Death at Devil's Bridge

by Cynthia DeFelice

  “No way!” exclaimed Jeff. “You found the car?”

  “Really?” Donny’s eyebrows lifted with interest. “When?”

  Pleased at having their full attention, I tried to sound casual. “First thing this morning. Chick and I were headed out and all of a sudden I saw this car in the water. I couldn’t believe it!”

  “Yeah, well, believe it, Daggett,” said Donny. He reached out his hand to give me a high five. “And the rich kids who come here thinking they’re better than us—they’d best believe it, too. Right, Manning?” he added, turning to Jeff and high-fiving him, too.

  “You got it!” said Jeff.

  Just then there was a loud beep, and I looked up to see a car coming our way, heading in the same direction as Donny. I scrambled to get out of the road so the car could go by. I caught a glimpse of the driver, a guy with a long gray ponytail. He scowled at me impatiently, then gave Donny a slow nod as he passed.

  Donny gunned the engine. “Catch ya later, Daggett.”

  “Later, Ben,” called Jeff as they pulled away.

  “Right,” I said, watching them disappear around a curve in the road. “Later.”

  Geez, I thought, I work for one day and Jeff goes and finds a new best friend.

  Three

  “Hi, Ben,” Mom called from the kitchen. “How was your first day of work?”

  “Okay,” I answered, opening the refrigerator door, then pouring a glass of milk. “I guess you heard about the car.”

  “Such a waste,” Mom said, shaking her head. “I almost fainted when Chief Widdiss told me how much a car like that costs. He says it’ll never run again after being in the saltwater all night.”

  “Did he tell you I was the first one to see it?” I asked, grabbing two cookies from the jar on the counter.

  “No more of those,” Mom warned. “You’ll spoil your dinner. I’m making tacos.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Is Barry coming over?”

  “Not for dinner,” Mom answered. “He’s too busy with all the holiday-weekend rentals. He might stop over later.”

  There was a time when I’d have been really happy to hear Barry wasn’t coming for dinner. I even used to have a secret nickname for him: Barry the Bozo. But I didn’t call him that anymore. I’d changed my mind about Barry during last year’s fishing derby, when he was the one who proved that Freddy Cobb had cheated by adding mercury to his big striper to make it weigh more. Barry had saved the whole tournament, and Pop’s record for the biggest striped bass ever caught on the island. Once I stopped being mad at Barry for not being Pop, I began to think he was okay.

  Besides, since Barry had been around, Mom’s eyes didn’t have that sad, haunted look they’d had for so long after Pop died. I was grateful for that, even though it was kind of embarrassing to see a guy acting so big-time crazy about my mother.

  Mom went on talking as she stirred onions and hamburger meat in the frying pan. “Yes, Ed told me you found it. That must have been a surprise.”

  She looked at me. My mouth was stuffed with cookies, so I just nodded.

  “Well, anyway, the police found the owner and talked to him. Apparently, his son drove here from Connecticut for the weekend. I can’t imagine letting a sixteen-year-old boy do that.”

  Big surprise. After Pop died, Mom had worried so much about something happening to me that she’d just about wrapped me in tissue paper and put me under her mattress for safekeeping. She was getting better, but I still figured I was going to be lucky if she ever let me drive around the block.

  Judging from what Mom had just said, Donny had been right about the driver being a wealthy kid from off-island in his father’s car. Believe it, Daggett, Donny had said. And the rich kids who come here thinking they’re better than us—they’d best believe it, too. I wondered what that was supposed to mean. Jeff had acted as if he knew, sitting beside Donny and high-fiving him back.

  I thought about how I’d reacted to seeing Jeff and Donny driving around together, and felt kind of embarrassed. What was I, a jealous girlfriend or something? But it was weird that Donny was hanging around with Jeff. Donny was sixteen. The three years’ difference in our ages hadn’t mattered so much when we were younger. I remembered a time when Jeff and I crashed one of his model planes out in the middle of Menemsha Pond. We didn’t have a dinghy or any way to get it, and we were too little and too scared to swim. Donny swam out, got the plane, and brought it back in his mouth like a dog retrieving a stick. He even came over to us and pretended to wag his tail, then shook like a dog when he dropped the plane at our feet. I’d just about choked to death, I was laughing so hard.

