First things first. I had to hurry because Justin would be coming. I tossed the envelope on the bed, but I had second thoughts. I didn’t know why, and I felt a little stupid about what I was doing, but I put the envelope under the stacks of T-shirts and shorts in the bottom drawer of my chest of drawers, making sure it was well hidden.
The steaming water took away the chill, but I was still shivering from fear. What would I say to Cindy? Should I tell her she’d been mistaken for me? No. That would sound dumb. There’d be too many things to explain, too many questions without answers.
I needed Cindy to tell me what she saw. I hoped she could describe the driver of that car. Had anyone got the license number? If they had, Cindy’s family would probably know.
Carrying a warm coat and another umbrella, I waited in the entry hall for Justin. From the corner of my eye I caught a movement and whirled to face Dexter the Silent.
“Are you going with your parents to the party tonight in Fort Worth?” he asked.
“Yes, I am,” I answered. Mom had mentioned it—Fort Worth’s chance to meet the party’s three candidates. We’d have barbecue and a Western band, and she thought I’d have fun. But with all that had happened, that particular celebration had gone out of my mind. I didn’t feel like a party. I hoped Mom and Dad wouldn’t care if I didn’t go.
“I assume you’ll also be attending the fund-raiser for your father on Friday?”
I assume you’ll be attending! Sometimes I got the feeling that Dexter tried too hard to sound like a butler-chauffeur. I kept a straight face and answered firmly, “Yes. I’ll be there. That’s the big night, and Dad’s going to give an important speech.”
I knew the speech would include whatever Dad’s investigators had discovered about the awarding of construction contracts and payoffs to Jimmy Milco, but I didn’t know what all of that information was. I suppose I could have told Dexter that much, but because I was suspicious of him, I didn’t want to tell him anything.
However, there was something I could ask him! Hoping to catch him off guard, I blurted out, “Dexter, where are you really from?”
Instead of a simple, direct answer, he queried me in turn, “Exactly what do you mean?”
I couldn’t tell him that Sally Jo and I had done some checking up on him and found that the employment agency didn’t have his name in their files. I was stuck, so I mumbled, “You know. Like, have you always lived in Dallas?”
“Dallas is my home,” he said.
That didn’t tell me anything. Did he mean it’s my home now, or I was born here, or I’ve lived here ten years?
Okay. Have it your way, I thought. But I’m not through with you.
I didn’t talk much after Justin and I entered the hospital. Hospitals have a way of making you feel you should whisper and tiptoe. Fortunately, Cindy’s door was open because I wouldn’t have known whether to knock or just wait quietly until someone opened it. Cindy was propped up on pillows, one ankle in a cast, and her mother was seated by the bed, holding her hand.
There were already bouquets of flowers in the room and a big box of chocolates, and I was embarrassed. We should have brought something.
We said hello to Mrs. Parker, but I hung back, afraid to touch Cindy in case I hurt her even more. “I’m terribly sorry!” I said.
Cindy’s smile was a little lopsided, probably because of pain pills. “It doesn’t hurt now,” she said. “The doctor told me what was broken, but I can’t remember what he called it. Anyhow, it was just a hairline fracture.” Her smile suddenly drooped. “I’m afraid I ruined your coat, Cary.”
“Don’t even think about my coat! The coat’s not important! That driver could have killed you!”
Mrs. Parker leaned forward. “Did you see him, Cary?”
“No,” I said.
She persisted. “Did you get the license?”
“I didn’t try to get the license. I’m sorry. I was looking at Cindy. I was trying to get to her before …”
“I understand.” Mrs. Parker’s shoulders sagged. “No one saw a license plate, and no one can identify the driver. I can’t imagine what that man was doing on your school grounds.”
I turned to Cindy. “You saw him?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Just enough to know it was a man who was driving and not a woman.”
“Did he have dark hair? Light hair?”
