Blindfold (8 page)

Whit looked interested. "What fund-raiser?"

Maggie let Lane answer. "The Women's Heritage Society is holding a bazaar on the grounds of the old courthouse to raise money for the refurbishing. That's this week. Next week, it's a party at the new courthouse, when they put the statue of Lady Justice up on the roof. That sounds like a lot more

fun to me than some dumb bazaar where old women will be selling fattening cakes and cookies, ratty old wicker furniture, and horrible little ceramic figurines. ,,

Alex nodded. "They'll be selling red lampshades with fringe, too, I bet. My grandmother has one."

Scout pulled up in his Jeep. Everyone piled in. Maggie hopped into the front seat, then suddenly cried, "The van! I forgot all about it. It's still in the school parking lot. I can't leave it there."

"We'll get it!" Lane was in the backseat, crammed in with Alex, Whit, and Helen. "Give me the keys. Whit and I will go collect it and bring it to your house. Scout can take us back to Whit's car later."

In the front seat, Maggie's teeth clenched. "Whit and J"? Fast work, even for Lane.

"Sure," Whit agreed heartily. "Be glad to. I'll drive. Lane can navigate, since I don't know where you live, Maggie."

Scout was only too happy to stop the Jeep and let Whit and Lane out.

Maggie watched as they ran up Fourth Street. That yachting cap on Lane's head, she thought darkly, is just about the stupidest thing I've ever seen. And what about poor "Scoop," away at college? Stupid nickname. He worked on the college newspaper, so Lane called him Scoop. His real name, Maggie thought, was Paul.

When the rest of the group was settled on her back porch, the sun just beginning to set, the

breeze cooling slightly, Helen told Maggie she should call her parents and tell them what had happened. "Your mother probably heard the sirens. Maybe she's worried."

"I don't know where she is. She and Trudy Newhouse were supposed to collect last-minute items for the bazaar tonight, and I know they were going out to Muleshoe and Arcadia for some antique furniture. Anyway, she's probably back at the courthouse by now, getting things ready for tonight. She'll know all about the collapse, but she won't have a clue that I was there, so why would she worry? I'll bet she's upset, though. This could set her renovating campaign back a lot?

"Maybe they won't have the bazaar now," Helen said. She was sitting on the top porch step, her back against the railing, her eyes narrowed against the last rays of the setting sun. "I mean, after what happened." Her head turned, and her eyes focused on Maggie, lying on the white wooden swing, her head resting on a huge green-and-white-striped pillow, her feet propped on the swing's other arm. Her injured arm was lying against her chest. "What if the sheriff was right?" Helen asked quietly. "I mean," she added hastily, "not that I think he was. But what if? Who do we know that would want to do that to us?"

"Well, first of all," Maggie said, "I think the sheriff is as bored with Felicity as the rest of us, and he's just trying to create a little excitement. Second, even if there was someone down there kicking beams and making ceilings collapse, he or she

might not have known that was us down there. He couldn't have seen us, because we certainly couldn't see him. Maybe . . . maybe it was an inspector or something, checking out the soundness of the building."

"He would have had a flashlight, Maggie. And he would have hung around afterward," said Helen.

True. And with that inescapable fact came another: Maggie remembered almost running into James Keith, Chantilly Beckwith, and two of then-friends, right before they descended into that basement. That meant the nasty little quartet knew for a fact that six members of the peer jury, which the quartet had reason to loathe, were down there. Chantilly might look like a twig, but James and his friends were stocky and sturdy, built like bulldogs. Any one of them alone could have knocked that beam silly.

Could four other people have entered that corridor without Maggie and her friends hearing footsteps or breathing or the rustling of clothing . . . something, anything that would clue them in to the presence of others?

Yes, absolutely, Maggie decided, because I was kicking up such a racket, ranting and raving about being locked in that awful little room. And the quick shove or kick to the beam would only have taken a second or two. One quick shove from bulky shoulders, and down goes the beam.

But...

"No," she said suddenly, as if she'd been thinking aloud, "it didn't happen the way the sheriff

said, because where would the person or persons have gone after they knocked the beam down? We couldn't get out. So how could they?"