  I remembered another long, rainy afternoon at the Mannings’ house when Donny had been there, too. We took Magic Markers and drew on all the faces in a deck of cards, and played stupid card games in which three-eyed jacks, kings with boogers, and queens with bad hair were wild.

  Then there was the time a whole bunch of kids—boys, girls, all different ages—were at the beach in the summer. It was a really windy day, and I was flying a kite tied to the line on a fishing rod. Everybody was watching because the kite was flying so high. I was concentrating hard, both hands on the rod and both eyes on the little speck high in the air, when suddenly an older kid named Tony came up behind me and pulled my bathing suit down around my ankles.

  Remembering it now, three years later, I could feel my face turning red with embarrassment all over again. I’d wanted to walk into the ocean and never come back to face all those kids—those girls—who had seen me naked.

  But Donny had saved me. He threw a beach towel over Tony’s head, and said he was going to pull off Tony’s suit unless he admitted that he was a creep for doing such a crummy thing.

  “Say it!” Donny had demanded. “Admit you’re a creep!” Everyone’s attention turned to Donny and Tony, and Tony was the one who ended up looking like a dork.

  Donny had seemed almost like a god to me that day. In a way, he still did. I decided I was making a big deal out of nothing. So Donny took Jeff for a ride in the Tomahawk. So maybe I wished Donny thought I was cool enough to go cruising around with him. So what? Get over it.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said, “can I go over to Jeff’s after dinner?”

  “May I go over to Jeff’s,” she corrected. Mom was a real grammar grouch.

  “May I go to Jeff’s?” I tried, along with my biggest, sweetest smile.

  “Yes, but I want you home by nine-thirty. You’ve got a full day of work tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  We sat down to eat, and Mom continued talking about the car. “The odd thing is,” she said, “that the boy who was driving never showed up to claim the car. He never reported it missing, either.”

  “I heard that,” I said. “Boy, I bet he’s in big trouble with his parents right now.”

  “Well, maybe,” Mom answered, “except that right now, I imagine his parents are more worried than angry.”

  “They’ll have plenty of time to get mad later, right, Mom?” I grinned at her, remembering when I’d sneaked out in the middle of the night during last year’s fishing derby and scared Mom half to death. She sure hadn’t thought it was funny at the time, but I figured maybe she could joke about it now.

  “When he shows up, I hope they give him a big kiss and then ground him for the rest of his life,” she said sternly.

  I decided I didn’t really want to know if she was kidding around or not. When we’d finished eating, I quickly cleared the dishes from the table, rinsed them in the sink, and headed for the door.

  After calling good-bye to Mom, I pedaled up Lighthouse Road and coasted to a stop in the Mannings’ driveway. Hearing laughter coming from the garage, I headed in that direction instead of toward the house. Soon I heard someone talking. The words stopped me in my tracks.

  Four

  “It was just too perfect,” a voice said. “The stupid dork was stoned out of his mind. He left the car right on the boat ramp. All I did was let off the emergency
brake. Maybe I gave it the smallest little push, you know what I’m saying?”

  There was a laugh, and another voice mumbled something I couldn’t understand. Then I heard more laughter.

  The first voice said, “I figured it would roll a little and end up stuck in the sand. He’d have to get it towed, and it’d be a major pain in the tail. But that sucker kept right on going! I didn’t mean to sink it, but, hey, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

  I recognized that first voice. It was Donny. And the other person was Jeff.

  I stood frozen in place, my hands over my ears, not wanting to hear any more, not wanting to believe what I’d already heard. I wanted to run to my bike and ride away.

  Instead, maybe just to stop the voices from saying anything more, I found myself calling, “Hey, Jeff, you in there?” I hadn’t known I was going to do it, and I was amazed to hear how steady my voice sounded, how normal, even though I felt as though a big diesel engine was roaring through my head and chest.

