, I suddenly remembered, had identified me as his granddaughter, not his step-granddaughter.
“You want to explain, Judge?” Jack asked soberly. “Or do we have to wait for the official explanation? You were being blackmailed, right, by that toad over there? You want to tell us why?”
“Obviously Cici thought it was because I’d murdered Zoe.”
“No,” I protested, “I thought she was blackmailing you. At least I did at first, but then I realized you’d gone on paying someone a thousand dollars a month for a long time after she died . . .”
“She tried to blackmail me,” the Judge admitted. “I’m an old man. I’m tired. I hope you don’t mind if I sit down on the edge of the dock.”
I could barely see him, beyond the range of the flashlight, as he sank down on the shoreward end of the pier.
For a few seconds I was afraid he wasn’t going to go on, but he drew a deep breath and began. “Trafton was the original blackmailer. And he was unwise enough to let Zoe find it out, so she thought she’d try it, too. Why did you tell her, Trafton?”
The other man’s name for Zoe was unprintable.
The Judge’s contempt for both of them was evident in his tone. “It was a game to her. She thought it was amusing. She called me and demanded that I meet her back there, in the Wades’ cabin. I was a fool ever to have gone; I should have called her bluff. She wouldn’t have gained a thing by turning me in, except the breaking of Molly’s heart. But I went, and she demanded as much as I was paying Trafton. Silly little fool. When I told her no she taunted me, threatened me.”
I had taken a few steps backward so that my light showed him better. He was slumped, like a very old man, and his face sagged in the way it had right after Grandma Molly died.
“I’ve never been so frustrated, so angry. I thought I had to convince her that she was playing a dangerous game, but I let my temper get away with me. All those years of dealing with petty criminals in the court system, and I never lost it that way before. The girl came right up close to me, laughing in my face about how I’d pay, either in cash or in loss of face. I’ll admit, I’ve been proud of my position in the county. Being a judge, being respected, deferred to. But I didn’t place that above my own self-respect. In all my years on the bench I never took a bribe, never changed a sentence because of a threat. I tried to be an honorable man.”
He fell silent. Sitting in the edge of the lake, Carl Trafton had turned his face away from us, away from the light, and sat with his head bowed.
“So what happened when Zoe kept pushing you?” Jack asked, when it seemed that the Judge had permanently fallen silent.
“I shook her,” the old man said finally. “As if she were one of my grandchildren who needed to be stopped from making a terrible mistake. I grabbed hold of her beads and shook her, and she slapped me across the face and swore at me, and I lost my temper. I was always proud of the fact that I never lost my temper on the bench.” He sighed deeply. “I didn’t even realize I was actually choking her until her eyes rolled back in her head.”
“So you did kill her,” I breathed, hardly audible.
“I didn’t think so. When I became aware of what I was doing, I let go of her, let her fall back on the sofa,” said the Judge heavily. “The color came back into her face, and she was breathing when I left her there.”
“But she was dead when her brothers found her,” Jack reminded him. “The police said she’d been strangled by her beads.”
The Judge nodded slowly. “I know. And for a while I actually thought maybe I had killed her, even if I hadn’t meant to. Then they found Brody’s wallet, and his footprints . . . I could understand how he might have come along, after I’d left her there, and . . . finished her off. I’d overheard them having a quarrel a week or two earlier, and I remembered thinking the boy was doing a good job of holding his temper with her then. And I finally decided I wasn’t guilty of that, at least. Killing her.”
“But my brother didn’t do it,” Jack said, ever so softly, with an underlying hint of anger.
“I finally figured that out, realized Brody wasn’t guilty, but I couldn’t expose everything.” The Judge’s voice was low, so that even though we were close to him, we had to strain to make out his words.
Far in the distance we heard the sound of a siren. A chill ran down my body, reminding me that I was in wet pajamas, and that I was cold.
“But if he wasn’t blackmailing you about Zoe . . .”
“Zoe wasn’t worth worrying about. But Molly was. She was getting old, and sick—” His voice quavered, then firmed. “I thought the world of Molly. I’d been taking care of her, protecting her, for what seemed like most of my life. I knew she had a bad heart . . . I had to keep on protecting her as long as she needed me. She’d never have withstood an investigation . . . a trial.”
For a moment my mind shut down. What was he talking about?
The siren was louder now. Coming closer.
