The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (29 page)

“He’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“Gary, what’s the matter with you?”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, he drove off in your car a while ago. I
think he said he was going to return it to you. What’s going
on?”

My brusque manner was scaring her. I toned my
voice down a notch or two and said, “May I use your phone? I need
to call Aunt Dorothy.”

Kate opened the door wider and let me in. She
led me to the telephone sitting on a small stand in the combination
dining room and kitchen. I was too absorbed in making sure my
relatives were all right to give any word of explanation to her. I
dialed the number and listened to the phone ring. And ring. I hung
up. There was no sense calling my parents. They would be at the
farm by now. Everybody must be outside. I hoped.

“I’ve got to get to the farm,” I said to
Kate. “Where are your parents?”

“They’re at church. I didn’t want to go, so I
told them I had homework. What…”

“Did they drive their car?”

“No, our neighbors picked them up.”

“Can I borrow their car? Kate, this is
important.”

“Where are you going to take it?”

“To the farm.”

“I’m going with you.”

“No.” Whatever happened, it was no place for
her.

“If you want to use the car, you have to take
me.”

No time to argue. “All right. Get the keys.
Hurry.”

CHAPTER 30

“Now tell me what’s going on,” Kate said as I
sped away from the house. “And try not to wreck the car. You’re
driving like a maniac.”

“Ed locked me in a bomb shelter last night,”
I said, skidding around a turn and downshifting into second gear.
“He’s up to something, but I’m not sure what.”

“He said you lent him your car.”

“That was a lie.”

“So what’s he doing? Is it something to do
with the necklace?”

“No, because there isn’t any necklace.”

“Then what—”

“I’m not sure what he’s up to, but whatever
it is, we’ve got to stop him.”

“Gary, you’re not making any sense.”

“I know. I can’t tell you anything more right
now. All I know is that we’ve got to get to the farm.”

At the speed I was driving, we were going to
be there in about four minutes, in spite of the fact that the old
crate could barely hit fifty. And it was vibrating something awful.
I was glad we didn’t have very far to go. I was also glad about the
scarcity of policemen as I skidded around another turn onto Sugar
Road, without honoring the stop sign.

Half a mile to go on a straightaway. I slowed
down for the railroad tracks, fearing that the car would fall to
pieces if it got too much of a jolt. The driveway of the farm was
just ahead. I pulled into the driveway between two big old maple
trees and stopped behind my father’s car. My car was nowhere in
sight. Maybe Ed wasn’t here, after all.

I jumped out and ran to the front door. It
was unlocked. I opened it and went inside. I could see into the
kitchen. Although I smelled the fetching aroma of Sunday dinner
cooking, I couldn’t see anybody.

“Aunt Dorothy,” I called. No answer. “Uncle
Jeff. Dad. Mother.”

Something was bubbling in the oven, but I
didn’t hear any human sounds. I glanced out the dining room window
that looked straight down the lane. Nobody was in the lane. I
turned and almost knocked down Kate, who had come into the house
behind me.

“Maybe they’re in the barn,” I said.

I ran out of the house and toward the barn.
Kate was right on my heels. Twenty steps later I opened the barn
door and went inside. Another few steps, and I was at the ladder to
the hayloft. The trapdoor was open, and the loft light was on; I
climbed up and onto the floor of the loft. The first thing I saw
was my mother and Aunt Dorothy on the other side of the loft,
attempting to peer between the bales and the wall of the barn. They
were both wearing dresses. It seemed very odd that they would be
wearing dresses in the hayloft.

Then I saw a group on top of the bales—my
dad, Uncle Jeff, Tom, and Archie—also apparently looking for
something. Kate quickly climbed up the bales and joined them. I
went over to the women, whose backs were toward me, and said, “What
are you doing?”

They jumped and turned around. Both stared at
me wide-eyed, as if they had seen a ghost.

“Gary,” my mother said, wrapping me in her
arms. “How did you…?” She couldn’t finish her sentence.

“How did you get out?” Aunt Dorothy
asked.

How did she know about the bomb shelter? I
started to give a confused reply when out of the corner of my eye I
saw somebody run to the ladder from behind the haystack and quickly
climb down, closing the trapdoor behind him with a bang.

