Dangerous

by Lee Magner

  “Yeah, Momma,” he called out. “I’ve got the scriptures in my hand now…”

  As always, he felt comforted.

  Luther Fitch closed his eyes. The black velvet of sleep slid softly over his head.

  Call Clare in the morning…tie up the dog tomorrow night…

  “Yeah, Momma…got the scriptures in my hand…” he mumbled.

  Lavinia Browne heard about it at the bank on Saturday morning when she went to cash a check for the week, as she always did. The people waiting in line were listening to the head teller explain to one of the customers that the mayor intended to look into the return of a convicted murderer to their little town.

  Most people remembered Lexie Clayton’s murder. Hardly anyone moved into Crawfordsville, though some of the younger generation moved away to look for jobs. Jobs had been hard to find ever since the glass factory closed back in the early sixties. So most people who lived here had lived here a long time. They remembered the scandalous death of Lexie Clayton at drunken Seamus Malloy’s hands. Since Malloy had no relatives here, no roots like the rest of them, it was easy to stamp him a reprobate and want him excised from their midst, like a malignant, foreign substance.

  Lavinia pursed her lips and marched home only to find Clare had returned from the grocery and was standing on the porch with two heavy paper bags of purchases, waylaid by the mayor himself.

  “Well, hello. Grissom,” Lavinia said, nodding and smiling politely at the Honorable Grissom Bonney, mayor of Crawfordsville, just about the most pompous person she’d ever met in her seventy years of existence. He was looking as puffed up and full of himself as ever today.

  “Lavinia,” the mayor acknowledged her, with a quick nod reminiscent of a baron nodding to a passing tenant. He turned back to Clare without missing a beat of what he’d been saying. “So I think we should put off that meeting with the lodges on Monday and use that time instead to hold an emergency meeting with the town council about this matter of Seamus Malloy coming back to our fine and peaceful community.”

  Clare shifted the weight of the packages against her torso and tried to follow her mother inside. Lavinia had stopped and was holding open the door for Clare. His Honor was apparently unaware that the door was open or even that Clare had anything in her arms. He was totally obsessed with his own purpose, which was to get Clare to cooperate with his crisis management plan for Seamus Malloy.

  “Whatever you do will be fine,” Clare assured him. “But perhaps I could go ahead and meet with the lodge leadership council on my own? There are other places we could get together besides city hall…”

  “Well, I suppose… No, wait a minute. That won’t do. They should probably attend the special town council meeting. A couple of them give very generous donations to several of the council members and I’m sure their seasoned advice on this matter will be highly valued.”

  “I’m sure,” Clare said dryly. Seasoned advice, indeed, she thought contemptuously. Even small towns had fat cats.

  The mayor wasn’t paying the slightest attention to her face, though, and he was blissfully unaware of Clare’s opinion of the donors’ influence on town council activities.

  “Phone them right now and explain, they’ll understand. I’ll call them this evening…”

  Clare didn’t bother to remind the mayor that she wasn’t his secretary and that Saturday was her day off. She knew neither fact would cause him to withdraw his demand. She knew something else that would, though.

  “Uh, I think most of the lodge members and their leaders are over at Lake Iroquois preparing the picnic tables and decorations for tonight.”

  The mayor hit his forehead with a chubby hand.

  “Oh, yes! The annual May picnic at the lake! Never mind, then, uh, I’ll run over there now and take care of it personally. I have to make sure the podium will be set up for my opening speech, anyway.”

  “Well, then, it won’t be a complete waste of your time. It’s very generous of you to do it, Mayor.” Clare smiled appreciatively. She felt a little hypocritical, but told herself that he was doing her a favor by saving her from the phone calls today. “And would you mind telling them that I’ll call them next Tuesday to reschedule the meeting?”

  “I’d be happy to, Clare,” the mayor said magnanimously. He smiled broadly, the way he did when he campaigned. “Just think of it as a constituent service… and be sure and treat me nicely when you get around to updating the town history next year.”

