A Candidate for Murder

by Joan Lowery Nixon

I pulled a pen and notepad out of my desk, dialed the information number, and when the operator answered I asked, “Could you please give me the telephone number for an Edwin Sibley?” Just to make sure there’d be no mistake, I spelled it.

  “Thank you,” the operator said, but instead of the recorded number I expected there was silence. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry, but I have no listing for an Edwin Sibley.”

  “Is it an unlisted number?”

  “I’m sorry. I am unable to give you a listing for an Edwin Sibley.”

  “Thank you, operator,” I said, and slowly put down the receiver.

  I’d been right to be suspicious of Edwin Sibley. What was he doing working in Dad’s campaign office? Was he there to sabotage it?

  Maybe Mr. Sibley was the one who’d spray-painted the office. He could have disposed of the paint can somewhere.

  How about the other things that had happened at the office? The mailings that had disappeared? The equipment that had been misplaced? Were they accidents or sabotage? Was Mr. Sibley to blame? He was at the office every day. This could have been his work.

  Mr. Sibley had gone to work as a volunteer the day after Mark’s party, but I couldn’t figure out how anything that had happened at the campaign office tied in with the men I’d overheard that night.

  It wasn’t much later when my phone rang. I was working so hard to memorize chemistry symbols that it made me jump.

  Justin? was my first hope, but it was Sally Jo.

  “I’ve found out a couple of things for you already,” she said. “First of all, about Dexter Kline. I have a friend who’s a secretary in the employment agency your parents used. She was only too glad to look up Dexter Kline’s folder. But surprise, surprise, there wasn’t one.”

  “But that’s the agency my parents always use.”

  “Not this time,” she said. “If you can find out the correct one, just let me know, and I’ll take it from there.”

  “I don’t understand this,” I said. “Something’s not right.” I remembered Edwin Sibley, so I told her what I’d discovered.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do to check him out, too.”

  “Thanks for calling,” I told her. “You don’t know how glad I am that you’re helping me.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “I told you I had a couple of pieces of information, and I’ve only given you one.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “I’ve got a candidate for your mystery man with the scratchy voice,” she said. “I talked to our reporter who handles the Austin beat, Hank Jolie, and when I described a scratchy voice, he picked up on it right away. He described the man, and his description sounded like the one you gave me. I asked Hank if he could fax me any photos, and he said he could. He’ll send them tomorrow morning.”

  “Who is old scratchy voice?” I asked.

  “He works for Jimmy Milco. He has an ambiguous title, which doesn’t mean anything.” There was an edge of sarcasm in her voice as she added, “There are a number of people with ambiguous titles on the governor’s personal staff.”

  “You didn’t tell me his name,” I said.

  “I didn’t think it would mean anything to you. You’ll need to see his photos in order to know if it’s the same person, and I’ll bring them to your house tomorrow after school.”

  We were interrupted by a couple of loud clicks, and Sally Jo said, “There’s my other line. I’ll have to get it.”

  “Thanks again,” I said, “but …”

  “Oh, yeah, his name,” Sally Jo said. “Nothing special. John Lamotta.”

  John Lamotta? His name meant no more to me than the words I’d heard him speak. Why should I be so afraid of him?

  Chapter 14

  Mom came upstairs and stopped by my room to kiss me good night. “Oh, honey,” she murmured and held me tightly.

  “I’m sorry, Mom, about scaring you and Dad,” I said again.

  “It’s all right, Cary,” Mom said. “It’s over and done with and we won’t talk about it.” Mom looked awful, and it was my fault. I felt like a jerk.

  After Mom went off to bed I read for a while, but I realized I hadn’t heard Dad come upstairs, so I quietly walked down to the library and entered the open door.

  Dad was sitting with his elbows propped on the desk, his forehead resting in the palms of his hands. “Dad?” I asked softly, realizing that he hadn’t heard me come in.

  He started, looked up at me with a bewildered expression, and said, “Isn’t it past your bedtime, Cary?”

