The Body In The Basement ff-6

by Katherine Hall Page

  Samantha was feeling a lot less frightened now that she'd told Arlene and Fred about the scene with Duncan.

  Sitting by the fire at the clambake, she'd decided she had to find out what he was up to. It could be nothing—or it could explain a lot of what had been happening lately. She had a feeling that after the fight with his parents, he wouldn't go home, but would gather his "club" together and do something. Arlene and Fred agreed. Fred had an idea where Duncan might be.

  “There's an old cabin in the woods behind the camp that used to be a place counselors went on their days off in the olden times before Jim was the director and figured out it was the perfect place to screw. Maybe used it himself."

  Fred laughed. Arlene made a face.

  “It's gross enough to think of adults doing it, without having to think of Jim Atherton as a teenager.”

  Samantha agreed and asked, "What about the cabin?

  Do you real y think Duncan hangs out there? It's pretty near the camp. Wouldn't he want to get farther away?"

  “That's what I've heard. Besides, the kid isn't old enough to drive. How far can he go? Though some of his loser friends are older and have cars. But I think he'd pick his own spot, something close to hand, and chances are he'l be there tonight. After what you described, he'd be nuts to go home. Doesn't spend much time in the mansion, anyway. My cousin worked on it and said Duncan's room was pretty cheesy compared to the rest of the place. Smal and no Jacuzzi in the bath."

  “Wel , no wonder the boy's disturbed," mocked Arlene, and they al laughed. It occurred to Samantha that she'd never heard Fred talk so much, and what he said made sense. Maybe Arlene knew what she was about.

  “We can park on the road and go in the back way. I'm pretty sure I can find it."

  “You sound awful y familiar with the cabin yourself, Frederick Ames," Arlene said.

  “So, maybe we took some brews there once or twice on a cold winter's day," he admitted, "but we never hurt anything. The place was pretty wel trashed before we ever found it.”

  He stopped the truck, got a flashlight from the glove compartment, and they started to walk silently through the woods. Samantha wasn't sure what she thought she would find, yet it seemed like a good idea at the time, and if she'd stayed at home doing nothing, she would have gone out of her mind. If nothing else, she'd provided Fred with some excitement for the night. He was as keyed up as if he was stalking a stag.

  They almost missed the tumbled-down cabin.

  Evergreen boughs and fal en trees had been piled around it in an attempt at camouflage. In the dark, it was quite effective.

  “Probably doesn't want his stepfather to notice it's stil here when he's leading one of his hikes," Arlene whispered.

  “Sssh" Fred put his hand over her mouth, expecting a kiss. The abruptness with which he pul ed away told Samantha he got something else. Arlene was not easily shushed.

  They crept up to the front of the cabin and could make out the door. It was closed and no light shone beneath it, nor at any of the windows.

  “It doesn't look like he's here," Samantha said. She was disappointed.

  Fred switched on the flashlight and they went up the steps. A board was missing from one and Samantha's foot almost went through. She grabbed at the rickety railing.

  “Be careful. This place is liable to fal apart like Lincoln Logs," Fred warned.

  They peered in the window, glass surprisingly stil intact, unless Duncan had replaced it. It was pitch-dark and they couldn't see a thing. Fred shone the flashlight in and they could make out a heavy-metal calendar and a King Diamond poster on the far wal .

  “What did you expect? Joey Lawrence? Come on, let's go in," Arlene said.

  The door was open. It appeared the cabin had never been wired for electricity. There were lots of candles around, especial y on a low shelf just above a smal footlocker. A table with an ashtray fil ed with cigarette butts, a couple of dilapidated chairs, and a mattress with a sleeping bag on top completed the decor. There were more posters on the wal s: Kiss, AC/DC, and one with a winged skul . Fred walked over to the ashtray and sniffed at the contents. "Marlboros, nothing else. If he's got a stash, it's someplace else. Like in that trunk over there.”

