Trip Wire

by Charlotte Carter

  “No. And I’m not going to.”

  “Why not? Some crazy fuck tied you up. That’s kidnapping or something.”

  “I’m not doing it, Cliff. I told you, the guy got what he came after and he won’t be back. Besides, the police are doing a real bad number on us. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t trust them. They’re trying to frame Dan, and Klaus is some kind of front for them.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while. He just looked sad, and kind of beaten.

  “What do you think’s gonna happen to Jordan?” he said finally.

  “To who?” His irrelevant question enraged me. “How should I know?”

  “I know. He’s gonna have it awful. His life’ll be shit. Probably end up hacking his foster mother to death.”

  “So now the biggest problem in our lives is Jordan?”

  He pulled himself up slowly. “I’m sorry. I try to keep focused. But I can’t. I’m too bummed out. I guess I’m just not as together as you are.”

  “Me? You think my shit’s together? Cliff, that’s a joke.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re the youngest one of all of us, but you’re the one who’s taking all the licks.”

  “I want to know why Wilton died. I have to know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Believe me, I get that. But you’re also keeping the rest of us together.”

  “I’m taking Mia’s place, you mean.”

  “No. Not like her. In your own way. The thing is . . . It’s over anyway.”

  “What is?”

  “The commune.”

  “Why? Because I might move back in with my folks? So what? You guys lived here before I moved in. You can get other people.”

  He shook his head. “Nobody’s gonna stay here, Sandy. Soon as the police close out the murder, we’re going to break up. I know it.”

  “You can get another apartment.”

  “No. Taylor’s got a woman now. He’ll probably go live with her. Beth’s parents have money. She’ll get an apartment in some fancy neighborhood, like they wanted her to do in the first place.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’ll go home, I guess. I kind of want to anyway.”

  “You’re not going back to school?”

  “I could go someplace in Connecticut. I don’t know. I don’t care.”

  “Don’t be stupid. You could get drafted. You want to go to Vietnam, man?”

  He shrugged. “Cary went. They killed him over there, and the same thing’ll happen to me. Who cares?”

  “Come on, Cliff. Don’t.”

  “Remember how we all used to be so fucking glad to be with each other? Bunch of people. All like each other. Respect each other. Wanna do what we have to do without all the hippie nonsense. Live right. Like Wilton used to say, Live right. That’s how you change the world. Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, maybe in the next fucking world.”

  All that anguish and cynicism just sounded pathetic coming from an overgrown boy in a green reindeer sweater. Cliff took a distressed-looking handkerchief from his back pocket and turned away from me while he blew his nose.

  “Feel like smoking?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “How about some hot tea?”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Then make me some.”

  I ran a tub while he was in the kitchen, stripped out of my funky clothes and threw my leggings into the trash.

  I peeked out of the bathroom door and saw him sitting quietly in the kitchen, staring at the steaming kettle.

  Well, what now, Lord?

  In a few minutes he came crashing in with the big yellow mug. “Ex-cuse me, going off like that. After what you went through, I shouldn’t—God, I’m dumb.”

  “Cliff, you’re in the bathroom with me. And I don’t have on any clothes.”

  He set the cup on the toilet seat, and in the same gesture, it seemed, he had his arms around me. He pushed the hair away from my forehead, brought my face close to his. “Where’re you coming from, Sandy? How’d you get to be so great?”

  I didn’t know what to say. But I noticed something I never had before. Cliff’s eyelids. They were so light, it was as if you could blow gently on them and they’d float away, like that fuzzy flower that grew wild in the country.

  He kissed me, kept on.

  I began to cooperate. As he pulled me closer, I felt the damp wool of his sweater against my bare breasts.

  “You never thought about me like this?” he said.

  “No.”

  “No, I guess you didn’t.”

  And his funny face was sweeter than I remembered, too, especially that lump at the end of his nose.

  We kissed more.

  “I did,” he said. “A lot. I wanted to be with you a lot.”

  “I stink, Cliff. Wait.”

  “No. Don’t make me.”

  Were we going to do it on the spot, standing up? Would we just roll into my room? Or were we going to try to fit our substantial young bodies into the tub?

  I stepped into the warm water, and he pulled quickly out of his sweater and thermal undershirt. He picked up the sponge and began to soap me while I worked at the buttons of his jeans.

  I had my hands on the last one, the pants just starting to slide off his ass, when we heard the ruckus. Annabeth and Taylor were pounding hysterically on the blocked door.

  I splashed out of the tub, threw on a robe—I don’t know whose it was—and hurried to let them in. With everything that had happened, I knew they must be thinking the worst.

  10

  Taylor was carrying an outsize pizza. Once he saw that all was well, he began to ride Cliff for the makeshift barricade at the front door.

  “Stop picking on him,” Annabeth said. “Building a fortress sounds like a damn good idea to me. Let’s get some plates, Sandy. I hate cold pizza.”

  But I didn’t move toward the cabinet.

  “What’s wrong? Why do you look like that?”

  “Somebody was in here,” I said.

  Taylor set the pizza carton down carefully, eyes on me.

  “Somebody was in here. Tonight. He jumped me.”