“I have no idea. I saw the car coming straight toward me, and I got the impression that a man was driving. That’s it. And then I jumped.”
She jumped! Great! I felt a lot better knowing that the car hadn’t touched her.
Justin and I talked with Cindy and her mother another five minutes, then some of her relatives came by, so we said good-bye and left. We stopped off in the gift shop, picked out a huge teddy bear and a bottle of cologne, and arranged to have our gifts sent to Cindy’s room. Thank goodness for credit cards!
As we walked to Justin’s car I said, “I hoped Cindy could tell me something about the driver.”
“You’ve only told me part of the story,” Justin said. “You said I should trust you and you’d fill me in on the rest of it later.”
During the drive home I did just that.
“I don’t get why someone is doing this,” Justin said.
“It all started the day after Mark’s party,” I told him. “I’m guessing it must be because of something they think I overheard on the terrace.”
“You said what you heard wasn’t important. You told me that the night of Mark’s party.”
“I hadn’t thought about what it meant,” I said.
“Can you do that now?”
I went over the whole conversation. “That’s what I heard. That’s it. Does any of it mean anything to you?”
Justin thought a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he said. He pulled up in front of our house, and I climbed out of the car. The rain had let up, and the grass and shrubbery glistened. I took a deep breath of the cool, clean air.
“Don’t you want me to come in?” he asked. “Cary, I won’t leave you alone for a minute, if you think it will help.”
I ducked back into the car and gave him the kind of kiss I’d been missing so much. “There’ll be plenty of people around,” I said, “but I promise I’ll call on you any time I need you.” I sat back and grinned. “And then some.”
He gave me a lingering kiss good-bye, and I reluctantly pulled out my front-door key. But the door opened before I could use it.
“Hi,” Mom said. “I saw Justin driving off.” She gave me a hug and asked, “Now. Tell me. Why wasn’t I supposed to ask Justin to give you a ride this morning?”
I just smiled and said, “No reason. You can ask him to give me a lift any time.”
Mom looked a little puzzled, but she didn’t push. Instead, she said, “It took you long enough to get home from school.”
“We came home to change clothes. Then we went to the hospital to see Cindy Parker. She broke her leg.”
“Oh, good gracious!” Mom said. “I’ll have to call Mrs. Parker. How is Cindy feeling?”
“She’s feeling pretty good. She said it was only a hairline fracture.”
I expected Mom to ask how it happened, but she said, “You can tell me all the details later. I’m really running late. I’ve got to get ready for that Fort Worth barbecue.”
I was glad to escape an explanation. They were excited about the party. This was a big night for both of them. I couldn’t ruin it by telling them that I suspected the driver was not after Cindy but was after me.
Dad arrived home a few minutes later. He greeted me and asked, “Where is Laura?”
“Upstairs, getting ready for Fort Worth.” I tagged up the stairs behind him and, when we reached the top, said, “Do I have to go?”
“I thought you’d want to.”
“Not really.” I told him that Cindy had been hurt and had a broken leg. I added, “It’s like I’ve been holding my breath all day, and now that I’ve let it
out, I’m tired.”
He smiled. “Stay home if you wish. The barbecue will be good, but the speeches won’t be that exciting.”
“Are you going to say anything about Governor Milco?”
“I’ve got some good solid information about him,” Dad said. “I’m afraid it goes beyond Milco and his friends just lining their pockets with taxpayer money through construction kickbacks and blatant favoritism. But I’ll make that proof public in the speech I’ll give at the fund-raiser banquet on Friday, because there will be good television and newspaper coverage. Tonight I’ll speak about education reforms.”
“What about Ben Cragmore’s construction company?”
“We’re working on that, but it has to be done the hard way. We still haven’t found the missing superintendent who can be our chief witness and who’ll tie it all together for us.”
“When you do tell everyone about what Milco and his friends are doing, will they arrest Governor Milco?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“First, the state’s attorney general would have to bring charges. Since he’s in the governor’s party and was elected on Milco’s coattails, he’s likely to delay on taking any action.”
