The Bay at Midnight (30 page)

“I’m not saying you did kill her, and we’re in the process of looking for Mr. Walker,” Officer Davis said. “Right now, I’m trying to put together a complete picture of last night. What did you do around the house?”

“I swept the whole house,” Ned said. “I washed the dishes. My brother dried. I folded laundry. I fixed a radio. Is that enough?”

“Shh, Ned,” Mr. Chapman said. “That attitude isn’t going to help.”

“And where were you around midnight last night?” Officer Davis asked.

“I thought you weren’t looking at him as a suspect,” Mr. Chapman said. “He’s not answering any more questions until we contact his lawyer.” I remembered suddenly that Mr. Chapman was a lawyer himself, as well as chief justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court. He would know how to advise his son and I was relieved. I didn’t like how Ned was being questioned. Officer Davis had been so nice to me when I found Donnie Jakes. This was a different, no-nonsense side of him.

“Answer the question, Ned,” my father said. “Where were you last night?” I noticed the other cop had his hand around my father’s arm as if holding him back from punching Ned in the face, and I wondered what had transpired before Grandpop and I had gotten out there. I could imagine how Daddy’d re
acted to the news that Ned and Isabel met on the platform nearly every night.

“He worked like a dog around the house,” Mr. Chapman said. “I was proud of him for finally helping out. So then he and I sat out in the yard for an hour or so looking for shooting stars. The meteor shower.” He looked at Ned. “We were eating bowls of ice cream. I think it was about twelve-thirty when we went inside. Wouldn’t you say it was about twelve-thirty?” He asked his son, who dropped his eyes under his father’s steady regard.

“I didn’t look at the clock,” Ned said.

“All right.” Officer Davis flipped his notepad closed, then nodded in my direction. “I’d like some time with Julie, here,” he said, then looked at Ned and his father. “You two can go. We’ll be in touch.”

Ned walked ahead of his father toward their house, and Daddy led me over to the double Adirondack chair. I sat down next to him and my grandfather took a seat near us, while Officer Davis and the other policeman leaned against the chain-link fence.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning, Julie,” Officer Davis said to me, kindly.

I told him everything and I tried not to cry so that I would be a good witness. I told him how I’d set up the meeting between Bruno and my sister when I was fishing with Wanda.

“I told you not to go over there,” my father said, as if fishing with the Lewis family was the cause of all that had happened.

I admitted that I used to sneak out in my boat to watch Ned and Isabel on the platform. “This whole thing is my fault,” I said. My voice had grown hoarse and it came out in a whisper. “I was jealous of her. I didn’t want her to have Ned. I didn’t mean for
her to get killed, though.” I felt my father’s hand on my back and I wasn’t sure if he meant the touch as a comfort or if he was telling me to stop talking, that I was saying too much.

I was sorry when the policemen left, because I was suddenly alone with my family again and I no longer knew how I fit in. There was an air of helplessness in the bungalow. My mother and grandmother worked in the kitchen, their silence broken by sudden bouts of sobbing. My grandfather and father sat on the glider near the bed on the porch, deep in conversation. Lucy was curled up at one end of the couch in the living room, her eyes closed, thumb in her mouth, her nose still red from crying. I did not know where to go. I thought of reading, but felt sick again when I thought of the childish, made-up mysteries in my Nancy Drew books.

I sat on the couch with Lucy for a while, staring into space, wishing she would wake up and talk to me, but she slept as though she’d been drugged. Maybe she had been. Maybe someone had given her something to let her sleep through the grief.

Finally I got up and walked into the kitchen.

“Can I help?” I asked, my voice small as I tried to tiptoe my way back into my family.

My mother looked at me, surprise on her face as though she’d forgotten I existed. She turned back to the frying pan where she was searing a roast.

“I’m sorry I hit you, Julie,” she said, her attention on the roast instead of on me.

“That’s okay,” I said.

“Here.” My grandmother handed me the potato peeler and pointed to the pile of potatoes on the counter. “You can peel.”

We worked in a silence that was rare in my family, but I wel
comed it because the only things that could be said would be full of pain and anger. I peeled every potato perfectly, leaving no hint of skin and carving out every eye. I wanted the task to last all afternoon because I wasn’t sure what I would do once I had finished.