Jack’s voice took on an urgent note. “Don’t stop now, Judge. Give us the rest of it. You said it was all over, now that Molly was gone.”
The Judge sagged even further, and I saw there was still water dripping off his trousers onto the sand beneath the dock.
“Molly had an accident,” he said finally. “She was still driving then, fifteen months ago. She was coming home from town at dusk, and she . . . hit a man who was walking on the road. She . . . didn’t stop. She said he was a very disreputable looking fellow, and she was afraid of him . . . and she didn’t think she’d killed him. She came home and told me.”
Hit and run, I thought numbly. Grandma Molly?
“I gave her one of her heart pills and put her to bed. Then I went back to see. The man was dead, lying just off the pavement. No I.D. on him. A transient, a bum. I was . . . stricken. I thought . . . of what would happen to my wife if they charged her with hit and run homicide. If they ever . . . locked her up, she’d die in prison.”
The siren ceased, and I knew the police must have reached the gate. We had only a few more minutes.
“I didn’t have much time to think, but when I got home I checked on Molly’s car—there was damage, even blood on one fender. I . . . washed it off, though the dent was still there. And I knew . . . by the time I went back into the house, and saw Molly’s anxious face . . . I knew I wasn’t going to turn her in. I thought no one had seen the accident, that there’d be no way of . . . tracing it to Molly. Especially after I sold her car, a couple of counties away.”
“But Trafton saw it.” Jack’s voice was harsh. “And when you didn’t report it, he started blackmailing you.”
The Judge lifted his head. “I don’t suppose you can understand that. That I chose to pay that piece of garbage off instead of letting my wife pay the price and the penalty for what was, after all, an accident. I was so upset about Molly that I suppose my mind wasn’t working as well as it normally would have done. Eventually, I did realize that I hadn’t killed Zoe, that I’d left her alive, just as I thought. Eventually it dawned on me that my blackmailer had been there after I left, that he had strangled her so that he’d never have to share the money, never be afraid she’d give him away. And he’d have one more hold over me that would keep me from freeing Brody.”
“So you let Brody go to prison. For twenty-five years.” The strain in Jack’s voice made me want to touch him, comfort him.
“I knew Molly probably didn’t have more than a few months,” the Jud
ge said in what was almost as apology. “Fact is, she lasted quite a while longer than I expected. Brody’s young. He’ll be cleared, and he’ll still have plenty of life left. And then Cici started snooping around, making up lists of suspects and poking into my business. I thought maybe if I scared her, if she thought a killer had shot at her, she’d stop, leave it alone. But she didn’t. I could tell by looking at her face when her parents went home that she was scared, but she wasn’t going to let it go. And I knew I couldn’t give up on all the principles I’d lived by all my life, not when it didn’t matter to Molly anymore. So I told Trafton it was over. Even if it meant going to jail myself, I knew I couldn’t hurt one of my grandchildren, couldn’t go on living a terrible lie. It wouldn’t hurt anybody but me. But he didn’t believe me, he insisted I meet him again.”
We heard the cars . . . there were two of them . . . pulling in behind the cottage. Sunny was barking. There were lights on all over now, at our place, and up the shore of the lake. I heard men’s voices, coming toward us, and recognized Fergus when he shouted, “What’s going on? Is somebody hurt?”
I felt stunned. Limp. I hardly noticed when Jack took the flashlight out of my hand. He didn’t say anything to me but turned to meet the uniformed officers coming onto the beach.
I wanted to cry. For Grandma Molly. The Judge. Brody and Ilona, Lina and Jack, everybody in my family.
I didn’t know what would happen, but I knew it was the end of an era. The end of childhood as I’d known it. The end of carefree summers with people I’d known forever at the lake. Maybe even the end of trusting the adults who had always taken care of me.
Nobody was paying any attention to me. Ginger glanced in my direction as I entered the house, but she didn’t demand answers from me. It was more interesting out where the police cars sat with their colored lights flashing, and people were milling around.
The Judge’s study was empty, the light too bright when I flicked the switch. I dialed, then blew my nose as I waited for someone back home to pick up the phone.
“Dan Linden,” Daddy said.
“Daddy—” my throat closed, and I didn’t know what to say next.
“Cici? Honey, is that you? What’s wrong?” His sharp anxiety increased my own inability to talk. I stared helplessly at the Judge’s desk through a blur of tears and strangled a sob.