That made me mad! “Well, at least the voters won’t vote for Milco when they find out what he’s done!”
Dad gave me a rueful smile. “I’m afraid you need a more realistic view of history, Cary. Some voters will vote for anyone who’s in the ‘right’ party, and many voters will vote for a name that sounds familiar, not knowing anything about the person for whom they’re voting.”
I shuddered. “Politics, yuck!”
“I’ve heard that before,” Dad said with a smile.
I grinned back. But then I wondered, what was so funny? Not politics!
I ran back downstairs to see what there was to eat. I didn’t want Velma to have to go to the trouble of making a special dinner just for me. She probably had planned a meal just for Dexter and herself. I didn’t feel like a big meal anyway, so I decided to stay out of the way and let her think I’d been taken care of.
Velma wasn’t in the kitchen, so I made myself a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, dumped some potato chips on the plate, and added an apple. There was just about enough butter pecan ice cream for one big serving in the carton, so I tucked it in one arm, managed to hang onto a can of diet soda, and headed for my bedroom. There was a well-balanced meal. Did I know my basic food groups, or what!
I was busy doing my English lit homework and polishing off the ice cream when Mom and Dad came in to say good night.
“I’ll get out the car,” Dad said and left.
But Mom hesitated. “Have you got enough light?” she asked. “That desk lamp reaches such a small area.”
“It’s enough, Mom,” I said. “The desk is the only place where I’m working.”
“I can turn on the overhead light.”
“Then it’s too glary. I’m fine, Mom. Honest.”
Mom bent and kissed my forehead. “See you later, honey,” she said, and gently shut my bedroom door when she left.
It was quiet in the house. The telephone wasn’t ringing because I’d taken it off the hook. I would have liked to talk to Allie, but I absolutely had to catch up on my homework. I knew that Velma would be snug in her apartment off the kitchen, watching her usual television programs. Dexter, of course, would have gone to his garage apartment right after an early dinner. It was wonderful, for a change, to have a quiet house that wasn’t filled with people. And I didn’t have to worry. The police were keeping an eye on the house. Occasionally I’d seen a police car drive past, and I was awfully glad to know they were nearby.
An hour later there was nothing left to eat, and I was practically falling asleep over some long poem by Robert Browning, which at the moment wasn’t making sense, when I heard the small squeak of the creaking board outside my door.
As I reached up and snapped off my lamp, the darkness swooped in, smothering me. My throat was dry, and I was afraid to breathe. I sat very still while my eyes grew used to the dark. I waited. And waited. And listened intently for another sound.
A narrow streak of light from the hallway lay like a bright border at the bottom of my door, but as I watched, a shadow broke it, then another.
Someone was standing right outside my bedroom door!
Chapter 16
Frantically, I looked toward the telephone, but it would take too long to hang up, wait for a dial tone, and call 911. And it would make too much noise. Whoever was in this house was waiting and listening, too.
At any minute he was going to enter my bedroom, and there was nowhere I could hide.
But as I stared at the shadow, holding my breath as he shifted his feet, it came to me that there was one place in which he wouldn’t see me if he opened the door. I’d hide behind the door.
Carefully and slowly, I stepped closer and closer to the door and the shadow, knowing that at any moment the person outside the door might open it, and we’d be face to face. Numb with terror, I saw the doorknob begin to turn, and I slid into place against the wall just as the door opened. My heart pounded. Please, I begged, don’t let him hear it!
The shadow, accented by the light in the hall, stretched its long dark limbs across my carpet and grew into the figure of a man who walked into the middle of my room. Cautiously, he turned his head from left to right as he scanned the room, and I could easily see who he was. Dexter.
What did he think he was doing, creeping into my room!
I couldn’t confront him here. I didn’t know what he had in mind. I only knew that I needed help. And soon. At any moment he might turn around and discover my hiding place.
