Quicksand Pond

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  “Time to be off!” her father exclaimed.

  They all walked stiffly to the car, where Jessie got in the backseat and her parents got in the front. They waved good-bye, leaving Julia and Jonathan plodding up the long driveway.

  They drove most of the way in weighty silence. But as they approached the station in the center of town, Jessie’s mother turned around and said:

  “Smile.”

  “What?”

  “Right now. Give me a smile. . . . Good. I just wanted to be sure you didn’t have any leftover cereal in your teeth.”

  “Mom!”

  “You don’t.”

  Jessie hadn’t expected to see Terri at the police station. She’d assumed she was still at the correctional center in Canville. Suddenly there she was, coming out the station door just as the Kettels were going in.

  “Hi,” Jessie said. “Are you back home now?”

  Terri shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

  It was all they had time for, they passed so quickly. Jessie might not have even noticed the odd position of Terri’s arms, the flash of metal at her waist, if she hadn’t been looking at her clothes. She had on a collarless lime-green shirt that Jessie had never seen before, and matching cotton pants that looked like pajamas. More shocking than that, her dark hair had been cut off as short as a boy’s. A woman official steered her through the door. Behind them both strode Mitch Carr with an angry look on his face. Jessie’s father stepped aside without speaking to let him pass.

  Jessie’s mother put her arm firmly around Jessie’s shoulders so she couldn’t look back.

  “Were they interviewing Terri this morning too?” Jessie asked.

  “I have no idea,” her mother answered.

  “She was wearing handcuffs.”

  Her mother didn’t answer. She marched Jessie straight ahead.

  The interview was conducted in a small room without windows. Jessie sat on a couch between her parents. Sergeant Smith was behind a desk, friendly and apologetic.

  “So sorry to drag you in here in the middle of your vacation. I won’t keep you long. I just want to tie up a few loose ends.”

  He looked at Jessie.

  “So you’re the one who found the raft,” he said with a grin. “Must’ve been left over from last summer. Or maybe the summer before. That saltbox you’re in doesn’t always rent out. Too primitive for some.”

  “I found it floating near the bank of the pond,” Jessie said. “It was waterlogged.”

  “Then you ran into Terri where, near your house?”

  “It was near her house. I’d found a pole and took the raft up the pond. She came out and got on it with me.”

  “And that was the first time you met?”

  “Yes.”

  “After that, who kept the raft?”

  “In the beginning I did mostly, on the bank near our house. Terri came over in the mornings and we’d take it on the pond.”

  “Terri wouldn’t come in,” her father interjected. “She’d sit outside in the grass and wait for Jessie to come out.”

  “Did that seem unusual?” Sergeant Smith asked.

  “No,” Jessie said at the same time her father answered, “A little.”

  “Well, it worried our older daughter,” her father explained. “She’d heard some things on the beach about Terri. And then our laptop was stolen.”

  “That was later,” Jessie objected, but Sergeant Smith held up a hand.

  “Just a moment. What kinds of things had your older daughter heard? What’s her name?”

  “Julia,” Richard and Marilyn Kettel answered together.

  “She’d heard that Terri had been in trouble for shoplifting,” Jessie’s father said. “And about the kind of family she came from. I began to realize she was, you know, disadvantaged.”

  “But that was much later, Dad,” Jessie protested again. “In the beginning you liked Terri. You said she seemed like a nice person.”

  The officer was writing something on a pad and didn’t look up. Jessie’s father went on as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “From what we understand, Terri took our daughter up to a house where there was a tool workshop of some kind. The idea was to fix up the raft, make it float better.”

  “That’s where I was going next,” Sergeant Smith said. He looked at Jessie. “Did you take tools from the Cuttings’ garage?”

  “We only meant to borrow them,” Jessie said. “They were in an old workshop in the garage where no one had been for years. We brought some down to the raft so we could fix it. We weren’t stealing.”

  “Jessie told us she thought she had permission to use the tools,” her mother said.

