The Secret of the Sand Castle (14 page)

BOOK: The Secret of the Sand Castle
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CHAPTER XXI
Unexpected Developments

THIS would be her strategy, Judy decided. She would make Walter Brand think Roxy needed him and wanted to be his client. As they walked toward the Sand Castle together she plied him with one question after another.

“I keep thinking of what you said before about all the houses not being empty,” she ventured at last.

“It—it frightened me—and then we saw her. Do you think it’s possible for the dead to come back and haunt a house?”

“If you’re referring to your aunt Agnes, yes,” he replied. “Your cousin Florence can tell you. Agnes was a strange woman,” he continued, slowing his steps and, obviously, putting on an act. “I’m told she took up spiritualism as a girl and was often heard to say that if it were possible for her to come back, she would.”

“Why?” asked Judy. “Was there something she 148

had to do? You know, like in the movies—”

“Of course.” He smiled, but it was not a pleasant smile. “She had to find her jewels. You’ve heard about them, I suppose. She had to make sure they went to her granddaughter.”

“Little Agnes, the one who was on that plane? I saw the police helicopter searching for survivors. Do you think they’ll find any?”

“I doubt it. They got the plane out with two bodies in it—”

“Only two?”

“Yes, the third one is probably in the water. It’s shallow, of course, except in the channels. The girl could wade out if she wasn’t killed when she jumped.”

“But you think she was?”

“I’m afraid so.” He managed a profound sigh. “It looks like the end of the Purdy family, doesn’t it?

Bad luck followed Agnes wherever she went. John was her only son and little Agnes her only grandchild. As for her husband—” He paused dramatically.

“I know,” Judy said. “I’ve heard all the family gossip. He robbed a bank and was sent to prison for—how many years was it, Mr. Brand?” He named the exact number of years that had elapsed since the hurricane. Was it coincidence?

Judy thought not.

149

“Then isn’t it about time he was released?”

“My dear Miss Zoller, he
was
released.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Judy, pretending more fear than she actually felt. “He won’t be there, will he? I won’t have to meet him?”

He smiled that ugly smile of his that pulled his face into a grimace.

“They will all be there,” he pronounced in solemn tones, “the dead and the living if what you tell me is true. It will be quite a family gathering.” Judy shivered, but not from the cold wind that was whipping the ocean into whitecaps. The sea was growling again, like a cat devouring a morsel it doesn’t wish to share. Suddenly the whole world seemed cold, unfriendly, and strange. Her fear was no longer pretended but gripping and real.

“But why?” she asked. “
Why
?”

“They’ve all been notified of the foreclosure, and each one wants to keep the other from getting hold of the property. That shows you what greed can do,” the lawyer pointed out virtuously.

“Do you think my aunt Hazel will be there?” Judy was unable to conceal the hopeful note in her voice as she asked this question. She did so want to learn the truth directly from the friendly woman she had met on the bus.

“Probably. She’s been notified. Ever meet her?”

“Just once.” Judy felt she might as well admit it 150

as he might not know how many of her stepmother’s relatives Roxy had met.

“What did you think of her?”

“I liked her,” declared Judy and now she was quite sincere. “She isn’t at all like the stories people tell about her.”

“No?” He chuckled. “You should have heard them talking against her at Agnes’ funeral. It wasn’t fair, some said, when she wasn’t there to defend herself. Others said the facts spoke for themselves.

Finally Mr. Garner saw they were upsetting Florence so he got up and told them off. Said it was enough to make Agnes rise up and haunt them.”

“Really?” exclaimed Judy, nearly as surprised as she pretended to be. “Maybe that’s what she is doing, Mr. Brand.”

His satisfied smile told her that was exactly what he wanted her to think. Only a few steps ahead was the Sand Castle, as wind-swept and haunted-looking as anyone could wish. As Judy opened the door she called loudly:

“Don’t be frightened. It’s only Roxy. I brought Mr. Brand along with me. We’re all in need of some sound legal advice.”