  The trunk had drawn Samantha's eye, too. So far, the room indicated perhaps a borderline unhealthy fascination with the occult and satanic music, yet nothing like upside-down crosses or inverted pentagrams to indicate the need for an emergency exorcist. Duncan seemed to spend his leisure time reading—not Proust or even Catcher in the Rye, but comic books. There was a stack of them next to the mattress. Arlene picked up a couple. "Look at this. The kid is real y total y weird. I mean he's got Ghost Rider and X-Men mixed in with Archies. He doesn't know if he's six or sixteen.”

  Fred had flipped the two catches and was fiddling around with the center lock on the footlocker. It looked like the kind you took to camp, and maybe Duncan had, some summer in his past life. Samantha found it hard to imagine him as a normal kid in shorts playing capture the flag in a camp T-shirt.

  “These things are pretty easy to open." Fred took out his knife.

  “What's that sticking out from the side?" Samantha asked.

  Fred pul ed at it. "I dunno. Some kind of black cloth.

  Maybe he has orgies or something here and they dressup."

  He inserted the knife into the lock and began to twist it open.

  Samantha had a funny feeling about al this. It was one thing to walk through an open door but another to open someone's private property, even if that someone was Duncan Cowley. She was also not sure she wanted to know what was inside.

  “He's coming! Let's get out of here!" Arlene had been watching at the window. "I can see his shoes! Come on, run!”

  They flew down the front stairs and into the woods.

  Samantha could see Duncan's shoes blinking in the dark.

  He wasn't far behind them and he'd realized someone had been at the cabin.

  “You bastard!" he screamed. "Come back here. I know who you are. You can't get away from me.”

  They ran until they reached the pickup and then were back on the main road in a few moments.

  “That was close," Fred said.

  They drove in silence for a while. The feeling of the dark cabin and what it might contain seemed to have invaded the thoughts of al three teenagers. Now that she was away, Samantha perversely felt she had to find out what Duncan was up to—even if it meant breaking into the footlocker. She reached over and grabbed Arlene's hand. It was as cold as her own.

  “It was great of you guys to come with me, but I've got to get home or my mother wil have a fit"

  “Mine, too," Arlene said.

  They pul ed into the drive in front of the Mil ers' cottage and Samantha got out. "Tomorrow night?" Fred asked. In the beams of his headlights, Samantha nodded solemnly.

  Tomorrow night.

  * * *

  The phone rang early the next morning. Sam was asleep and Samantha had already left for work, taking her bike. Pix was drinking a cup of coffee, stil in her nightclothes, out on the back deck. She dashed inside. Her hel o was a little breathless. It had been the fourth ring; islanders were known to hang up after less, assuming no one was home or didn't want to be bothered.

  “Mom!" It was Samantha and she was breathless, too.

  "Get over here right away! It's the sails! They're covered with blood and al these dead bats are lying around in the hul s!"

  “Blood! Bats! My God, what's happened?" Pix could scarcely

  believe

  Samantha's

  words.

  "Samantha!

  Samantha!" The line appeared to have gone dead.

  “That was Arlene." Samantha was back on the phone and her voice was marginal y calmer. "It's not blood. It's paint, red paint. And the bats are plastic. But it looked like blood when the sails were raised and the bats were total y gross with red stuff coming out of them, so we al ran back here. I could have sworn it was real!"

/>   “Darling, how dreadful!"

  “Just come, okay?"

  “I'l be there as soon as I can." Pix was already unbuttoning her pajamas. After she hung up, she raced upstairs.

  “Sam, Sam, wake up! There's some trouble over at the camp. Someone painted the sails with red paint and they al thought it was blood, because there were bats in the boats that they thought were dead. But they turned out to be fake too." Pix was struggling for lucidity.

  “Bats? What kind of bats? Basebal bats? Paint?