  Jessie nodded. “I did sort of think that because—”

  “Terri had said her father worked for the Cuttings,” her mother interrupted, “so naturally Jessie assumed it was all right to borrow the tools.”

  “Is that right, Jessie?” the officer asked.

  Jessie shifted in her chair. “Well, sort of,” she said. “It was kind of a fine line. I went along with it because Terri thought it was okay.”

  Sergeant Smith nodded. “I understand. I guess Terri was shading the truth a little. Mitch Carr once did some groundskeeping for the Cuttings, but that was over long ago. There was nothing that would’ve entitled her to be in their garage. But let’s go on. Did you put the tools back after you were through with them?”

  “Not right then,” Jessie said. “Because someone had started breaking into the garage and we were afraid to go back. Terri said we should wait and not get involved.”

  “Did you get the idea that she might know who was breaking in?”

  “I don’t think she knew for sure. She said there were people around who might be doing it because they were, you know, addicts. Or they might have just been hard up.”

  “So she wasn’t too surprised that it was happening?”

  “I don’t know if she was surprised, but she was worried,” Jessie said.

  “Worried that it might be discovered?”

  “No. Just that it was happening.”

  Sergeant Smith put down his pencil. “And after that?”

  “Well, I got scared,” Jessie said. “I could see how things were getting out of control. So that’s when I asked Terri to take me home. I said she could have the raft.”

  “So the friendship broke up?”

  Jessie’s mother leaned forward. “I wouldn’t call it a ‘friendship’ in the normal sense of the word,” she said. “Terri offered a way to fix Jessie’s raft, that’s all. It’s not as if our family knew the Carrs or they knew us. Jessie was never in their house and Terri was never in ours. By invitation, at least. They never went to the movies together or to the beach. It was a relationship of convenience more than anything. The moment Jessie saw where she was being led, she stopped. Isn’t that right, sweetie?”

  Jessie looked down. “Sort of. We really were friends, though.” She turned to her mother. “It wasn’t convenience. I really liked Terri and she liked me.”

  “Well, then, tell the officer about Terri’s fire starter,” her mother said.

  “Oh, we already know about the lighter fluid at her camp,” Sergeant Smith said. “Terri says she was using it to start her own campfires.”

  “No, this is different. Jessie, tell what you saw. Tell what it made you think about the fire.”

  Jessie couldn’t answer right away. A sick feeling was welling up inside her. She didn’t want to say what they wanted her to say, but she was afraid to go against them too. She twisted in her chair and thought how miserable Terri had looked going out the station door, her hands linked together, her hair cut off, wearing clothes that weren’t hers, without anyone to help her. There was only Mitch, looking mean and disgusted, and the woman officer guiding her through the door, holding fast to her arm. As if Terri were dangerous or might try to get away. As if nobody trusted her for one minute, anywhere.

  “Jessie?”

  Sergeant Smith had
stepped out around his desk. He was drawing a chair up directly opposite her. He sat down and leaned forward so she couldn’t avoid his eyes.

  “Jessie, I’d appreciate you telling me what you saw,” he said. “It will help us to know more about the whole situation, and it will help Terri, too. She’s been at risk for some time. You and your parents are newcomers here, understandably unaware of her past. To state it plainly, Terri Carr isn’t headed in the right direction. She’s headed into trouble. You’d be doing her a favor to tell us what you know. You’d be acting like a friend.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  If it hadn’t been for the raft, Henrietta Cutting would never have known who the killers were. They would have been just men in gray coats and wet boots, standing in the front hall below her; men with guns.

  As silent and quick as a shoal of silvery minnows, the raft could slip between shadowed reeds. It could creep up the shore like an invisible wind, barely disturbing the water. She was on a mission that day, in the summer of her twelfth year, to find the snapper. Over a century old, it was said to be, though no one she knew had actually seen the great turtle. Did it exist? Was it a fact or a fiction? Henrietta was determined to find out. Sunbathing was a snapper habit, she’d read. That morning she was out early, canvassing the mud flats and the boggy edges around the pond, hoping to catch the enormous creature asleep on a bank.

