The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (7 page)

Natalie said. “To keep you two from ganging
up on me, write one about Sylvia.”

For some reason, I didn’t want to. “There are
no rhymes for Sylvia. It’s like orange.”

“You can’t get out of it that easily,”
Natalie said. “Make it Syl.”

This one took me a little longer. Just when
the troops looked as if they might get restless, I came out
with:

“
There is a young lady named Syl,

Who races and never stands still.

You can look anywhere,

But you’ll find she’s not there.

She’s already over the hill.”

Sylvia glanced at her watch and said, “I’ve
gotta run.”

Natalie and I laughed.

“Me too,” Natalie said, standing up.

“See ya later, alligator,” Sylvia said.

“After a while, crocodile,” Natalie
added.

“Not too soon, baboon,” I chimed in.

“After a laugh, giraffe,” we all
finished.

CHAPTER 8

There was a large garage in the back of the
school where buses were maintained. I figured the janitors might
hang out when they weren’t janitoring elsewhere. In addition, I had
found out that Mr. White, the janitor who had discovered Ralph’s
body, doubled as a bus driver. He was probably a mechanic,
also.

I headed toward the garage during my brief
lunch period while wolfing down a sandwich from a brown bag I had
brought from home. I was surprised at how large the garage was. It
had the capacity to hold several buses at once. There was even a
hydraulic lift. The air smelled of grease and oil and all the odors
mechanics loved.

Two men were sitting, side by side, on a
workbench, their legs dangling in the air, eating their own
sandwiches and drinking from cups of thermoses that had been
retrieved from metal lunchboxes. They wore gray coveralls, which
hid some of the dirt that went with their jobs.

They glanced up as I approached and stopped
talking. I addressed the older one, because his white hair made him
look like a White, saying, “Mr. White?”

He nodded and the younger one said, “That’s
his name; don’t wear it out.”

“My name is Gary Blanchard. I’m a cousin of
Ralph…Harrison.” I figured knowing that would make him more likely
to talk to me, since he shouldn’t have anything to hide. “I just
started here at Carter.”

Mr. White nodded and took a swig of whatever
was in his thermos. He was going to make me do the talking. The
younger man slid off the workbench and walked away.

“I understand that you’re the one who found
Ralph in the auditorium.”

Mr. White nodded again. I remained silent,
hoping he would say something. He looked at me with his blue eyes,
set in a face the color and consistency of white bread dough, and
said, “I went in to clean up after the assembly. Didn’t see nuthin’
out of place at first. Then I saw a boy—Ralph, as it turned
out—laying on his back across a couple of seatbacks. I said to
myself, ‘That ain’t right,’ and went over to investigate. He was in
a unnatural position, you know what I mean? Then I saw that one of
the seats was broken. But I didn’t know he was dead until I got up
close to him. Poor guy. He was right below the balcony and I knew
immediately what had happened. He must have been goofing off up
there.”

“What time was that?”

“Oh, about 2:30. Half hour after the assembly
ended.”

“Did you see anybody else in or near the
auditorium?”

“Nope.”

“What about in the balcony?”

“Couldn’t have been nobody there. I would
have heard them. Any sound in that place carries. It’s got good
acoustics.”

“But what if someone were hiding in the
balcony and not moving?”

“Police searched it after they got
there.”

“Okay, but you had to leave the auditorium to
tell Dr. Graves about Ralph. A person would have had time to leave
while you were gone. Or before you got there in the first
place.”

“What are you driving at, young fella?”

“Somebody else could have been with Ralph
when he fell.”

Mr. White appeared to think about that
statement. Then he said, “Like I told Dr. Graves and the police, I
didn’t see or hear nobody. And I got to get to work.”

Mr. White slid off the workbench. Standing,
he came up to just above my shoulder. He walked over toward a bus
that had its hood up. The interview was obviously over. I called a
thank you after him and headed toward my next class.

