by Amy Brashear
“Carly—”
“I have to tell Agent Dewey what I know.”
“What do you know that he doesn’t?”
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
“Carly!” she cries.
But I’m already shoving my way toward the stairwell.
Upstairs, the hall is completely deserted. The doors are closed, except for one. It’s the office of Duane West, the Finney County prosecutor. I swallow as I tiptoe toward it. Mr. West is a little scary—even my dad admits it. He’s six foot four, with perfectly combed dark hair and thin lips that never smile. My dad says he takes every crime as a personal insult.
When I reach the door and poke my head inside, I nearly slam right into Agent Dewey.
“Carly, you know you shouldn’t be here,” he says.
“Agent Dewey, I have to tell you something,” I whisper back, trying to poke my head around him to catch a glimpse of Mr. West, who’s deep in conversation with Agent Nye.
“Carly, not right now,” Agent Dewey says with a sigh, as if he’s tired of me. He moves to close the door on me, but all of a sudden the office falls silent.
“Miss Fleming, what are you doing here?” Mr. West asks, standing up. He has a pile of folders in his arms.
I seize the opportunity, jumping past Agent Dewey. “Mr. West, I just need to tell someone what I know, please.” I nearly trip over a box. I see now that the whole floor is littered with photographs and boxes full of papers stacked to the rim.
“What’s all this?” I ask.
“Leads,” he says sharply. “Now, what do you want me to know?”
I stand straight, and, taking a deep breath, I admit that I trespassed onto the farm and in the Clutter house.
Now it’s Mr. West’s turn to sigh. He glances at Agent Dewey, who bows his head and shakes it. Agent Nye just sneers and looks at his watch, as if I’m wasting their time.
“Carly, Carly, Carly,” Mr. West scolds. “Does your father know?”
“Yes, sir—and so does the sheriff.”
Mr. West’s eyes widen over the rims of his glasses. “My goodness, young lady. Do you know how much danger you put yourself in—”
I interrupt him before he can reprimand me any further, spilling everything I saw: how the telephone wires were cut, how the binoculars that belonged to Mr. Clutter weren’t in his office, how Kenyon’s radio wasn’t in his room, where it always is. Lastly, I tell him about Nancy’s diary not being in her nightstand drawer.
“Who would want to steal her diary?” I ask.
He sits back down. “I’ll look into it,” he says.
“You believe me, don’t you, Mr. West?”
He begins to organize the papers on his desk. “We have it.”
“You have what?” I ask.
“The diary,” he says.
“Are you going to read it? Because it’s private. You shouldn’t be reading Nancy’s diary.”
The room falls silent again. Agent Nye glances at Agent Dewey, cracking a slight smile.
“Carly, I’m busy,” Mr. West snaps, peering at me over his glasses. “Stay away from that house.”
I clench my fists at my sides. “Well. Thank you for your time,” I say, holding myself back from running over and pushing everything off his desk. I whirl past Agent Dewey and slam the door shut. I feel the glass shake with the impact. Walking back down the hall toward the staircase, I notice that another door is cracked open, but only slightly. Inside I see a table covered with plastic bags.
“Carly, wait!”
I’m surprised when I turn around. It’s Agent Nye. I stop dead in my tracks.
“Don’t mind us; we’re all just frustrated with the case. I promise I’ll look into it.”
“What’s in there?” I ask, pointing to the room.
“Evidence,” he says, reaching past me and pulling the door closed. “You know what, Nancy Drew?” he says with a laugh, locking up. He digs into his back pocket and takes out a steno notebook, then tears out the first page—scrawled over with sloppy handwriting—and hands the rest of the blank notebook to me. “If you want to help, take notes. Write them down. Anything can be a clue.”
He’s mocking me, but I still take the notebook and shove it into my coat pocket.
“Thank you, sir.”
Mary Claire appears at the top of the stairs just as Agent Nye vanishes back into Mr. West’s office. “You finished?” she whispers. “I’ve got to get me some nylons.” She grabs me by the arm and pulls me down the stairs before I can get into any more trouble.