The phone rang, and my mother jumped but made no move to walk into the living room to answer it. She stood at the sink, a half-washed spatula frozen in her hand, as we listened to my father’s footsteps in the other room, then his Hello? into the receiver. The three of us listened hard, but could not hear much of his conversation. Finally he walked into the kitchen.

He stood in the doorway, the color of his face so ashen I felt afraid for him. He might die, I thought. This might kill him. I would be responsible for both their deaths.

“She wasn’t…there was no rape,” he said. “Thank God for that.”

“What do they think happened?” I had never heard my mother sound so tentative and weak, as if she was afraid of the answer.

“They said she drowned, but that she’d been…manhandled first. She had a bruise on her shoulder and her arm and a lump on her head. They guess she fought the Walker boy off and then fell or maybe jumped into the water and hit her head on the edge of the platform.”

My mother suddenly threw the spatula against the wall, then buried her face in her hands. My father was quickly next to her, pulling her into his arms. My grandmother moved to them, wrapping her arms around them both. I stood alone in the middle of the kitchen floor, the peeler in my hand, tears no one noticed running down my cheeks.

Officer Davis returned to our house just as we were sitting down to a dinner we had no interest in eating. My father answered the door, then walked with him back to the porch.

“Sorry to disturb you folks,” Officer Davis said, “but I need to talk with Julie again.”

My father nodded to me without saying a word.

I stood up, scraping my chair away from the table, then walked outside with my father and the policeman. Daddy and I sat on the double Adirondack chair again, and this time, Officer Davis took a seat as well. He pulled his chair in front of me and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together loosely in front of him.

“We found Bruno Walker,” he said.

I was filled with hatred for Bruno. I remembered how he’d looked toward the bridge the day before, how I’d hoped my sister could be drawn in by his lovely eyes.

“Where’d you find him?” my father asked.

“In Ortley Beach,” the officer said.

“Did he confess?”

The officer shook his head. “He said he was with some friends at one of their rental cottages and that he left them around one in the morning and went home to bed. We talked with several of his friends separately, and they all confirmed his story.”

“What crap,” my father said.

Officer Davis locked his eyes onto mine. “Tell me again about informing Bruno that your sister would be on the platform at midnight,” he said. “Where were you when you told him?”

“The other side of the canal,” I said.

“With your friend.” The officer nodded. “What’s her name?” he asked.

“Wanda Lewis.”

“They’re not really friends,” my father said, and I knew it was not the time to argue with him.

“Who else was there?” the officer asked. “Was there anyone else who might have heard your conversation with Mr. Walker?”

You up to no good, girl.

“George was there,” I said. “Wanda’s brother. Her other relatives were there, too, but they were down—” I pointed across the canal to the area where Salena and the men had been fishing. “They weren’t close enough to hear.”

“But this George was,” the officer said.

I nodded. Suddenly I realized where this was going.

“George wouldn’t hurt anybody,” I said.

“Why are you asking her about this…George?” My father said his name as though he was talking about an object and not a person.

“Mr. Walker claims that Mr. Lewis looked very interested when he heard Julie say that Isabel would be alone on the platform.”

“Bruno’s just trying to pin the blame on someone else,” I said, but I could feel my heart sinking. I remembered George’s occasional appreciative comments about my sister and the scary way he’d cut his eyes at my father the day he came over to drag me home.

“Well, that may be so,” Officer Davis said. “Just the same, we need to talk to Mr. Lewis. Do you know how we can reach him?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have a phone number or address or anything,” I said. “But I think they live on South Street. And
they’ll be back across the canal in the morning, probably, if it’s a nice day. But I know he didn’t do it.”

“You don’t know that, Julie,” my father scoffed. “You don’t really know those people. You don’t know what that boy’s capable of doing.”

“He’s nice to me,” I said, but that only enraged my father more.

“This is what happens when you disobey me,” he said, and I supposed he was right.

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I went up to the attic early with Lucy, who was weepy and withdrawn, and I didn’t bother going down again. I kept crying—we all did. I would think I was okay, that I’d gotten a grip on my emotions, and then all of a sudden, I’d be sobbing again.

