I closed my eyes, listening to the voices in the hallway. There was a knock on the bathroom door.
“Julie?” It was my grandfather. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” My voice squeaked.
“You need to come out,” he said. “The police want to talk to you.”
I wanted to stay in the small, safe room, but I stood up and opened the door. I looked at my grandfather’s basset-hound face. His eyes were red. “Grandpop,” I said. I wanted to say that I never meant for this to happen, but that was an excuse for what I’d done, and there were no excuses big enough to cover this particular multifaceted sin. He put his arm around me again and led me down the hallway. I could see all the way through the living room and porch to our yard, where the police were talking to my father. And I could hear voices coming from my parents’ bedroom. My mother and grandmother and Lucy were in there, hushed voices cut with sobs. I heard my sister hiccup.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand as we walked across the porch. Grandpop opened the screen door and I nearly tripped down the two steps to the yard, my legs felt so wobbly. My father and the policemen looked up as the screen door slammed closed behind us. I recognized one of the policemen as Officer Davis, who had lauded me when I’d found the little boy. I felt humiliated now, the fallen heroine.
Ned and his father were there as well. All at once, I realized what a fool I’d been: Ned was a man, standing there with four other men. I was a skinny-legged idiot for thinking he could ever be romantically interested in me. I’d been playing a twelve-year-old’s game with grown-up consequences.
My father limped forward to hug me, and the gesture caught me off guard. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt her,” he said into my ear, his voice cracking on the last word. I would never forget the gift he gave me with those words. He pulled away from me, turning back to the police.
“And you were supposed to meet her last night?” Officer Davis was asking Ned.
Ned looked as though he was already tired of answering questions. “Originally,” he said. “But I couldn’t…” He glanced at his father, and I remembered the argument that had led to him telling me he could not see Isabel last night. “I wasn’t allowed to go out last night. So, I asked Julie if she’d give Izzy that message.”
“Why weren’t you allowed to go out?” the other office asked.
“He hasn’t been helping out much around the house this summer,” Mr. Chapman said. “Always on the go. My wife and I decided he needed to stay in for a change. Help the family out.”
“And did you?” Officer Davis asked. “Did you help the family out last night?”
Ned nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. The word came out in two syllables.
“What exactly did you do?”
“I didn’t kill her,” he said. “Why aren’t you talking to Bruno Walker?”
“I’m not saying you did kill her, and we’re in the process of looking for Mr. Walker,” Officer Davis said. “Right now, I’m trying to put together a complete picture of last night. What did you do around the house?”
“I swept the whole house,” Ned said. “I washed the dishes. My brother dried. I folded laundry. I fixed a radio. Is that enough?”
“Shh, Ned,” Mr. Chapman said. “That attitude isn’t going to help.”
“And where were you around midnight last night?” Officer Davis asked.
“I thought you weren’t looking at him as a suspect,” Mr. Chapman said. “He’s not answering any more questions until we contact his lawyer.” I remembered suddenly that Mr. Chapman was a lawyer himself, as well as chief justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court. He would know how to advise his son and I was relieved. I didn’t like how Ned was being questioned. Officer Davis had been so nice to me when I found Donnie Jakes. This was a different, no-nonsense side of him.
“Answer the question, Ned,” my father said. “Where were you last night?” I noticed the other cop had his hand around my father’s arm as if holding him back from punching Ned in the face, and I wondered what had transpired before Grandpop and I had gotten out there. I could imagine how Daddy’d reacted to the news that Ned and Isabel met on the platform nearly every night.
“He worked like a dog around the house,” Mr. Chapman said. “I was proud of him for finally helping out. So then he and I sat out in the yard for an hour or so looking for shooting stars. The meteor shower.” He looked at Ned. “We were eating bowls of ice cream. I think it was about twelve-thirty when we went inside. Wouldn’t you say it was about twelve-thirty?” He asked his son, who dropped his eyes under his father’s steady regard.
“I didn’t look at the clock,” Ned said.
“All right.” Officer Davis flipped his notepad closed, then nodded in my direction. “I’d like some time with Julie, here,” he said, then looked at Ned and his father. “You two can go. We’ll be in touch.”
Ned walked ahead of his father toward their house, and Daddy led me over to the double Adirondack chair. I sat down next to him and my grandfather took a seat near us, while Officer Davis and the other policeman leaned against the chain-link fence.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning, Julie,” Officer Davis said to me, kindly.
I told him everything and I tried not to cry so that I would be a good witness. I told him how I’d set up the meeting between Bruno and my sister when I was fishing with Wanda.
“I told you not to go over there,” my father said, as if fishing with the Lewis family was the cause of all that had happened.
I admitted that I used to sneak out in my boat to watch Ned and Isabel on the platform. “This whole thing is my fault,” I said. My voice had grown hoarse and it came out in a whisper. “I was jealous of her. I didn’t want her to have Ned. I didn’t mean for her to get killed, though.” I felt my father’s hand on my back and I wasn’t sure if he meant the touch as a comfort or if he was telling me to stop talking, that I was saying too much.