CHAPTER TWENTY
After going to the Vogue Shop and waiting and waiting for Mary Claire to pick out some nude nylons, we sit in a booth at Candy’s Café, drinking cherry limeade. Flipping open the steno notebook, I pluck out the tiny pieces of paper stuck in the spiral binding.
“Where’d you get that?” she asks.
“Agent Nye.”
“That was nice of him,” she says, biting the cherry garnish off its stem. “I was sure he was going to arrest you.”
“But he ripped off the front page,” I mutter, flipping it closed.
“I guess it was important, huh?” she says.
Her words get my wheels turning. Of course it was important. Then I remember something Perry Mason did with a piece of paper and a pencil when he was deprived of important information, too. Maybe it will work in real life, despite what my dad says. “Ma’am?” I call to the waitress. “Can I borrow that pencil?”
She picks it out of her hair and holds it out for me to take. Scooting out of the booth I practically run over to her.
“Bring it back, ’kay, hon?”
Leaning over the steno notebook I open to the first page, where Agent Nye’s notes have made a barely noticeable imprint. As lightly as I can, I make tiny brushstrokes over the lines of invisible text. My heart starts to pound as words appear. “I’ve got it, Mary Claire, I’ve got it!”
People stare. My face gets hot and I lower my voice to a whisper. “Look.”
She leans over and tries to read upside down. “What does it say?”
I squint at the paper. “‘Great Bend—hunting knife. An abandoned car. Two Negroes were seen driving, ’53 or ’54 Mercury, Colorado license plates. Bloody western-style shirt with the sleeves cut off found in ditch north of Hugoton.’ That’s all.”
“What does it mean?”
I look up and smile. “Clues. Anything can be one, you know.”
When Mary Claire pulls up in front of my house, a man in work boots is sitting on the front porch reading the paper, a tool kit at his side. My elation over the notebook vanishes. I forgot all about the locksmith. My parents are going to kill me.
“Shoot! I’m late,” I whisper, sick to my stomach. I can’t bring myself to open the passenger door. “I was supposed to be home at four.”
“Just tell your dad that you had to run an errand with me,” Mary Claire says calmly.
“Yeah, I don’t think so. I’m grounded. I’m supposed to be at home—thinking about what I’ve done.”
“Tell him it’s all my fault. I forced you to come with me to the Vogue Shop. He won’t be too mad.” She laughs. “Your dad likes me.”
It’s true. Dad has always liked Mary Claire. I can tell that he likes her better than he likes—than he liked—Nancy. He’s talked about how he gets a kick out of her, of how she loves to have fun and how she wears her heart on her sleeve. Mom, too.
“Yeah, I’ll just conveniently leave out the part about running into the courthouse,” I joke grimly, half to myself.
“Sounds like a plan,” she says with a smile and a wink.
“I was being sarcastic,” I grumble.
“See you later, Carly. Hopefully.”
She drives off, leaving me alone with the man on my front steps.
He lowers the newspaper so at first I can only see his eyes. They’re dark brown and they don’t look friendly. He folds the paper in half and stands up. “You Mr. Fleming’s daughter?” he grunts.
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“Your dad said four, right?” he asks, looking at his pocket watch. Then he grabs his tool kit. “I’ve got places to be.”
“I know. I know. I’m so sorry.” Grabbing the key from my bag, I unlock the door so he can get started. He tosses the paper on the chair after I’ve let him in, then eyes the lock. He crouches down.
“Everyone’s doing this, aren’t they?” I ask, watching him unlock his tool kit.
“Ever since Sunday morning. Did you know them—them being the Clutters?”
“Yeah, I knew them, did you?”
He shakes his head. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care.” He takes out a screwdriver and starts loosening the screws. “Righty tighty, lefty loosy,” he says under his breath.
Picking up the newspaper, I sit with my feet under my butt. I flip through until one word catches my eye: deaths.