“Cici?” Lina was there behind me, with a pink bathrobe over her nightgown, her feet bare. “You talking to your folks?”
She took the receiver out of my hand and spoke into it, and I saw that there were tears on her cheeks. “Dan? Lina Shurik. Something’s happened here, I don’t know all of it, but Jack said,” she choked on her emotion, “Brody has been cleared. The police are here, and it’ll be a while before it gets straightened out enough to tell you much, but everyone’s all right. It might be a good idea to come back, as soon as you can.”
She listened for a moment, then said, “We’ll take care of Cici and Freddy. Don’t worry about them.”
When she hung up, she didn’t say a word about my still damp pajamas. She reached for me, and I went into her arms, both of us weeping.
“Jack told me to check on you,” she said as I began to shake. “What really happened, Cici? Who really killed Zoe?”
I choked. “Trafton,” I said.
And then Jack himself was there in the doorway. His voice was gruff. “It’s gotten to be a habit, having to check on you, Cici. When are you going to grow up enough to stay out of trouble?”
I couldn’t find words to respond to him, either, but I looked at him with gratitude for being there.
Slowly, a smile touched his lips. “Guess I’ll have to stay in touch and keep track, huh?”
I nodded. Someone called for him, and he turned away. “Be there in a minute!” And then, to me, “Send me a Christmas card, okay? And write something besides your signature on it. Us big kids have to stick together.”
I finally found my voice. “I’ll write to you before Christmas,” I said.
And though he went away then, and I knew we might never spend another summer together here at the lake, I knew we wouldn’t lose touch.
When Lina heard the whole story, I wasn’t sure she’d forgive the Judge very easily, though she’d loved Molly, too. I wasn’t quite sure I could forgive him, though I did understand how he’d felt compelled to protect Molly. Maybe people would be ashamed of how they’d treated Lina and Jack now. Mom and Dad would come after Freddy and me and take us home. And as soon as the stores had Christmas cards in stock, I’d find a special one for Jack and spend weeks deciding what to write in it.
Maybe, after this was all over, that would be enough. That, and knowing that Jack no longer thought I was one of the little kids.
This had been a crazy, terrifying, growing-up kind of summer, and I wasn’t the kid I’d been when we’d arrived only a matter of weeks ago.
There were still a lot of things we didn’t know, though we found out later after the police had questioned Trafton. Zoe had followed him once when he was collecting his blackmail, spied on him, and learned enough for her own purposes. When it was clear that he wasn’t going to get away with any of it, Trafton admitted he’d been suspicious enough of her to spy on her, and observed the confrontation between Zoe and the Judge that fatal night. The opportunity to be rid of her and frame someone else had been too good to pass up. It had been a snap to get Brody’s wallet after Trafton spotted him on the beach right after Zoe died.
Before I learned any of this, though, there was that night to get through, waiting for my folks to come, watching Lina’s face when she realized the Judge had known for a long time that Brody was not guilty, yet had allowed him to be sentenced to prison.
I was afraid she might reject the whole family, but she didn’t. After we stopped crying, we managed watery smiles at each other before I went up to get into dry clothes.
Ilona was on the stairs, in her nightclothes, listening to the conversations below. She was so pale I thought she might faint, and her knuckles were white on the railing. She didn’t speak, and neither did I. Ilona would have her own demons to deal with now.
I came back down to see Jack reentering the house. He headed for his mother, not paying any attention to me. He hugged her and rocked her as she cried again in relief.
I hoped I was going to like being a big kid now, I thought as I reached the bottom of the stairs. And then Jack smiled at me, over Lina’s head, and I knew I was.
about the author
Willo Davis Roberts wrote many mystery and suspense novels for children during her long and illustrious career, including The Girl with the Silver Eyes, The View from the Cherry Tree, Twisted Summer, Megan’s Island, Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job, Hostage, Scared Stiff, and The Kidnappers. Three of her children’s books won Edgar® Awards, while others received great reviews and accolades, including the Sunshine State Young Readers Award, California Young Reader Medal, and the Georgia Children’s Book Awards.
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Willo Davis Roberts Mysteries:
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Undercurrents
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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This Simon Pulse edition June 2017
Text copyright © 1996 by Willo Davis Roberts
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Cover designed by Regina Flath
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The text of this book was set in Excelsior LT Std.
Library of Congress Control Number TK
ISBN 978-1-4814-8623-1 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-8622-4 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4391-1558-9 (eBook)
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