Shadowmaker

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  Gritting my teeth, I led Lana Jean to the car. Ten o’clock seemed like a week or two away. In spite of Lana Jean’s excitement, I didn’t look forward to going to the carnival.

  The rides and booths were set up on a large lot that had been cleared for a proposed mall that had never taken shape. The faded and torn billboard, erected near the road, still offered space for rent. Around it pickup trucks and cars were parked wherever they could squeeze in, and beyond them crowds of people swarmed under the colored lights and balloons. I parked in the only spot I could find, way down the road, and Lana Jean and I walked back to the carnival.

  I should say, I walked. Lana Jean was so high on excitement that she was all over the place, like a little kid going to see Santa Claus.

  As we reached the fringes of the carnival, some kids from school spotted her and stared hard. One even waved, but Lana Jean didn’t notice. She was busy looking for Travis, and nothing else mattered.

  Floating over the din of raised voices and tinny music, came the spicy fragrances of hot dogs and pizza. My stomach growled, and I realized how hungry I was. “Let’s get something to eat,” I shouted.

  “Not yet,” Lana Jean yelled over her shoulder. “I have to find Travis first. Come on!” To make sure I’d stick with her, she grabbed my wrist and tugged me in her wake.

  In front of a ring-toss booth she stopped so abruptly I plowed into her, nearly losing my balance. She pulled my face close to hers and whispered, “There he is!”

  Ahead of us, at a shooting gallery, stood Travis, rifle in hand, a confident leader of the pack surrounded by his friends, including my least favorite person, B.J. Behind his cloud of cigarette smoke I recognized Duke Macon, a tall, hefty, dark-haired guy who was repeating history along with Delmar Johnson. Delmar was a quiet guy who sat in the back row, slumped so far down that he rested on the back of his neck, and never got an answer right when he was called on. The three of them were egging Travis on, daring him to beat their scores, stopping only when he raised the rifle and fired.

  Someone bumped into me, and I tried to edge out of the main path. “Okay, we’ve seen him,” I said. “Now what?”

  Lana Jean turned to look at me with wide eyes. “Well, now it’s time for him to see me,” she said. “He’ll be through shooting in a minute, and we’ll walk past him and say hi.”

  I had to think fast. I was not going to walk past that group of guys with B.J. and say anything. “It won’t work if I’m with you,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Then they’d have to talk to both of us. You want Travis to see only you.”

  “He’d see me,” she said, but there was a question in her voice, and I jumped to answer it.

  “But not as much, if he had to talk to me too.”

  Lana Jean took a long breath and let it out in a sigh. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go alone, but where will you be?”

  “Right here,” I said. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “What’ll I say?”

  “What you told me you’d say. Say hi to him.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Unless he says something to you. Then you can stand there and talk for a few minutes.”

  Lana Jean straightened her shoulders and, as though there were only two people at this carnival, walked as gracefully as she could right through the crowd that elbowed and pushed around her, until she reached Travis’s cluster of friends.

  He was just handing the rifle to one of the other guys with him when Lana Jean stepped up and spoke.

  Travis looked down at her with a kind of puzzled look and said something. I hoped he was telling her she looked great, but I doubted it.

  “Hi, Katie,” someone said behind my back, and I whirled around. Tammy went on. “I saw you come in with Lana Jean. You made her look good. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  I just nodded.

  “I recognized your blue blouse.”

  “Where’s Julie?” I asked. “Wasn’t she coming with you?”

  Tammy smiled and said, “She’s here, and so are some other friends you haven’t met yet. Want to join us and get something to eat?”

  My stomach rumbled, and I giggled. “Sure,” I said, but then I remembered my promise to wait for Lana Jean. I glanced at the spot where she’d been talking to Travis, but the guys had left, and there was no sign of her.

  “Did you see where Lana Jean went?” I asked Tammy.