"Oh, that's easy," Scout answered. "All they would have had to do was dart around a corner and hide in one of the other passageways until dark. Couple of hours, that's all. Then leave either by the coal chute, or if the mess was cleaned up by then, go back up the stairs and out of the building. I mean, we could have done that, too, but we weren't willing to wait. You weren't," he reminded Maggie.

They fell silent again, then Helen said, "I think saving that building would be a big mistake. I think the Bransoms would rather we tore it down. That's what they'd want. That's what they wanted the first time, when Felicity turned their home into a jail. Remember the newspaper articles at the WOH offices, telling how Otis and his wife, Amelia, were so furious when the city took their home for unpaid back taxes and then turned it into a jail? They were both in their nineties then, and in the same nursing home, but they were so angry that criminals were going to be housed in the home they'd lived in forever and raised their kids in." Her voice lowered. "Some people in town say the two of them still wander the halls of the old courthouse. Maybe the renovations would make them even madder."

"We can't make them mad, Helen." Alex's voice was as quiet as Helen's, but firm. "They're dead. You can't make dead people mad."

Maggie wondered if he was thinking about his father. Maybe thinking that because his father was

dead, Alex himself had to be mad for him, at the city officials who had treated Mr. Goodman so shabbily.

The van pulled up the steep driveway, stopped, and Lane and Whit jumped out. They were laughing.

Oh, goodie, they had a nice time, Maggie thought, slinking lower on the swing. I do so love it when my friends get along well. When they ran up onto the porch, she flashed a brilliant smile at them and said sweetly, "Thank you both so much. It was so nice of you to go to all that trouble."

"No trouble," Whit said easily, taking a seat on the steps. "You feeling okay? How's the arm?"

Lane was beside him in seconds.

'The arm is fine. But you must have had some trouble," Maggie continued in that same innocent voice. "It usually only takes four minutes to drive here from school. Did you run into a detour or something? An accident?"

Lane shot her a suspicious glance. "Actually, we ran into your mom. She was at the van, looking for you. Someone at the courthouse told her you were involved in the collapse, and she freaked. Went to the hospital, you weren't there, so she was on her way here when she spotted the van. I think we convinced her that you weren't at death's door. She wanted to know what we were doing down there, and she said it was a good thing you'd already delivered those plans in the morning, because if she thought it was her fault you were in there, she'd never have forgiven herself."

Maggie flushed guiltily.

"I didn't tell her," Lane continued, 'that you were there delivering the plans. I didn't dare. I was afraid she'd feel too guilty. Either that or she'd have been really mad that you didn't deliver them when she told you to. So I kept my mouth zipped."

"Thanks, Lane. I'll explain it all later."

Whit said, "You'd better have that explanation ready any second now, because I'm not that sure we convinced her you were okay. I'm surprised she hasn't called here already."

The phone rang.

When Maggie had persuaded her mother that not only was she okay, but she had every intention of working at the bazaar as promised, she returned to the porch. "I think I need to sack out for a little while before I go over there," she said reluctantly, not that eager to be in the house alone. Her brother was working and wouldn't be home until late, her mother was staying at the courthouse to put the finishing touches on the bazaar, and her father was going straight there after work to help. But if she didn't lie down, just for a little while, she wasn't going to be in any shape to help in the courthouse kitchen later. God, she was going to have to go back inside that building again!

"Did she say anything about canceling the bazaar?" Helen asked, standing up and dusting off her khaki shorts.

"No. She said it's too late. All the stuff is already on display tables and tagged with prices. And the kitchen, where we'll be working, is in a separate

wing from the collapse. Besides, like she said, the bazaar itself is being held outside, and the grounds should be perfectly safe." Maggie laughed abruptly. "No beams out there, holding things up. Or not"

Whit stood up, too, and moved toward Maggie to say quietly, "So, Til see you over there, right?"

She nodded, aware of both Scout and Lane, who must have heard. Then she led everyone down the back steps to the driveway and waved as they all climbed into the Jeep.