  “It’s eleven-thirty,” I told him, but I sat in the chair across from his desk and leaned my own elbows on his desk. “I try to remember what our lives were like before you filed to run for office,” I said, “and I can’t. It seems like such a long time ago.”

  “There are bound to be changes,” he began, but I interrupted.

  “That’s what Mom said, but it’s not the changes that bother me as much as all the people who are suddenly mixed up in our lives. There are people we’re afraid of, and even people who seem to have come out of nowhere.”

  “Out of nowhere?”

  “Dexter.”

  “What about Dexter?”

  “Dad, where did you find Dexter?”

  “That’s a strange question,” Dad said and looked down at his hands.

  This wasn’t like Dad, who always was so poised, so put-together, so much in charge. Maybe it was the light in here, but his skin seemed yellowed, and his eyelids drooped with exhaustion.

  “Cary,” he said in a voice that was so heavy and tired it made me ache for him, “I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to make changes which would benefit everyone in Texas. The state should be run with honor and integrity. I …” His voice broke, and he couldn’t continue.

  “What are you telling me, Dad?”

  “That I have no right to cause you and your mother so much worry, to have put you into a position that might even be potentially dangerous.”

  “You didn’t!” Dad couldn’t kick out all his dreams because of me. I couldn’t let him do that.

  “I didn’t foresee all the ramifications,” Dad said, as though he were talking to himself. “My plan was too simplistic. I’d offer the voters my proposals for a better government, and if they accepted them and voted me into office, I’d work hard to put them into practice. Maybe I’m too used to giving orders and having them carried out. I didn’t anticipate such a strong opposition and the effect it would have on my family.”

  I reached out and took his hands in mine. “Dad! The way you’re talking, I can’t tell what you have in mind. You’re not giving up, are you?”

  He slowly looked up at me. “I don’t know, Cary,” he said. “I’m trying to think it through.”

  “What does Mom want you to do?”

  “She doesn’t want me to drop out of the race.”

  “Then neither do I,” I said. “You won’t, will you?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “We’ve come this far, and Mom and I are willing to stick with it all the way.”

  “It won’t be easy for you.”

  I managed to grin at him. “Hey! Being a good governor won’t be easy, either.”

  The bare shadow of a smile touched Dad’s face. He rose, took my hands, and pulled me to my feet.

  I wasn’t through with my pep talk. “Don’t worry about that break-in, Dad. It could have happened to anyone. Don’t let some creep stop you from doing what you want to do.”

  Even though I really didn’t believe what I’d just said, I must have sounded convincing because Dad seemed to perk up, so I went on. “You’re going to find that a lot of people want you to run for governor, Dad. There’ll be big crowds at your fund-raiser Saturday, and you’ll see that I’m right.”

  “It’s long past your bedtime, Cary,” Dad told me, but he gave me a smile, and seeing that smile made me feel a hundred percent better. “You’ll be falling asleep in class,” he said. “Hur
ry upstairs. Now!”

  I did as he said. Dad hadn’t given me the answer I’d wanted, but I could tell that he was back on his own track.

  In the morning Dad told me he was in the race to stay, no matter what. I was proud of him, but at the same time I couldn’t help secretly wishing he had never got the idea of running for office.

  He left for an early meeting, and Mom came in dressed to leave, too. She was carrying a folding umbrella because it was raining. “A cold front’s moving in,” she said.

  “I’m not ready to leave yet,” I told her and reached for my glass of milk, ready to chugalug it.

  “I’m not taking you,” Mom said. “A last-minute change of schedule. I’ve got to meet with my client before he leaves to catch a plane.”

  “But Dad’s got the other car, so Dexter can’t …”

  “I called Justin a few minutes ago and asked him to pick you up.” Mom aimed a kiss in my direction and pulled out her car keys.

  “Mom! You didn’t!” She had reached the door by this time but stopped to stare at me in surprise.