I was sorry when the policemen left, because I was suddenly alone with my family again and I no longer knew how I fit in. There was an air of helplessness in the bungalow. My mother and grandmother worked in the kitchen, their silence broken by sudden bouts of sobbing. My grandfather and father sat on the glider near the bed on the porch, deep in conversation. Lucy was curled up at one end of the couch in the living room, her eyes closed, thumb in her mouth, her nose still red from crying. I did not know where to go. I thought of reading, but felt sick again when I thought of the childish, made-up mysteries in my Nancy Drew books.
I sat on the couch with Lucy for a while, staring into space, wishing she would wake up and talk to me, but she slept as though she’d been drugged. Maybe she had been. Maybe someone had given her something to let her sleep through the grief.
Finally I got up and walked into the kitchen.
“Can I help?” I asked, my voice small as I tried to tiptoe my way back into my family.
My mother looked at me, surprise on her face as though she’d forgotten I existed. She turned back to the frying pan where she was searing a roast.
“I’m sorry I hit you, Julie,” she said, her attention on the roast instead of on me.
“That’s okay,” I said.
“Here.” My grandmother handed me the potato peeler and pointed to the pile of potatoes on the counter. “You can peel.”
We worked in a silence that was rare in my family, but I welcomed it because the only things that could be said would be full of pain and anger. I peeled every potato perfectly, leaving no hint of skin and carving out every eye. I wanted the task to last all afternoon because I wasn’t sure what I would do once I had finished.
The phone rang, and my mother jumped but made no move to walk into the living room to answer it. She stood at the sink, a half-washed spatula frozen in her hand, as we listened to my father’s footsteps in the other room, then his Hello? into the receiver. The three of us listened hard, but could not hear much of his conversation. Finally he walked into the kitchen.
“She wasn’t…there was no rape,” he said. “Thank God for that.”
“What do they think happened?” I had never heard my mother sound so tentative and weak, as if she was afraid of the answer.
“They said she drowned, but that she’d been…manhandled first. She had a bruise on her shoulder and her arm and a lump on her head. They guess she fought the Walker boy off and then fell or maybe jumped into the water and hit her head on the edge of the platform.”
My mother suddenly threw the spatula against the wall, then buried her face in her hands. My father was quickly next to her, pulling her into his arms. My grandmother moved to them, wrapping her arms around them both. I stood alone in the middle of the kitchen floor, the peeler in my hand, tears no one noticed running down my cheeks.
Officer Davis returned to our house just as we were sitting down to a dinner we had no interest in eating. My father answered the door, then walked with him back to the porch.
“Sorry to disturb you folks,” Officer Davis said, “but I need to talk with Julie again.”
My father nodded to me without saying a word.
I stood up, scraping my chair away from the table, then walked outside with my father and the policeman. Daddy and I sat on the double Adirondack chair again, and this time, Officer Davis took a seat as well. He pulled his chair in front of me and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together loosely in front of him.
“We found Bruno Walker,” he said.
I was filled with hatred for Bruno. I remembered how he’d looked toward the bridge the day before, how I’d hoped my sister could be drawn in by his lovely eyes.
“Where’d you find him?” my father asked.
“In Ortley Beach,” the officer said.
“Did he confess?”
The officer shook his head. “He said he was with some friends at one of their rental cottages and that he left them around one in the morning and went home to bed. We talked with several of his friends separately, and they all confirmed his story.”
“What crap,” my father said.
Officer Davis locked his eyes onto mine. “Tell me again about informing Bruno that your sister would be on the platform at midnight,” he said. “Where were you when you told him?”
“The other side of the canal,” I said.
“With your friend.” The officer nodded. “What’s her name?” he asked.
“Wanda Lewis.”
“They’re not really friends,” my father said, and I knew it was not the time to argue with him.
“Who else was there?” the officer asked. “Was there anyone else who might have heard your conversation with Mr. Walker?”
You up to no good, girl.
“George was there,” I said. “Wanda’s brother. Her other relatives were there, too, but they were down—” I pointed across the canal to the area where Salena and the men had been fishing. “They weren’t close enough to hear.”
“But this George was,” the officer said.
I nodded. Suddenly I realized where this was going.
“George wouldn’t hurt anybody,” I said.
“Why are you asking her about this…George?” My father said his name as though he was talking about an object and not a person.
“Mr. Walker claims that Mr. Lewis looked very interested when he heard Julie say that Isabel would be alone on the platform.”
“Bruno’s just trying to pin the blame on someone else,” I said, but I could feel my heart sinking. I remembered George’s occasional appreciative comments about my sister and the scary way he’d cut his eyes at my father the day he came over to drag me home.
“Well, that may be so,” Officer Davis said. “Just the same, we need to talk to Mr. Lewis. Do you know how we can reach him?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have a phone number or address or anything,” I said. “But I think they live on South Street. And they’ll be back across the canal in the morning, probably, if it’s a nice day. But I know he didn’t do it.”
