Quicksand Pond

by Janet Taylor Lisle

“I can’t go today,” she said. “I’ve got to get home today.”

  “Okay, but sometime, right?”

  “Sometime.”

  “How about just a short trip now? I was going to pole over to see the baby foxes. I have some crusts!” Terri held up a plastic bag. “You don’t have to leave yet, do you? You just got here.”

  “Thanks, but . . .”

  “Because we’re safe now,” Terri insisted. “I made us safe. No one’s ever going to know about the tools.”

  “I know. It’s not that. Just, another time would be better. I’ll let you know.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll just come here.”

  “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be at this camp,” Terri said.

  “I’ll call you. On my cell phone.”

  “You have a cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, give me your number. I can call you! We can stay in touch. I don’t want to show up at your house anymore anyway if everyone thinks I stole your laptop.”

  “Oh, Terri, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Just give me your number and I’ll call you every couple of days. You can say whether it’s a good time to go out on the raft or not. If it’s not, don’t worry. I can wait.”

  “Terri . . .”

  “So tell me your number. I can remember without writing it down. I have a mind like a steel trap. Mitch says that.”

  “Terri . . .” Jessie looked away. A strange silence opened between them.

  Terri said, “Oh, I get it. You don’t want to.”

  “Anyway, my cell doesn’t work at our house. I just remembered,” Jessie said, not meeting her eyes.

  For a moment Terri looked crushed. Her lips parted and her forehead buckled, as if she might be on the verge of pleading, or even bursting into tears. In the end she folded her arms across her chest, lifted her chin, and spoke in a high, proud voice.

  “You know, I’m not going to be stuck here forever. I’m going to get out of this someday.”

  “Sure,” Jessie said. “I know you will.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I’m going to be awesome. You’ll want to be friends when you see how great I’ll be. I’ll do stuff you won’t believe. I’m getting better and I’m getting out.”

  “I know. I know you will.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Yes, I do! I just have to go right now.”

  Jessie turned to walk away, and Terri, standing with her arms still folded across her chest, let her go. She allowed her to get a good distance down the shore, almost out of sight, before calling to her.

  “Hey, Jessie. You know, your dad is right about not letting Julia walk home at night. And he might not want to let her drive home with anyone either.”

  Jessie turned around. “What do you mean?”

  “Some of those beachers are really bad news. Julia probably can’t tell the difference between the good guys and the creeps.”

  “She thinks she can tell.”

  “Well, you know who she’s hanging out with now, don’t you?”

  “Who?” Jessie walked back a little way to hear better.

  “Ripley Schute. He comes here every summer and picks on some girl who doesn’t know anything, who’s impressed by his car and his superrich dad.”

  “So, what does his dad do?”

  “Owns a bank probably, I don’t know. He’s in some business in Providence. That family has been around here for years, pulling all kinds of stunts. They used to work a dairy like us, but they sold out. They’d never admit they did anything like farming, though. They’ve risen up too high. You should tell Julia to steer clear of Rip. She’s kind of an innocent person, anybody can see. He’s a real low-level creep. He got a girl in trouble last summer.”

  “He did?”

  “His dad paid to have it taken care of, you know what I mean?”

  Jessie knew. “I’ll tell Julia,” she said. “Thanks for letting us know. Actually, I think she’s a little afraid of him.”

  “I would be if I were her,” Terri said. “I’d be scared stiff. He’s like that snapper up at the dam, just waiting for someone to fall in the water.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Julia and Richard Kettel had arrived at the village center and were just getting out of their car to go into the library when Julia pointed.

  “Look! Look who I see.”

  Her father took a moment to recognize the disheveled figure coming through the door of the village market.

  “It’s Terri Carr,” Julia breathed. “She looks like she’s been in a swamp.”

  She did. Her hair was slicked back behind her ears, wet and scraggly. Her shirt and jean shorts were filthy. She wore rubber flip-flops too big for her feet. They slapped loudly against her soles as she walked. She was carrying groceries in a brown paper bag.