It was Ed. What was he up to? I broke free of
my mother and ran over to the trapdoor. By the time I reached it, I
heard hammering noises coming from just beneath it. When it was
closed, we opened the door from above by pulling up a bolt that
acted as a handle, because the closed door was flush with the
floor. I tried to get a grip on the bolt to pull it, but it had
slid down almost flush with the door and I couldn’t get my fingers
under it. Ed had apparently secured it from below. And it was
practically impossible to open the door any other way. The
hammering continued.

“Ed,” I called. “What the hell are you
doing?”

The hammering stopped for a few seconds.
“Gary?” Ed said through the door. “How did you get out?”

“Open the door, Ed,” I said. “The time for
games is over.”

“This will work out just as well,” Ed said.
“Better. I don’t have to go back to the bomb shelter to take care
of you.” He continued hammering.

I sniffed the air. Something smelled funny. I
glanced toward the haystack and saw smoke drifting up from between
the hay and the wall. Ed had set the hay on fire.

“Fire!” I yelled. The others, who had started
coming down from the bales when they heard my voice, now ran over.
My father, Uncle Jeff, and the boys made their way along the wall
toward the fire and started trying to stamp it out.

“This isn’t a joke, Ed,” I yelled, panic in
my voice. “Everybody is up here.”

Ed briefly stopped hammering and said, “It
worked out beautifully, didn’t it? They all hurried out here when I
told them you had gotten stuck searching for the necklace. You
would be amazed how much they all love you, Gary. I’ve got your
whole family right where I want them. Only the Drucquers will be
left to inherit the farm.”

Ed continued hammering. The volume of smoke
was increasing rapidly. Ed had obviously started the fire in a
number of places, and the dry hay was catching fast. I could tell
from the yelling that we weren’t going to be able to put it
out.

There was one thing Ed didn’t know. “Ed, Kate
is up here,” I yelled over the hammering and the shouting. “Kate is
up here,” I called again when the hammering stopped.

“Nice, try, Gary. But pulling my leg won’t
work.”

“Kate,” I yelled. She had tried to get to the
fire, but had been driven back by what was now thick smoke. “Come
here.” I motioned frantically to her. “Tell Ed you’re here.”

Kate ran over to the trapdoor, heard the
hammering, and called, “Eddie?” as if she didn’t believe what was
happening. “What are you doing?”

“Katie? Katie? You’re not supposed to be
here.”

Kate clawed frantically and ineffectually at
the door. “Eddie, the barn is on fire. We’re all going to die.”

“I can’t pull the nails out,” Ed called. Now
the panic was in his voice. “I put them in too tight.”

“Release the bolt,” I said.

I heard some more hammering and the bolt
popped up. But when I pulled up on it, the door didn’t move. Ed had
nailed the wooden crosspieces of the door to the boards surrounding
it. I pulled harder and lost my grip on the bolt. This was as bad
as trying to open the door at the bomb shelter by pulling on the
hasp.

Archie and Tom stumbled out of the space
between the wall and the haystack, coughing, driven out by the
smoke. The men followed them. I heard screaming and confusion. We
didn’t have much time.

“Ed, knock the slats out of the door with the
hammer,” I called.

The wooden slats were nailed in from above,
and he should be able to knock the nails out. I heard pounding, and
the door jumped a little. The nails were in tight, and it would
take forceful blows. More pounding, then a yelled curse from Ed and
a muffled plop that sounded like something hitting the concrete
floor down below. Then silence.

“Ed,” I called. I repeatedly called his name,
but there was no answer.

“What’s the matter with the door?” Uncle Jeff
asked.

He grabbed the bolt and tried to pull the
door up, but he couldn’t get a good enough grip. The door didn’t
move.

“Ed nailed it shut,” I said. “He wants us to
die. He knows Kate’s here, and he was trying to knock the slats
out, but I think he fell off the ladder.”

Uncle Jeff shouted Ed’s name several times.
Still no answer.

“He must have hit his head,” Uncle Jeff
said.