It was the speech she had rehearsed to herself as she came up from the beach, but now it seemed woefully inadequate.

“From
him
?”
The voice, full of distrust, came 151

from a chair near the stove where a strange man was sitting. He appeared to be perhaps sixty. His face was deeply lined, but his eyes were bright—almost too bright, Judy decided. There were tears in them.

Somehow, it made her uncomfortable to see a man cry.

“We told him,” Irene whispered. “He’s the grandfather of that little twelve-year-old. Now he has no one. Her father was his only son.” Judy was inside now, her back against the door although she didn’t remember shutting it. Flo was busy setting the table, but Irene was standing close to her. Some way Judy had to let them know that Aggie was alive and that Pauline was on the boat.

“I’m sorry to be so late,” she began uncertainly.

The man by the stove looked up at her, and there was a message in his face. He might have been trying to warn her of a danger which threatened all of them. “It is always too late,” he observed in a tone which implied that early or late was no matter when the limit of hope had been reached. Judy saw in him, not a ruthless bank robber there to make trouble, but a pitiful old man in need of comfort. She longed to tell him his granddaughter was safe, but how safe was she on Captain Ottwell’s boat? Had he come over on the boat himself?

Before Judy could ask him she was besieged with questions. Flo, rattling dishes as she talked, gave 152

Aggie’s grandfather no time to explain his presence.

“Pauline did get on the boat all right?” she asked.

“Yes,” Judy said, “she got on it.”

“Were there any other passengers?”

“No.” Again Judy’s answer was brief. Aggie could hardly be called a passenger, and besides, Judy had no intention of letting Walter Brand suspect what she knew.

He was the next one to speak. His voice shook with anger. “I told the captain to wait. I shouted at him, but the blasted scoundrel left without me.”

“Oh,” Judy said in mild surprise, “so you missed the boat.”

This brought a chuckle from the old man beside the stove. “I think he missed it in more ways than one. But you girls better watch him. He’s up to no good. As for Captain Ottwell, I wouldn’t trust him with a cat of mine unless I wanted it disposed of.”

“Oh, do you know the captain? Tell me about him,” Judy questioned, an idea flashing through her head. “Is he tall or short?”

“Tall,” he replied without hesitation. “Best basketball player on the prison team.”

“Is he—a criminal?” Irene asked in shocked surprise.

“Everybody is a criminal to
him,

Walter Brand explained before the older man could answer. The lawyer made a circular motion toward his head.

153

Then he smiled in a tolerant way and said to the girls, “You understand? All those years in prison—” The man’s head dropped to his chest at this. Tears came again to his eyes as he looked at Flo. “You are like your mother. She believed him, too. Her eyes were just like yours and she was about your age when I was sent away—”

“But I’m not like her!” Flo interrupted. “I don’t believe him. I’m not like any of them. They think only of themselves, never of anyone else—” Sobbing, Flo ran upstairs, probably to throw herself on the bed in the tower room and cry her heart out. When Judy started to follow her Walter Brand put out his hand.

“Just a minute, young lady. If you have any words of comfort, they’re needed right here.”

“He’s right,” agreed Irene. “Mr.—I mean your uncle Paul needs them. You see, after we told him about his wife he asked for his son and granddaughter. I had to tell him they were on that plane.”

“But they’re still searching. There’s a police helicopter circling over the bay this very minute.

Believe me, Uncle Paul,” Judy said, falling to her knees and grasping the old man’s hand, “there’s hope for your granddaughter. They may find her.” He shook his head, refusing to believe it.

“Poor man! He’s been through so much. He isn’t 154

at all the way I expected him to be,” Irene said with sympathy.

“No, I thought—” Judy stopped to consider what Roxy would think when suddenly little Judy burst in from the screened porch with a shout:

“Mommy! Mommy! Are we having a birthday?

There’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people.

See them coming! Who are they, Mommy? Are they coming to my party?”