  Julia turned her back. “Don’t let her see us. We don’t want to talk to her.”

  But Richard could tell that Terri wasn’t about to talk to anyone. Just the opposite: her eyes were on the ground and she was walking away as fast as she could. She crossed the street and cut in behind the old white-steepled church. The last he saw of her, she was heading downhill toward the elementary school. Going home, he supposed.

  “Poor kid,” he said. “She leads a rough life.”

  Julia snorted. “You are such a bleeding heart. She probably stole our laptop, you know.”

  Her father shook his head. “Even if she did, I feel sorry for her.”

  “Well, I don’t. I’m just glad Jessie isn’t hanging out with her anymore. She is not someone we want to fool around with.”

  Richard Kettel was visited by a sudden realization. “You know, I think I might have known her father when I was here as a kid.”

  He’d been vaguely aware of this possibility for some time but kept pushing the notion aside. Now it rose with more certainty.

  “She even looks a little like how I remember him back then.”

  “Who?” Julia demanded.

  “Mitch. Mitch . . . Carr. Of course! That was his name! Mitchell Carr. Well, that’s certainly a coincidence. I wonder what he’s doing now?”

  “Dad! You don’t want to know, okay? That’s Terri’s family down at the end of the pond. They’re not good people.”

  Her father’s curiosity had been aroused, however. In the library that morning, while Julia settled down in front of an impossibly slow and backward computer (though at least it had Internet), he casually interviewed the librarian on duty.

  Did she happen to know the Carr family? The one that lived down on Quicksand Pond?

  She did. Everybody in town knew them. Because of the trouble the boys were always in, and the girl wasn’t much better. And then their old barn burning down under suspicious circumstances. Though no one was ever charged. But people in a town like this knew things whether or not the law caught up. There was court judgment that had to be proved beyond a doubt, and then there was what people knew. The Carr family, Richard learned, was in the second category of what people knew.

  “That family’s had trouble from way back,” the librarian said. “There was a big murder in this town years ago. It was all over the newspapers from here to Boston. The Carrs were involved in that, too. You can look it up if you want. We’ve got a whole file of stuff here in the library.”

  The next thing Richard knew, he wasn’t working on background for his novel anymore. He was in the library archives, which occupied a basement room beneath the main building. He was poring over folders full of clippings and reading old newspapers on an ancient microfilm reader that dated from, what, fifty years ago?

  “I didn’t know these machines still existed,” he told the helpful librarian.

  “You wouldn’t believe the stuff that’s still around in this town,” she answered. “People here don’t let go easily. They like to hang on to things. You can’t tell them there’s a better way of thinking. They don’t want to hear it.”

&
nbsp; * * *

  Home from the library that afternoon, Richard Kettel waited until Julia had left for the beach before speaking to Jessie about what he’d found. Anything to do with the Carrs sent his elder daughter into a righteous rage. He waited until after lunch, when Jonathan, back from a strenuous morning of swimming with Philip, was temporarily at low ebb in the living room.

  “I did a little poking around on your murder this morning,” he said quietly to Jessie in the kitchen.

  “My murder! Why is it mine?”

  “You asked me about it, didn’t you? Well, I found some interesting information in the library. From old newspaper clippings. You know that huge house down the pond? It was owned by one of the richest men in the state, a newspaper magnate named George C. Cutting. In 1944 there was a robbery there. He and his wife were shot dead. A dairyman named Eddie Carr was arrested and went to prison. He was Terri’s great-grandfather.”

  “I already know that,” Jessie said. “Terri told me. She said he didn’t do it.”

  “Well, he looks pretty guilty from these clippings. Remember the friend I worked with on trash that summer? The kid who took me fishing? I figured out he was Mitch Carr. Remember how I said the family drove to Pennsylvania one time to visit someone in prison? They must’ve been visiting Eddie Carr. He was still alive then, I guess.”