  There was a sudden hush from the garage, then Donny and Jeff stepped out. Jeff stared at the ground, but Donny looked right at me with narrowed eyes.

  “How long have you been out here, Ben?” he asked. There was none of the usual fun or teasing in his expression.

  “Not long,” I answered quickly. “I heard you guys talking, so I was just coming—”

  Donny interrupted. “What’d you hear?”

  “Nothing,” I said, holding up my empty hands as if to prove my innocence. I laughed, and to my own ears it sounded forced and phony. “Why? What’s the big deal?”

  Donny, too, was trying to act normal now, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “No big deal,” he said, giving me a little grin. To Jeff he said, “He’s cool, right?”

  “Yeah,” answered Jeff. “He’s cool.”

  Donny disappeared into the garage, and Jeff and I stood uncomfortably in the driveway. He still hadn’t met my eyes.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, finally looking at me and giving a little shrug. “Donny was just messing around.”

  Jeff was lying to me; I couldn’t believe it. Jeff was the one friend I’d always thought I could count on to tell me the real scoop. After Mom started dating Barry and I was really mad about it, Jeff had had the guts to say that maybe Barry was good for my mom. I hadn’t wanted to hear it, but it sure made me think.

  I decided to give him another chance to tell me what the heck was going on. “What’s he doing in your garage?”

  “Working on the Tomahawk,” Jeff answered. “He needed to borrow some of my dad’s tools.”

  I tried again. “Looks like you and Donny are big buddies all of a sudden. What do you guys talk about?”

  “Nothing much.”

  Come off it, Jeff, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I felt off-balance from what I’d heard, and from the strange way Jeff was acting. I just stood there, sure he’d be able to read my thoughts on my face, but all he said was, “So, you want to see the airplane I got for my birthday? I’ve almost got it put together, but I still have to get the remote control rigged up.”

  I hesitated. Maybe if we worked on the plane together it would feel like old times, and Jeff would confide in me about what was going on with Donny. “Sure,” I managed to say, and followed him inside, where Mr. and Mrs. Manning were watching television in the den.

  Somehow I managed to say hello and answer their friendly, interested questions about my first day mating for Chick. Then I followed Jeff up to his room. We sat down at the card table he’d set up in the middle of the room, where the plane’s assembly kit was spread out on sheets of waxed paper.

  Jeff immediately began gluing a few final little pieces, holding them in place with pins, and talking nonstop about all the plane’s special features. He was so into it that he didn’t seem to notice anything odd about my behavior. Maybe I wasn’t acting strange. But I sure felt weird.

  Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Jeff,” I said, “I heard you and Donny talking.”

  His hands stopped moving, and he looked up from the table. “Yeah, I thought so,” he said with a little smile.

  “Did Donny push that car into the harbor?”

  Jeff looked at me. “What if he did?” he asked.

  “Well, for cripe’s sake, Jeff, did he?” I knew, but for some reason I wanted to hear Jeff say it.

  “Yeah,” Jeff said softly.

  “But why?” I asked. “Is he crazy?” It came out more loudly than I’d expected.

  Jeff looked nervously toward the door and whispered, “Shhh. Take it easy, Ben. He didn’t mean to sink it.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said, whispering now, too. “What if he gets caught?”

  “He’s not going to get caught.” Jeff looked at me earnestly, really believing what he was saying.

  “How do you know? The police are looking for the person who did it!”

  Jeff shrugged. “Nobody saw him.”

  “But why did he do it?” I asked.

  Jeff leaned toward me and said in a hushed voice, “You know Jen, Donny’s girlfriend?”

  I nodded. Everybody knew Jen and Donny.

  “Well, the kid who was driving the car was hitting on Jen at South Beach the other day, trying to impress her with his fancy car, get her to go for a ride and stuff. So Donny was just, you know, teaching him a lesson.”

