Shadowmaker

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  “This is neat, Katie,” he said. “I’m sure I’d really like to be walking here with you, if we didn’t have to talk about what we have to talk about.”

  “That’s practically what I was thinking,” I said, being more honest than I probably should have.

  “You were?” He turned that handsome smile on me again. “Well, then let’s get it over with.”

  Nearby was a sand bank, scattered with wisps of sea grass. Travis reached for my hand and led me to the bank, brushing off a handful of broken shells. We sat down, and I stared out silently at the pale sea, with its gold skim broken only by two oil rigs and a ship in the distance, and waited for whatever Travis would tell me.

  “Part of what you said to the sheriff was right. I did talk to Lana Jean in the alley back of Kennedy’s Grill,” Travis began. “Only she made out what we said to be different than what was really said.”

  I turned to face him. “Lana Jean told me the two of you talked for a while.”

  He shook his head. “She talked. I listened.” He paused for a minute, then asked, “Did she tell you what we talked about?”

  I looked away from him and admitted, “She told you that she’d followed you a few times and—”

  Anger sparked in his voice as he interrupted. “It was a lot more than a few times. According to what she told me, she was practically a spy.”

  “She had this big infatuation for you, but you didn’t even know about it, so it couldn’t have hurt. Don’t get so mad.”

  “I did know. I heard a lot about it from some of the guys who saw her spying on me at school. They thought it was funny.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He looked down at the toes of his Nikes, scuffing them back and forth in the sand. “She told me she even wrote down everything she saw me do or heard me say in her journal for English lit class.”

  When I didn’t answer he continued, “B.J. told me that Mrs. Walgren asked you to help Lana Jean with her journal. I assume you probably read it. Right?”

  “Only a little bit,” I answered.

  He straightened up and studied me. “What parts did you read?” When I hesitated, he pleaded, “You don’t know how embarrassing this is for me, Kate.”

  “You don’t need to be embarrassed,” I said. “I only read the first couple of entries. I skimmed a few others.”

  “Did you read about the carnival?”

  “Just the first couple of paragraphs. That’s when I told her she’d have to write it over again and explained about description and emotion and sensory perception … you know, all of that.”

  I thought I noticed a kind of relief in his eyes, and that took me by surprise. “It’s just that I ran into Cindy Jones at the carnival and … well, there were a couple of minutes behind the Ferris wheel … but it was just for fun, and if Lana Jean wrote about that, well … It’s just not something I’d want everybody to read about—especially you. Okay?” His face turned a blotchy red.

  “It’s okay,” I mumbled. “I don’t know why you’d care what I thought about you and Cindy Jones—whoever she is.”

  He leaned back and smiled again, his words coming out in an easy drawl. “Now that I’ve met you, Katie, I really do care what you think.”

  It must have been the way he said my name, but I began to be glad he cared. I could understand what Lana Jean saw in him.

  I shook myself back and realized I’d better stick with the way the conversation was supposed to go. “Lana Jean told me that you said she was a very interesting person, and you’d like to get to know her better.”

  He grimaced and moaned, “No way!”

  “And she said you were going to take her out.”

  Travis looked directly into my eyes and said, “If someone kept shadowing you, then cornered you in an alley while you were waiting for a friend, and told you how he followed you and wrote all about everything he saw you do and heard you say, would you tell this person how interesting he was and say, ‘Let’s get to know each other better’? Or go on a date?”

  I didn’t have to think about it. “No,” I answered.

  He hunched his shoulders and spread his arms wide. “There. You see?”

  I nodded. “I’m the new kid in Kluney and Lana Jean was so open and kind to me, like a little kid. I just didn’t think she’d lie.” Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. “I was so worried about what happened to her after her mother called and said she was missing, that I tried to help. I told the sheriff that you and she had been talking, but I didn’t tell him what you were talking about.”

