Shadowmaker (11 page)

Late that afternoon, as I came through the kitchen, Mom got up from her desk to greet me, but her eyes were glassy,
and she blinked a lot, looking as if she was trying to remember where she was and what I was doing there.

“Sorry I interrupted you,” I said, and tossed my books and handbag on the coffee table. “You’re right in the middle of a scene, aren’t you?”

“Does it show?” she asked, and we both laughed.

“Go back to work,” I said, “but first, there’s something I need to tell you. Travis Wyman—Lana Jean’s Travis—is coming here this afternoon.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I guess the sheriff must have talked to him about what I told him. Travis said I have the wrong idea and he wants to explain.”

“What time will he be here? Do we have Cokes in the refrigerator? Cookies?”

I gave an exaggerated sigh. “Any minute, but Mom, this is not a date. I will introduce Travis to you, then I’ll take him down to the beach. You can go back to work on your novel.”

“This is your house too,” Mom said apologetically. “If you’d rather talk to Travis in the living room, I’ll close down the computer.”

“Keep writing,” I said. “The sooner you finish your novel, the better.”

I heard the sound of a car approaching, along with the complaints of the rottweiler, and looked out the window to see Travis climbing out of a shiny black pickup. “Here he is,” I announced.

Mom snatched up the morning paper, two dirty coffee mugs, and tried to straighten up as I stood by the door,
waiting until Travis knocked. He followed me through the kitchen into the living room, where Mom greeted him pleasantly.

“You’ve been doing a lot of research on the Hawkins brothers,” Travis told Mom as he stared with surprise at the stack of printed sheets next to Mom’s computer.

“That printout has nothing to do with the Hawkins brothers,” Mom explained in a rather annoyed voice. “I’m writing a novel.”

He didn’t answer, and I had no idea whether he believed her or not. Obviously, most of the people in town didn’t.

Before Mom had a chance to offer him something to eat or drink, I said, “Mom has to get back to work on her novel, so why don’t we walk down to the beach?” Smiling, as though it was just what he would have suggested, Travis walked to the porch door and held it open for me.

The breeze was still warmed by the sun, and the sea, which smacked the drizzling foam close to our feet, had an invigorating sour-salt fragrance. The walk would have been pleasant if I hadn’t been so nervous about why Travis had come to see me.

“This is neat, Katie,” he said. “I’m sure I’d really like to be walking here with you, if we didn’t have to talk about what we have to talk about.”

“That’s practically what I was thinking,” I said, being more honest than I probably should have.

“You were?” He turned that handsome smile on me again. “Well, then let’s get it over with.”

Nearby was a sand bank, scattered with wisps of sea grass. Travis reached for my hand and led me to the bank,
brushing off a handful of broken shells. We sat down, and I stared out silently at the pale sea, with its gold skim broken only by two oil rigs and a ship in the distance, and waited for whatever Travis would tell me.

“Part of what you said to the sheriff was right. I did talk to Lana Jean in the alley back of Kennedy’s Grill,” Travis began. “Only she made out what we said to be different than what was really said.”

I turned to face him. “Lana Jean told me the two of you talked for a while.”

He shook his head. “She talked. I listened.” He paused for a minute, then asked, “Did she tell you what we talked about?”

I looked away from him and admitted, “She told you that she’d followed you a few times and—”

Anger sparked in his voice as he interrupted. “It was a lot more than a few times. According to what she told me, she was practically a spy.”

“She had this big infatuation for you, but you didn’t even know about it, so it couldn’t have hurt. Don’t get so mad.”

“I did know. I heard a lot about it from some of the guys who saw her spying on me at school. They thought it was funny.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He looked down at the toes of his Nikes, scuffing them back and forth in the sand. “She told me she even wrote down everything she saw me do or heard me say in her journal for English lit class.”

When I didn’t answer he continued, “B.J. told me that
Mrs. Walgren asked you to help Lana Jean with her journal. I assume you probably read it. Right?”

“Only a little bit,” I answered.

He straightened up and studied me. “What parts did you read?” When I hesitated, he pleaded, “You don’t know how embarrassing this is for me, Kate.”