I replayed the night before in my mind over and over again, examining my actions to see if I could have done something different and thus prevented my sister’s death. I remembered looking out the attic window at the dark canal. If only I’d left the house earlier. Would that have made a difference? And what if I’d gone through with my idea of getting Ned to go with me? Then we would have been in his boat and been able to reach the platform safely, although we might have been too late.

Suddenly, I sat bolt upright in my bed. I remembered running over to the Chapmans’ house, getting ready to knock on the screen door only to realize their entire house was dark. I remembered looking toward the canal and seeing the empty Adirondack chairs. And then I remembered the policemen questioning Ned that afternoon, and the way he had looked down at the sand when his father said they’d been watching a
meteor shower together in the backyard. Had Mr. Chapman fabricated an alibi to save his son?

I pressed my hand to my mouth, a shiver running through my body.

Oh, Ned,
I thought to myself.
Why?

Julie
1962

I
awakened the next morning with new resolve and a plan: I needed to do my own investigation. The facts I knew did not fit together. I would tell the police my suspicions about Ned, but not until I’d seen what other evidence I could gather. As heartsick as I was at the thought of George being my sister’s killer, I was triply distressed to think it might have been Ned. I would be objective, though, as detached as I could possibly be from the outcome as I gathered my clues.

I was relieved to have something to do that would both ease my sense of helplessness and also allow me to avoid my family. I left the house early and started walking toward the beach. What made no sense, I thought as I walked, was that Ned had told me to tell Isabel he couldn’t meet her that night. Then why
would he have thought he could find her on the platform? My question was answered only minutes later.

I was nearly to Mitzi’s house when I noticed she was in her front yard washing her parents’ car. She tried to hide from me on the other side of the car, but she knew I’d already seen her. I saw her shoulders sag with resignation as she watched me approach.

“Hi, Mitzi,” I said, walking up her short driveway.

“Hi, Julie.” She stopped scrubbing the car with her soapy sponge. I almost felt sorry for her, she looked so uncomfortable. “Are you all right?” she asked. “How’s your mother and grandmother?”

“Messed up,” I said. “Did the police talk to you?”

“They called, but they just asked me what time Izzy left my house the night…the other night.”

“What time did she leave?”

“Eleven-thirty.” She wrung suds out of the sponge onto the driveway. Her hands were pudgy, like the rest of her. “She was going to…I know you know she always met Ned at midnight.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“He was so peeved at you for not giving Izzy that message that he couldn’t come. Even though he could. Although he actually couldn’t.” She laughed, then sobered, remembering the seriousness of the conversation.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What do you mean that he could, but then he couldn’t?”

“He called her here at my house to tell her he might be able to meet her after all,” Mitzi said. “That’s when he found out you hadn’t told her he couldn’t. Izzy was peeved at you, too. Anyway, he said he might be able to, but he wasn’t sure, but he’d try. He couldn’t get away, though. Isn’t it unreal? The one night he couldn’t get out that colored boy was there? What crappy
luck. You must just be—” She shook her head. “I bet you could just kill that guy if you could get your hands on him.”

“Right,” I said. It was easiest to agree with her, but my head was spinning. I had to think through all of this new information.

“They caught him, though,” she said. “Well, I guess you know that.”

“Caught who? George?”

“The colored boy. Right. I heard it on the radio before I came outside.”

“What did they say?” I asked.

“Just that they found him and he says he’s not guilty,” Mitzi said.

“Maybe he’s not,” I said.

“Who else could have done it?” She tried to smooth her frizzy dark hair away from her face, but it sprang back again into a curly mess. I felt sorry for her having to deal with hair like that. “What I can’t get over is that I was the third to the last person to see Izzy alive,” she said, as though she had practiced the statement.

“What do you mean, the third to the last?” I asked.

“The…you know, the person who did it was number one,” she said. “And Pam. Pam left here with her, like she always did, so she was number two.”

Pam’s house was between Mitzi’s and the beach. That made sense.

“Ned’ll probably start going with Pam now,” Mitzi said.

It was years before I realized how tactless Mitzi Caruso had been with that statement. The boorishness of her words went right over my head. At that moment, I was only thinking about their content.