“No, Precious, your party will be on television—I hope,” Irene said as she turned toward the window to see who was arriving.

155

CHAPTER XXII
The New Arrivals

ACTUALLY there were six people in the Sand Castle and five more arriving, but the limit of little Judy’s counting was seven as she had learned from the number of seconds it took for the light from the lighthouse to turn her way. Beyond the lighthouse was a bridge with a road across to the state park, but it went no farther than the Coast Guard station.

How, then, could these five people have come?

They were walking up from the beach on the ocean side of Fire Island.

From the tower where she had gone to be alone with her tears, Flo recognized her parents and came flying down to meet them. With them were two men, obviously the two uncles, Bert and Harry, but it was the woman with them who caused Judy’s heart to skip a beat.

“Aunt Hazel!” she exclaimed, embracing the bewildered woman she had met on the bus the moment 156

she entered the door.

“But how—why?” the still bewildered Hazel Barton began when Judy released her.

The act was not over. Judy did not dare reveal her true identity while Walter Brand was there watching every move she made.

“Just call me Roxy,” she whispered. “I’m taking her place until he,” with a glance toward the lawyer,

“finds me out. Oh, how did you come—and why?”

“In a taxi along the beach. They call them beach buggies, I believe,” Mrs. Barton began. “They have oversize tires so that—”

She never finished the sentence. Walter Brand, excited almost to the point of hysteria, rushed between them. Waving his hands like a wild man, he raced down the boardwalk toward the beach shouting at the top of his voice:

“Taxi! Taxi! Someone hail him for me, please! I have to get back to the mainland.” It was the younger of the two uncles who stopped him, but it took both of them to drag him back to the Sand Castle. A final shove from Mr. Garner sent him inside.

“Sorry,” Flo’s father said with relish, “but we told that taxi not to wait. If you’re representing the interests of the Terry family as you claimed in your letter, why all the hurry?”

“Oh, there’s no hurry. Believe me,” Walter Brand 157

declared when he had recovered his breath, “I have your interests at heart, truly I do. But there’s no other way for us to get across—”

“In other words,” Judy said, speaking out at last,

“you were caught in your own trap. You wanted us to be stranded here until after the foreclosure, didn’t you? But I don’t see how you or anybody else can foreclose on this property when all the papers are in your brief case.”

That was a guess, but the expression on Walter Brand’s face told Judy that she had guessed right.

She tried again.

“I presume your friend, Captain Ottwell, wanted whatever you unloaded from that little wagon you borrowed. If it was a long, hinged box he may have some trouble opening it. Irene, where’s that key we found yesterday when we were digging under the house?”

“Was it only yesterday? It seems like ages ago.

Yes,” Irene replied thoughtfully, “we did find a key.”

She produced it from the cubbyhole where she had hidden it, and Walter Brand tried to grab it from her hand as he snarled, “Where did you find that?”

“I found it,” Flo volunteered. “I thought it might be the key to the box that holds the family jewels.”

“What family jewels?” both uncles asked at once.

“Why, I—I thought there were jewels,” Flo stam-158

mered. “Irene said—”

“You might introduce us to your friend Irene, before you tell us what she said,” the bachelor uncle remarked cryptically.

“Oh, I—I’m sorry, Uncle Harry. I meant to introduce everybody. I guess I forgot you didn’t all know each other.”

With this apology, Flo began a rather hurried round of introductions. When she came to Hazel Barton, she said, “I guess I don’t have to introduce you to my cousins, only to myself. You aren’t at all the way I thought you would be, and neither is Uncle Paul.”

A smile flitted across the face of the man by the stove. “Not the hardened criminal you expected to see, eh? The years have mellowed me some,” he admitted. “Just the same, the young fool they put in prison deserved it. He listened to another young fool, his lawyer. The difference is, one paid for his crime and the other didn’t—up to now.”

“What do you mean?” cried Walter Brand, clenching his fists. “If you think—”

BOOK: The Secret of the Sand Castle
11.55Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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