Angel in the Snow

by Glen Ebisch

  I figured that was the closest to an apology I’d ever get, so giving him a sharp glance, I put down my stuff. “Why have you had so many roommates in only three months? Is it because of your basic lack of good manners?”

  “Partly, perhaps,” he said unruffled, “but do you mean that no one has told you about my father?”

  “Randy Anderson said something about problems, but didn’t give any details.”

  “Only because he didn’t have time. My father is Arthur Templeton. Does that mean anything to you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Yes, well it wouldn’t mean much to most of the students here, except that their parents and a few select gossips keep reminding them. My father was accused of operating one of the biggest embezzlement schemes in the history of American business. It ranged from selling stock in phony companies and shares in non-existent oil wells to promoting real estate that’s been under water since Columbus arrived. Almost every form of financial malpractice you can think of, including tax evasion, has been attributed to him.”

  “When was all this?”

  “It started to come out publicly two years ago. At first my father believed he could outmaneuver his enemies; he’d done it before a number of times. But in this case there proved to be too many, so he simply disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? Don’t you know where he is?”

  “The last I heard he had an estate somewhere in the Caribbean, on an island the United States doesn’t have an extradition treaty with.”

  “Was he really guilty of doing anything illegal?”

  “Some people think he was no different than any other smart, aggressive businessman. Some say he was a thief.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m not certain that I can see the difference.”

  I thought that over for a minute. “What about your mother? Where’s she?”

  “On an extended trip to Europe in order to live down the shame of it all.”

  “And she sent you here until things quieted down?”

  “Not precisely. My father managed to set up a large trust fund in my name, which all the various lawyers, accountants, and government agencies after his money have not been able to break. My Uncle Max is guardian of the trust, and he is sending me here at my own request.”

  “You want to be here, even though you’re treated like an outcast?”

  “Of course, the education is excellent, and I plan to go on to a fine college.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling my headache grow worse. Talking to this guy was harder than listening to him pound on stone. “And you think you’ve had trouble keeping roommates because of what your father is supposed to have done?”

  “That, and as you bluntly pointed out, I am not by nature very diplomatic. You must realize that Randy Anderson is simply the most extreme example of what is very common here—snobbism. A completely unjustified sense of being better than other people. Have you ever gone to a private school?”

  “Not in this country.”

  “You’ll learn.”

  “But if you made an effort to show people what you’re like, don’t you think they’d accept you for who you are, and not what your father is?”

  “I have better things to do,” he replied grandly, walking over to the bookshelf on his wall and taking down a volume. “Oh, and there’s one other thing you should know—I have a hobby.”

  “Yeah, I saw the soccer cup on the mantle. Maybe we could practice together some time.”

  “That was only a passing childhood interest. I am a student of crime. This is undoubtedly one of the largest private libraries on the subject in the area,” he said, gesturing at the long rows of books.

  “Do you commit them or solve them?” I asked, and instantly regretted having implied that he was like his father.

  “Perhaps there is a little of my father in me, but I’d prefer to think it was the good part,” he said with a faint smile. “To answer your question, however, I solve them. In fact just this past month I figured out who had stolen the antique weathervane from the top of the field house.”

  “Did you turn in whoever it was to the authorities?”

  “No, I simply convinced him that it would be in his best interest if the weathervane reappeared in its normal place by the next morning.”

  “And it did?”

  “As surely as the sun rises and the wind blows. But word got around that somehow I was involved. Strange as it may seem, solving crimes makes you even less popular than being the son of a criminal,” he said, opening up the large book and beginning to read.

  Slowly I unpacked my belongings, telling myself all the while that things would work out if I gave them a chance, and wondering if I wouldn’t have been better off taking my chances in the Middle East.

  Chapter 3

  The next few days went by in a flash because I was busy setting up in a new place: learning names, finding rooms, getting books, and trying to make friends. Rule one when entering a new school is smile at everyone since you never know who will turn out to be a person you like. Rule two is always listen to the advice everyone gives you because mixed in with all the garbage there might be something that actually helps you out.

  Of course, sometimes nothing helps. A couple of kids had told me that Mr. Jameson, my English teacher, was one of those guys who makes you wonder why he went into teaching because he hates young people. And, sure enough, when I gave him my registration form, he noted right away that my last place of residence had been Italy; so he rattled off several sentences in Italian, which might have been Greek for all I understood of it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but my classes were taught in English, and I only picked up a few Italian phrases.”

  “Obscenities, no doubt.” He turned to the class and pointed at me as though I were an exhibit. “That’s the trouble with you young people, you have all sorts of opportunities and fail to take advantage of them.”

  “I was only there for six months,” I explained.

  “That’s all the time you have remaining in this school year to learn English, so you’d better try harder,” he said with a nasty grin, and looked out at his audience for applause. A couple of students dutifully smiled, but most stared back expressionlessly, as though tired of being used as straight men.

  I shrugged and didn’t bother to answer him. Sometimes there’s just no point.

