The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (24 page)

I was gratified to realize that Sylvia wasn’t
entirely joking. Sure, there was some work involved, but if things
went according to my plan, we would have time for necking later.
Aunt Dorothy had a League of Women Voters meeting after she
finished teaching school. It involved some sort of dinner, and she
wouldn’t be home until nine. It was an ideal day to bring Sylvia
back to the hayloft.

My ulterior motive was that I wanted to see
if the necklace was actually in the southwest corner of the loft,
as Ralph’s map indicated, or whether the whole thing was a hoax.
And I wanted Sylvia with me because I had been shaken up by my
previous experience trying to get to the necklace, even with Sylvia
present. She was levelheaded and a good person to have looking out
for me.

Without giving her the details of how I knew,
I told her that I had reason to believe the necklace was not where
I had been looking, in the northwest corner of the barn, but in the
southwest corner instead. I even told her that it was a necklace we
were looking for. Then I told her my plan.

“I want to remove the topmost bales from this
corner, until we get below the crossbeam. I think there may be a
gap between the bales and the wall below that.” I pointed out the
solid wooden beam, part of a series that extended around the
perimeter of the barn at the point where the roof and the wall came
together. By shining my new flashlight down from the corner of the
loft, I could see that the bales abutted the beam.

I took two hay hooks and started moving bales
around. I could do it faster by myself than with Sylvia’s help.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked. “I
feel about as useful as an appendix.”

“Make sure I don’t kill myself. You did a
good job of that before.”

The bales weren’t stacked as high on this
side as they had been initially on the other side. I hadn’t gotten
down to the crossbeam on the other side, even after I had spent
some time moving bales.

I went to work. In twenty minutes, I had
cleared enough bales so that I was below the beam. I stopped and
panted for a bit and then shone my flashlight down the crack in the
corner.

“There’s more space here than on the other
side,” I told Sylvia. “And I’m starting lower. Come and look.”

She peered down the hole for a few seconds
and then said, “I don’t think it’s safe to go down there, Gary.
You’ll get stuck again.” She looked some more. “What’s that? It
looks like another beam.”

It was another beam. This beam and others
went around the wall, midway between the floor and the roof.
Although I hadn’t completely forgotten about it, I had hoped it
wouldn’t constitute a problem. However, there didn’t appear to be
any space between the bales and this beam. And it was far enough
down that it would take forever for me to dig out all the
intervening bales.

“I’m going to lower myself to that beam and
investigate,” I said, bringing over the end of the rope that hung
from the rafters. “There’s room enough so that I won’t get stuck. I
can always pull myself up with the rope.”

Sylvia wasn’t as convinced of that as I was.
But she wasn’t going to let me do it without her there, either. And
she was clearly afraid that I would do something dangerous later if
she didn’t allow me to try it now.

I placed the flashlight in my pocket and,
holding onto the rope, lowered myself until I was standing on the
lower beam. There was a little more room between the bales and the
wall than there had been on the other side of the loft where I had
gotten stuck. I took out the flashlight and knelt on the beam on
one knee, placing the foot of my other leg awkwardly in front of
that knee. I wouldn’t be able to maintain this position long. I
shone the light along the beam, looking for cracks.

Right at the corner of the barn there
appeared to be a gap in the bales. That’s where I wanted to be,
anyway. I edged myself along the beam the few feet to the corner
and felt the area around the beam with one hand. I also used the
flashlight. I thought there was enough room for me to slide between
the beam and the bales and get down to the floor of the loft.
Although I couldn’t use the rope for this maneuver, I kept it
nearby so that I could help pull myself back up, if necessary.

I worked my way around the beam and reached
down with one leg. I was gratified to feel the floor under my feet.
Then I lowered my other leg to the floor. I had made it, but I
couldn’t stand in this position, because the beam wasn’t high
enough above the floor to give me headroom. It was too tight to be
comfortable, but I should be able to survive for a few minutes.
Carefully, I lowered my whole body to the floor, so that I could
reach the corner with my hand.