  “Well, why …?” She broke off. “Cary, I don’t have time to discuss it, although what was wrong with calling Justin I can’t imagine.”

  I could have told her, but she was already on her way out of the house.

  When Justin drove up I was waiting for him. It was a cold rain, and I pulled the collar of my red raincoat up around my neck. I hurried into his car, plopping down on the seat next to him and tossing my dripping umbrella to the floor. I didn’t scoot close, the way I usually did, but kept a space between us.

  “I’m sorry Mom bothered you,” I told him.

  “She didn’t bother me,” Justin said. “It’s not any trouble to pick you up.”

  We were talking to each other as though we were strangers, and I hated it, but I didn’t know how to change things.

  After a couple of minutes of silence Justin turned to give me a quick glance. “Your Mom sounded kind of nervous about you, Cary, like she didn’t want to let you out of her sight. How come?”

  I hadn’t told Justin anything about what had happened—Nora’s calls, the car that followed me, the man who hid in my room—and I didn’t want to. It was bad enough that we were breaking up. My private life was none of Justin’s business. “It’s not like that,” I said and tried to change the subject. “I’m glad you got your car back. You never told me what happened after the police said they’d impound it.”

  “They didn’t. Dad’s attorney worked things out. Because we all tested clean and the call about us was anonymous, they went along with what we thought—that someone had set us up and planted the drugs.” He looked at me again. “I can’t figure out who would have done it. Can you?”

  “No,” I answered. Believe me, I’d tried.

  “I already thought of Mark,” Justin said. “He’s the only weirdo we know. But Mark said he didn’t do it, and I think he was telling the truth. It was too rotten, even for him.”

  What if it had been some fanatic—someone crazy enough to try to get Dad out of the race by attacking me? I didn’t know, so I didn’t say any more about it, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.

  I had just put my books in my locker when Mark practically yelled in my ear. “Cary! You’ve got to see the pictures I took at the Halloween dance!”

  “No, thanks,” I said. I didn’t want to be reminded of that dance. Mark handed me the pictures anyway, and I handed them right back. “I’m busy, Mark. I don’t want to see your pictures.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said and shoved them in my face.

  I started to shove them right back at him, but I decided the fastest way to get rid of Mark was to look at his pictures and let him go bug someone else. “Nice,” I mumbled, “very nice,” as I flipped through the stack. I looked awful, but I wasn’t going to give Mark the satisfaction of reacting.

  I was near the end of the stack when my eye caught a group of kids in the senior class. Behind them a girl with long black hair was looking directly at the camera. “Francine!” I said.

  Mark hung over my shoulder. “Who? That one? Who was she? Somebody’s date?”

  “Somebody who shouldn’t have been there,” I said. I wasn’t talking to Mark. I was talking to myself. The anonymous phone call to the police. The drugs planted in Justin’s car. Was Francine responsible? And why? Why would she want to make me look bad and discredit Dad?

  “A gate crasher?” Mark chuckled, snatched the photos out of my hand, and hurried off to give the news to someone else.

  It was hard to keep my mind on what was taking place at school. The same disc jockey had started a new Charles Amberson joke: “I have all the qualities it takes to be governor—money, money, and more money.” Some of the kids had picked it up, but it wasn’t hard to ignore because it was childish and silly … and so were they for repeating it.

  After the last class, I’d just pulled my coat and umbrella from my locker when Cindy Parker grabbed my arm and said, “Oh, Cary, you’re just the person I need. I lost my umbrella, but there’s an old one in the trunk of my car. Lend me yours so I can run out and get it. Okay?”

  I held out my umbrella, but she grabbed for my coat, too. “I’d better wear this. It’s really coming down hard.”

  Typically Cindy. I wasn’t surprised.

  Allie had come up behind Cindy, and she and I walked to the door. A few of the kids had sprinted to their cars, but some of them waited, as we did, hoping the downpour would let up in a few minutes.