  The other teachers were okay. The guy in chemistry had large tufts of gray hair sticking up and a few long ones growing out of his ears, but seemed nice enough. The history and math classes were covering material I’d had two months ago, and they were my best subjects anyway.

  Aside from Jameson, the only hassle was with my gym teacher, Coach LaSalle, who took one look up at me and demanded that I immediately sign up for the basketball team. Since basketball is my least favorite sport, I hesitated until he pointed out that he could arrange it so that this would fulfill my phys. ed. team requirement, which I would otherwise have to meet by playing endless games of volleyball on Friday afternoons. I got the point.

  Tim Woodward, who sat next to me in chemistry and was also on the team, filled me in that they weren’t called LaSalle’s Losers for nothing. The small prep school circuit we were on included eight teams, and as Tim put it, “Out of eight we’re ninth.” Whenever we played an away game, he explained, the home team would hold up numbers indicating how much they thought we would lose by, and bets were never made on whether we would lose, but by how much.

  Still, it had to be better than Friday afternoon volleyball.

  One of the nice things about North Hill was that there were almost as many girls as boys. When it was founded about a hundred years ago by some minister, North Hill had been for boys, and South Hill, on the other side of the interstate, had been only for girls. But about thirty years ago, the two schools had been combined, and the South Hill buildings were sold to a medical center.

  There were still some stories around about the past. Legend had i
t that there were a number of places between the two schools where couples would run away and meet in secret. There was even a lovers’ leap called Kingman’s Cliff. Somebody named Kingman had lost his girl to another guy, so one evening, after writing her a letter declaring his undying love, he walked to the cliff and threw himself off. I guess that must have made her feel pretty bad—for a while at least.

  I was doing better than Kingman. It turned out to be easy to meet people because even complete strangers, both male and female, would come up to me with a knowing grin and ask, “How do you like living with Maxwell Templeton?” The guy was single-handedly making my social life.

  I would tell everyone we got along fine. No one believed me, but it was pretty much the truth. In the week or so we had been together, he’d stayed around about half the nights. The other times he’d disappeared early and not returned until after I was asleep. I didn’t ask where he’d been, and he didn’t volunteer the information. On the nights he was there, we would get our illegal fire going, and stretch out in the old leather chairs. A couple of times we had talked. I had described placed overseas where I’d lived. Templeton would listen carefully and ask very detailed questions about the language and culture, most of which I couldn’t answer. Then he would light up a truly foul pipe, and filling the room with smoke that smelled like burning tires, tell marvelous stories about famous crimes.

  There were other nights when he would just sit there and say nothing. I would ask questions and at best get only a grunt in return, so I’d take the hint and leave, or turn on my desk lamp and do some studying. Sometimes when I went to bed, he would still be sitting there silently, puffing on his pipe and staring into the fire as though it was telling him something.

  One night, about ten days after my arrival, I was sitting in front of the fire doing some reading for history, while Templeton was at his table carefully jotting down notes from some big book. It was one of our non-talking nights, so when I threw one of our few remaining pieces of wood on the fire, I debated with myself whether or not to mention it.

  “I think we need some more wood,” I said finally. “Where do you get it from?”

  He glanced over as if he had heard a strange noise. “Did you ask me something?”

  “Yeah, I just offered to get more wood if you’ll tell me where you gather it. Since I enjoy the fire, too, I should do my share to keep it going.”

  He hesitated as though this wasn’t a secret he wanted to let me in on. “I go into the woods behind the field house. Take this,” he said finally, pulling a heavy canvas bag out of his closet and tossing it my way. It landed with a thump. “If anyone sees you, they’ll think you’re just doing some late laundry, and it will give you something to hide the wood in.” We weren’t officially allowed out of the dorms after ten during the week, but the only laundry room was in the cellar of the maintenance room, so people used to throw their clothes in right at ten and then use that as an excuse to wander around after hours.

  “What do I chop it with?”

  “There’s a hatchet in the bag. It won’t bring down a giant Sequoia, but it’s adequate for the size pieces we use. Try not to amputate one of your own limbs, and make sure when you come back that the hatchet is in the bag with the wood. If you come back with it dangling from your hand, it won’t take a skilled detective to put two and two together and squeal to the headmaster.”

  I didn’t bother to dignify that with a reply.

  The halls were pretty empty and quiet as I slipped down the stairs at ten twenty, except for the third floor where two guys were in the hall flicking towels at each other. The hall monitors were responsible for seeing that every one was in his room by ten-thirty, and that the stereos and televisions were off. They also had to report to Mr. Prendergast, the faculty member who lived on the first floor, if there was anyone missing whose whereabouts was unknown. Although Randy was technically in charge of the fourth floor, he was too intimidated by Templeton to check on us. But everybody else lived a pretty regimented existence after dark.