  Clare laughed. The mayor had a twinkle in his eye. He never missed a chance for good publicity.

  “Uh, aren’t those bags heavy, Clare?” he asked suddenly, as his attention shifted to her sagging arms and overstuffed bags of groceries, seeing them for the first time. “You ought to get them in the house.”

  “I’ll do that right now,” Clare said. She staggered into the house and managed to reach the kitchen table before the bags fell from her grasp. “Goodbye, Mr. Mayor,” she shouted. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard him shout farewell back to her.

  “I made it!” Clare gasped.

  She leaned on the packages, now safely sitting on the sturdy kitchen table. Then she turned and grinned at her mother, who’d bid the mayor farewell, slammed the door at the shadow of his departing back and had joined Clare in the kitchen.

  “I was hoping to save the week’s meals before they ended up on the floor in bits and pieces,” Lavinia exclaimed. “But I see that you’ve got them safe and sound… and not a second too soon,” she added, noting the rip at the bottom of one of the bags.

  The relieved grin faded from Clare’s face.

  “I don’t like the way the mayor was talking, Mother,” Clare said.

  “Hmm. Yes. It does seem he’s getting ahead of himself, doesn’t it? I mean, no one’s actually seen Seamus here in Crawfordsville. It’s just a rumor that Paula Lightman saw him in Luther’s car…”

  Clare wished she could believe it was just a rumor. She had the feeling that it was Seamus who had been in the passenger’s seat of Luther’s old Chevy.

  The phone rang.

  Lavinia picked it up.

  “Hello? Yes. I’m fine, thank you. And yourself?” Lavinia rolled her eyes and waved intently at Clare, who’d started putting away the food and wasn’t paying any attention. “Well, yes, she is. Would you like to speak to her?”

  Clare looked up at that.

  Lavinia arched her brows for emphasis as she addressed her daughter and held out the phone to her.

  “Clare, it’s Luther Fitch. He’d like to speak with you, dear.”

  Clare’s mouth fell open in surprise.

  Her mother shoved the phone toward her with a touch of impatience.

  Clare took it.

  “Hello, Luther?” she said, a little unsteadily.

  “Clare?” he said briskly. “Well, by now I guess you know that Seamus Malloy’s back and he’s staying here with me. Case and I talked it over last night and decided you oughtta know what’s going on, so I’m gonna tell you…”

  Clare sat down in the chair by the telephone table and listened to every word he said. When he got to the part about Case coming back to town, her heart started to pound. Case was coming back!

  Chapter 3

  The picnic at Lake Iroquois had been going on for as long as anyone could remember. A hundred years ago, people had come in horse-drawn buggies and wagons, with their children and their homemade pies and their bathing suits that resembled long underwear more than anything else.

  Saturday continued the tradition, only the bathing suits were a lot more revealing and the horsepowered vehicles filled up on gasoline instead of hay before going home.

  Families with children had their picnic sometime between two in the afternoon and six-thirty at night. Then the parents hustled their tired and sunburned offspring back into the vans and station wagons that would carry them home before dark.

  The single people, engaged couples and those married but free of child-rearing duties for
the evening usually began arriving as the moon rose big and creamy white in the eastern sky.

  On the huge amphitheater stage where local acrobats and amateur magicians had entertained rapt youngsters all afternoon, a band was setting up to play dance music from twilight until the party ended, which was expected to be somewhere around eleven o’clock.

  Clare discovered that she was going to see more of the party than she had anticipated. Franklin called Saturday afternoon to inform her that his father had canceled their campaign strategy meeting. He then went on to note that there were a lot of voters at the annual picnic that he could rub elbows with. Not that he wasn’t looking forward to spending additional time with Clare, of course, he hastened to add.

  Franklin was always quick to smooth over any ruffled feathers, Clare thought wryly. They’d been casual friends for most of their lives, though, so he really didn’t ruffle her feathers with comments such as that. She knew Franklin always put Franklin’s interests first. And since she wasn’t in love with him, that never caused any problems between them.