“You don’t know that, Julie,” my father scoffed. “You don’t really know those people. You don’t know what that boy’s capable of doing.”
“He’s nice to me,” I said, but that only enraged my father more.
“This is what happens when you disobey me,” he said, and I supposed he was right.
I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I went up to the attic early with Lucy, who was weepy and withdrawn, and I didn’t bother going down again. I kept crying—we all did. I would think I was okay, that I’d gotten a grip on my emotions, and then all of a sudden, I’d be sobbing again.
I replayed the night before in my mind over and over again, examining my actions to see if I could have done something different and thus prevented my sister’s death. I remembered looking out the attic window at the dark canal. If only I’d left the house earlier. Would that have made a difference? And what if I’d gone through with my idea of getting Ned to go with me? Then we would have been in his boat and been able to reach the platform safely, although we might have been too late.
Suddenly, I sat bolt upright in my bed. I remembered running over to the Chapmans’ house, getting ready to knock on the screen door only to realize their entire house was dark. I remembered looking toward the canal and seeing the empty Adirondack chairs. And then I remembered the policemen questioning Ned that afternoon, and the way he had looked down at the sand when his father said they’d been watching a meteor shower together in the backyard. Had Mr. Chapman fabricated an alibi to save his son?
I pressed my hand to my mouth, a shiver running through my body.
Oh, Ned, I thought to myself. Why?
CHAPTER 39
Julie
1962
I awakened the next morning with new resolve and a plan: I needed to do my own investigation. The facts I knew did not fit together. I would tell the police my suspicions about Ned, but not until I’d seen what other evidence I could gather. As heartsick as I was at the thought of George being my sister’s killer, I was triply distressed to think it might have been Ned. I would be objective, though, as detached as I could possibly be from the outcome as I gathered my clues.
I was relieved to have something to do that would both ease my sense of helplessness and also allow me to avoid my family. I left the house early and started walking toward the beach. What made no sense, I thought as I walked, was that Ned had told me to tell Isabel he couldn’t meet her that night. Then why would he have thought he could find her on the platform? My question was answered only minutes later.
I was nearly to Mitzi’s house when I noticed she was in her front yard washing her parents’ car. She tried to hide from me on the other side of the car, but she knew I’d already seen her. I saw her shoulders sag with resignation as she watched me approach.
“Hi, Mitzi,” I said, walking up her short driveway.
“Hi, Julie.” She stopped scrubbing the car with her soapy sponge. I almost felt sorry for her, she looked so uncomfortable. “Are you all right?” she asked. “How’s your mother and grandmother?”
“Messed up,” I said. “Did the police talk to you?”
“They called, but they just asked me what time Izzy left my house the night…the other night.”
“What time did she leave?”
“Eleven-thirty.” She wrung suds out of the sponge onto the driveway. Her hands were pudgy, like the rest of her. “She was going to…I know you know she always met Ned at midnight.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He was so peeved at you for not giving Izzy that message that he couldn’t come. Even though he could. Although he actually couldn’t.” She laughed, then sobered, remembering the seriousness of the conversation.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What do you mean that he could, but then
he couldn’t?”
“He called her here at my house to tell her he might be able to meet her after all,” Mitzi said. “That’s when he found out you hadn’t told her he couldn’t. Izzy was peeved at you, too. Anyway, he said he might be able to, but he wasn’t sure, but he’d try. He couldn’t get away, though. Isn’t it unreal? The one night he couldn’t get out that colored boy was there? What crappy luck. You must just be—” She shook her head. “I bet you could just kill that guy if you could get your hands on him.”
“Right,” I said. It was easiest to agree with her, but my head was spinning. I had to think through all of this new information.
“They caught him, though,” she said. “Well, I guess you know that.”
“Caught who? George?”
“The colored boy. Right. I heard it on the radio before I came outside.”
“What did they say?” I asked.
“Just that they found him and he says he’s not guilty,” Mitzi said.
“Maybe he’s not,” I said.
“Who else could have done it?” She tried to smooth her frizzy dark hair away from her face, but it sprang back again into a curly mess. I felt sorry for her having to deal with hair like that. “What I can’t get over is that I was the third to the last person to see Izzy alive,” she said, as though she had practiced the statement.
“What do you mean, the third to the last?” I asked.
“The…you know, the person who did it was number one,” she said. “And Pam. Pam left here with her, like she always did, so she was number two.”
Pam’s house was between Mitzi’s and the beach. That made sense.
“Ned’ll probably start going with Pam now,” Mitzi said.
It was years before I realized how tactless Mitzi Caruso had been with that statement. The boorishness of her words went right over my head. At that moment, I was only thinking about their content.
I left Mitzi’s and continued walking to the beach, cataloging the clues I had so far in my mind. First, Ned’s alibi appeared to be a lie, since I had not seen him with his father in their backyard. Second, Ned had told Isabel he might be able to meet her after all—something he had not mentioned to the police, as far as I knew. Third, his motive might have had something to do with his interest in Pam, but murdering Izzy to get her out of the way seemed extreme.
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