“You don’t need to be embarrassed,” I said. “I only read the first couple of entries. I skimmed a few others.”

“Did you read about the carnival?”

“Just the first couple of paragraphs. That’s when I told her she’d have to write it over again and explained about description and emotion and sensory perception … you know, all of that.”

I thought I noticed a kind of relief in his eyes, and that took me by surprise. “It’s just that I ran into Cindy Jones at the carnival and … well, there were a couple of minutes behind the Ferris wheel … but it was just for fun, and if Lana Jean wrote about that, well … It’s just not something I’d want everybody to read about—especially you. Okay?” His face turned a blotchy red.

“It’s okay,” I mumbled. “I don’t know why you’d care what I thought about you and Cindy Jones—whoever she is.”

He leaned back and smiled again, his words coming out in an easy drawl. “Now that I’ve met you, Katie, I really do care what you think.”

It must have been the way he said my name, but I began to be glad he cared. I could understand what Lana Jean saw in him.

I shook myself back and realized I’d better stick with the
way the conversation was supposed to go. “Lana Jean told me that you said she was a very interesting person, and you’d like to get to know her better.”

He grimaced and moaned, “No way!”

“And she said you were going to take her out.”

Travis looked directly into my eyes and said, “If someone kept shadowing you, then cornered you in an alley while you were waiting for a friend, and told you how he followed you and wrote all about everything he saw you do and heard you say, would you tell this person how interesting he was and say, ‘Let’s get to know each other better’? Or go on a date?”

I didn’t have to think about it. “No,” I answered.

He hunched his shoulders and spread his arms wide. “There. You see?”

I nodded. “I’m the new kid in Kluney and Lana Jean was so open and kind to me, like a little kid. I just didn’t think she’d lie.” Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. “I was so worried about what happened to her after her mother called and said she was missing, that I tried to help. I told the sheriff that you and she had been talking, but I didn’t tell him what you were talking about.”

He said, “I’d appreciate it if you could keep it that way. I told Sheriff Granger that what happened was I was waiting for B.J. in back of Kennedy’s Grill and Lana Jean came out and wanted to talk to me, but I brushed her off. Maybe I was even kind of rude to her. I’m sorry now if I was rude.”

He looked so contrite I impulsively reached out and rested my hand on his. He sandwiched my hand between his two and said, “There’s no harm done. The sheriff’s
known me and my family all my life, and he knows Lana Jean and her mother. He believed me.” He turned my fingers so that my hand was tightly held inside his own, and bent toward me. “I hope you’ll believe me, too, Katie.”

I gulped. I had no reason not to believe him, except that it made no sense that Lana Jean had called me so excited she could hardly talk, then fed me a made-up story. It was crazy, but then some people might say Lana Jean’s obsession with Travis was kind of crazy.

“Do you believe me, Katie?” Travis asked.

“I guess I do,” I answered.

Suddenly Travis said, “Quick! Take off your shoes.”

“What?”

He began tugging his off, dropping them on the sand. “C’mon. Race you along the water’s edge.”

“Not me!” I laughed. “The water’s freezing.”

“That makes you run all the faster.”

He bent to grab my feet, tossed my shoes next to his, then pulled me after him down to the water, making sure I ran splashing into the nearest wavelet.

“Ouch!” I shrieked. “It’s cold!”

Letting go of my hand, he raced down the beach, splashing through the shallow foam that slid up and back on the hard-packed sand. I ran after him until he came to a stop and caught me, pulling me up on the dry sand where we flopped, out of breath.

“My toes are red,” I said, wiggling them for emphasis.

“It’s good for the circulation.”

“They’re so cold they’re tingling.”

“Then cover them up and stop complaining,” he teased, and heaped sand over my feet.

“I liked racing,” I managed to say.

“It’s not over yet,” Travis told me. “We’re a long way from your house, and we’ll have to race back.”

I surprised myself by adding, “I’m in no hurry to go back.”

He smiled at me. “Good. Then we’ll have a chance to get to know each other better. Tell me about yourself.”