“‘Mr. and Mrs. H.W. Clutter, Nancy, Kenyon Clutter,’” I read out loud.
“The obituary,” he says.
“Did you read it?”
He nods. “It’s sad, isn’t it?” He pulls the new knob out of a brown paper bag.
“They don’t say how they died . . .”
“In obituaries they usually don’t,” he says.
“But that’s not right. It’s important to know how they died.”
He stops working on the door lock and looks up at me. “But is it more important to know that they lived?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Apparently being grounded only means being shackled to my family. I, Carly Fleming, am free to hit the open road, as long as my parents and brother supervise.
Asher and I are in the backseat of the Desoto. We travel the 146 miles to Hays in silence, though once we’re close, Mom starts to talk and fidget. One of her old prep-school friends is speaking at Jefferson West High School, and then I remember what we’re doing here. Mom convinced Dad to drive all this way because she wants to see a friendly face from the past. I don’t blame her. It’s been way too long since we’ve seen anybody from back east. We all could use a break from Holcomb.
“I can’t believe he came all the way to Kansas,” Mom says, applying more lipstick to her already-stained lips.
She’s transformed all of a sudden. In fact, the way she’s acting now reminds me a lot of the way Nancy used to act when she was looking forward to seeing Bobby—oblivious, lost in a mirror with herself. I don’t share these thoughts. I’m not even sure what they mean.
Asher’s asleep. Mom and Dad assume it’s because he’s tired from the grueling basketball tryouts. He’ll find out if he made the team this weekend. But I know he’s tired because he can’t fall asleep at night. I can hear him pacing in his room. He won’t talk to me about the reasons why. Anyway, he’s sleeping now. That’s what matters. Best to let Mom and Dad run this little sideshow. It was their idea.
Mom looks at her watch.
“We’ll make it, don’t you worry,” Dad says, making a right turn off the highway.
“I know, I know. It’s just, I haven’t seen Jack in forever.”
“Him and your mom were friends,” Dad says to me in the rearview. He emphasizes the word friends in a dry voice.
He hasn’t looked so content or relaxed in a long time, either. I try to be content for him. But mostly I’m annoyed and restless and bored.
“Friends, just friends, that’s all,” Mom says, shaking her head.
“Right,” Dad says.
Mom slaps Dad on the arm. They laugh. “Who’s this Jack fellow, anyhow?” I ask loudly.
“An old friend of your mom’s,” Dad begins. “He—”
“Jack and my brother used to get into trouble at Choate,” Mom interrupts. “Your uncle Carlson was a part of the Muckers Club.”
“A group of boys that got into loads of trouble,” Dad clarifies with another smile.
“He brought Jack home one weekend while I was at home from Rosemary Hall,” Mom adds.
“Your uncle was one of the orchestrators of a notorious stunt at Choate,” Dad says, focusing on the road. Now that we’re off the highway, we’re passing farmhouses and roadside shacks, the telltale outskirts of a small Kansas town. We’re close to the end of this endless journey. Which is good, because Dad can’t hold in his laughter. “He took a firecracker and exploded the toilet seat—”
“Oh, please,” Mom interrupts. She shifts in her seat and turns to me. “Jack’s speaking to a sold-out crowd,” she says, getting back on topic. She waves her left hand over her head, fingers crossed. “He could well be the next president of the United States.”
Mom and I fix our dresses and Dad and Asher straighten their ties. Both Mom and Dad, Mom mostly, are more insistent than usual that we look presentable to her old friend from back east: Jack, the presidential hopeful. She doesn’t want us to embarrass ourselves or, more importantly, embarrass her. As Dad hands the man at the door our tickets, Mom scoots past us and jets to the back of the stage. We find our table and sit. I take a sip of the warm water and a bite of the crunchy burned garlic bread.
Asher still seems half asleep, or at least dazed. Dad is in a daze, too, until he spots Mom hurrying back to find us, teetering on her heels.
“He’s still so handsome,” she says, her face flushed. She sits and places a napkin in her lap.