  Blood?" Sam sat up, rubbing his eyes. "What the hel is going on over there? Wait while I throw something on"

  When the Mil ers pul ed into the parking lot at Maine Sail Camp, they could see that Sergeant Dickinson had beaten them. They hurried down to the waterfront, where the entire camp was gathered. Samantha was in the center of a group of the youngest campers. Two were literal y clinging to her. Pix was proud of the way her daughter was handling the crisis. Stroking one head while patting another, Samantha was saying, "It's just someone's idea of a stupid joke. A very, very bad joke and that's al . We'l get the extra sails and be out on the water in no time”

  One of the children, a little girl, looked up at Samantha with absolute certainty that she would get an honest answer from this goddess. "Are you sure? So many spooky things have been happening—the mice and those other tricks”

  Sam turned to Pix. "Mice?" he asked softly, not wanting to upset the scene further.

  “I'l tel you later," Pix replied. "Another nasty prank."

  She wanted to listen. What was this about "other tricks"?

  Jim strode over to them, obviously pleased at their presence.

  “Sam, Pix. Good of you to come. Earl is down on the beach now and then he wants to search al the cabins.

  Clayton Dickinson is working here as handyman this summer. He's Earl's cousin, I believe, and is going to help him. The kids are understandably upset. Do you think you could give us a hand? We're going to gather in the dining hal and sing some songs. Mabel is getting together some cookies and milk. The counselors have been terrific, but the kids need some more adult reassurance."

  “No problem," Sam replied, abandoning his morning sail with only a slight trace of regret. "Before you start your hootenanny though, I think you'd better talk about what's happened. There's the possibility that someone may have some information, but mostly you want to keep it al out in the open or you're going to have them jumping ship in droves."

  “Don't I know it. One kid has already demanded to leave. His parents are on a barge in Burgundy, pretty unreachable, as he wel knows, but he's stirring up the others"

  “Is this one of Samantha's group? She said there was a boy who was pretty annoyed at his mother and father.”

  Jim nodded. "Geoff Baxter. He may have been too immature for such a long sleep-away session.”

  Pix went over to Samantha and began to help her move the kids into the dining room. Sam went to another group. "Hootenanny?" Had her husband been listening to his old Pete Seeger records while the family was away?

  The clingers were stil clinging and Pix gently pried the little girl away from Samantha. Pix had the distinct impression that the campers around Samantha, and especial y those who had commandeered each of her daughter's hands, were not so much scared as excited, despite appearances to the contrary. There was definitely something in the air. She made a mental note to talk to Samantha about it later—and also ask her how she liked being the object of such devotion. The crushes at Maine Sail were beginning to resemble some sort of food chain—

  beginning with Samantha's on Valerie.

  “Now, listen to Samantha. She's right. It's just a rotten trick. What's your name?" The girl gulped, took a tissue Pix offered, and blew her nose. "It's Susannah." Obviously the effort was too much and she began to cry, adding the tearful protest, "I didn't do it. I don't know who did it!"

  “Shut up, Susannah, and stop showing off." It was one of the boys in the group. "Nobody thinks you did it. Besides, you would never have the guts”

  Pix was inclined to agree with him. Whoever had done it would have had to have nerve and some to spare. The sails had been fine the day before, Samantha said, so the deed involved getting up in the dead of night, raising the sails, painting them without leaving a trace of the evidence on one's person, then making everything shipshape before going back to bed.

  It would have been very difficult for any of the campers

  —or counselors—to do without someone detecting his or her absence.

  That left ... Arlene supplied the name uppermost in everyone's minds, whispering to Pix as she swept by, several charges in tow, "It's just creepy Duncan again. If this doesn't get him sent away, I don't know what wil ." She was smiling.

  In the cavernous dining room, the commotion was deafening and it took Jim several minutes to get everyone quieted down. During that time, Pix saw Valerie and Duncan slip in through the side door. Valerie looked furious. Duncan's mouth was set in a tight line. He looked as if he hadn't slept—or changed his clothes—for a few weeks. When Pix tried to read the expression in his eyes, al she could come up with was fear. If there was red paint on his body, it wasn't anywhere that showed.

  “Campers, staff, I know how upset everyone is, and believe me, I feel it just as much as you do—more. Right now, what we need is to stay calm and do everything we can to help Sergeant Dickinson figure out who did this.

