by Glen Ebisch
“Yeah, but I guess she backed out. Confrontation isn’t her kind of scene,” I explained.
“Doesn’t she usually work for you during this period?” he asked Hawthorne. When Hawthorne nodded, Templeton asked him to check with his secretary to see if Elaine had called in to say she would be absent.
Hawthorne came back and said, “She left a message with Miss Davis saying that she had to report to the headmaster’s office. Something about new information involving Vicki’s death.”
“Call and verify that she had an appointment and kept it,” Templeton said. Suppressing his irritation at being ordered around by a student, Hawthorne called.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, starting to get a sinking feeling in my stomach. But Templeton was concentrating on Hawthorne’s end of the conversation.
“The headmaster’s office doesn’t have any record of an appointment for Elaine,” Hawthorne reported. “But the secretary happened to see Randy meet Elaine at the door to the office.”
“Where did they go?” asked Templeton.
“She thinks they were headed in the direction of the field house.”
“Let’s go!” said Templeton, leaping to his feet and pulling open the door.
“Where?” I asked. “They could have gone anywhere.”
“Not if he wants it to look like a suicide. Mr. Hawthorne, notify the security police and have them meet us at Kingman’s Cliff.”
Chapter 14
On a good day Kingman’s Cliff was probably about a twenty minute run from where we were, but this was not a good day. There were five or six inches of hard snow on the ground. On the far side of the field house, Templeton stopped momentarily and pointed. Two sets of tracks went across the field and into the woods.
Grimly, without speaking, we ran side by side into the woods. Once in there, the tracks were harder to follow, but we figured that we knew their destination and didn’t stop to search for the trail. I tripped over a root hidden by the snow and almost fell, and Templeton took a branch across the face that left an angry welt. But, all things considered, we were making pretty good time.
As we came out of the woods, we paused to get our bearings. Templeton pointed to the right. “It should be there. Just the other side of that hill.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been there,” he answered and started off at a run.
We came to the top of the hill. Twenty yards away was the edge of the mountain. In the distance you could see neat rectangles of snowy New England farmland extending off to the horizon. Peaceful and comforting, divided by stone walls that had stood for years.
Closer up things were less cozy. About fifteen feet from the edge were two figures. Elaine was lying in the snow, and Randy was tugging on her arm, pulling her toward the cliff. Before we could decide what to do, the scene changed. Randy let go of Elaine’s arm and raised some kind of club he was carrying in his left hand over his head.
“Randy!” I shouted, running toward them. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Templeton going off to the right trying to outflank them. “Don’t do it, Randy. There’s no point anymore. We all know.”
Slowly he lowered the club. “You all know? But even Elaine didn’t know! Not until I explained why I had to kill her. How could you all know?”
“We do. I know, Templeton knows, Hawthorne knows, and the school police are on their way,” I said, walking closer to him. “It’s all over, Randy.”
With a strangled cry, he dropped the club, turned around, and ran full speed for the edge. But Templeton had the angle on him and was a few steps quicker. He brought him down with a pretty respectable tackle about three feet from the edge of the cliff.
I bent over Elaine, who was more scared than hurt, and helped her to her feet.
“Okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. But what is that thing?” she asked, pointing to Randy’s club, which I had just picked up out of the snow.
“A polo mallet,” I answered.
“A polo mallet?” she asked in amazement.
“Yeah, at least you would have gone out in style.”
“But, I mean, who plays polo?”
“I guess Randy had big plans for the future as one of the rich and famous. Playing polo with royalty and dining with the stars.”
“Good Lord! He was even crazier than I was.”
“I think it’s called being ambitious,” Templeton added, coming up behind us with Randy in tow. “Also, he couldn’t kill you with an ice pick the way he did Vicki, because a stab wound wouldn’t be blamed on the fall the way the blows from the mallet would.”
Before we could say any more, the security police came crashing through the woods. Sergeant Foster asked us a few questions, then took charge of Randy. They put handcuffs on him, which seemed kind of unnecessary since Foster had enough men with him to quell a full-scale riot, and began marching him back to campus. Elaine, Templeton, and I trailed along a few yards behind.
Elaine explained that Randy had sent a note on the headmaster’s stationery asking her to come to the office. He’d met her at the door, told her that some new evidence had been found in the field where she had been chased, and that the headmaster wanted to see her out there.
When they got to the empty field, Randy said that maybe the headmaster had gone into the woods looking for clues. It wasn’t until she came out by the cliff and realized they were alone that Elaine became suspicious.
“Didn’t you think it was a little odd that he kept leading you further into the woods?” I asked.
“Yeah, I guess so. But, you know, Randy always liked me, so I figured maybe he just wanted us to be alone. Kind of a romantic rendezvous, you know what I mean?”
I certainly did.
Once Elaine realized that Randy had other things on his mind than a quick cuddle, she insisted they go back. He threatened her with the polo mallet, and soon the whole story had come pouring out. He explained that Vicki had been blackmailing him by threatening to tell everyone he was a thief. She kept wanting more and more money, and his parents had him on a pretty tight allowance because of the trouble he’d gotten into before. Finally, he couldn’t afford to pay her what she demanded.
He got her to meet him in back of the restaurant with some story about his parents wiring him money. He forced her into the car, killed her right there on the street while she sat in the car, drove around for a while, then took her body back to school and put it behind the teachers’ bungalows.