  Annabeth stared hard at me. “What are you talking about? Cliff, what’s she talking about?”

  “I was jumped. After I left you at the store. He—tied me up.”

  She moaned.

  While I explained, she was taking it all in, but at the same time she was shaking her head, denying the words even as I spoke them.

  Taylor stepped across the hall and opened the door on the devastation in Wilt and Mia’s room. “Wow,” he said slowly. “This is so fucked up.”

  Beth pulled herself together enough to ask, “What’s taking the police so long? Where’s Norris?”

  I flicked my eyes over at Cliff, who walked away from me.

  “I didn’t tell the police. I’m not calling them.”

  And I thought Cliff’s move on me in the bathroom had been sudden. Beth was on me faster than I could blink, not a bit interested in my theories about the intruder, why I was so certain he wouldn’t return. She grabbed the collar of my robe and shook me like I was a free bubblegum machine. “Call them now. Call them now, or I’ll do it myself.”

  “The hell you will, Beth. It didn’t happen to you, did it? What are you going to say to them? How are you going to prove it?”

  She broke away and snatched the kitchen telephone off the hook. I wrestled it from her hand.

  “You’re fucking crazy!” she shrieked. “You want to get us all killed.”

  I don’t think she meant for her nails to dig into my cheek that way. But it took that sharp pain to kick me into action. I shoved her, and she stumbled on a chair leg. Then she righted herself and immediately came at me again. “Asshole!” she was shouting. “You arrogant cow.” There was a lot of muscle behind all that slinkiness.

  I’m no brawler. I may be kind of hefty, but I still fight like a girl. I went for her hair. Then
we commenced to slapping each other. Oh, it was tawdry.

  Taylor and Cliff handled us the way the refs on the Roller Derby treat those big women. I huffed and puffed from my corner of the room, all my goods hanging out of the torn bathrobe.

  “The two of you,” Annabeth said in disgust to the men, “can’t you do anything with her?”

  But they seemed to know better than to interfere. They only watched us, ready to break up the melee should it start again.

  Finally, Annabeth was calm again. “Sandy,” she said quietly, “you have crossed the line, hon. You’re out there in space. You hear me? They took Wilton away from you, and it’s made you insane. It’s not your fault, okay? But you need help.”

  I knew I needed help. And I knew what I needed help with.

  “Is that how your mom talks to her maid out there in Kenilworth?” I said.

  She threw up her hands then. “Fine. Be like that. But I’m not ready to die. If I don’t get murdered in my sleep, I’m going home tomorrow.”

  “Oh, really? What’s your friend Norris going to say about that? He told us—”

  She gave me a toss of rich-girl hair. “I don’t give a shit what Norris says. He’s got a problem with that, let him take it up with my father.”

  We watched her as she slammed into her room and banged the door behind her.

  Not even in my lurid imagination could I have dreamed up a scene like the one that had just taken place. Me and Beth Riegel fighting like cave women in a B movie. Another friend struck from the list.

  And how was I going to make it right with Owen after what happened earlier? I couldn’t imagine facing him again, but the loss of him as a friend would be the final blow.

  As I slumped in the kitchen chair, swallowing back tears and clutching at the front of that stupid robe, all at once the exhaustion came down on me like a club. I knew I had it figured right: The intruder had what he wanted and wouldn’t be back. Nobody was out to kill off this commune of hapless hippies. But I was so weary, if it turned out I was wrong, I didn’t care just then. Kill me, I thought. Go ahead. Just let me rest.

  Taylor and Cliff were talking, but their voices filtered down as if they were calling to me from the top of a hill. I dragged myself out of the chair and into my room.

  11

  Was Cliff right? Was the end at hand, our little experiment in democracy—living right—all over? Freedom, happiness, community all finished so fast.

  I lay awake, staring up at the ceiling that Mia had painted a velvety blue and then overlaid with silver stars. When I joined the commune, that pretty make-believe sky had been her welcoming gift to me.

  I imagined her up on the ladder doing that for me. Perhaps Wilt had helped, in his way, standing at the base of the ladder, holding it steady with one hand, smoking a joint with the other. It made my heart ache.

  “Sometimes, when you’re out with Mia, do black people ever look at you like you’re a bug? Like you give them the creeps?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s like you know what they’re thinking. It’s like, ‘How can you stand them? How could you be with one of them, after what they did to us?’ “

  “And how can we?” I said.

  Sleep overtook me at last.

  Gently shaking me awake, Cliff interrupted a very involved dream I was having—not a good one. Bev, Jordan’s mother, was in it. She was begging Barry, who was all dressed up like a medicine man in a bad western, to give her sick baby some kind of miracle potion.

  I came to with Cliff’s face looming over me. “What is it?”

  “Beth called the cops,” he said.

  “Shit. They’re here?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Damn, she had no right!”

  The pressure of his hand on my shoulder slowed my movements. “Just a minute, Sandy. I know you’re mad and all. But I think Beth did the right thing. Some guy breaking in here like that—it’s nothing to be playing around with.”

  “Who’s playing? I’m not playing, Cliff. I told you he wasn’t out to hurt me. He was looking for something in here.”

