Blindfold (12 page)

"Donovan? No, I haven't." Alarm flared in Sheila Keene's eyes. "Why?"

"Nothing. Listen, that beam just caved, that's all. Why is everyone so surprised? The building is ancient."

Her mother sighed heavily. "I know. And I've decided to talk the committee into canceling the courthouse renovation. I've been thinking a lot about it. And it's just too risky." The regret in her eyes slowly gave way to the glimmer of a new idea. "What about that old warehouse down on Second Street? It's big, and looks solid enough. It might just make a great children's museum." She got up,

went to a drawer for pencil and paper, and left the room, murmuring under her breath, the old courthouse apparently forgotten, at least for the moment.

Well, my friends will be thrilled, Maggie thought. Looks like they're going to get their rec center, after all.

She knew she should have told her mother that she'd had the plans with her all day at school. Because it could mean that someone had seen those plans. But who? The backpack had been with her all day.

Well, almost all day. She'd left the backpack, with the plans inside, on the bench outside the jury room when they went in to deliberate. And again, during PE, she'd left the pack on a bench in the locker room. Should have put it in her locker, but she'd been late, as usual, and had just dropped it and changed and run to the gym.

But the broken gavel couldn't have anything to do with any of the courthouse stuff. That had to do with the peer jury. Which was not her mother's problem.

Her friends weren't coming over until later, and her parents went to deliver the last of the bazaar merchandise. Dog-face was working, so Maggie had the house to herself. She soaked in a hot tub to ease her aches and pains, then lay on her bed reading. Reading kept her from thinking about Trudy's husband's theory and the sheriffs suspicions.

She was almost asleep when the doorbell rang. Scout.

Conscious of a dull, throbbing headache, Maggie called in the direction of the open window, "Come on in! I'm upstairs!" She sat up, picked at her hair with her fingers in a halfhearted attempt to smooth it, and waited for Scout to pound up the stairs and burst into her room.

When she didn't hear the front door open, she called out again, waited again. It wasn't like Scout to hesitate on the front porch. She got up reluctantly and went to the window, intending to call to Scout from there.

But the Jeep wasn't in the driveway, parked on the incline the way it should have been. And something else caught Maggie's eye immediately. A sedan. Old. Blue. Parked across the street. There was only one distinctive thing about the car. It didn't belong there. It wasn't Mrs. Garber's brand-new Cadillac with the custom turquoise paint job that was always parked at the curb because Mrs. Garber was afraid of her very steep driveway. When she was home, the Cadillac was always parked right there in that very spot. If she wasn't home, she couldn't very well have company, so what was the old blue sedan doing there?

Maggie pulled the curtain aside to get a better look. Hadn't she seen that car somewhere recently? It looked familiar. But then, there were probably hundreds of cars just like that in Greene County. Still, it wasn't the kind of car normally parked at Mrs. Garber's house when she entertained.

The doorbell rang again, more insistently this time.

Feeling foolish, as if she'd been caught spying, Maggie drew back from the window.

She was too stiff and sore to hurry down the stairs, but it didn't matter, because when she finally pulled the front door open, Scout wasn't standing on the porch. No one was. And the blue car was gone.

But there was something on the front porch. It was lying just across the threshhold, at Maggie's feet. She had already begun to swing the door shut when the object caught her eye, drawing her gaze down, down

She stopped the door in midswing. Stared at the object. Looked up again, glanced around for some clue as to how it had arrived on her porch. Nothing. - The street below their slope was silent and empty.

Maggie backed away a step, took another look. What sat in front of her, perched on the threshold like a gift, was an old-fashioned scale, very old, probably antique. She'd seen one like it in an old western. It was a miniature version of the scales Justice was balancing on the old courthouse roof, and in the movie it had been used to weigh gold dust. But this wasn't an old western, and no one weighed gold dust at her house.

Extending over the gold base was a lightweight brass arm. From each end of the arm hung a slender chain. Each chain supported a round brass scoop. The twin scoops were loosely covered with squares of aluminum foil.

