Back by the pillars, the deputy made one more careful study of the church and the graveyard, then he pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and knelt by the west pillar. He tugged at a stone about three inches from the ground.
Gretchen couldn’t believe her eyes. She leaned so far forward her branch creaked.
The kneeling man’s head jerked up.
Gretchen froze quieter than a tick on a dog.
The sun glistened on his face, giving it an unhealthy coppery glow. The eyes that skittered over the headstones and probed the lengthening shadows were dark and dangerous.
A crow cawed. A heavy truck rumbled over the hill, down main street. The faraway wail of Cal Burke’s saxophone sounded sad and lonely.
Gradually the tension eased out of the deputy’s shoulders. He turned and jammed the paper into the small dark square and poked the stone over the opening, like capping a jar of preserves. He lunged to his feet and strode out of the cemetery, relaxing to a casual saunter once past the church.
Gretchen waited until he climbed into his old black Ford and drove down the dusty road.
She swung down from the tree, thumped onto the wheelbarrow, and jumped to the ground. The bells in the steeple rang six times. She had to hurry. Grandmother would have a light supper ready, pork and beans and a salad with her homemade Thousand Island dressing and a big slice of watermelon.
Gretchen tried not to look like she had the Hope diamond in her pocket. Instead, she whistled as though calling a dog and clapped her hands. A truck roared past on its way north to Joplin. Still whistling, she ran to the stone posts. Once hidden from the road, she worked fast. The oblong slab of stone came right off in her hand. She pulled out the sheet of paper, unfolded it.
She’d had geography last spring with Mrs. Jacobs. She’d made an A. She liked maps, liked the way you could take anything, a mountain, a road, an ocean, and make it come alive on a piece of paper.
She figured this one at a glance, the straight line—though really the road curved and climbed and fell—was Highway 66. The little squiggle slanting off to the northeast from McGrory’s station was the dusty road that led to an abandoned zinc mine, the Sister Sue. The X was a little off the road, just short of the mine entrance. There was a round clock face at the top of the sheet. The hands were set at midnight.
She stuffed the folded sheet in its dark space, replaced the stone. X marks the spot. Not a treasure map. That was kid stuff in stories by Robert Louis Stevenson. But nobody hid a note in a stone post unless they were up to something bad, something they didn’t want anybody to know about. Tonight. Something secret was going to happen tonight….
* * *
—
Gretchen pulled the sheet up to her chin even though the night oozed heat like the stoves at the café. She was dressed, a tee shirt and shorts, and her sneakers were on the floor. She waited until eleven, watching the slow crawl of the hands on her alarm clock and listening to the summer dance of the June bugs against her window screen. She unhooked the screen, sat on the sill, and dropped to the ground. She wished she could ride her bike, but somebody might be out on the road and see her and they’d sure tell Grandmother. Instead, she figured out the shortest route, cutting across the McClelland farm, careful to avoid the pasture where Old Amos glared out at the world with reddish eyes, and slipping in the shadows down Purdy Road.
The full moon hung low in the sky, its milky radiance creating a black and cream world, making it easy to see. She stayed in the shadows. The buzz of the cicadas was so loud she couldn’t hear the cars, so she kept a close eye out for headlights coming over the hill or around the curve.
Once near the abandoned mine, she moved from shadow to shadow, smelling the sharp scent of the evergreens, feeling the slippy dried needles underfoot. A tremulous, wavering, plaintive shriek hurt her ears. Slowly, it subsided into a moan. Gretchen’s heart raced. A sudden flap and an owl launched into the air.
Gretchen looked uneasily around the clearing. The boarded-over mine shaft was a dark mound straight ahead. There was a cave-in years ago, and they weren’t able to get to the miners in time. In the dark, the curved mound looked like a huge gravestone.
The road, rutted and overgrown, curved past the mine entrance and ended in front of a ramshackle storage building, perhaps half as large as a barn. A huge padlock hung from a rusty chain wound around the big splintery board that barred the double doors.
Nothing moved though the night was alive with sound, frogs croaking, cicadas rasping.
Gretchen found a big sycamore on the hillside. She climbed high enough to see over the cleared area. She sat on a fat limb, her back to the trunk, her knees to her chin.
The cicada chorus was so loud she didn’t hear the car. It appeared without warning, headlights off, lurching in the deep ruts, crushing an overgrowth of weeds as it stopped off the road to one side of the storage shed. The car door slammed. In the moonlight, the deputy’s face was a pale mask. As she watched, that pale mask turned ever so slowly, all the way around the clearing.
Gretchen hunkered into a tight crouch. She felt prickles of cold though it was so hot sweat beaded her face, slipped down her arms and legs.
A cigarette lighter flared. The end of the deputy’s cigar was a red spot. He leaned inside the car, dragging out something. Metal clanked as he placed the thing on the front car fender. Suddenly he turned toward the rutted lane.
Gretchen heard the dull rumble, too, loud enough to drown out the cicadas.
Dust swirled in a thick cloud as the wheels of the army truck churned the soft ruts.
