The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery

by Alan Cook

  THE HAYLOFT

  by

  Alan Cook

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  “The Hayloft,” a mystery set in the 1950s, is a wonderful way to spend some time.”

  —Cathy Yanda for Reader Views

  “Cook has the details in this book just right. Having grown up in that era, in a small Midwestern town I felt like I had been transported back to my childhood. I knew people with bomb shelters and haylofts and spent time playing in both. The bomb shelters are every bit as creepy feeling as described in the book and the haylofts every bit as fun, complete with forts, slides and tunnels built out of the hay bales.”

  —Caryn St.Clair for Mystery Morgue

  “Alan Cook not only recreated the feeling of the fifties with his words but also the tone of the time. Excellent!”

  — Cynthia Lea Clark

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Alan Cook on Smashwords

  The Hayloft

  Copyright © 2006 by Alan L. Cook.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  BOOKS BY ALAN COOK

  Run into Trouble

  Gary Blanchard Mysteries:

  Honeymoon for Three

  The Hayloft: a 1950s mystery

  California Mystery:

  Hotline to Murder

  Lillian Morgan mysteries:

  Catch a Falling Knife

  Thirteen Diamonds

  Other fiction:

  Walking to Denver

  Nonfiction:

  Walking the World: Memories and Adventures

  History:

  Freedom’s Light: Quotations from History’s Champions of Freedom

  Poetry:

  The Saga of Bill the Hermit

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to Dawn Dowdle and my wife, Bonny, for helping to make this book readable.

  DEDICATION

  To Matthew and Mason, who will also be going to high school

  CHAPTER 1

  Some people must like to be the bearers of bad news. One of these is my younger brother, Archie. I had been practicing some preseason tennis on the indoor courts at Atherton High School and then ridden home on my bike, bucking the March winds. I had just barely entered our suburban house when he raced up to me.

  “Gary, Ralph’s dead,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion.

  “What?” I asked, unable to believe my ears. Was this some kind of a joke?

  “Ralph’s dead,” he said again. “He fell off the balcony in the Carter High School auditorium and killed himself."

  This couldn’t be true. Nobody fell off a balcony in real life. That sort of thing only happened in movies. Especially not my first cousin, Ralph, who was an all-star athlete and in complete control of his body at all times. But Archie, who liked practical jokes, looked pale and deadly serious. He obviously wasn’t kidding.

  I raced into the kitchen where my mother and my other brother, Tom, were sitting at the table in our breakfast nook, looking stunned. Nobody sat here at this time of day. Tears rolled freely down my mother’s cheeks while she dabbed at them ineffectually with a tissue and sniffed as if she had a cold. Happy-go-lucky Tom looked as if he had lost his last friend.

  “Is it true?” I asked them.

  My mother nodded and then said, the words choking her, “We just got a phone call from Aunt Dorothy. It happened after an assembly in the auditorium. Apparently Ralph stayed behind and was there all alone.”

  None of this made any sense. “Does Dad know?” I asked.

  “I just called him,” Mother said. “He’s on his way home.”

  My father was the brother of Aunt Dorothy and the uncle of Ralph. I asked more questions, but my mother had given me all the information she had. If it were anybody else, I might have almost believed it—but Ralph. Ralph was indestructible. He climbed the highest trees, dove off the biggest rocks. We were the same age, but he did everything a little bit better than I did—and a lot more flamboyantly.

  ***

  I heard our car pull into the driveway and turned off the radio. I was tired of hearing about communist-hunting by the House Un-American Activities Committee, anyway. And tired of listening to pop songs that had lost their music and meaning since Ralph died.

  I was also tired of itching and not being able to scratch. Quarantined in the small and darkened corner room above the garage with measles, I had been unable to attend his funeral, which had taken place this afternoon in Carter, the second town east of Buffalo, Atherton being the first.

  Part of me felt bad about not attending the funeral, but part of me was relieved. I had never been to a funeral, and I felt that I was too young to start attending them. But Tom and Archie were younger than I was and they had gone. As the oldest, I should have been there.

  Archie was the first person up the stairs. He stopped in the doorway to my room. Nobody was allowed inside except my mother. He wore the same dark blue suit he wore to Sunday School, complete with white shirt and tie. At eleven years old, he was still on the small side, but he was beginning to grow vertically. His light brown hair was neatly brushed, which was unusual.

  “You should have been there, Gary,” he said, echoing my thoughts and breathing hard from running up the stairs. “There were hundreds of people. Everybody loved Ralph.”

  I tried to focus on him through my rheumy eyes and said, “Were there a lot of students from Carter High School?”