***

When school let out, I walked over to the
football field. The team was already there, practicing for the game
on Saturday. The game was important enough that the jocks had been
let out of school early. An offensive team, headed by quarterback
Joe Hawkins, was running plays against a defensive team composed of
second-stringers, since the first string played both offense and
defense in a game. Joe was a commanding presence on the field, and
he had a strong passing arm. I could understand why a girl would
fall for him. That didn’t make me feel good.

The cheerleaders came out and started
practicing nearby. Natalie, as head cheerleader, drilled the
varsity cheerleaders who were practicing in uniform. Their black
skirts fell well below their knees. They wore black sweaters with
big red C’s on the front. When they practiced jumps, their skirts
flew up in back, and I was able to see their black pants
underneath. I would have preferred white.

When the cheerleaders took a break, I walked
over to Natalie, who had seen me and was a few steps away from the
others. I said, “Shake hands with me, so it will look like we’re
meeting for the first time. She smiled her winning smile and pumped
my hand. She was a good actress, and even though her smile was put
on, it still affected me.

“Which one is Ruth?” I asked.

“Ruth is the redhead with freckles.”

I picked her out instantly. She was a big
girl, built like a brick shithouse. I’m not sure where that
expression came from, but it meant she was stacked in all the right
places.

Natalie called Ruth over to us and said,
“Ruth, this is Gary. He’s new here. He’s writing a story for the
Carter Press.”

“About what?” Ruth asked.

“A general story about the school and its
history, athletic program, cheerleaders,” I said, trying to make it
as broad as possible.

“Did Ed ask you to do this?”

“Ed?”

“Ed Drucquer. He’s in charge of all the
school news written for the Carter Press.”

“Do you work with Ed?”

“I’m on his staff.”

How was I going to get out of this one? “I
talked to him a little. We’ll talk some more.”

“Why do you want to talk to me, in
particular?”

It was time for the truth. “Because you knew
Ralph Harrison.”

She looked at me, stone-faced.

“I heard about Ralph’s accident when I was at
Atherton. It was big news. I’d like to know more of the
details.”

“It was all in the papers.”

This was going nowhere. “May I talk to you,
say, after practice?”

“I have to take the school bus home.” Her
voice was too high-pitched for her body.

“Why don’t I drive you home? Where do you
live?”

Ruth looked apprehensive.

Natalie, who had been lurking nearby, said,
“Gary’s a good guy. Sylvia told me all about him. And he’s really
interested in anything to do with Ralph.”

Ruth finally nodded and said, “Okay.”

Sylvia’s seal of approval carried a lot of
weight. “Great,” I said. “I’ll be over watching the football
practice.” Actually, I wouldn’t have minded watching the
cheerleaders—and especially Natalie practice, but I couldn’t be too
obvious about it.

***

Ruth didn’t say much as we walked toward the parking
lot together and I wondered whether I was going to have to pry
words out of her. Compared to the voluble Natalie and Sylvia, she
was about as talkative as a Greek statue.

But when she saw the car I was driving, she
exclaimed, “That’s Ralph’s car.”

I had forgotten about that. Major error. She shrunk
away from me, as though I were a car thief. Or worse.

“I’m Ralph’s cousin,” I blurted out. “I should have
told you before. I’m staying with his parents and they let me use
the car.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She looked as if she might fly away. “I should have.
I thought…you might not want to talk to me. I’m sorry.”

Ruth was still on the verge of bugging out. I opened
her door and then went around to the driver’s side, trying to exude
confidence I didn’t feel. I climbed in and waited. Finally, she got
into the car, but she didn’t look happy about it. I started the
engine, shifted into first gear, and drove out to Main Street. I
stopped, not knowing which way to turn.

“Turn left,” she said after a few seconds. That was
opposite from the direction to the farm.

Ruth smoothed her cheerleader skirt down over her
knees as I tried to figure out what to say next. She finally said,
“Ralph steered with the spinner.”

I didn’t use the spinner knob that Ralph had
installed on the steering wheel.

She said, “You aren’t really writing a story for the
Carter Press, are you?”