  While the kitchen crew gives us a little snack, we'l have a few songs and practice for the parade. I'm going to be in my office in case any of you wants to come to talk to me. If you want to bring a friend, fine. I'm prepared to treat this as a very bad joke—something that maybe seemed like a fun idea at midnight, to scare your friends the next morning. But I wil find out who did it.”

  Jim Atherton was definitely displaying the non pussycat side of his camp-director role this morning.

  Nobody but nobody messed with Maine Sail.

  Samantha joined her parents. Pix took the opportunity to ask her a few questions as the group began to sing

  "There Was a Tree," volume increasing as they went along, until it sounded like any other camp group. Al they needed was to be on a bus or tramping through the woods.

  “What did the kids mean by the other tricks?"

  “Oh, those were just the normal things that go on in a place like this—salt in the sugar bowls, short-sheeting the counselors' beds—the ones who don't have sleeping bags

  —and cow-pats in people's shoes.”

  Pix nodded. These were the typical perils of camp existence. "Nothing else? Nothing like the mice?"

  “Not that I know of, though the kids have been saying they hear creepy noises at night—scary music, rustling in the bushes—but I'm pretty sure it's one or two kids wanting to get the others worked up."

  “Now what is this about the mice?" Sam demanded.

  He real y wanted to be sailing. It was a gorgeous day and through the window he could see luckier folk skimming the surface of the water just beyond the vandalized boats moored in the camp harbor. They did look pretty dreadful and reminded him of an. ancient Greek myth, only those sails had been black. He shuddered slightly and put any and al implications firmly out of his mind.

  They fil ed him in on the mice and he commented, "The sole connection I can see is blood and gore. Kids this age love it, but I'm damned if I can figure out how a kid could have done it."

  “The Athertons were at the clambake al afternoon; someone could have snuck away then," Pix proposed.

  “Except the whole camp was here practicing for the Fourth of July parade. The counselors have planned an elaborate routine where the campers flip cards as they march and sing, like at sports events. If someone was missing, it would have been spotted right away. You couldn't do that much damage in the time it might have taken to go the bathroom"

  “Samantha's right, which leaves an outsider.”

  Samantha elaborated. "Which leaves Duncan. We know he had a wicked big figh
t with his parents. What better way to get even than try to get the camp closed down? If Jim can't keep this hushed up, there are a lot of parents who'l want their kids out of here. You know, `Kid's Camp Cult Target'—that sort of thing.

  “Duncan had plenty of time to do it while the rest of us were eating lobster—or he could have done it later after everyone was asleep." Or, she said to herself silently, he could have been coming from his painting party just in time to surprise us at the cabin.

  “Wel ," Sam said, rubbing his hands together, "I don't see that there's too much more we can do here." The group was lustily singing "One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wal " and it was time to leave—tide or no tide. "Why don't we go talk to Jim, see if anything more has turned up, and skedaddle." Skedaddle? Pix thought. What was happening to her husband's vocabulary. He definitely needed to be around his family more.

  “I'l come, too. Are you staying, darling?"

  “Mother! Of course! It's my job. Besides, I want to.”

  Samantha went back to her post. The worshippers were waiting.

  “It seems odd that little Susannah would have felt it necessary to protest her innocence," Pix remarked to her husband as they started across the ground, so heavily carpeted with years of fal en fir needles that their every footfal released a strong scent of balsam as they crunched along.

  “Maybe she's the salt/sugar culprit. She has the perfect face for it—those big baby blues and that sunshine from-behind-the-clouds smile.”

  behind-the-clouds smile.”

  Pix looked at Sam admiringly. "You would have made a good detective"

  “Thank you, Mrs. Holmes. Now let's say good-bye and not waste any more of this beautiful day.”

  Outside the office, they could hear voices, raised voices.

  “I tel you, young man, one more incident and you'l go.

  This is not a threat; it's a promise. You are not hiding behind your mother's skirts anymore. Of al the idiotic things to do, frightening some of the younger children half to death!"