  “B.J. and Travis and those other guys they hang out with went toward the rides,” she said. “Lana Jean waited a minute, then I think she followed them.” Tammy paused and looked embarrassed. “She’s had a thing for Travis all year,” she said, “and it’s so obvious, everyone knows about it. Travis’s been really rude to her, but that hasn’t discouraged her for a minute.”

  “She shadows him,” I said.

  “I know. That’s probably what she’s doing now.”

  For an instant I was angry. She’d told me to stay here and wait for her, then she went wandering off. “Where are we meeting your friends?” I asked Tammy. “I’m getting hungry.”

  For a while I looked around for Lana Jean, but there was no sign of her, and no sign of Travis and his friends either. Tammy and I and the other girls tried the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round and a crack-the-whip ride that nearly brought up the hot dogs I’d eaten. I was actually having fun, and I had to admit to myself that I was glad I’d come to the carnival.

  Tammy’s father came to pick her up a little after ten, and I noticed that the crowd had begun to thin out. I purposefully began searching for Lana Jean, even checking all the rides, but I couldn’t find her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I grew more and more upset. I wanted to get out of that place, but I was supposed to give Lana Jean a ride home. If she’d gone somewhere with someone else—I couldn’t imagine it was Travis—she should have let me know.

  I decided to walk back to Mom’s car to see if by any chance Lana Jean had gone there to wait for me. Outside the gaudy, bright circle of carnival light, the road was dark and lonely. I hesitated, waiting for others to leave so that I’d have company.

  Two women and an elderly man walked past me, laughing as one of them said to the man, “Finally had enough, did you? Or do you want to go back and have a try at that crack-the-whip?”

  I stepped forward eagerly, grateful to have company on the dark road, but their car was parked close to the carnival entrance, and they drove off, leaving me standing in the middle of the road, wondering what to do next.

  The plop of running feet behind me caused me to yelp and whirl, ready to defend myself, but a voice called, “Katie! Where are you going? You said you’d wait for me!”

  “Wait for you!” I repeated, anger flooding out the fear. “How long did you expect me to wait? It’s almost eleven! My mom is probably worried. Where have you been all this time?”

  She stopped in front of me, breathing hard, her head down as though she were a child being scolded. “I thought you’d know,” she said. “I was watching Travis.”

  In spite of the problems she’d caused me, I felt so sorry for her I couldn’t stay angry. “Lana Jean, why do you spy on Travis? He must know you’re shadowing him.”

  Her head jerked up, and she insisted, “No, he doesn’t! I’m real good at it.”

  “But why do you want to? He isn’t even friendly to you.”

  “He isn’t unfriendly.”

  “How can you say that?” I started to walk to the car, and she trotted along beside me. “Look, this is what I mean: Tonight … what did he say to you tonight?”

  “Hi.”

  “That’s it? Hi? Nothing else?”

  “I asked him if he was having fun, and he said yeah. And then I asked if he wanted anything to eat, and he said no. And then they started to walk away, and B.J. told me to get lost.”

  I groaned. We’d reached the car, so I unlocked it, automatically checking the backseat, and we climbe
d in. “Why don’t you forget Travis and get interested in some other guy?” I asked as I swung the car around and headed back the way we had come.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  She gave me directions to her house, and I let her off in front. She thanked me again for the clothes and the makeover. “I really felt pretty tonight,” she said.

  My impatience vanished, and I answered, “You looked great.”

  “Could I come over tomorrow afternoon with my journal?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Did you write something in it since Mrs. Walgren handed it back?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll have to write something. I know. Write about the carnival. Try to focus on how you felt about the lights, the music, and the crowds.”

  After an instant’s thought her eyes brightened. “I will. That’ll be easy to write about. See you tomorrow!” She slammed the car door and ran up the walk to the front door of the small bungalow. I waited until the door closed behind her, then pulled away from the curb.

  In my rearview mirror I noticed a car without lights move out into the road. Nervously, my heart beginning to pound, I pressed down on the gas pedal, and shot ahead, eager to get home.