  What she caught instead were words of a hushed conversation coming through the reeds.

  “Cooper, what kind of pistol is that?”

  “A Browning semiautomatic. Brand new.”

  “Very pretty. Very pretty. You’re not going to shoot out here with it, are you?”

  “Not here. It’s for later. The big man said we’re to give it back after.”

  “That’s the way these days. You can’t even keep your own piece.”

  “We’ll be cleaning up in other ways, so what’s the difference? Shhh. I heard something.”

  Henrietta crouched on the raft and waited.

  “Thought I heard a wood duck,” said the hunter named Cooper. He had a high, hoarse voice.

  “Could’ve been a loon.”

  “Nah. Not this far south.”

  “Well, I don’t see a thing around here right now,” a third man complained. “How about we go farther up so Buster and me can get a look at the terrain.”

  “We haven’t been out here a half hour and Shootsy’s already getting antsy,” the Cooper voice said with a scratchy chuckle. “Sure, let’s go. Let’s give Shootsy a look around.”

  “Just for the record, I do my work with my own piece,” Shootsy growled. “A good old shotgun. Hey, anyone got a light? I could use one.”

  There was the scrape of a match. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted through the reeds. Henrietta lay down flat as the three passed within six feet in a rowboat and headed out into the pond.

  She guessed the man named Cooper was Albert’s father. He didn’t visit the family cabin often enough to be familiar, but she saw a resemblance. And she saw his hunting companions, brawny men with ball-game caps and open-necked shirts.

  Mr. Cooper, on the oars, wore a hat and tie. He had reddish hair and a pink complexion like his son, now verging on tomato. All three men looked overheated, though it was still quite early in the day. Inexperienced hunters, Henrietta thought they were. She watched them go up the pond until their voices faded and she was sure she could move the raft undetected. She resumed her own hunt for the snapper, a will-o’-the-wisp she never did encounter.

  She recognized them that night. Those three hunters were the men in the hall with her mother and father. But at the time no one ever asked her. The police had caught the killer, she was told. In her dazed state she never questioned it. She was taken to a private home near Philadelphia, where her mother’s cousins lived. Then, when she was better, she was sent across to England. It wasn’t until she came back years later that she understood Eddie Carr had been convicted.

  “The milkman?” she said. “But he wasn’t even there!”

  She knew Eddie. He was a cheerful, dark-haired man of twenty-five or so who delivered their milk from his family farm down the road. How could he have been involved? Slowly it dawned on her: A mistake had been made! She began to tell people. She called her cousins to say the man in prison was not the right one. She spoke to her family lawyers. She telephoned the police, who said the case was closed. Too much time had passed. She was confused, they informed her. Her memory was unreliable.

  Perhaps, but over the years she saw them, one or another of the killers, walking around town in broad daylight. Red-faced Mr. Cooper, or the big, brawny man people called Shootsy. She’d passed him, or someone who looked exactly like him, just the other day. She’d confronted him herself. Murderer! Someone had to say something!

  In the end, she gave up trying to convince people. Eddie Carr had died, she heard, so what was the use? Only occasionally now was she tormented by dreams of that night. There was no telling what set them off. Sometimes a face or a voice reminded her; sometimes it was just a random collision of events.

  This time it was the visit of two local police officers that stirred the sleeping snake of her memory.

  “Sergeant Smith, how do you do? And you are? . . . Officer Wells. Please sit down. Is it too hot in here?” They were in the old solarium. “Mrs. Parks, would you kindly draw the shades for these gentlemen?”

  Henrietta, showing a bit of her mother’s Southern hospitality, was in the midst of a handshake when she caught sight of the gun. It was a short-barreled pistol, holstered in a black leather case on the officer’s hip. The second officer had one too. This was bad enough, but when the two began asking questions about the girls, her girls, Henrietta wet her lips and grew wary. Nothing must interfere with them.