I left Mitzi’s and continued walking to the beach, cataloging
the clues I had so far in my mind. First, Ned’s alibi appeared to be a lie, since I had not seen him with his father in their backyard. Second, Ned had told Isabel he might be able to meet her after all—something he had not mentioned to the police, as far as I knew. Third, his motive might have had something to do with his interest in Pam, but murdering Izzy to get her out of the way seemed extreme.

I walked past Pam Durant’s house on the lagoon, thinking I would talk with her after I explored the beach. She would be less suspicious of me than she would be the police, so maybe she would open up to me more than she would to them.

The beach was completely empty. I thought there might still be policemen in the area, but maybe they had finished searching for clues. Most likely, they thought they had their killer now. I was growing more certain by the minute that they were wrong.

I headed for the patch of sea grass where my sister had been found. I looked for things washed onto the shore by the small, gentle waves. I found a Popsicle stick and a plastic cup, but I seemed to have lost interest in collecting any old thing I came across, and I didn’t bother to pick them up.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I walked through the creepy tangles of seaweed. I sat down in the place where Isabel had been found, letting the water wash over my legs. I ran my hands through the tendrils of eel grass. There was nothing here. What had I been expecting?

I left the beach empty-handed and empty hearted and walked along the road leading to Pam’s house. A dog barked when I knocked on the Durants’ door. I could see through their house to the lagoon behind, just as I could see through my house to the canal.

Pam herself answered the door, her Doberman pinscher, the only dog I’ve ever been afraid of, at her side.

“Oh, Julie!” she said, pushing open the door. “I’m so sorry. Come in.” She hugged me, but I felt stiff inside and I kept one eye on her dog.

“I just wanted to talk to you,” I said. The dog sniffed at the back of my hand.

Pam drew away from me, studying my face, but I studied hers harder. The whites of her eyes had the bluish tint of skim milk. No trace of red. No trace of tears.

“Let’s go out back,” she said.

“Are your parents here?” I asked, as we walked through the small living room.

“No one’s here except me,” she said.

She stopped at the door to the kitchen. “Can I get you some soda?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“I almost died myself when I heard,” she said, pushing open the screen door and stepping into her yard, which was covered with smooth, blond stones. I was glad she left the dog in the house. “I was the last person to see her alive,” she said. At least Mitzi had been modest enough to say she was third to the last. Pam put herself right at the top.

We sat on the bulkhead, our feet dangling above the still lagoon water. Pam was so pretty. Her nearly white ponytail fell in a long spiral over her shoulder.

“I just can’t believe she’s gone,” she said. “I’ve never known anyone who died before. It’s so tragic.”

“Do you know where Ned was the night Isabel was killed?” I asked, point-blank.

“He was home,” she said, as though she knew this for a fact.

“He says he was watching a meteor shower with his father in their backyard,” I said.

“That’s probably what he was doing, then.” Pam shrugged. “He wasn’t allowed out, right? And you were supposed to tell that to Izzy, but you didn’t.”

“But then he called her at Mitzi’s to say he could.”

“He said he
might
be able to. Not that he could for sure.” She tilted her head to look at me. “You know Ned would never hurt Isabel, don’t you?”

“I’m just trying to figure some things out,” I said.

“He was over here yesterday.” Pam straightened her legs to look at her painted toes. “He’s all torn up,” she said. “He was really scared the cops thought it was him.”

And you comforted him, I guess,
I wanted to say. “Maybe it was,” I said, instead.

“What?”
She lowered her legs again, frowning at me. “Oh Julie, don’t be crazy,” she said. “Ned was a
lifesaver.
He would never kill anyone.”

I wasn’t sure what else to ask. I was doing a poor job of keeping my misgivings about Ned to myself; Nancy Drew would have been far more clever at questioning Pam than I was being. We talked a while longer, and then I left her house with nothing to prove my hunch other than my own suspicions.

There was one more person that I needed to interview, and I was quite sure where I could find him. I walked to the shallows at the end of Shore Boulevard and along the path cut through the tall grass.

“Who’s there?” Ethan asked as I rustled through the cattails. I heard the anxiety in his voice. I guessed we were all a little on edge.

“Me,” I said.