  Clare dropped the phone back in the cradle and wondered whether she really wanted to go to the picnic much earlier than they had originally agreed. Of course, that might offer her an excuse to leave earlier, she realized. Clare brightened.

  Since she’d-heard that Case was coming back, her enthusiasm for her Saturday night date had severely waned. She didn’t even bother to try to fool herself that it wasn’t so.

  “Sorry, Franklin,” Clare muttered under her breath.

  ‘’Was that Franklin on the phone just now?” her mother asked in surprise. Lavinia’s brows formed a disapproving ridge. “He wasn’t trying to back out of tonight, was he?” Lavinia never was certain just how much anyone could count on Franklin, and her opinion slipped nakedly out when she voiced that suspicion.

  “Back out of our date?” Clare asked in surprise. “No. As a matter of fact, he’s picking me up earlier.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, that’s all right, isn’t it? I thought eight o’clock was late to go to a picnic, even though people treat it like a late dinner date sometimes,” Lavinia declared. “A picnic is supposed to happen while the sun’s up!”

  “You’ll never convince people around here of that, Mother. They’re locked into generations of tradition on this.”

  “Tradition, hmph!” Lavinia sniffed.

  “Franklin said that the mayor is so busy talking about Seamus with everyone he can buttonhole for five minutes that he doesn’t have time to work on Franklin’s reelection bid, which naturally, hasn’t left Franklin in the best of moods.”

  “Oh, dear!” exclaimed Lavinia in disgust. “I don’t know why we keep reelecting Grissom Bonney. He can create problems faster than anyone in the southern quarter of the state.”

  Clare grinned and shrugged.

  “Remember that at the next election, Mother.”

  Clare climbed the stairs to her bedroom and her mother trailed along behind her. Her clothes were already laid out on the bed, and she stared at them, wondering if she should put on something a little, well, more alluring. Something that a woman with a touch of sophistication and, um, experience might wear.

  Clare was sure that Franklin wouldn’t take it as a come-on. She expected that he would notice, and probably pay her a compliment. Then she thought he’d ignore the clothes for the rest of the evening. There had never been any undertones of sexual appeal between them, and Clare was sure that a more daring clothing style wouldn’t do anything to change that. Franklin was fundamentally absorbed in himself. Women were merely decorations to hang on his arm. Except for a few women, such as herself, who were longtime friends of his family. He treated Clare more like a sister than anything else.

  Which brought Clare back to the very unsisterly attire she yearned to have right this moment but, alas, did not possess.

  “Clare Browne, what on earth are you thinking? Your face is as intent as Martha Lightman’s tabby cat when it corners a mouse in the church.”

  Clare groaned with frustration.

  “I’m just not the vamp type,” she despaired, having a hard time imagining herself in anything racier than the simple clothes that were hanging in her closet.

  Lavinia chuckled. “You don’t see yourself the way a man does, Clare. You might be shocked to discovered just how attractive you are to them.”

  “You’re right,” Clare said with an impish grin. “I’d be shocked. Nice try, Mother, but don’t worry about it. I’m resigned to being the perpetual ‘girl next door.’” She glanced at her wristwatch and made a face. “I’d better hop in the tub and start getting ready. Franklin will be here before very long.”

  “You know, Clare, I’m beginning to think that Seamus is having a very beneficial effect on this community,” said Lavinia with enthusiasm. “Why, he’s hardly been here for a day and Franklin’s reelection campaign is disappearing, the mayor is making an incredible donkey’s posterior of himself, and you are wondering whether you’d have the nerve to dress like a shady lady!”

  “A shady lady?” Clare squealed in outrage from the bathroom over the sound of running water. “I was thinking no such thing! And that term hasn’t been used in, well, in my entire life and probably not more recently than your earliest girlhood! Really, Mother!”