  It wasn’t until I rounded two curves and reached a straightaway that I could look back and see that no one was following me. I decided I was getting paranoid. Just because someone had forgotten to turn on his headlights was no reason to jump to the conclusion that he was after me.

  Even though I tried to think rationally and calm down, as soon as I had parked the car in the garage I ran toward the house as though something were chasing me.

  I burst through the door to find Mom still at her computer. “I thought you’d be in bed,” I said, and locked the door.

  Mom blinked, looked up, and said, “I decided while I was waiting up for you, I’d read over the first few chapters of my novel, and I began thinking about rewriting one of the scenes, and the next thing I knew …” She laughed, hit the end and save key, and turned off the computer. “You stayed longer than you thought you would, so you must have been having a good time.”

  I nodded. There was no point in going into my reason for leaving the carnival later than I’d planned. I babbled on about the kids I’d met and what we did until Mom gave a humongous yawn. “You’re tired, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “I bet you are too,” Mom said with a smile. “Do you want anything to eat, or are you ready for bed?”

  “Bed,” I answered.

  Mom put an arm around my shoulders. “What you did for Lana Jean was very nice. Did she have a good time at the carnival?”

  “I guess. In her own way,” I answered. “By the way, she’s coming over tomorrow again so I can help her with her journal.”

  “Fine,” Mom said, and paused. “Maybe the two of you could … work on her journal in your bedroom?”

  “I guess you could hear us on the porch,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Mom said. She gave my shoulders a little squeeze and her eyes crinkled as she added, “The story’s going well, Katie. I feel good about taking time off to write my novel.” She paused and the smile disappeared. “On Monday I should get the information I requested about the Hawkins brothers’ company.”

  I let out a long, impatient sigh. I couldn’t help it. “Mom, I think you’re crazy to start investigating toxic waste around here, but if it’ll save time I’ll help you find out whatever you need.”

  “I think it’s better that you stay out of it, Katie,” Mom said. “In fact, I just wish there was a relative I could send you to.”

  “No,” I said firmly, hoping to stop her from thinking in that direction. She might discover an elderly great-aunt and ship me off, and it would take even longer to get back to Houston. “Mom, no matter what, I’m staying right here with you. And nothing bad is going to happen. I know it.”

  It was the next morning, after church services, that we heard about the murder.

  The people who’d learned about it were so full of the news they even included Mom and me in the telling. Short, lumpy-jowled Belle Dobbs, who managed the drugstore, clutched Mom’s arm and leaned close. “The murder victim was one of the carnival hands, according to the sheriff. Otis Cantrell—you know who Otis is. He has that used-car lot on the highway to Corpus. Anyhow, Otis was out in the woods behind the carnival lot early this morning, and practically fell over the body. Like to scared him to death.”

  “You said the man who was killed was a carnival worker?” Mom asked. I could see Mom’s investigative-reporter side emerge.

  Belle nodded vigorously, then rolled her eyes and let her voice drop. “Shot right in the chest,” she said.

  “No one heard the shot?”

  Belle’s younger sister, Sudie, a somewhat plumper copy of Belle, elbowed in, shocked excitement in her voice. “One of the carnival people told Sheriff Granger he thought he heard a car backfire somewhere around eleven-fifteen to eleven-thirty, but with the noise at the carnival—the motors on those rides make an awful racket, don’t you think?—no one heard anything. No one even missed him until all the people had gone and it was time to lock things up. He wasn’t a regular—more a drifter who joined them just a short while back. The owner thought he’d quit without so much as a word, but that didn’t seem so strange.”

  Mom gave a little shiver and looked at me as though she was sorry she’d allowed me to go to the carnival. “Does the sheriff have any idea who killed the man?”

  Belle stepped in front of Sudie, recapturing her place as head storyteller. “The sheriff’s interrogating the carnival people, and it wouldn’t surprise me none if the murderer hadn’t come to Kluney along with the carnival. We all know it couldn’t have been anyone from Kluney.”