  Jessie gazed at her father. “Dad! You’re so hopeless. I already know all this.”

  “You knew Terri’s father was the guy I went fishing with? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Jessie sighed. “I didn’t tell Terri, either. I didn’t think you and Mitch would get along, the way things are with him. He’s a big drunk now and their place is a mess. I was afraid you might try to go over there or something.”

  Her father looked away thoughtfully. “I should’ve figured out who she was. There was something familiar about Terri right from the beginning. I guess I just didn’t want to think about it. It’s one of those sad situations you don’t want to dwell on.”

  Jessie measured her father with a glance and decided to take the conversation one step further.

  “I’ve been feeling bad about Terri too,” she said. “I went to see her today. She’s camped out by herself on the pond. She can’t go home until Mitch cools down. They had some kind of fight. He gets drunk and . . .”

  “Poor kid,” Richard said for the second time that day. “I wish we could do something.”

  “I do too,” Jessie said. “The trouble is it’s really complicated with her. You can’t just be her friend in a normal way. The more you know her, the more you get kind of sucked into her life.”

  Her father’s head swung around. “But you haven’t . . .” He stopped and rephrased. “I mean, everything’s okay, isn’t it? You’ve been out with her on that raft a few times and that’s it, right?”

  “Oh, sure,” Jessie said quickly. “Everything’s fine. I can see how it might turn into a problem though.”

  Her father nodded. “You know what? I think the best thing would be for you to keep some distance between you and Terri. From now on, I mean. Your mother would say that. She’d be worried you might be drawn into an uncomfortable situation. It might sound callous, but you have to be careful in cases like this. You have to protect yourself.”

  “It’s hard, because I really like Terri,” Jessie said. “I like her very much.”

  “I know,” her father said. “We all do. It’s one of those sad things.”

  A shout came from the living room. Jonathan was gearing up again. He’d dragged out the Monopoly game they’d brought from Pittsburgh and was demanding to play. Immediately!

  “I printed out some of the articles about the murders, if you’re interested,” her father went on quickly. “I guess the daughter was asleep upstairs when it happened. There’s a photo of her.”

  “There is?”

  “She had a breakdown of some kind afterwards. Did you know she still lives in town?”

  “She lives here on the pond,” Jessie said. “In that same big house. I’ve met her, actually. She’s a little crazy but not completely out of it. She came down to see us when we were . . .”

  She put her hand over her mouth.

  Better not to tell that secret. Better not to say a word, even with the tools returned. Her father seemed not to have heard, anyway. Jonathan was raising a din in the living room, calling for them to get started on the game, that he wanted to be the banker. Jessie’s father thrust the articles into her hand and went to quell the storm.

  “Okay, okay! If you’re going to be the banker, you need to give me two thousand dollars to start off with. No, those are the hundred-dollar bills. The orange ones are the five-hundred-dollar bills. Give me three five hundreds and three one-hundred-dollar bills and then—”

  “Don’t you want to play?” Jonathan yelled as Jessie disappeared upstairs.

  No, she said. Not this time. No.

  * * *

  The girl in the newspaper photo was unrecognizable. She looked nothing like the ghostly figure who’d surprised them at the pond. Old age had erased every feature from Henrietta Cutting’s appearance back then: her light, curly hair; her oval face; her pale eyes and determined chin. Jessie wondered if this could really be the same person, this long-legged girl caught at the foot of some porch steps, a fishing pole cocked over a shoulder.

  The photo must have been taken before the murders, Jessie thought. The girl was gazing straight at the camera, an impatient look on her face, as if she was being interrupted. She’d stand still for this moment, her expression said, but no longer. She had better things to do and places to be. Another minute and she’d be on her way.

  The newspaper headline presented another reality:

  CUTTING DAUGHTER TRAPPED IN HOUSE WHILE KILLERS ROAMED.