The smoke was now swirling around us. It
would get us before the fire would. The women and my brothers and
Kate were huddled together, coughing and crying. I thought of Uncle
Jeff’s words about looking for the weakest link. The trapdoor was
no longer the weakest link.

What other possibilities were there? There
was the door at one end of the barn. It opened at the top of the
barn to let the conveyor belt bring hay into the loft. It was on
the wall behind the haystack. The door was also well above the
ground and below it was a hard gravel driveway. But the worst
problem was that the smoke was too thick to allow us to climb the
haystack and the whole pile of hay would burst into flames at any
moment.

CHAPTER 31

There was one other possibility. That was the
window above the hay bales at the other end of the barn. We could
get to the window, but how could we get down from there? It must be
at least twenty-five feet to the ground. But maybe it was better to
jump than face certain death from smoke and fire.

I looked up at the window and saw the rope
hanging from the rafters near it. That had to be the answer.

“We’ll go through the window and down the
rope,” I said to Uncle Jeff and my dad, who were both trying to
lift the trapdoor, in vain.

“Is there enough rope to reach the ground?”
my dad asked.

“I don’t know but it’s our only chance. Bring
everybody up on the bales.”

Without waiting for a reply, I ran to the
bales and climbed them as fast as I could. The smoke wasn’t heavy
here yet, although it was starting to drift over from the haystack
to this end of the barn. The window was a little above the top of
the bales, but the wooden slats nailed to the side of the barn
acted as rungs of a ladder that gave access to it.

I quickly climbed the ladder until my head
was even with the window. The bottom half of the window slid up to
open. I released my grip on the top rung with one hand and tried to
push the window up. It was stuck. I hit the crosspiece of the
window with the heel of my hand in an upward direction, trying to
unstick it. The window didn’t move, but my hand hit one of the
dirty panes and broke the glass.

A quick look at my hand revealed that I had
suffered only a minor cut. The broken glass was no help, because
the panes were much too small for us to go through. But if I could
break the six panes of glass on the bottom half of the window and
the wooden crosspieces that held the panes in place, we could get
through the opening.

I looked down and saw that my brothers and
Kate were now standing on the bales below me. The women were
hampered by their tight skirts, but the men were helping them climb
up the bales.

“I need to break the window,” I said to Tom,
Archie, and Kate. “Has anybody seen the pitchfork?”

The pitchfork was used to move the hay in the
haystack. Hopefully, it was in the hayloft.

“I saw it the last time we were up here,”
Kate said. “It was between the haystack and the north wall.”

Before I could say anything, she made her way
quickly through the jumble of bales to the edge and slid down them
to the floor. She disappeared from my view. That side of the
hayloft was not yet on fire, thankfully, but the smoke had reached
it. I hoped the pitchfork was still there. I prayed she would find
it and make it back all right. Tom went to the edge of the bales,
probably wondering whether he should follow her. And perhaps
wondering what she meant by talking about the last time we were in
the hayloft.

For several seconds, I held my breath and
wondered whether I should send Tom down into the smoke with her, or
go myself. No, I couldn’t take the time to get down from the
ladder. Maybe I should try to break the window with a hay hook
instead of the pitchfork. I was about to ask Archie to hand up a
hay hook when I saw Tom grab the handle of the pitchfork as it was
lifted up to him. Kate had found it.

Tom made his way among the bales, which were
piled helter-skelter from when I had been searching for the
necklace, trying not to trip and stick himself with the pitchfork.
While I cringed as the pitchfork swung wildly with his movements,
he made it to a spot below me and handed the pitchfork up, handle
first. The other end consisted of three sharp metal tines.

I gripped the handle like a javelin, with the
tines facing the window, pulled my arm back as far as I could, and
made a sharp thrust at the window. The force of my thrust threw me
against the wall of the barn, and I almost dropped the pitchfork
and fell off the ladder. I clung to the top rung of the ladder with
one hand and renewed my grip on the pitchfork with the other.

I checked for damage. I had broken two more
panes of glass, but more important, I saw a crack in the wooden
frame that held the glass in place. I thought I could knock it out
and clear a hole large enough for us to crawl through.