  Lavinia’s eyes twinkled and she smothered a delighted laugh. She didn’t want to irritate Clare so much that she’d revert to her usual mousy ways.

  “You know, Clare,” Lavinia said, speaking over the sound of the bathwater. “Your father never would have noticed me if I hadn’t worn stockings with little bows embroidered on the ankles. I sewed them myself, since my mother only bought me the plain black ones. My father was apoplectic when he realized what I’d done! But Henry loved it. And he decided I might not faint if he asked me out. After all, a girl with black bows on her ankles obviously wasn’t afraid to flirt a little”

  Clare sat in the bath, bubbles up around her bosom, and stared at the door in utter amazement.

  Little black bows embroidered on her stockings?

  Clare stuffed the washcloth against her mouth to stifle a hysterical giggle that threatened to spill out. Life didn’t change much, she thought, choking on her laughter.

  “But I put them on,” Lavinia emphasized, as if divining her daughter’s train of thought.

  And I haven’t, Clare thought, silently completing her mother’s observation.

  Clare splashed the soapy water over her skin and concentrated on bathing. Thinking was stirring up too many dangerously tempting thoughts.

  “Look at that moon,” Franklin exclaimed. He flashed Clare a smile and turned his car into the parking area not far from the picnic grounds at Lake Iroquois.

  Clare obediently admired the moon. It looked just the way it always did, rising early in the evening at this time in May. Like a polished plate, it shone down on them. The cloudless night let the moonlight play on the rippling surface of the small lake, frosting the dark blue-black waters with thin wavelets of fresh cream.

  “Do you remember when we were kids and came out here?” Franklin asked, walking around to open the car door for her.

  Clare got out and accompanied him as he headed toward the food and the strains of music.

  “Sure, I remember, Franklin.”

  “That summer when we were seventeen…”

  “I was sixteen,” she reminded him ruefully.

  Franklin was preoccupied and nodded.

  When he didn’t continue, Clare prodded him. “What about that summer, Franklin?”

  “It was a turning point, wasn’t it? I mean, when Lexie was murdered, everything changed, didn’t it? We’d all been friends, spent summers together, but after that summer when Lexie was killed, we all drifted apart.”

  “Well, you’d been away at boarding schools a couple of times…”

  “Yes, but we kept in touch. You, and Peter and Paula Lightman, and Lexie…”

  “And Case,” Clare added.

  Frankli
n glanced at her.

  “Case was always a little on the outside of the group, didn’t you think? I mean, you were very loyal to him and tried to help him fit in, but he was different. Everybody knew he was different. Your smoothing over the differences didn’t really change that.”

  Clare felt the old anger well up inside her. “You’re beginning to sound like a snob, Franklin!”.

  He shrugged and grinned.

  “Well, at least I’m not a hypocrite,” he countered.

  “What made you think about the old times here?” Clare asked curiously.

  Franklin’s eyes were focused on the edge of the lake. A mask seemed to settle over his features and he shrugged off her question.

  “Well, it’s just reminiscing. You know, here we all are again… I’m sure the others will be here, too. Except for Lexie. And Case.”

  Clare wasn’t sure about Case. She would have been completely astonished to see him here at the town’s lakeside block party, but she knew he was expected at Luther’s. She wasn’t about to tell Franklin that, however. Or anyone else. Luther hadn’t exactly asked her to keep it a secret, but he’d made it clear that she was being told because she was special.

  That had indeed made her feel very special.

  Luther and Case weren’t telling anyone else what was happening. At least, not yet. So neither would she, Clare vowed.

  Franklin put his hand at the back of her waist and guided her through the thickening crowd. As they threaded their way through the evening “picnickers,” Franklin shook hands, made small talk and purchased a beer for himself and a birch beer soda for Clare.

  By the time they reached the lakeside amphitheater, Clare had seen about half the adult citizens of Crawfordsville and quite a few people who lived out in the county. She’d also watched Franklin make clever, personal comments with each and every one. He made a memorable connection with every person he shook hands with along the way.