Maggie realized what must have happened. The scale, which looked to be an antique, perhaps even

valuable, must have been left behind in all the excitement at the bazaar last night. Someone had spotted it and been kind enough to bring it here, so her mother could deliver it to the person who had bought it. The scoops were probably covered to keep them free of damaging dust and grime.

Why hadn't the person who'd delivered it waited to be thanked?

Because you took forever getting down here, she told herself, and bent to pick up the scale. She'd just take it inside and park it in the kitchen for her mother.

As she bent, a brisk spring breeze blew across the porch. First it increased the swaying motion of the scale's twin scoops, then it reached in underneath one square of aluminum foil and tugged on it until it had lifted an edge. Slipping in beneath the edge to set the foil free, it yanked it all the way off and dropped it to the porch floor before wafting along on its merry way.

As the foil uncurled from the scoop, and slid off, Maggie's body froze in midbend. She stared, her eyes filled with confusion.

The uncovered scoop was brimming over with a thick, bright red liquid that, no longer kept in check by the foil, rolled to the edge of the swaying scoop and spilled over onto the gray porch floor, where it began to puddle at Maggie's feet.

She stood up straight, still staring at the scale. The confusion in her eyes turned to revulsion as she realized what she was looking at. Slowly, very

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slowly, as the sun continued to shine and the breeze set the porch rocker to rocking, it sank in, though she fought it as long as she could. The thin red stream spilling out of the scoop and pooling at her feet was blood.

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door. Wasn't the first time. Christy and I thought it was stupid to keep that door barred, since no one but kids ever went near the coal bin. Besides, it was barred on the corridor side, so any prisoner who wanted to use it as an escape route could just lift the bar and open the door. Most of them weren't there long enough to think about escaping. But that was exactly the way I planned to get Dante out of there.

He was asleep on the cot in his cell, one arm hanging down over the edge of the bunk as if he hadn't known where else to put it. He was lying on his stomach in his repulsive orange jail clothes, his eyes closed, his face turned in profile toward me. His hair could have stood a good combing, not to mention a shampoo, and he looked about eight years old.

I hurt then, real bad, deep down inside somewhere, in a place I hadn't felt before. No matter how much I blamed Christy (and I did) for what had happened, the fact was, Dante wouldn't be lying on that musty cot in that damp, dark cell if it weren't for me. That really hurt.

But I was going to fix that.

There were no guards in sight, but I hadn't expected any. If there was a guard on duty in the dead of night, he'd be sound asleep around the corner. Or over at Shorty's, having a cup of coffee and a piece of Shorty's coconut cream pie. Felicity wasn't used to having murderers in its jail. And Dante was a local boy, so the guards weren't watching him as carefully as they might have a stranger. Lucky for me.

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He was the only prisoner in the six basement cells. That was lucky, too. For us.

He woke up when I called his name for the third time. Rubbed his eyes with a fist. Sat up. Looked at me as if he thought he was still dreaming.

I told him Td come to set him free. "You're sixteen," I said, "old enough to run away and make a life for yourself someplace where no one knows you." I'd stolen fifty dollars from my mother's purse, and as I talked quietly, urgently, I held out a fistful of bills.

Dante didn't take the money. He didn't even get off his cot, just sat there listening to me with a sleepy-eyed look. I had to repeat myself twice before he finally got what I was saying.

Even when he nodded to show me he understood why I was there, standing just outside the barred door of his cell, he didn't say anything. Just sat there, nodding his head and swiping at his messy hair and studying the dirt floor. Not even looking at me.

When he finally did speak, still not looking at me, what he said stopped my heart cold. "It was you, wasn't it?" His voice was flat and emotionless. "You did it You killed Christy. I knew it wasnt me, but I figured it was maybe one of her other boyfriends. I never thought of you. Not once." He lifted his head then, his eyes red-rimmed with sleep and just plain old weariness and probably tears over the death of his father. "Why? Why did you do it?"

There was so much anguish in his voice that I knew then he still loved her. And that made me so

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mad. So really, really furious. Did he still not know how bad she was for him? For his family? For our friendship? What was the matter with him?