A feeling of desolation swept over her as the car disappeared from sight. Twilight had arrived, bathing the backyard in a rosy, purplish glow, but darkness would follow soon after. She'd be left alone in the dark with only questions about the disaster at the courthouse to keep her company.

Maggie was about to. climb the steps when the toe of her boot struck something solid. Something that shouldn't have been there. There was just supposed to be the thick, green lawn, and then the wide, wooden steps. Nothing else.

Dog-face had probably dropped something on his way in or out and been too lazy to pick it up.

Maggie looked down. The object lying just below the bottom step didn't belong to her brother, Darren.

The object belonged to her. And before that, it had belonged to Scout's grandfather, and possibly his father before him. Now it belonged to her, because Scout had generously given it to her. Lying at her feet, half-hidden beneath the open bottom step, was the gavel Scout had given her when she was appointed foreperson of the peer jury.

Except. . . except, Maggie realized as she bent to pick it up, thinking it must have dropped out of her backpack, there was something very wrong with it.

The gavel Scout had gifted her with had been one solid piece of smooth, shiny wood. But the gavel she was looking at now in dismay was in pieces. The gavel itself had been neatly sliced-- sawed?--into three fat chunks, the handle into two narrower slices.

Picking up the larger chunks and holding them in the palm of one hand, Maggie stood at the foot of the steps, staring down at what was left of the antique gavel Scout had given her.

property. The tire iron belonged to him, and had his fingerprints on it. And there was the phone call, that same evening, from his house to hers.

But no one ever investigated to see if there was evidence against anyone else.

They put him in jail. I couldn't believe it. They actually took him, in handcuffs, and put him in a cell, which was really just an extra room in Sheriff Donovan's house, with bars on the windows. Then, as if that weren't bad enough, because of what the sheriff said was "outrage" over Christy's death in Dante's little farming community, they moved Dante into Felicity. They took him to that disgusting old wreck of a building with the six jail cells in the basement. They said he'd be safer there. And of course, the trial would be held there, in the county seat.

But I was mad. It would be hard for me to go all the way to Felicity to visit Dante.

That courthouse was disgusting! Musty and mildewy and withered, a corpse the town refused to bury. Even the ivy on the outside walls was dead, dry as brown tissue paper, the edges curled like arthritic fingers.

But that's where they took him. And that's where he stayed until they convicted him. Wouldn't even let him out on bail. Not for murder, they said. No bail for murder suspects, not in Greene County.

All the time, while he was in jail, and all during the trial, I was convinced he couldn't possibly be convicted. How could he be? He was innocent. I wasn't worried.

But I should have been.

Because justice is blind. Blind to the truth, and that's a fact.

No wonder that statue up on the courthouse roof is wearing a blindfold. It was explained to me a long time ago that the blindfold means Justice is blind to things like riace, creed, wealth, religion, power, and position ... so that everyone, no matter what their circumstances, is treated the same way under the law. Treated fairly.

But I know now that it means something very different. What that blindfold really means is, Justice is blind to the truth.

I could not believe it when they actually convicted him. I was in shock for days. How could they do that? Dante hadn't done anything wrong. He'd just fallen in love with the wrong person, that was all. As far as I know, you don't go to prison for life for that. If you did, the prisons would be overflowing even more than they already are.

Dante hadn't killed anyone. Who knew that better than I?

Of course Dante's fingerprints were on the tire iron. He'd worked on that truck. My fingerprints would have been on it, too, if I hadn't been wearing gloves. Even if I hadn't been wearing them, I don't think my fingerprints would have meant much. Everyone knew I hung around the Guardino farm sometimes, and I was only thirteen . . . much too young to be guilty of such a heinous crime. That's what they'd have said, anyway. Besides, no one had seen me with Christy in a while. But Dante was

still very much involved with her. Everyone in town had seen and heard them fighting.

And everyone in town was willing, even eager, to testify to those arguments in open court.

I think the clincher was, Dante had no alibi. His story about sitting down by the pond, alone, sounded weak even to me, and I knew he was telling the truth.