  He said, “I’d appreciate it if you could keep it that way. I told Sheriff Granger that what happened was I was waiting for B.J. in back of Kennedy’s Grill and Lana Jean came out and wanted to talk to me, but I brushed her off. Maybe I was even kind of rude to her. I’m sorry now if I was rude.”

  He looked so contrite I impulsively reached out and rested my hand on his. He sandwiched my hand between his two and said, “There’s no harm done. The sheriff’s known me and my family all my life, and he knows Lana Jean and her mother. He believed me.” He turned my fingers so that my hand was tightly held inside his own, and bent toward me. “I hope you’ll believe me, too, Katie.”

  I gulped. I had no reason not to believe him, except that it made no sense that Lana Jean had called me so excited she could hardly talk, then fed me a made-up story. It was crazy, but then some people might say Lana Jean’s obsession with Travis was kind of crazy.

  “Do you believe me, Katie?” Travis asked.

  “I guess I do,” I answered.

  Suddenly Travis said, “Quick! Take off your shoes.”

  “What?”

  He began tugging his off, dropping them on the sand. “C’mon. Race you along the water’s edge.”

  “Not me!” I laughed. “The water’s freezing.”

  “That makes you run all the faster.”

  He bent to grab my feet, tossed my shoes next to his, then pulled me after him down to the water, making sure I ran splashing into the nearest wavelet.

  “Ouch!” I shrieked. “It’s cold!”

  Letting go of my hand, he raced down the beach, splashing through the shallow foam that slid up and back on the hard-packed sand. I ran after him until he came to a stop and caught me, pulling me up on the dry sand where we flopped, out of breath.

  “My toes are red,” I said, wiggling them for emphasis.

  “It’s good for the circulation.”

  “They’re so cold they’re tingling.”

  “Then cover them up and stop complaining,” he teased, and heaped sand over my feet.

  “I liked racing,” I managed to say.

  “It’s not over yet,” Travis told me. “We’re a long way from your house, and we’ll have to race back.”

  I surprised myself by adding, “I’m in no hurry to go back.”

  He smiled at me. “Good. Then we’ll have a chance to get to know each other better. Tell me about yourself.”

  “There’s not much to tell. My dad died six years ago, so I live just with my mom. She writes a national newspaper column and some articles for magazines, but she’s always wanted to write a novel, so she took a leave of absence for six months from her job. There was no one for me to live with for six months—we haven’t any close relatives, and my mom wouldn’t let me stay with a friend’s family—so I had to come along. If Mom can finish her novel by the end of summer, I’ll go back to my school and my friends in Houston.”

  “Your mom really is writing a novel?”

  “Really. You saw her printout copy.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t read what it said. Most people in town think she came here to investigate the Hawkins brothers’ company. After all, she stirred up trouble in other places.”

  “Mom didn’t even know about the Hawkins brothers until Anita Boggs came to see her and asked for her help.”

  “Is that what Miz Boggs did? Came to your mom? A lot of folks think that your mom went to Miz Boggs.”<
br />
  I sighed. “How would she know Mrs. Boggs? I’m not used to a small town. In Houston something happens and no one ever hears about it. In Kluney everyone seems to know everything and anything the others are up to, even if their information is wrong.”

  “Folks in Kluney are interested in each other.”

  “Anita’s husband beat her up. Everybody was interested in that, but no one seems to care.”

  Travis looked surprised. “Sure they care. Some of the ladies, like my mom, went to visit and brought her casseroles.”

  “A casserole isn’t going to make up for a mean, abusive husband.”

  “Harvey Boggs isn’t mean. He was just scared that he and all the others in town who work at Hawkins would lose their jobs. Miz Boggs didn’t think about what she was doing.”

  “What if there really is toxic waste?” I asked Travis. “Aren’t the people in Kluney afraid of living with that?”

  “Nobody’s proved there’s any toxic waste to worry about.”

  I didn’t want to get involved in an argument and ruin what time we had left on the beach. The afternoon shadows were long and low, and I knew we’d have to leave soon in order to be back at the house before the sun went down. The thought of Travis with me on a moonlit beach was appealing, but it seemed ridiculous as well.