  “I have occasionally seen a raft on the pond, but never close to my shore,” she announced. “I have no idea who was aboard.”

  “Yes, you do,” Sally Parks piped up from across the room. “You said they were girls. Two young girls.”

  Henrietta denied this with spirit. “I certainly never saw such a thing. It might’ve been boys, for all I know.”

  “So you did see somebody on a raft,” the first gun queried. “I mean, there were two kids out there, am I correct?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t see anyone?”

  “Not anyone recognizable.”

  “Mrs. Cutting . . .”

  “Miss Cutting. I never married. And never will,” Henrietta added, free of charge. “What I would like to know is why you officers didn’t come around before. Why was I never consulted?”

  “You mean . . . about the fire?” the second gun asked.

  “Not the fire. The murder! Now, if you were to ask me about that, I could give you a clear answer. It wasn’t the milkman who did it. He was never there. It was Mr. Cooper and his hunters.”

  Both men looked over at Sally Parks. “Has there been a recent murder?” the first gun inquired.

  “Not that I know of,” Sally said.

  “Who is Mr. Cooper?”

  Sally waved a dismissive hand. “She gets a little lost sometimes. I’m sorry I can’t help you myself, but I really wasn’t paying attention. Miss Cutting was the one with the binoculars.”

  The two turned their attention back to Henrietta.

  “Miss Cutting, we’d be grateful for anything you could tell us about a raft and the girl we believe was on it. Terri Carr is her name. She lives down at the end of the pond. We have reason to believe she was landing on your shore, possibly stealing from your garage. She may have started the fire.”

  “Ridiculous!” Henrietta exclaimed. “Why would she want to do that?”

  “So you admit there was a girl.”

  Henrietta paused to consider. She was beginning to understand what the officers were after. They were looking for a milkman, trying to pin the fire on someone. As they had done once before, they were making a mistake. She cleared her throat and decided to tell the t
ruth.

  “I do remember now, there was a girl out on the pond that day of the fire.”

  The first gun nodded. “Just what we thought. Dark hair? Wiry build?”

  “Yes.”

  “About twelve or thirteen? Shorts. Blue plaid shirt?”

  “Yes.”

  The first gun glanced at the second gun, as if the case were already closed and this was all they’d need to wrap up a conviction. Henrietta rushed to set the record straight.

  “That girl could not have set fire to my garage.”

  The first gun’s eyes swerved back to her. “And why is that?”

  “Because she wasn’t anywhere near my landing that afternoon.”

  “Now, Miss Cutting, this is important. Exactly where on the pond was she? And at what time?” The second gun had taken over the questioning, homing in on her so fiercely that Henrietta felt a dark motor of fear switch on in her chest.

  “Why, in the middle! She was standing on the raft, watching the fire.”

  “She was watching it?”

  Henrietta nodded. “And then she went straight home. She took the raft and went home. I tried to wave, but I don’t think she saw me.”

  “That may be true,” Sally Parks confirmed. “Miss Cutting was standing at the window when I came upstairs. She was waving at something. I couldn’t see what.”

  The second gun gave Henrietta a cool glance.

  “From what you say, this girl could easily have come from your landing, couldn’t she? She could’ve been watching the fire for the very reason that she started it.”

  “Oh, no!” Henrietta exclaimed. “She wasn’t watching it that way. She was shocked, as shocked as anyone. I saw her face.”

  The first gun chuckled. “Now, Miss Cutting, even with binoculars, how could you have possibly determined that?”

  “But I did see it!” Henrietta insisted. “And I’m quite sure that girl is not the person you’re looking for. I’m quite, quite sure because . . .”

  At this moment Henrietta lost her bearings. Her mind, under stress, unmoored and cast off from the shores of the present. The scene shifted to the past and she began to tell a different story, the one she’d wanted to tell all along.