“Why take her back? I asked. “Why not leave the body in the alley, so no one would connect the murderer with the school?”
“Because Vicki had bragged to Randy she was blackmailing Hawthorne,” Templeton put in. “In addition, Randy was probably always a little worried that Hawthorne might tell people what was in his records from Connecticut. This way he could kill two birds with one stone.”
“Did Vicki tell Randy that you knew about his past, too?” I asked Elaine.
“No. But Randy was nervous that because we were friends Vicki might have confided in me about it. When I told him the other night at the movies that Vicki and I had talked a lot about our past experiences, he thought I was leading up to blackmailing him. That’s why he broke into my dorm room that night and tried to kill me.”
I shook my head. “The poor guy, he cared an awful lot about what people thought of him, and it must have seemed that everywhere he turned they were bringing up his past.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of sad,” Elaine agreed. “He didn’t understand that if you’re rich, nobody cares if you were a thief. It really just kind of makes you more interesting.”
“Do you believe that?” I asked, a little shocked.
“Sure. You may as well face it, that’s the way things are.”
“Well, it’s not the way they should be,” I retorted.
“Yeah, well welcome to the real world, Charlie.”
“And who was that guy you were holding hands with last night in front of the dorm? Somebody else wh
o kind of liked you?”
At least she had the decency to blush. “Just a guy. You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“I figured that much. Was it Randy?”
“No, it was Tim.”
“Tim Woodward? But he’s on the basketball team with me.” I couldn’t believe Tim would do that, but then, I’d expected better of Elaine, too.
“I told you that I liked tall boys.”
“But you didn’t say that meant every tall boy! How could you do something like that?”
“Oh, grow up,” she said in disgust, and walked on ahead.
Templeton had drifted off to my left when Elaine and I began arguing. He didn’t seem to be paying attention, but I knew he must have overheard.
“Say something that’s sane, that’s rational, that’s incredibly pompous. Say anything that will convince me I’m not surrounded by crazy people,” I pleaded.
“We’ve solved the case, Wood. And I mean ‘we.’ You were a great deal of help, particularly when you didn’t intend to be. But I always hate to see a case come to a close. It’s like finishing the last chapter in a good book that you want to go on and on.”
“What about Hawthorne? He’s another chapter. Are you really going to keep quiet about his grade frauds?”
“I promised the people who signed the letters of confession that I wouldn’t get them into trouble if I could possibly avoid it. However, I may strongly suggest to Hawthorne that he look for another place to work.”
“In a school for the poor?”
“No, the poor deserve better than that,” said Templeton.
“Yeah, especially the poor,” I replied.
Chapter 15
Elaine and I made up. We went out pretty regularly for the rest of the winter. And, although I suspected there were always other guys, I never tried very hard to find out who they were. I dreamed about what it would be like once the spring came. There would be long walks with Elaine in newly green woods on beautiful warm days. Birds would sing, and flowers would suddenly burst into bloom. We would lie under a magnificent old oak and talk about ourselves and our future. Pretty soon, as she came to know me, I’d be the only one for her.
But on one windy day in late March, Elaine and I took a short stroll out behind the field house, and she explained that her mother was taking her out of school so they could go live in Europe with her father. Her mom and dad were going to try to make a go of it again, and they wanted her along so they could be a family. The next day she was gone.
Maybe it was just as well, because it was a lousy spring with a lot of rain and cold. In fact, it was on about the first really warm day we had, which was in early May, that I went to my mailbox and found a postcard from her. The picture was of some island off the coast of Greece where the water was as blue as the sky.
I read it over about twenty times on the way back to my room. She was there for a vacation with a group from the film company. She said she thought of me often. That was about all she said.
Templeton was reading when I came in, slouched in one of the old leather chairs in front of an unnecessary fire that made the room stifling hot. In gratitude for his help in solving Vicki’s murder, the headmaster had given him special permission to have a fire for as long as he was at the school, and he was taking advantage of it. He had been quieter than ever now that there was no case to investigate, and sometimes went several days without speaking.
“Look,” I said, holding out the card to him. “Elaine sent a card. She’s on an island near Greece.”
“Fascinating,” he said in a bored voice, without looking up.
A wave of anger washed over me. I wanted to pull him out of the chair and shake him until he lost that smug look. Until he hurt the same way I did since Elaine had left.
Then I remembered something she had said to me. It was just after the murder was solved, and I had mentioned how depressed Templeton had become.
“That’s because he loved me,” she’d explained.
I had smiled.
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking. ‘Once she was paranoid and thought everyone hated her, now she’s swung to the other extreme and thinks everyone loves her. Either way she’s crazy.’”
I’d put my arm around her and said, “You’re not crazy, but Templeton doesn’t love you. He doesn’t love anyone.”
“For a while he did. He loved me, as long as I was a problem—a case to be solved.”
“But that’s not really loving,” I had protested.
“And you love me because I’m part of your dream of what you want your future to be like.”
“That’s different,” I said.
“Maybe, maybe not. But don’t be too hard on Templeton, he does what he can with a different dream.”
I looked over at Templeton who was lost in his contemplation of the flames. My anger disappeared. I wanted to smile at him, to reach over and give him a friendly pat on the back, to offer some reassurance that there would be more mysteries. But somehow I didn’t think he would understand.
– THE END –
Glen has been writing fiction for over twenty-five years, and has had eighteen books published for both young people and adults. He lives with his wife in western Massachusetts and his hobbies include yoga and reading.