The sheriff was already moving. He propped a big flashlight on the car fender. By the time the driver turned and backed the truck with its rear end facing the shed, the sheriff was snipping the chain.
The driver of the truck wore a uniform. He jumped down and ran to help and the two men lifted up the big splintery board, tossed it aside. Each man grabbed a door. They grunted and strained and pulled and finally both doors were wide open. The soldier hurried to the back of the truck, let down the metal back.
Gretchen strained to catch glimpses of the soldier as he moved back and forth past the flashlight. Tall and skinny, he had a bright bald spot on the top of his head, short dark hair on the sides. His face was bony with a beaked nose and a chin that sank into his neck. He had sergeant stripes on his sleeves. He was a lot smaller and skinnier than the deputy but he was twice as fast. They both moved back and forth between the truck and the shed, carrying olive green gasoline tins in each hand.
Once the sergeant barked, “Get a move on. I’ve got to get that truck back damn quick.”
Even in the moonlight, the deputy’s face looked dangerously red and he huffed for breath. He stopped occasionally to mop his face with an oversize handkerchief. The sergeant never paused, and he shot a sour look at the bigger man.
Gretchen tried to count the tins. She got confused, but was sure there were at least forty, maybe a few more.
When the last tin was inside the shed, the doors shoved shut, the chains wrapped around the board, the deputy rested against his car, his breathing as labored as a bulldogger struggling with a calf.
The sergeant planted himself square in front of the gasping deputy and held out his hand.
“Goddam, man”—the deputy’s wind whistled in his throat—“you gotta wait ’til I sell the stuff. I worked out a deal with a guy in Tulsa. Top price. A lot more than we could get around here. Besides, black market gas out here might get traced right back to us.”
“I want my money.” The sergeant’s reedy voice sounded edgy and mean.
“Look, fella.” The deputy pushed away from the car, glowered down at the smaller man. “You’ll get your goddam money when I get mine.”
The soldier didn’t move an inch. “Okay. That’s good. When do you get yours?”
/> The deputy didn’t answer.
“When’s the man coming? We’ll meet him together.” A hard laugh. “We can split the money right then and there.”
The deputy wiped his face and neck with his handkerchief. “Sure. You can help us load. Thursday night. Same time.”
“I’ll be here.” The sergeant moved fast to the truck, climbed into the front seat. After he revved the motor, he leaned out of the window. “I’ll be here. And you damn sure better be.”
* * *
—
Grandmother settled the big blue bowl in her lap, began to snap green beans.
Gretchen was so tired her eyes burned and her feet felt like lead. She swiped the paring knife around the potato. “Grandmother, what does it mean when people talk about selling gas on the black market?”
Grandmother’s hand moved so fast, snap, snap, snap. “We don’t have much of that around here. Everyone tries hard to do right. The gas has to be used by people like the farmers and Dr. Sherman so he can go to sick people and the Army. The black market is very wrong, Gretchen. Why, what if there wasn’t enough gas for the jeeps and tanks where Jimmy is?”
There wasn’t much sound then but the snap of beans and the soft squish as the potato peelings fell into the sink.
Gretchen tossed the last potato into the big pan of cold water. “Grandmother,” she scooped up the potato peels, “who catches these people in the black market?”
Grandmother carried her bowl to the sink. “I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. “I guess in the cities the police. And here it would be the deputy. Or maybe the Army.”
Gretchen put the dirty dishes on the tray, swiped the cloth across the table.
* * *
—
Deputy Carter grunted, “Bring me some more coffee,” but he didn’t look up from his copy of the newspaper. He frowned as he printed words in the crossword puzzle.
Across the room, the officer who looked like Alan Ladd was by himself. He smiled at Gretchen. “Tell your grandmother this is the best food I’ve had since I was home.”
Gretchen smiled shyly at him, then she blurted, “Are you still looking for the Spooklight?”
His eyebrows scooted up like snapped window shades. “How’d you know that?”
She polished the table, slid him an uncertain look. “I heard you yesterday,” she said softly.
“Oh, sure. Well,” he leaned forward conspiratorially, “my colonel thinks it’s a great training tool to have the troops search for mystery lights. The first platoon to find them’s going to get a free weekend pass.”
Gretchen wasn’t sure what a training tool was or a free pass, but she focused on what mattered to her. “You mean the soldiers are still looking for the lights? They’ll come where the lights are?”
“Fast as they can. Of course,” he shrugged, “nobody knows when or where they’re going to appear so it’s mostly a lot of hiking around in the dark and nothing happens.”
Gretchen looked toward the deputy. He was frowning as he scratched out a word, wrote another one. She turned until her back was toward the sheriff. “They say that in July the lights dance around the old Sister Sue mine. That’s what I heard the other day.” Behind her, she heard the creak as the sheriff slid out of the booth, clumped toward the cash register. “Excuse me,” she said quickly and she turned away.
The sheriff paid forty-five cents total, thirty for the Meatless Tuesday vegetable plate, ten for raisin pie, a nickel for coffee.