I moved forward stealthily, squeezing around the edge of the door. Then I ran, my adrenaline pumping like super-fuel, propelling me down the stairs.
“Cary!” Dexter shouted. “Stop!” He was right behind me.
I jumped the last three steps and ran across the entry hall, yelling, “Help! Velma! Help me!”
But a hand came down on my shoulder, and I was spun around so hard I fell against Dexter.
He righted me, keeping his grip on my shoulder, as he said, “I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t know you were home. I thought you’d gone with your parents.”
I could hardly get the words out. “What are you going to do?”
“Apologize,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Why were you in my room?” I took a deep breath and tried to speak more normally.
“I thought I heard someone upstairs. I had to check it out, so I went upstairs to look around.”
“I wasn’t making any noise. I was just sitting there, reading.” I jerked my shoulder, trying to pull away, and Dexter released his grip.
“You may not have been aware of making noise,” he said. He stood a little straighter, held his chin a little higher, and assumed his usual expression of detachment. “One’s chair squeaks; one brushes a foot against the desk. It’s easy not to notice.”
Dexter was back to being a butler, but I knew he wasn’t a real one. I’d caught him off guard, and now I was sure. He was a fake.
What was he really doing upstairs while he thought Mom and Dad and I were out of the house?
Velma scurried into the entry hall, fumbling with the tie on her robe. “What’s the matter, Cary?” she asked. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Fort Worth with your parents.”
“I’m afraid I unwittingly startled Miss Caroline,” Dexter told Velma. “I believed that the entire family had gone, so when I heard a car pull into the drive, then leave, I wanted to be positive that the house was secure. I was in the living room when I heard a sound over my head, so I went upstairs to find out what it was and, in the process, I frightened Miss Caroline.”
I wished he’d stop talking like that. He didn’t have to. I’d heard him when he’d dropped the butler pose.
I realized that Velma was looking at me,
waiting for whatever I’d have to say. What could I do except go along with Dexter’s smooth explanation? “It was about like that,” I mumbled. “I didn’t know Dexter was in the house.”
“Why didn’t you go to the barbecue?” Velma’s thoughts made an abrupt shift. “Oh, my, you didn’t have dinner. Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?”
“No, thanks,” I said. I looked at Velma, unwilling to meet Dexter’s eyes, and mumbled, “I’m sorry I got so upset and made so much noise. Okay?”
“Okay,” Velma said and smiled reassuringly.
“Of course,” Dexter said. His steady gaze felt like lasers boring into my skull.
Velma. The envelope. I suddenly remembered. Velma had told me that Sally Jo brought it, and I’d taken it upstairs and hidden it. Was that envelope what Dexter had been after? Or was it me?
“Good night,” I said and made a dash for the stairs. Once I was safely inside my room, I carefully locked the door.
I slipped the envelope from under the clothes in the bottom drawer and dumped out the contents on my desk, under the reading lamp. There was a short note from Sally Jo in which she said she was enclosing a computer printout about Ben Cragmore.
“I skimmed some of it,” she wrote, “but didn’t have time to go through it in detail. We can do this tomorrow. John Lamotta is in each of the pictures. Do you recognize him?”
Did I ever!
There were three newspaper photographs—small groups of men—and even though the faxed copies weren’t as clear as real photographs, there was no mistaking the man I’d seen with Ben Cragmore.
And there was no mistaking the girl in the fourth photograph. The caption underneath that photo identified her as Francine Lamotta, John Lamotta’s daughter.
I read through the printout next. There were a million uninteresting things in it about Ben Cragmore. I did find out that he’d been before a grand jury a couple of times but hadn’t been indicted. There was something about a sale of stock under question and about falsified receipts on supplies, but he’d never been officially charged, and he’d never gone to trial. However, he’d been sued at least a half-dozen times by other firms. Twice he’d lost and had to pay up. One case was still on appeal.
A Candidate for Murder Page 13