I found him sitting at the water’s edge, where he had set up a little marine research laboratory, complete with a small fish net and microscope and a booklet on sea creatures.

“What do you want?” he asked.

I sat down next to him, the damp sand cool beneath my thighs.

“Was Ned really home all night the night Isabel was killed?” I asked.

“How would I know?” He shook his head at me. “You really think you’re Nancy Drew, don’t you?”

“And you really think you’re some sort of scientist.” I reached out and knocked over his microscope with my hand and then felt instantly remorseful. With the exception of Lucy, he was the only person in the world weaker than me, and I guessed I just needed to take out my frustration on someone.

“Hey!” He lifted the microscope from the wet sand. “This is a precision instrument,” he said, cradling it in his hands. “You might have ruined it. What’s the matter with you?”

“I think your brother might have killed my sister,” I said.

“You’re full of soup,” he said, pushing his glasses higher up his nose. I hated when he did that. “The police already got that—” he nodded in the general direction of the opposite side of the canal “—that colored boy. If anybody’s responsible for killing your sister, it’s
you,
for letting him know Isabel was going to be alone on the beach that night.”

“I didn’t kill her,” I said, my eyes burning.

“Well, my brother sure didn’t, either. He was grounded.”

“Ned probably just snuck out anyhow,” I said. “That’s what he usually did.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” With tender care, Ethan set the microscope upright in the sand again. “How do you know what my brother usually does?”

“I know plenty,” I said.

“If Ned did it, why would he be such a wreck right now? He’s sitting around crying about your sister.”

“Yeah, well, maybe he’s crying ’cause he killed her and he—”

“Shut
up!
” In a flash, Ethan was on top of me, his skinny arms pinning mine above my head in the sand. His knee dug into my belly, making me gasp for air. I mustered up all my strength and pushed him off me, rolling him over until I was on top of him. I punched his cheek as hard as I could. He yelped and I saw a little blood coming from his nose. I didn’t care. I punched him one more time. His head was in a few inches of water, and I could easily have turned his face until the water covered his nose and mouth. The realization that I could have such a thought shocked the sense back into me. I let go of him and scrambled to my feet, choking on my own sobs. I ran back through the tall grass, blinded by tears and confused by a rush of emotions. My heart was in a vise; my hands formed fists so tight I would later find blood on my palms from my fingernails. I wanted to kill someone. I just didn’t know who it was that I should want to kill.

I called the police myself. My parents and I were not talking easily with one another and I could hardly ask them to do it for me. I told Officer Davis my suspicions. He listened carefully. Then he told me that George Lewis had no verifiable alibi. George had told the police he’d been on the Seaside Heights boardwalk waiting for some friends who never showed
up. He had scratches on his face and arms, and said that he’d gotten into a fight on the beach that night with a white boy he’d never seen before, but the police had been unable to find any witnesses to a fight. At the Lewises’ house, they found George’s wet trunks, and—most incriminating—a towel belonging to Isabel.

“But
I
took that towel across the canal and accidentally left it there!” I said, almost shouting into the phone.

“There was blood on it, Julie,” Officer Davis said. “Mr. Lewis claims he used the towel after the fight he was in, and both he and your sister have the same blood type, so it’s not possible to know if it was his or hers, but it’s clear he was in an altercation.”

“The chairs in the Chapmans’ backyard were
empty
that night,” I said, repeating a fact I’d already told him.

“We’ll reinterview them about that,” Officer Davis said. “I know you’re troubled and need to feel sure we have the right suspect in custody, and I’m grateful that you called. But you let us do our job now, all right?”

When they were questioned again, Ned and Mr. Chapman said that they’d been lying on a blanket in their backyard the night Isabel was killed and that’s why I didn’t notice them when I ran to their house. I still thought I would have seen them, and it seemed odd that they didn’t notice
me
running through their yard, even though I’d been a distance behind them. Surely they’d heard me get into the runabout, but no one else seemed troubled by their story.

Bruno’s father hired a lawyer—the same one who had gotten him off on the previous year’s rape charge. George didn’t even know who his father was, much less have the money for a
lawyer. He was charged and eventually convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

Ned was not even considered a suspect. The son of the chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court was presumed innocent—by everyone except me.