  “Yes, they brought them in buses. The church was packed. Some of them spoke. They said nice things about Ralph.”

  “We met our cousins at the reception afterward at the church,” Tom said.

  He had followed Archie up the stairs and was standing behind him in the doorway, looking over his shoulder at me. He also wore a dark suit, but he was a full-fledged teenager, having just turned fifteen. He was challenging me in the height department, although he was still as skinny as a broomstick. He wore his hair short, like me, so it always looked neat. When his acne went away, he would be handsome.

  I was confused for a moment. Ralph was our cousin, but he was dead. He had no brothers or sisters. Then I remembered. “Oh, you mean the ones who came from England?”

  “Right. The Drucquers. They have two kids. Ed is a sophomore at Carter High and Kate is a freshman.”

  So she was Tom’s age. And Ed was between Tom and me. I had never met the Drucquers. They had apparently come to Carter from England a couple of years ago, but Aunt Dorothy had only known about them for a year.

  “Do they have English accents?” I asked.r />
  “Mr. and Mrs. Drucquer do,” Archie said. “It was hard to understand some of the things they said. Ed has an accent, too, but Kate speaks almost perfect English.”

  I didn’t bother to point out that what the Drucquers spoke had a better claim to being called English than what we Americans spoke.

  “Ed is chubby,” Archie said, “like his parents. But Kate is thin and has red hair. Compared to the others, she is very unique.”

  “Unique doesn’t take a modifier,” I said, automatically.

  Ignoring me, Archie continued, “But Ed is a little strange.”

  “He asked us if we knew anything about a diamond necklace that belonged to our family,” Tom said. “It was apparently brought over from England some time ago. But I’ve never heard of it.”

  I hadn’t either. My father appeared in the doorway, dressed in a three-piece suit. He still looked handsome and athletic and had all his hair. Because of the lack of light and the glop in my eyes, I couldn’t see the blue eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He asked me how I was feeling. I told him I was feeling a little better, because that’s what he wanted to hear. He didn’t like any display of weakness. Better to placate him than tell the truth. He said the funeral was tastefully done, with appropriate music and heart-felt eulogies. My father liked rituals, especially if they were well executed.

  He hadn’t learned any more about how Ralph had fallen off the balcony. The account in the Buffalo Express had been uninformative on that score. He had also met the Drucquers for the first time. I asked him how we were related to them.

  “We have a common English ancestor from the early 1800s,” he said. “Although the Drucquers may have originated someplace else, maybe Holland. I’m a little hazy on the details.”

  Tom asked him about a diamond necklace.

  “There is no diamond necklace. That’s a family legend. It’s fun to talk about, but that’s all it is.”

  That night, when my fever was at its highest, I had nightmares about Ralph falling off the balcony at the Carter High School auditorium, over and over again. But it never occurred to me, even in those nightmares, that very soon I would be an involuntary student at Carter High, myself.

  CHAPTER 2

  Everybody has bad days occasionally. I had managed to put together a string of bad days. The longest string I could remember in my seventeen years, except for some of the times I was sick. I shouldn’t be here. I should be in my homeroom at Atherton High School getting ready for the third week of school. But instead, I was sitting in the office of the principal at Carter High School, hoping that he wouldn’t throw me out. The way I had been thrown out of Atherton last week. Had it only been last week? It seemed like at least a century ago.

  Tap tap tap. The sound of the pencil tapping on the desk sounded like the drumbeat for a particularly mournful country song about pickup trucks, booze, and wayward women. It irritated me. And scared me. In fact, everything irritated and scared me this morning. I had an urge to get up from the uncomfortable chair in which I was sitting and run from the office. And from the building. And from the world.

  Dr. Graves continued to tap his pencil as he read a transcript of my grades. The way he wore his glasses down on the end of his nose led me to believe that he didn’t wear them all the time. He was tall—taller than I was. I had discovered that fact when he had stood to shake my hand as I entered his office. It was the first time I could remember shaking the hand of a principal. He had a strong grip, and he looked lean and mean.

  He wasn’t wearing his suit coat, and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up two folds. His hair, what there was of it, was all on the sides of his head. The center had been paved over with skin, still sporting a trace of summer tan. His eyebrows might have more hair than his head.

  He stopped tapping his pencil and looked up at me over his glasses. His dark eyes drilled holes through me for several seconds, making me more and more scared. I tried to brace myself for what was coming.

  “Your grades are good,” Dr. Graves said, in a surprisingly kind voice. “You won’t have any trouble here academically.”