  “Geez,” I said, imagining the whole scene. Donny was touchy about the Tomahawk, but that was nothing compared to how he was about Jen. No kid from the island would be brave—or stupid—enough to flirt with Jen since she’d started going out with Donny. Not that Donny went around threatening people or anything like that, but still, you didn’t want Donny mad at you. You just never knew what he might do.

  “So the kid had it coming,” Jeff went on. “Maybe he’ll tell his friends they can’t just come here and throw their money around and treat us like dirt.”

  Treat us like dirt? What had the kid ever done to Jeff? I wondered. Then it hit me: the kid! “Where is the kid, anyway?” I asked.

  Jeff shrugged again. “Don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows.”

  “Not even Donny?”

  “Nope. Donny left after he pushed the car in, and he never saw the kid again after that.”

  “And the kid just let Donny push his car in the water?”

  “No. He was out on the beach, meeting some other kids.”

  It was pretty clear that Jeff was taking Donny’s side completely. He said, “You’re not going to tell, are you?”

  Tell? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. When I didn’t answer immediately, Jeff said, “Ben. You can’t tell.” He looked at me incredulously and urged, “Come on, Ben. It’s not like he did it to one of our cars, like Chick’s or your mom’s or something. It belonged to one of them.”

  “That’s why you’re covering for him?”

  “Well, yeah. What do I care about that rich little snot or his car? Donny’s my friend.”

  I couldn’t even talk. My thoughts were too jumbled up, and Jeff seemed so sure.

  “And you’re my friend,” he said. Then he added, “Right?”

  “Well, duh.”

  He smiled, spreading his hands wide, as if that settled that.

  I felt trapped in Jeff’s small, cluttered bedroom. I couldn’t breathe. Desperate to get away, I glanced at the clock. To my relief, it was almost nine-thirty. “Look, I really gotta go,” I said, standing up. “You know how Mom is.”

  “Yeah,” said Jeff. “Okay.” Then, looking worried, he said, “You’re not mad or anything?”

  Mad? I didn’t know what I was, but I wasn’t mad at Jeff. I just needed time to think things over. “No,” I said.

  “Good,” he answered, and flashed me his old smile.

  I raced down the stairs, said a quick good-bye to the Mannings, and stepped out into the driveway. There was a light coming from the garage. Great. The last thing I wanted to do wa
s run into Donny again. I crept toward my bike, trying not to let the gravel crunch beneath my feet.

  “Leaving, Ben?” Donny seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Suddenly he was standing between my bike and me. His voice was casual and light, as usual.

  “Yeah,” I said, “and I’ve got to hurry. Mom’ll kill me if I’m late.”

  Donny smiled his lazy smile, but his eyes seemed to be sizing me up. “Hey, you remember when I found out about your secret cave?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, puzzled. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected him to say.

  Jeff and I had discovered a cave up in the clay cliffs, and for about four years now, it had been our secret place. We kept sleeping bags, rods, reels, and lures there, and matches and driftwood for campfires. We’d had some of our best times in that cave. Something that made it even cooler was that I had discovered my father’s initials, JUD, for Jack Ulysses Daggett, carved into the clay on the back wall. Pop told me it had been his secret place when he was a kid. Jeff’s initials and mine were carved right next to Pop’s.

  One day when Jeff and I were slipping through the narrow entrance to the cave, I looked back and saw Donny watching us. Later, he told me he wouldn’t tell anybody, and as far as I knew, he’d kept his promise.

  “I never told anybody your little secret, you know.”

  “I know, Donny,” I said, trying to smile. “Thanks.” I started to go, but Donny reached out and touched my arm, and I turned back to face him.

  “And I never will tell, Ben,” he said very slowly, emphasizing each word. “You can count on me.”

  “That’s great, Donny. Thanks.”

  Donny grinned and gave me a soft punch on the shoulder. “Jeff said you were cool. How about we pick you up in the Tomahawk tomorrow night before the fireworks?”

  I was so surprised, my jaw dropped. Donny wanted me to go with him to the fireworks? I quickly closed my mouth, then managed to stammer, “Well, yeah, sure. I mean, that’d be great.”

  “Around eight?”