  As I got to my feet and brushed sand off the seat of my jeans, I asked, “Since you know everything that’s going on around here, tell me about our house—who was in it before we moved in, and who was throwing rocks, knocking out our outside lights, last week?”

  Travis took my hand, and we ambled along the hard-packed sand, heading toward my home. I was glad he’d forgotten about racing back. This was nicer. “I can answer the first question,” he said. “No one lived in your uncle’s house for over three years, but last year we all figured some beach bums had made themselves at home. A couple of people saw some strangers along the beach, but nobody comes down here much, so they didn’t pay close attention.”

  “Beach bums … that’s what Mom guessed and that’s what the sheriff said. The house was a mess when we moved in. We really had to scrub it down.”

  “Aren’t you glad it’s a little house, with just the four rooms and a bath?” he teased. “Think what it would have been like to clean anything bigger.”

  I grimaced. “Those four rooms and a bath were still an awful lot of hard, dirty work.” We were getting close to home and an end to our conversation. “You didn’t answer the rest of my question. What about the lights? Who threw the rocks?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “Kids?”

  “No. It wasn’t kids. Someone had been watching the house a couple of nights before that. The dogs in the properties along the road barked and woke us up, and that’s how we saw the prowlers—just watching the house, hiding in the shadows, until Mom turned on my bedroom light and called the sheriff. It was creepy.”

  “It sure must have been,” Travis said. “It sounds as if someone wants to scare you away.”

  “The Hawkins people?”

  “I don’t think so. It doesn’t sound like something they’d do.”

  “Right.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my voice. “I forgot Harvey Boggs. The Hawkins people are more into physical violence.”

  Travis threw me a sharp look. “Don’t blame Bubba and Billy Joe Hawkins for what Harvey did. He’s just one employee.”

  “You’re quick to come to their defense,” I shot back. “I suppose the Hawkinses are related to you too.”

  “Second cousins on my mom’s side,” he answered, “but that has nothing to do with what I said.”

  I had no answer. Was everybody in town going to defend or cover up for the Hawkinses? What about me and Mom?

  We picked up our shoes and walked almost up to the porch before Travis stopped and looked directly into my eyes. “Have you thought about this? What if whoever had been in your house left something and decided to come back?”

  “Don’t!” I said as I shivered. “You’re frightening me.”

  “I’m sorry, Katie,” he said, looking so remorseful I wanted to hug him. “I was thinking out loud. I want to take care of you, not frighten you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, although the idea still made me feel a little shaky. “Besides, if something had been left behind we would have seen it when we first cleaned the house.”

  “Right,” Travis said. “I told you I was just thinking out loud.” He smiled and added, “I didn’t promise to make sense.”

  I could hear Mom banging pans around in the kitchen, so I took his hand and said, “Let’s go in and see what Mom’s cooking. If there’s enough, maybe you’d like to stay for dinner.”

  “Thanks, but my folks are expecting me to show up for supper on time.” I took a step forward, but Travis didn’t budge. “Katie,” he said, “According to B.J., you told Mrs. Walgren that Lana Jean probably didn’t throw away the torn-out pages from her journal.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know where they are? I mean, since what she wrote was about me, I’d sort of like to have them.”

  I wished he hadn’t asked. The journal pages were Lana Jean’s property, and I had no right to give them to Travis or anyone else. “When Lana Jean turns up, you’ll have to ask her where they are,” I said.

  His gaze was penetrating. “I thought you’d know.”

  I couldn’t tell Travis I had the missing pages. Lana Jean had trusted me. I tried to make light of the situation and teased, “And you’ll have to get in line behind Mrs. Walgren. Even though she told us she hadn’t read Lana Jean’s journal entries, she wants those papers too.”