  A few others waylaid us as we walked to the car, each repeating the basic facts of the story, with a few imaginative variations. It seems that the sheriff found lots of footprints around the body, which caused Bennie Lutz, head mechanic at the Shell gas station, to come to the conclusion that the victim was killed by a motorcycle gang.

  Gibb Barker, Kluney’s bald-as-a-basketball postmaster, had heard that every one of the victim’s pockets had been turned inside out, everything taken, including identification. “It had to have been a pro,” he said, “come down here from Houston.”

  As we drove home Mom murmured, “Poor man. He and another carnival hand probably got into a fight. It shouldn’t take the sheriff long to find the culprit.”

  I felt creepy, thinking about a murder taking place so close by. I couldn’t help but be glad that at the time the victim was getting killed, I was on my way home.

  It was not the kind of day to dwell on a murder. The sea glittered with reflected sunlight, and the tall beach grass shimmered and shivered under a gentle breeze. I changed into shorts and ran barefoot down to the sand, letting the foam from the icy water trickle up to freeze my toes. Small, long-legged birds chased the wavelets up and back the hard-packed sand, and I watched them, trying to figure out what in the world they thought they were doing. I hadn’t done my warm-ups, but even so I went through the basic positions and a few light pliés; then with my arms behind me like wings, I danced a quick, stiff-legged movement up to the foam and back, mimicking the birds.

  Mom’s call startled me, and I was even more startled to see Lana Jean standing on the porch next to her. I’d forgotten that Lana Jean was coming.

  As I reached the porch steps Mom said, “I’ve made a plate of ham sandwiches, and there’s potato chips and cookies and all kinds of soft drinks on the kitchen table.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and took a closer look at Lana Jean. She was still wearing yesterday’s makeup. The foundation had turned a little orange, and there was a faint smudge of mascara under both eyes. At least she had combed her hair.

  She smiled at me happily and held out a spiral notebook. “I remembered it this time.”

  “Let’s eat first,” I said. “Then I’ll help you with your journal.”


  We munched our way through heaping plates of food before Lana Jean said, “I don’t know why Mrs. Walgren doesn’t like what I write in my journal. We’re supposed to tell what we feel about things, and I do that.”

  I took a last slurp of my Coke and collected the dishes, tucking them inside the dishwasher. Mom was already typing away on her keyboard, so I motioned to Lana Jean. “Come on. And bring your journal. We’ll go over it in my bedroom.”

  I turned to page one and began reading. Lana Jean had written about seeing Travis at a football game. “He climbed up the bleachers to the top, and as he passed me I think he saw me looking at him, so I smiled.”

  Skipping the rest, I went on to the next entry, which was also about Travis, as was the next and the next.

  Farther on, as I thumbed through the journal, I saw that Lana Jean had mentioned Travis’s friends and their secret club, Blitz.

  “This is all about Travis!” I exclaimed. “You didn’t write about anything else!”

  “Don’t yell at me,” Lana Jean complained. “I did what you said. This morning I wrote about the carnival.”

  I flipped to the last pages and read a detailed account of Lana Jean’s arrival at the carnival, looking for Travis, and spotting him at the shooting gallery. She included their conversation and then followed his trail as he and his friends left for some of the rides.

  I couldn’t read any more of it. “You didn’t write about the carnival. You wrote about Travis,” I told Lana Jean.

  “Well, Travis was at the carnival.”

  “Why don’t you make a completely new start with your journal?” I asked. “Promise yourself you won’t write another word about Travis. Skip a page, then write a description of the carnival.”

  She looked puzzled. “A description? Like what?”

  “Like the music, for instance. Do you remember some of the tunes that were playing?”

  “Not really.” Trying to be helpful, she added, “But there was music. I do remember that.”

  “And there were strings of colored lights and lots of people. We stopped at the ring-toss booth. Do you remember what it looked like?”