  She’d suffered some collapse during police questioning and was never called to testify at the trial, according to the news story. As the thieves ransacked the house, she’d hidden. A housekeeper arriving the next morning came upon her parents’ bodies in the front hall. The girl was found later, huddled under a dressing table upstairs.

  “She didn’t know me,” the housekeeper was quoted as saying. “When we came upon her, she didn’t move. She couldn’t speak. Frozen, she was, like a block of ice.”

  Other photos showed Mr. and Mrs. Cutting as they had looked in life, a well-padded middle-aged couple attending various Providence social events. There was a photo of Mr. Cutting in a business suit visiting his newspaper offices, surrounded by his writers and reporters. Eddie Carr was not pictured, except for one long-range shot showing a short, stocky figure—it must have been him—being brought into court between a pair of police officers.

  LOCAL DAIRYMAN CONVICTED IN CUTTING MURDERS, one headline read.

  Jessie wondered if Terri had seen these articles. She thought not. They so directly contradicted her version of events. According to the articles, Eddie Carr was caught practically red-handed with the stolen property. A neighboring farmer had tipped off the police. He’d been up late with an ailing cow, he testified, and seen suspicious activity at the Carrs’ landing.

  Everything was there under a tarp on Eddie’s dock. His boat showed evidence of bloody boot prints. A cap of the sort he was known to wear was found nearby, spattered with blood. More incriminating, a jewelry box belonging to Mrs. Cutting was recovered in a woodbin on the Carrs’ back porch.

  “We got our man,” the chief of police was quoted as saying. “It’s an open-and-shut case. The guy never had time to get rid of the goods.”

  Testifying for himself, Eddie protested it all. He knew nothing of the jewelry box, he said. The cap wasn’t his. His boat had been tampered with. He’d been asleep all night in his own bed—just ask his wife!

  The prosecuting attorney called him a liar. His wife wept on the stand and could barely be heard. The murder weapon was never found. (“Likely sunk in the pond,” the prosecutor surmised.) The jury convicted and recommended death, but when the sentence was r
ead, the judge spared Eddie’s life.

  Eddie Carr had had a clean record up till then, was the reason given. He came from a landholding family. It was living next to all that wealth that had deviled his mind. The Cuttings’ summer estate had more in common with the mansions of Newport than with the working farms surrounding it. A man might be angered by such extravagance. A man might be tempted, during hard times, to steal for the good of his family. But murder? For murder there was no justification. For that Eddie would spend the rest of his natural life incarcerated in a federal prison.

  Jessie stopped reading. She went back to Henrietta’s photo. There, after a second examination, she saw that what she’d thought was a fishing pole had no reel or line. It was just a long, smooth shaft big enough to fit neatly into the girl’s palm.

  Jessie glanced at Henrietta’s shoes. They were old-fashioned lace-up canvas sneakers, dark and soggy-looking. Above them Henrietta’s bare legs extended to a pair of floppy, old-fashioned shorts. More telling, her legs showed streaks of mud, the same mud Jessie often found on her own legs when she came in from a day on the water.

  “She’s been on a raft,” Jessie said out loud. “She’s been out poling around on the pond!”

  Her first thought was to find Terri and show her: Look at this! Henrietta Cutting isn’t as crazy as we thought. She really did have a raft. She thought ours was hers, that’s why she came down to see us. That’s why she’s been trying to help us fix it up. She wants us to do something for her. But what? We should visit her and find out.

  In the end, though, Jessie didn’t go. She agonized for an hour, then thought better of it. To go was to take another step toward the Carrs’ messy life at the end of the pond. To go was to start up again with Terri, who’d expect her to do things that might get her in trouble. Jessie decided to play it safe and stay home. That evening she was glad she had, because another crisis was already under way at the beleaguered Cutting mansion.

  EIGHTEEN

  Henrietta was in her bedroom upstairs when she smelled smoke. A mild whiff sifting through the screen, as if someone was doing a bit of local burning. She paid no attention, for just at that moment the raft came into view! She nearly fell out of her chair trying to get the binoculars focused.