“There’s not much to tell. My dad died six years ago, so I live just with my mom. She writes a national newspaper column and some articles for magazines, but she’s always wanted to write a novel, so she took a leave of absence for six months from her job. There was no one for me to live with for six months—we haven’t any close relatives, and my mom wouldn’t let me stay with a friend’s family—so I had to come along. If Mom can finish her novel by the end of summer, I’ll go back to my school and my friends in Houston.”

“Your mom really is writing a novel?”

“Really. You saw her printout copy.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t read what it said. Most people in town think she came here to investigate the Hawkins brothers’ company. After all, she stirred up trouble in other places.”

“Mom didn’t even know about the Hawkins brothers until Anita Boggs came to see her and asked for her help.”

“Is that what Miz Boggs did? Came to your mom? A lot of folks think that your mom went to Miz Boggs.”

I sighed. “How would she know Mrs. Boggs? I’m not
used to a small town. In Houston something happens and no one ever hears about it. In Kluney everyone seems to know everything and anything the others are up to, even if their information is wrong.”

“Folks in Kluney are interested in each other.”

“Anita’s husband beat her up. Everybody was interested in that, but no one seems to care.”

Travis looked surprised. “Sure they care. Some of the ladies, like my mom, went to visit and brought her casseroles.”

“A casserole isn’t going to make up for a mean, abusive husband.”

“Harvey Boggs isn’t mean. He was just scared that he and all the others in town who work at Hawkins would lose their jobs. Miz Boggs didn’t think about what she was doing.”

“What if there really is toxic waste?” I asked Travis. “Aren’t the people in Kluney afraid of living with that?”

“Nobody’s proved there’s any toxic waste to worry about.”

I didn’t want to get involved in an argument and ruin what time we had left on the beach. The afternoon shadows were long and low, and I knew we’d have to leave soon in order to be back at the house before the sun went down. The thought of Travis with me on a moonlit beach was appealing, but it seemed ridiculous as well.

As I got to my feet and brushed sand off the seat of my jeans, I asked, “Since you know everything that’s going on around here, tell me about our house—who was in it before
we moved in, and who was throwing rocks, knocking out our outside lights, last week?”

Travis took my hand, and we ambled along the hard-packed sand, heading toward my home. I was glad he’d forgotten about racing back. This was nicer. “I can answer the first question,” he said. “No one lived in your uncle’s house for over three years, but last year we all figured some beach bums had made themselves at home. A couple of people saw some strangers along the beach, but nobody comes down here much, so they didn’t pay close attention.”

“Beach bums … that’s what Mom guessed and that’s what the sheriff said. The house was a mess when we moved in. We really had to scrub it down.”

“Aren’t you glad it’s a little house, with just the four rooms and a bath?” he teased. “Think what it would have been like to clean anything bigger.”

I grimaced. “Those four rooms and a bath were still an awful lot of hard, dirty work.” We were getting close to home and an end to our conversation. “You didn’t answer the rest of my question. What about the lights? Who threw the rocks?”

“I don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “Kids?”

“No. It wasn’t kids. Someone had been watching the house a couple of nights before that. The dogs in the properties along the road barked and woke us up, and that’s how we saw the prowlers—just watching the house, hiding in the shadows, until Mom turned on my bedroom light and called the sheriff. It was creepy.”

“It sure must have been,” Travis said. “It sounds as if someone wants to scare you away.”

“The Hawkins people?”

“I don’t think so. It doesn’t sound like something they’d do.”

“Right.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my voice. “I forgot Harvey Boggs. The Hawkins people are more into physical violence.”

Travis threw me a sharp look. “Don’t blame Bubba and Billy Joe Hawkins for what Harvey did. He’s just one employee.”

“You’re quick to come to their defense,” I shot back. “I suppose the Hawkinses are related to you too.”

“Second cousins on my mom’s side,” he answered, “but that has nothing to do with what I said.”

I had no answer. Was everybody in town going to defend or cover up for the Hawkinses? What about me and Mom?

We picked up our shoes and walked almost up to the porch before Travis stopped and looked directly into my eyes. “Have you thought about this? What if whoever had been in your house left something and decided to come back?”

“Don’t!” I said as I shivered. “You’re frightening me.”