  * * *

  A cold breeze that made my face burn and my eyes water whipped across the snow as I went down toward Hodges Hall, which held the library and the headmaster’s Office. The campus was dark except for the fancy imitation gaslights that dimly lit the walk at distant intervals and a few lights that were still on across the way in the girls’ dorm. I went around Hodges and out the path to the field house. When you got this far, the lights disappeared completely, so I turned on the flashlight Templeton had tossed to me as I went out the door. I was afraid to keep it on all the time, in case one of the teachers living in the bungalows on campus happened to spot it and called the night security guard, but every few yards I switched it on quickly to make sure the path was clear.

  When I got to the barn-like gym, or, as they grandly called it, the field house, the shoveled path disappeared. I had two choices. Off to my left about fifty yards away was a road leading up from the main highway to the school. I could walk over to the road, go down it part way, and then cut over into the woods. The alternative was to walk right across the open field of snow behind the field house and into the woods, a shorter route, but a little tricky when you couldn’t see exactly where you were going. I stood there like a horse between two bales of hay, not able to make up my mind. Suddenly, as if by magic, a bright full moon came out from behind the clouds, so I headed off across the field.

  I was probably halfway to the woods when I heard the sound. At first I thought it was a chain saw. This business of gathering wood after dark was getting out of hand, I thought stupidly. Then I realized that it was the sound of motorcycles coming up the road to the school. A couple of the guys had told me that some of the local bikers liked to ride through the campus after dark, just to stir things up with the rich kids from out of town.

  But something else was happening this time because I heard them stop on the road, about parallel to where I was standing. Forty yards or so separated me from where they were, and the edge of the high bank from the field down to the road kept me from seeing what was going on. The engines shut off, and I could hear voices. Then someone broke over the snow covered top of the bank and began running across the field in my direction. Whoever it was slipped and fell but quickly scrambled up and kept moving, zigzagging wildly. Three bigger figures came crashing over the bank close behind, and with a shout began to give chase, like wolves on the scent of a wounded deer. That was when the moon disappeared!

  I stood still. I didn’t want to turn on my flashlight and give my position away because I doubted that anyone had spotted me at that distance in the few seconds of moonlight, and I wanted to know more about what was happening before getting involved. But standing out there in the open would leave me kind of exposed if the moon decided to peek out again. I could vaguely make out the dark background of the woods on the horizon, figured I’d be safer there, and stumbled on in the darkness.

  I’d only managed a few tentative steps when on my left I heard the harsh rasping breath of someone nearing exhaustion. Almost instantaneously something bumped into me and collapsed at my feet. For a crazy moment I thought it was a bird because I’d hardly felt it hit me.

  I bent over, and a girl’s voice whispered hoarsely, “Help me. Please!”

  Chapter 4

  “Usually girls don’t fall for me this quickly,” I said to relieve the tension.

  She groaned. I couldn’t tell if it was from weariness or because of my joke, and there was no time to find out. Picking her up in my arms I set off at a trot for the woods with the canvas bag and the damned hatchet banging on my knees at every step. Fortunately she was small, not much more than a hundred pounds, because the woods were farther away than I thought.

  When we finally reached the tree line, I stopped and crouched behind what passed for a bush to catch my breath and get some idea of where our pursuers were. They sounded as though they were having an argument out in the middle of the field, and a few seconds later a flashlight switched o
n. I could make out three shapes standing around the spot where my friend here had bumped into me. Unless they were better woodsmen than I guessed they were, it was going to be pretty hard for them to make sense of all that trampled down snow. But sooner or later, someone would spot my big footprints heading off into the woods, and for the lack of anything else to do they would follow.

  The girl was still in my arms. She hadn’t said anything since her plea for help.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I think you can put me down now.”

  “Oh . . . sure.” I couldn’t see what she looked like, but I liked the soothing sound of her voice, which was husky and deep.

  Deciding that under the circumstances we should be properly introduced, I told her my name and that I went to North Hill. She said she went to North Hill, too, and that her name was Elaine Sharp.

  “Why are these guys chasing you?”

  “I don’t know. I got off the bus down on the highway and started to walk up the road. Suddenly they were behind me, riding along real slow, saying nasty things—making threats. Finally they got off their bikes and came toward me, so I ran.”

  “You don’t know them?”

  “Of course not, I don’t know people like that.”

  “Hey, look over here,” I heard one of the bikers shout in a whiney voice. The flashlight had found my tracks, and they shined the light in our direction and stared into the woods. I knew they couldn’t see us, but it still made me nervous. In a fair fight it might be an even match, but they were probably carrying chains, knives or even guns.

  “Why don’t we go further into the woods?” Elaine asked.

  “What’s at the end of the woods?”

  “Kingman’s Cliff.”

  I thought about it. Instinctively I didn’t want to move farther into the darkness, away from my cozy room and warm fire. We were bound to step on twigs and stuff, which would make enough noise so they could follow us. Follow us right up to the edge of the cliff. Somehow the idea of a cliff behind me and three bikers in front of me wasn’t an attractive proposition.