“No,” I admitted. “But I am interested in Ralph.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I understand you and Ralph were going together.”

“We were going steady.”

“Uh, how were you getting along?” That was awkward,
but I couldn’t think of any better way of phrasing it. She was
silent as I shoved the gearshift on the steering post into second
while pulling away from one of the few traffic lights in the area.
I hoped I hadn’t spooked her.

“We were…we were going steady. We were getting along
fine.”

I thought she might have been going to say that they
were in love, but that was too intimate an admission to a
stranger—especially a male stranger. I tried one more time. “Were
you having any problems with your relationship?”

“No. No problems. We were getting along fine.”

I decided to let that rest. I said, “I saw Ralph
several times a year, mostly during the summer. Sometimes our
families would go up into Canada and stay at a lodge on a lake for
a week. I got the impression that Ralph was kind of wild.”

“He was a little wild, but I helped to calm him
down.”

Or maybe put him to sleep. She must have exhibited
more personality with Ralph than she was showing with me. Or did he
just like her for her body? I preferred witty chatterboxes, myself.
“How long had you two been going together?”

“Since the start of the year.”

“The calendar year?”

“Yes.”

“So you had been going together almost three months
when he…”

“Yes.”

She would have been a sophomore and Ralph would have
been a junior.

“Did you see him on the day he…died?”

“Yes. We sat together at an assembly that took place
just before…”

Her voice trailed off. Usually, classes sat together
at assemblies, but sometimes students were able to break away and
sit with their friends.

“Where were you sitting?”

“In the balcony.”

“Did you ever see him…do anything unusual or daring
in the balcony?”

“One time he took me there and showed me how he could
stand on his hands on the edge. It scared me half to death.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him never to do it again.”

“What happened after the assembly was over?”

Ruth was silent. I glanced over and saw a tear
rolling down her cheek. Maybe I was asking too many questions. I
wouldn’t press her any more.

She wiped the tear away with her finger and said, “I
had to go to class. He had a class near mine and ordinarily he
would have walked me to my class, but he said he needed to talk to
someone. So I went on alone.”

“Did he say who he needed to talk to?”

“No.”

I had one more question. “Did you see him again?”

She choked as she said, “No.”

I couldn’t bear to ask her any more questions about
Ralph, but I also couldn’t leave her in this condition. I waited
while she blew her nose into a tissue she extracted from her purse
and then changed the subject. “So you work with Ed.”

“Yes.” Her face lit up with a wan smile for the first
time. She said, “Ed is a riot. He’s fun to work with. And I love
his accent.”

“Do you write stories for the paper?” If she wrote
stories, she must interview people, and if she interviewed people,
she must talk.

“Yes, I write stories, and I type the stories up on
stencils, so we can make copies of the paper for distribution. Ed’s
not a very good typist.” She actually giggled.

I knew stencils well since I had typed many of them
while putting the school paper together at Atherton. They were
difficult to work with, required great accuracy on the typewriter,
and could be messy while making reproductions.

I said, “I really do write. I wrote for the school
paper at Atherton.”

“Oh.”

We chatted about the newspaper business the rest of
the way to her house.

***

Dinner at my aunt’s house was a somber affair. Aunt
Dorothy and Uncle Jeff had not gotten over Ralph’s death. Ralph was
an only child, so the house would have been completely quiet if it
weren’t for me. I think that’s why they agreed so readily to let me
come and live with them. They saw me as a replacement for Ralph.
But so far, I had been a failure in that regard because they rarely
smiled.

Uncle Jeff had a job with an aircraft company near
the Buffalo Airport. He used his mathematical background to
calculate reliability. If an airplane part had one chance in a
thousand of failing over a certain period of time, then adding
another part to back it up would mean that the chances of both
parts failing in the same time frame was one in a million. That
sort of thing.

Aunt Dorothy was a substitute teacher at Atherton,
although she was also available to teach at Carter. It was a good
thing that she was usually called to teach several days a week,
because she needed something to keep her busy.