When the front door closed behind him, Gretchen hurried to the table. As she cleared it, she carefully tucked the discarded newspaper under her arm.
* * *
—
“A cherry fausfade, please.” She slid onto the hard metal stool. The soda fountain at Thompson’s Drugs didn’t offer comfortable stools like those at the Victory Café.
“Cherry phosphate,” Millard Thompson corrected. He gave her his sweet smile that made his round face look like a cheerful pumpkin topped by tight coils of red hair. Millard was two years older than she and had lived across the alley all her life. He played the tuba in the junior high band, had collected more tin cans than anybody in town, and knew which shrubs the butterflies liked. Once he led her on a long walk, scrambling through the rugged bois d’arc to a little valley covered with thousands of Monarchs. And in the Thompson wash room, he had two shelves full of chemicals and sometimes he let her watch his experiments. He even had a Bunsen burner. And Millard’s big brother Mike was in the 45th, now part of General Patton’s Seventh Army. They hadn’t heard from him since the landings in Sicily and there was a haunted look in Mrs. Thompson’s eyes. Mr. Thompson had a big map at the back of the store and he moved red pins along the invasion route. Mike’s unit was reported fighting for the Comiso airport.
Gretchen looked around the store, but it was quiet in midafternoon. Millard’s mother was arranging perfumes and powders on a shelf behind the cash register. His dad was in the back of the store behind the pharmacy counter. “Millard,” she kept her voice low, “do you know about the black market?”
He leaned his elbow on the counter. “See if I got enough cherry in. Yeah, sure, Gretchen. Dad says it’s as bad as being a spy. He says people who sell on the black market make blood money. He says they don’t deserve to have guys like Mike ready to die for them.”
Gretchen loved cherry fausfades, okay, she knew it was phosphate but it had always sounded like fausfade to her, but she just held tight to the tall beaded sundae glass. “Okay, then listen, Millard…”
* * *
—
Gretchen struggled to stay awake. She waited a half hour after Grandmother turned off her light, then slipped from her window. Millard was waiting by Big Angus’s pasture.
As they hurried along Purdy Road, Millard asked, “You sure it was Deputy Carter? And he said it was for the black market?”
“Yes.”
Millard didn’t answer but she knew he was struggling with the truth that they couldn’t go to the man who was supposed to catch bad guys. When they pulled the shed doors wide and he shone his flashlight over the dozens and dozens of five-gallon gasoline tins, he gave a low whistle. Being Millard, he picked up a tin, unscrewed the cap, smelled.
“Gas, all right.” There was a definite change in Millard’s voice when he spoke. He sounded more grownup and very serious. “We got to do something, Gretchen.”
She knew that. That’s why she’d come to him. “I know.” She, too, sounded somber. “Listen, Millard, I got an idea…”
He listened intently while she spoke, then he looked around the clearing, his round face was intent, measuring. Then he grinned. “Sure. Sure we can. Dad’s got a bunch of powdered magnesium out in the storeroom. They used to use it with the old-fashioned photography.” He looked at her blank face. “For the flash, Gretchen. Here’s what we’ll do…”
* * *
—
Gretchen could scarcely bear the relief that flooded through her when the young lieutenant stopped in for coffee and pie Wednesday afternoon. When she refilled his cup, she said quickly, “Will you look for the Spooklight tonight?”
The lieutenant sighed. “Every night. Don’t know why the darned thing’s disappeared just when we started looking for it.”
“A friend of mine saw it last night. Near the Sister Sue mine.” She gripped her cleaning cloth tightly. “If you’ll look there tonight, I’m sure you’ll find it.”
It was cloudy Wednesday night, the last night before the man from Tulsa would come to get that gas. Gretchen and Millard moved quickly around the clearing, Gretchen clambering up in the trees, Millard handing her the pie tins Gretchen brought from the café’s kitchen. She scrambled to high branches, fastened the tins with duct tape.
“You think they’ll come,” Millard asked as they unwrapped the chain
, lifted the board and tugged the doors to the storage shed wide open. Gretchen carefully tucked the newspaper discarded by the sheriff between two tins.
“Yes.” There had been a sudden sharpness in the young officer’s eyes. She’d had the feeling he really listened to her. Maybe she felt that way because she wanted it so badly, but there was a calmness in her heart. He would come. He would come.
Millard took his place high in the branches of an oak that grew close to the boarded-over mine shaft. Gretchen clutched the oversize flashlight and checked over in her mind which trees had the pie tins and how she could move in the shadows to reach them.
Suddenly Millard began to scramble down the tree. “Gretchen, Gretchen, where are you?”
“Over here, Millard.” She moved out into the clearing. “What’s wrong?”
He was panting. “It’s the army, but they’re going down the wrong road. They’re on the road to Hell Hollow. They won’t come close enough to see us.”
Gretchen could hear the noise now from the road on the other side of the hill.
“I’ll go through the woods. I’ve got my stuff.” And Millard disappeared in the night.
Gretchen almost followed. But if Millard decoyed them this way, she had to be ready to do her part.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 153