  A wisp of hope. Did that mean he was accepting me?

  “I understand you write limericks.”

  His comment disordered my brain cells. Limericks were not one of the topics I was expecting to discuss this morning. And how did he know? “Er, I’ve written some.”

  “Clean ones I hope. Can you write one about me?”

  “Right now?” Dr. Graves nodded. Maybe this was an admission test. I had been asked to do stranger things. I would keep it bland. I thought for a minute while Dr. Graves tapped his pencil. Then I spoke.

  “Our leader’s a doctor named Graves.

  He sees that each student behaves.

  He won’t lose his poise

  With the girls and the boys,

  And we hope he won’t treat them like slaves.”

  It was a bad limerick, but what did he expect so early on a Monday morning? Then I saw that Dr. Graves was laughing.

  “I hope that doesn’t reflect your true feelings about school.”

  “It’s the best I can do on short notice.”

  His smile disappeared. “You and I need to agree on a few things.”

  I was ready to agree to anything, even to polishing his glasses each morning.

  “I’d like you to not write for the school paper.”

  I nodded.

  “Some of our students write up school events for the Carter Press, our local town paper. You’d probably better stay away from that, too.”

  I continued to nod.

  “Concentrate on your studies.”

  “I-I plan to keep a low profile,” I stammered. Lower than the bellybutton of a snake.

  “Good idea. That doesn’t mean you can’t participate in some extra-curricular activities. I hear you play basketball.”

  He knew my life story. I had played for Atherton last year in the game against Carter. Atherton had beaten Carter, and I had played well. Surely he didn’t remember me.

  “The team can use you. A couple of our key players graduated. And, of course, Ralph Harrison was on the team. Ralph was your cousin, wasn’t he?

  “First cousin.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to Ralph. Do you play any other sports?”

  “I play tennis.”

  “I play tennis. Maybe we can play sometime.”

  I couldn’t picture that. I hadn’t been buddy-buddy with the school administration at Atherton. Although, perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t be here now.

  “I liked Ralph,” Dr. Graves said. “He was a good student and a good athlete. If you do as well as he did, you shouldn’t have any problems.”

  If Ralph were still at Carter, I wouldn’t consider it so much of a tragedy to enroll here. Maybe Dr. Graves knew something about Ralph’s death that I didn’t know. “I never heard the full story about how he died.”

  “There’s not much of a story. He fell off the balcony in the auditorium.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Well, you know how teenage boys are, Gary. They do stupid things. Ralph was probably doing something stupid.”

  “Ralph wasn’t stupid.” And a principal shouldn’t talk like that about his students.

  “I’m not questioning his brains, only his judgment. In the first place, he shouldn’t have been on the balcony all alone when he was supposed to be in class.”

  “Why do you think he was all alone?”

  “Because he was. Mr. White, the janitor who found him, said nobody else was there. The police said the evidence pointed to him being alone.”

  “But couldn’t somebody have been with him and left—?”

  “As to why you are here,” Dr. Graves said, interrupting me, “that’s strictly between you and me. It won’t get beyond this room unless you let it.”

  I gathered that the discussion about Ralph was over. And that if I wanted to be admitted to Carter, I had better not bring it up a
gain. “Thank-you.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  I tensed. Here it comes, I thought.

  “I need you to do something for me.”

  Dr. Graves took off his glasses and looked hard at me. I returned the look, trying not to squirm.

  He said, “None of what I’m about to say goes beyond this room. Just like the story of why you’re here. Swear you won’t breathe a word to anyone.”

  I nodded, dumbly.

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  What were we talking about, military secrets? “I swear I won’t say anything.”

  “Good.” He placed his elbows on the desk and leaned forward toward me. “Have you heard of the House Un-American Activities Committee?”

  If you listened to the radio, you couldn’t avoid hearing about HUAC. But I tried to ignore it. What happened in Washington wasn’t high on my radar screen. “Yeah.”

  “To refresh your memory, there are dangerous people living in this country. People who are intent on selling us out to countries like the USSR. HUAC investigates them.”

  “Communists,” I said, wanting to appear intelligent.

  “That’s right, communists. You never know where they might be. They can be anywhere.”

  “Even here in Carter?” I asked, beginning to get his drift.

  “Even here in Carter. I have asked one of our student leaders, Sylvia Doran, to show you around the school and help you get acclimated. She’s president of the student council and knows everybody. What I want you to do is to report to me anything she says of a suspicious nature.”

  I was flabbergasted. “Do you think she’s a communist?”

  “No, but her father might be. I particularly would like to know anything she says about him.”