  Travis followed me up the porch steps. “Can I see you again?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Travis smiled. “I’ll pass along the word that your mom really is writing a novel. That will give the gossips something to work on, and they’ll stop worrying about what she’s planning for the Hawkins brothers. By the way, is it a sexy romance?”

  “Travis! Is that the kind of novel you think a woman would write?” I grinned at his discomfiture and added, “Tell them it’s going to be a blockbuster, a best seller.”

  “Soon to be a major motion picture,” he said.

  We both laughed. “Thanks for coming over,” I told him. I opened the porch door, holding it wide.

  “I’ll track in too much sand,” Travis said, shaking his head. “I’ll just cut around the other side of the house.” He bent toward me, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead he said, “Don’t be afraid, Katie. I don’t think you’re going to have any more trouble.”

  He ran down the steps and soon disappeared around the far side of the house.

  During dinner I told Mom what Travis had said as he left.

  “No more trouble?” Mom repeated. “I hope he knows what he’s talking about. That would be good news.”

  Good news? I wondered, or wishful thinking?

  CHAPTER TEN

  The dogs woke us, and I heard running footsteps along the walkway, but by the time Mom stumbled into the room and we threw back the drapes at the window there was no one in sight. The outside lights allowed us just the glimpse of a car heading back up the road.

  “Do you recognize the car?” Mom asked.

  “It’s too dark. I couldn’t tell what it was. It might have been a sedan or maybe even a pickup.”

  I let the drapes fall back into place and shivered. “Someone ran up to the house just outside my window, Mom. He stopped for only a second, then ran back.”

  Mom and I stared at each other for a moment, and I could see, by the sudden fear that widened her eyes, that we were both remembering the stink bomb that had been tossed into her hotel room two years ago when she was writing about fraud in one of the unions.

  “Get into my bedroom,” she said, pushing me so urgently that I slammed a shoulder against the door frame. “If there’s an explosion, climb out the window.”


  “Mom! Come with me! You can’t go out there! What if someone really did leave a bomb?”

  Panicked, I pulled on her arm, but she pulled back, and our struggle swung us out of the little hallway into the kitchen. Mom suddenly stopped tugging, and I stumbled into her.

  “Look,” she said, pointing at the floor just inside the kitchen door. “It’s not a bomb. It’s a letter.”

  Neither of us moved to pick it up, watching the small envelope as though it might suddenly slither across the floor and strike.

  “It’s only a letter,” Mom finally said, and before I could stop her she broke away from me and picked it up, slipping a single sheet of paper from the open envelope. “Short and to the point,” she said, and read aloud, “ ‘Get out of Kluney before it’s too late.’ ”

  The crude threat was corny, sounding as though it came from an old western movie, but the anger that made someone print those words was plain and raw, and it scared me. “Do you think it’s from Harvey Boggs?” I asked.

  Mom shrugged. “Harvey Boggs, Belle Dobbs, Bubba Hawkins … Who knows? The warning could be from practically anyone in Kluney.”

  “Are you going to call the sheriff?” I asked.

  Mom shook her head. “I doubt if it would do any good. I can hear Sheriff Granger now, complaining that if we didn’t see who shoved the warning under the door, then he couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “What are we going to do, Mom?” I asked.

  “Stay right here,” she said. “I’m not doing anything wrong. I have a novel to write.”

  “Good! That’s it, Mom—” I began, but she interrupted me with a familiar tight, determined expression.

  “And this warning makes me all the more interested in discovering exactly what the Hawkins brothers are up to.”

  I grabbed her shoulders and begged, “Mom! Don’t go to the waste disposal plant. Forget it!”

  “I have to go, Katie.”

  “Then promise that you won’t go by yourself. Take me with you. Promise me! Please!”

  “All right, Katie,” she said. I didn’t expect her to give in so easily. “I’ll pick you up after school tomorrow, and we’ll drive out to the plant and see if we can get a glimpse of whatever’s inside that fenced-in property that reaches from the main building all the way down to the bayou.”