  As I watched Cindy run across the lot, the umbrella pulled so close that she looked like a red mushroom with feet, I noticed a sedan pull from the far end of the lot. It began to pick up speed, and as I stared, unable to believe what I was seeing, the driver aimed right for Cindy.

  I dropped my books and ran through the door, screaming at the top of my lungs, “Cindy! Look out!”

  Chapter 15

  She couldn’t have heard me, but maybe she heard the car, because she looked up and saw it. Only a second later she flew over the hood of the car parked next to her. I couldn’t tell if the driver had hit Cindy or if she’d been able to fling herself out of the way.

  I should have tried to get the license number, but the car sped out of the lot faster than I could think. I yelled for help and ran toward Cindy.

  Some of the other kids came running, too, and we knelt around Cindy, whose chin and nose were skinned and oozing blood. She lay on the asphalt crying. “My leg,” she said. “Don’t touch me! I think my leg’s broken.”

  I pulled out a Kleenex to hold to her face, but it was rain-soaked in an instant. Someone had run to the office, and Coach Mac was the first faculty member to arrive. “An ambulance is coming, Cindy,” he said, and he turned to the rest of us. “You kids, clear out of the way. Go on back inside. Move it!”

  At first I was too paralyzed to obey him, but someone took a firm grip on my arm and pulled me around, walking me across the parking lot.

  I looked up through a blur of tears and rain to see Justin. “It’s my fault. She had on my coat. They thought she was me,” I babbled.

  Justin didn’t say anything until he’d opened the door of his car and shoved me inside. “Stay here, and I’ll get your books,” he said.

  In just a couple of minutes he was back. He threw my books in the back seat and reached for an old sweatshirt, which he handed to me. “You can mop up with this,” he said.

  I tried, wiping my face, but my hair dripped down my shoulders and back, and I shivered. I couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Here,” Justin said, and he wrapped his jacket around me. For the first time I saw that he was as wet as I was, and I leaned against his shoulder, his arms snugly around me, and cried.

  We heard a siren, and in just a couple of minutes a police car arrived. Right on its heels was an ambulance.

  I sat up. “I’d better talk to the police.”

  “Did you get the license number?”

  “No. I need to tell them that
the driver thought Cindy was me.”

  “You’re not going to tell them some fool thing like that, Cary,” Justin said. He pulled away, turned on the ignition, and drove slowly out of the school’s parking lot.

  “It’s not a fool thing!” I said. “Justin, someone’s after me. They tried to scare me. They broke into my bedroom. And now this. If Cindy hadn’t jumped out of the way, she would have been killed!”

  We came to a boulevard stop, and as he turned to look at me I could see that Justin was scared. “You really think so?”

  “Why else would that driver have just aimed for Cindy? It wasn’t an accident.”

  “It may have been some nut who didn’t care who he hit, or someone after Cindy.”

  “No, Justin,” I said. “The driver thought Cindy was me.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Please. Just trust me. I’ll go into it later.” I put a hand on Justin’s arm. “I need to talk to Cindy. Will you take me to see her?”

  “We’ll have to find out which hospital she’ll be in. We’d better get into dry clothes first.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes, but Justin said, “Cary, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I don’t put things the right way. What I mean is, I’m sorry that Cindy got hurt, but I’m glad it wasn’t you. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”

  He reached over and took my hand, and I held it tightly all the way home.

  I found Velma in the kitchen.

  “Well, look at you,” she said. She did a double take and demanded, “Wait a minute! How’d you get in a state like that? What did you do with your coat and umbrella?”

  “I lent them to a friend.”

  Velma shook her head as if I were a dork beyond help. “Better get into a hot shower right away. And take some vitamin C.”

  As I left the kitchen she called after me, “That lady reporter came by just a few minutes ago. She left an envelope for you. It’s on the front-hall table. She said she had to go out of town for an interview and she might not get to see you until tomorrow.”

  I picked up the envelope and carried it upstairs. Just the tip of the gummed flap was sealed, and I was tempted to open it.