“I can’t see you,” Sylvia called from above.
“Where are you?” Her voice sounded muffled.

“I’m on the floor in the corner.”

“Are you all right? I can’t hear you very
well.”

“I’m fine. I’m going to look for the
necklace.”

If she’d just shut up, I could do my job. If
I could breathe. The air smelled stale. Was there enough oxygen? I
shone the flashlight into the corner where the floor and the two
walls came together. Sure enough, there was a hole in the floor. My
heartbeat accelerated even beyond what it was already because of my
exertions.

I carefully reached my hand into the hole. I
felt the wisp of a spider web and hoped that a spider wasn’t the
next thing I’d feel. A few inches below the hole, my hand touched
wood. I moved it in each direction. More wood. The space was
enclosed on the bottom and sides, as if it had been deliberately
built as a hiding place. That may or may not be true, but one thing
was definitely true. There was nothing in it except an old spider
web.

I felt around the space several more times to
make sure. Then I pulled my hand out of the hole and shone the
flashlight along the edges where the floor and walls met, to see if
there were any more holes. There weren’t. No place to hide
anything. If the necklace had ever been here, it was gone now.

My knees hurt. My leg muscles were cramped
from being bent like pretzels. It was time to go back up. As I
raised my hand to locate the wooden beam, the flashlight hit the
beam and went out. I shook it and cursed at it, but the darkness
was absolute.

“What’s going on?” the muffled voice of
Sylvia called from above.

“My flashlight went out.”

“I’ve heard that song before. Are you coming
up?”

“Yes.”

I was in the dark, in an enclosed space. My
mobility was extremely limited. What if I became trapped? What if I
couldn’t get out of here? I was too young to die. My heartbeat felt
like a drum roll. I panicked and tried to stand. My head hit the
beam. I fell back to the floor with a grunt, feeling the
reverberation, and wondering whether I had been knocked out.

I must have lain there for at least thirty
seconds. All I saw was black. Was this what it felt like to be
unconscious? Then I heard Sylvia call from above.

“What are you doing? I can’t hear you or see
you.”

If I could hear her, I must be conscious. But
I didn’t have the energy to answer her. I mentally shook myself. I
could work my way out of this. I just had to move slowly and
carefully. And Sylvia would go for help if I really got stuck.

Sylvia. I couldn’t show her that I was
panicked. I called out to her that I was coming up. I took several
deep breaths. Could I crawl along the floor to where the bales
ended and get out there? I had to crawl backward, because I didn’t
have room to turn around. I managed to move a few inches, but the
bales were too close to the wall and I could go no farther. I had
to climb back to the top.

I reached up and found the beam with my hand
and carefully raised my body, edging my head past it. I worked my
way up onto the beam by feel and great effort, as my heart pounded
in my aching head. If this was what mountain climbing was like, it
wasn’t for me. Actually, it might be more like cave exploring,
because of the dark and close quarters.

I slowly stood up on the beam, my legs shaky.
Sylvia could see me now, and I could see her. If I hadn’t hit my
head, I would have the strength to climb out from here. But right
now it seemed like an impossible task. The rope was out of my
reach. I asked her to hand it to me. I took hold of it and during
an eternity worked my way up the remaining bales, with Sylvia
giving me encouragement. She grabbed me and pulled. I finally
rolled out onto the flat tops of the lowest bales beside the wall,
dazed and panting.

“Are you okay?” Sylvia asked, concern in her
voice.

“Yeah. But I hit my head on the beam. It
hurts.” My heart was still racing.

“Where?”

I pointed to the back of my head, near my
crown. She parted my hair and looked at it.

“Gary, you’ve got a big bump on your head. No
wonder it hurts.”

I tried to make a joke. “Does that mean no
necking?”

“You better believe it means no necking.
You’re in no shape to do anything. I don’t even see how you can
drive me home.”

“I’ll be fine. I can drive. Give me a few
minutes.”

“All right. But then you’ve got to come back
and rest. And make sure you don’t have a concussion.”