  “Even so, Barry didn’t come home tonight. You’ve got to tell Norris you saw him in the Volvo. It’s getting too fucking weird.”

  “I can’t help that, Cliff. Why don’t you tell Norris, or don’t tell him. Whatever. Just let me get up, will you?”

  “Wait, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you get it? I don’t want you to go. I don’t want anything else to happen to you.”

  His hand was now at the collar of my nightshirt. He leaned in to kiss me, but I stopped him. “What is this? More of what you said last night? You were serious about all that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re fantasizing about what—you, me, and Jordan in a little cottage in the woods or something? You going to take us to Connecticut and we’ll have a boat?”

  He looked away, unable to deny it. And oddly enough, now that I’d said it, in theory there was nothing so terrible about the idea. I’d never been on a boat.

  He got me while I was thinking. A long kiss like the ones we’d had last night.

  “Why me?” I asked. “How come you didn’t go after Beth . . . or Clea? Or somebody at school?”

  “How many times do I have to say it? I want to be with you.”

  “All right. But it’ll have to wait.” I pushed out of bed then. “I’m splitting.”

  “Jesus Christ, Sandy. It’s one o’clock in the morning. Where are you going?”

  “Home, I guess. I mean, to Woody and Ivy’s. I’ll catch a cab.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “You will not, Cliff. Now get out of here and let me get dressed.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FRIDAY

  1

  Woody was making me his famous apple pancakes. Which was mighty nice of him, in light of our last meeting. We had not talked since I freaked out on him and Ivy at the commune the day after the murders.

  Ivy was still asleep. I had awakened the two of them at one-thirty in the morning, offering no explanation why I’d chosen that ungodly hour to come calling. I’ll explain everything tomorrow, I told them, and we had all stumbled into our respective beds.

  When I awoke in my old room about 9 a.m., I could smell the sausages and coffee. I followed my nose out to the kitchen and found my uncle, fully dressed, sleeves rolled up, sifting flour into an old crockery bowl.

  I hardly knew where to begin, how to apologize. After a minute of fumbling for the words, I gave up, lip trembling, willing myself not to bawl like a baby.

  Woody put down his wooden spoon and came over to me, hugged me tightly. “You will always be my girl,” he said, and there may even have been a bit of wetness in his eyes.

  “But,” I said when I’d brushed away the tears, “you still think I’m foolish to get all up in this murder thing, don’t you?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t, Cass. But I can see you’re going to do it anyway. So I have to stand with you.”

  The pancakes didn’t disappoint. They were just as delicious as I remembered. Truth was, Woody was a better cook than Ivy, who had help with the household stuff several days a week. But on lazy Sundays or holidays, Uncle Woody would prepare one of his specialties—pancakes, or pepper steak, or his sensational duckling in sweet sauce.

  After eating, we sat at the kitchen table over our coffee. Woody lit a cigarette with his beloved old Zippo. “Jack tells me you came to see him.”

  “Yeah, I did.” I hoped Klaus hadn’t gone whining to Woody, telling him how rude I’d been, or that I’d stormed out of his office.

  “He says some things are coming to light about these two youngsters. Details about the deaths. It’s not nice, Cass.”

  “I didn’t think it would be.”

  “He says the boy was tortured before they killed him.” Tortured. Jack Klaus was right: That was personal, I thought. “But it looks like they killed the girl right off. The homicide detective thinks she might’ve just walked in on i
t.”

  I swallowed hard, refusing to visualize any of it.

  “Cass, doesn’t common sense tell you somebody was trying to get something out of that boy he didn’t want to give up?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Must have been a pretty big secret he was keeping.”

  “Wilt didn’t keep secrets.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I hesitated before answering. I was thinking about what Klaus had revealed yesterday—the old relationship between Mia Boone and Dan Zuni. That was a secret, wasn’t it? But I didn’t know whether Wilt was party to it.

  Almost as if he was reading my mind, Woody said, “Cass, you were devoted to this boy. But you have to ask yourself some hard questions. You say you knew him so well. But is that really true? What kind of things was he doing when you weren’t with him? Who all was he associated with? What about his friends?”

  “His friends were my friends. We all lived together.”

  “I don’t mean them. The boy lived in Chicago all his life until he went to school, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he get into any kind of trouble while he was away?”

  “He never told me about anything like that. Neither did Taylor. They were at school together. I’m sure the police asked him about that.”

  “Maybe he had enemies here in the city, people you don’t know about.”

  “It’s hard to think of Wilton having enemies.”

  “Don’t be childish. Everybody’s got enemies. Young men get up to things they don’t want other people to know about. Especially colored boys in these times.”

  “Oh, look, Woody. Wilt was no criminal. His mother and father have money, and they sheltered him all his life. He went to the Lab School and Francis Parker. His dad is Oscar Mobley, one of the biggest, richest lawyers in the city.”

  “You don’t have to tell me who Oscar Mobley is, girl. I’m the one can tell you about him. And one thing I’ll tell you is, it’s a good thing he is a smart lawyer, because he was able to get your boy out of trouble with the law.”

  “What trouble?”

  “Drug trouble. Wilton Mobley was arrested for selling dope to his classmates.”

  “Oh.”