I talked faster then than I ever had in my life. I didn't tell him exactly the whole truth. I couldn't do that. I told him we'd fought, Christy and I, and that I was only defending myself when I hit her. I told myself that might make him feel better than the truth would, but of course it was really me I was protecting. Whatever. When Fd finished, I added that he had to understand, he really had to. Because I couldn't deal with him not understanding.

He listened, although his eyes were focusing on the floor again, which made me mad. I was there to rescue him. He could at least look at me. When I'd finished, he did look at me, but what he said was, "You have to tell You know you do. You have to confess, and you have to do it yesterday."

I couldn't believe it. What was he talking about? Was he nuts? I had no intention of telling anyone but him the truth. Ever. I hadn't even planned to tell him. He'd guessed the truth.

"Dante, don't be ridiculous! No one would believe I did it! I'm not even fourteen yet! Besides, there isn't one shred of proof that I hadanything to do with Christy's death. Anyway, you've already been convicted. Like you said, no one wants another trial. It's all over. I'm sorry she's dead," (a lie, but after so many, what's one more?) "but I'm here to make it up to you."

"The only way you can make it up to me," he said firmly, "is by telling the truth. I want people to

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know Fm not a murderer. You owe me that"

"What do you care what people think? Anyway, even if I confessed and enough people believed me to get you off the hook and send me off to juvenile detention, there would be just as many people in Greene County who would never believe you were really innocent Never. They'd think I made a false confession to save a friend from prison. Because Fm younger and would only get juvie. Fll bet even your own mother would never be sure it wasn't you"

It took a while, but in the end I convinced him. He was pretty bitter about the people in Greene County by then anyway. I could tell by the look in his eyes that it finally had sunk in... that even if he were somehow freed, he wouldn't be able to stay around Felicity. People would never really trust him again. They wouldn't let it rest.

But I could also see that he didn't think it was right for me to get away with murder. I asked him, "Are you going to tell?" After a couple of long minutes, he shook his head. "You're right No one would believe me," he said in a hopeless voice. "They'd think I was just trying to get myself off the hook, that Fd somehow talked you into taking the rap for me because you're younger and wouldn't, be sent to prison like me. They might even think you'd volunteered, just like you said, because we're friends."

That was heartening. He'd been so preoccupied for so long with Christy, I wasn't even sure he still thought of me as a friend.

But the way he looked worried me. So drained and lifeless, as if his sentence had been death, and it had already been carried out. I wasn't sure he had the energy to climb up the coal chute and run to the railroad tracks to grab a freight train on its way out of town, which was how I'd planned his escape. I also wasn't sure he'd be willing to split before his father's funeral. But he couldn't afford to wait. No way could I get him out of town if he insisted on attending the service. There'd be too many people around tomorrow. Tonight was perfect. He had to agree. For both our sakes.

He did, although it took a while. But he knew it was his only chance. I made him see that.

Getting him out of there was a cinch. Those cells were a joke. The wooden frame around his cell door was rotting. I used my knife again, and in minutes Dante, looking surprised, was standing beside me outside the cell. Using my flashlight to guide us, I led the way to the coal bin. I left the door off its hinges. It wasn't like they weren't going to know Dante had escaped. What difference did it make if they knew hvufl Even if they figured out that he hadn't done it alone, they'd never in a trillion years think it was me who had helped him. I was perfectly safe.

We scuttled up the coal chute and outside.

I wriggled through that window on my stomach and heaved an enormous sigh of relief. Dante, close on my heels, gulping in fresh air as if he couldn't get enough of it, was out of jail and would soon be on his way out of Felicity and Greene County. I had

made amends. I couldn't bring Christy back even if I wanted to (which I didn't), but Dante wasn't going to spend the rest of his life in prison for my crime, after all. That was such a relief, my whole body suddenly felt as light as air. I had set Dante free.

out again, Whit led her to a chair and pushed her gently into it. Helen ran into the kitchen to get her a glass of water, and Scout went to the telephone to call the sheriff, saying bluntly to Maggie, "That's blood on there, Maggie. He has to see this."