“I’ll pretend like I didn’t hear that, dear,” Dad murmurs.
Asher is awake now, all of a sudden. He taps his fingers on the table. He sits up, his lips twisted in a scowl.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I should be at home practicing. I need more time,” he says. “Why am I here?”
I have no idea what to say. I glance at Dad, but he’s focused on the stage.
Glasses clink. Everyone else’s attention is focused on the stage now, too.
“Governor Docking,” Mom whispers excitedly, half standing, holding her martini in her left hand.
The spotlight falls on a pleasant-looking man with thick curly hair at the podium. A hush falls over the crowd as he introduces the night’s keynote speaker: “John Fitzgerald Kennedy.” Jack, as he is known to my mom. I crane my neck and squint toward the stage. Even from this distance I can tell that Mom is right. Jack is handsome. Even more handsome than Governor Docking.
For the next half hour, the “esteemed senator from Massachusetts” (the governor’s words) stands at the podium and speaks in his funny New England accent about the farm way of life and the threat of the Soviet Union.
Asher’s stabbing his cheesecake. I’m picking at the tablecloth. Like my brother, my mind is somewhere else. I didn’t tell Dad that I was late to meet the locksmith. Dad didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell. I don’t want to get into any more trouble than I already am. Besides, Asher is right: he and I weren’t supposed to come to Hays. But no one wants to be home alone with a murderer on the loose. If it happened once, it could surely happen again.
Just when I’m about to burst, the room explodes with applause. Mom and Dad leap to their feet. So do I. Asher stands as well, the last one up. Onstage, Governor Docking beams beside Senator Kennedy and shakes his hand.
“A good team, a mighty good team,” a man yells from the back of the room.
The room clears. Dirty dishes are left on tabletops; cloth napkins dot the floor. Before I know it, Mom’s engrossed in conversation with a man she calls Liam. He’s wearing shiny black shoes. His suit reminds me of New York. But what strikes me most about him is how he ran up to Mom after the speech and kissed her flat on the lips. Dad didn’t seem too upset, but I was stunned. Asher didn’t even noti
ce, of course.
Now he’s looking at me. Mom blinks several times, collecting herself.
“Liam, these are my children. Carly, she’s fifteen,” Mom says.
I shake the man’s hand.
“I can’t believe you have a fifteen-year-old,” he says with a laugh. “It’s seems like yesterday that your brother . . . you know what I mean.” He shakes his head and waves for her to come on. “He’ll want to see you. I just know it.”
We follow them to the back of the stage, where people are crowded around the governor and the senator. But once Jack catches a glimpse of my mom, he disengages and runs over to her.
“Becca,” he calls with a toothy smile. “I’m glad you’re here.” He kisses her on both cheeks. “You traveled all the way from . . . where are you living now?”
“Holcomb,” she says, sighing. “A very, very small town.”
Standing off to the side, I spot The Hays Daily News stuck between a cheese platter and a pitcher of iced tea. officers check shotgun shells in clutter case. It’s interesting to read what other newspapers have to say about what you’ve been living with for the past week.
Liam walks over, stands beside me, crosses his arms, and looks down at the newspaper. “Is that not the worst thing that you ever did read?” He shakes his head. “I read about it in The New York Times. It’s a shame.”
“How do you know my mom?” I ask him.
“I went to school with your uncle Carlson,” he says.
“I never met my uncle.”
He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me into him. “Your uncle was one of the greatest men I ever knew.”
Uncle Carlson was killed over in the USSR during the Battle of Stalingrad. He was a part of the lend-lease program with the US Air Force. German forces shot him down as he was delivering American-made boots requested by Stalin. He was killed on impact. They say that he didn’t feel a thing. He’s buried at Arlington.
“You’re named after him; don’t you know?” Liam asks me.
I nod. I almost laugh. All that, and still my aunt Trudy can’t remember that I’m Carly. But maybe that’s why. She doesn’t want to be reminded of her dead brother.