***

Somehow I drove Sylvia safely home, although
I was nauseated and glad to get back to the farm where I could lie
down.

Uncle Jeff came home first and gave me
aspirin and ice cubes wrapped in a towel to bring down the
swelling. I told him I had hit my head in the hayloft, without
saying exactly how. I implied that it had happened while I was
practicing basketball. Apparently I didn’t have a concussion,
although I did have one lollapalooza of a headache.

By the time Aunt Dorothy arrived home, I was
feeling better, and we decided that I didn’t need to go to the
doctor. I tried to do some homework, but I couldn’t concentrate and
went to bed early.

***

In school on Friday, my head was still
tender, and I wasn’t speaking in a loud voice. I was looking for an
opportunity to tell Ed that I hadn’t found the necklace. He never
showed up at lunchtime, so I went looking for him during the
activities period. I went into the room containing the duplicating
equipment, because that also served as the headquarters for the
school paper.

Ed wasn’t there, but Ruth Allen was. She was
wearing a straight skirt down to her calves and long socks that
disappeared somewhere up into the skirt.

I said hello to her and then said, “How far
up do those socks go?”

“Too far for you to look,” she said with the
hint of a smile.

Those were almost the first human words she
had spoken to me. I asked her if she knew where Ed was. She said he
was sick today. That explained his nonappearance at lunch.

Ruth seemed friendlier than she had before,
so I decided to chat with her for a while and admire her figure.
After we had talked for a couple of minutes, I said, “You know that
I’ve been interested in finding exactly how Ralph died and whether
anybody was with him. I admit that I talked to Ed about you, and he
verified that you were in the class you had after the assembly, so
that you couldn’t have been in the auditorium.”

Ruth looked at me strangely. She said, “I was
in that class, but Ed wasn’t.”

“Are you absolutely sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Somebody brought a message
about Ralph to the classroom, and the teacher announced what had
happened to him. I completely fell apart. I remember looking for
Ed, because I knew that he was Ralph’s cousin, and because I
thought we could comfort each other. But he wasn’t there.”

“Have you ever told anybody that?”

“No. I never thought it was relevant. I
thought Ralph’s death was an accident. I had seen Ralph do a
handstand on the auditorium balcony. It scared the life out of me,
and I made him promise never to do it again. But obviously he
didn’t keep that promise.”

We looked at each other for a minute. Then
Ruth said, “Do you think…do you think…that Ed might have had
something to do with Ralph’s death?”

“I’m not sure. But I have reason to be
suspicious. Don’t say anything to anybody. I’m going to see Ed
tomorrow—that is if he’s well by then. I’ve got some questions to
ask him.”

The room contained at least a dozen
typewriters. Typing classes were taught here.

“Do you and Ed use these typewriters?” I
asked Ruth.

“Sure. All the time. The teacher trusts us.
We can use any equipment here.”

My thought was that if Ed had typed the
mysterious limerick that had appeared in my locker, he might have
done it on one of these typewriters. It had become clear to me that
he had learned a lot about me before we met. He certainly could
have known about my limerick writing from Aunt Dorothy, even before
I wrote a limerick for him. I wasn’t going to go to the trouble of
getting a sample from each of these typewriters now. But it was an
option for later.

CHAPTER 25

Saturday morning, I drove to the Drucquers’
house to pick up Ed. The sun was shining, but the air was cool.
When I had called him last night, he said he had an upset stomach,
which is why he stayed home from school. But he was feeling better.
I didn’t question him about whether his stomach ache was real or a
ploy to skip school. I pulled into the driveway of the ramshackle
house, and before I could open the door to get out, Kate came
running out of the house, dressed in blue jeans and a heavy
sweater.

I rolled down the window and said, “Is Ed
still sick?”

“Eddie’s fine,” she said. “I just wanted to
say hello.”

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

We laughed. She poked her head through the
car window and kissed me. I felt like I was two-timing Sylvia. But
it wasn’t as if I had initiated the kiss. The door opened, and Ed
came out. Kate quickly pulled her head out of the car, and we
strove to look innocent.