Blindfold (11 page)

"Can't." Maggie poured cereal into a bowl. "I have to go over there next Saturday. They're taking the statue of Lady Justice down, and Ms. Gross wants the peer jury there."

"After what happened to you last night, she couldn't possibly expect you to show up."

"Sure, she could. And she mil. I'm foreperson,

Mom." Her mother had finally seen the wound on her arm last night in the ER, but Maggie didn't want to remind her, so she was careful to keep the bandage covered by the sleeve of her robe as she poured milk on her cereal. "I want to be there. It's an event." She smiled at her mother. "Felicity doesn't have a lot of those, Mom. I don't want to miss it."

Uncertain, her mother turned to Maggie's father. "Martin? What do you think?"

"Well, it's being held outside. I suppose the grounds are safe enough. If she's supposed to be there, she should go."

"But you said ..."

"I said you should forget about restoring that dump and use the money you've raised for a recreation center. God knows the kids in Felicity could use one. I didn't say Maggie should retreat to her room. Anyway, it's a week away, Sheila. Let's not worry about it now, okay? Besides," smiling at Maggie from around the corner of his newspaper, "she's had her quota of accidents for this year, right, Megs?"

"Right." She hoped. This was probably not a good time to inform them that Sheriff Donovan had his doubts about just how "accidental" the collapsing beam had been.

Their attention turned then to Maggie and how she was feeling, and the discussion ended.

But as she left the table and made her way gingerly up the stairs to her room to get dressed, she thought about what her mother had said. About

how coincidental it seemed that two disasters had taken place in the old courthouse in one day.

That it did. Weird. Creepy, especially when Sheriff Donovan had hinted that one of those disasters might have had a little help. If that was true, maybe someone was deliberately sabotaging the committee's plans. And if that was true, someone must hate the old courthouse a lot.

Why would they? It was just a building.

It was a good thing the ceremony honoring the removal of Lady Justice from the top of the building was taking place outside. If it were inside, Maggie honestly didn't think she could attend. She wasn't ready to walk back into that building. And thinking that gave her the same annoyed feeling she'd had in the basement, that she wasn't as brave as she'd been when she was little.

Maybe that wasn't bravery, she told herself as she reached the top of the stairs. Maybe it was stupidity. I just hadn't learned enough yet to be afraid.

But now I have. I've learned that ceilings collapse, with or without help, and kitchens explode, and people sneak up on your own private property in broad daylight. I'd be stupid not to be afraid. No wonder people say that ignorance is bliss. It is.

L.

belly puffing in and out under his tan shirt, disgusting little snoring noises escaping from his open mouth. Even if he woke up, he was half deaf and couldn't possibly have heard what Dante and I were saying. And the other cells were all empty.

"The whole county would be mad at anyone who came forward now," Dante told me. He was sitting on the faded gray-and-white-striped mattress on his bunk. It hung from chains fastened into the wall. He sat with his hands folded in his lap, his head down, his feet in sneakers kicking at the earthen floor. "And not just because that person killed Christy. Because they'd obstructed justice all this time, making everyone go through this whole stupid, useless trial."

He lifted his head. His blue eyes were empty, almost as if the Dante I'd known had already disappeared, even though he hadn't actually been taken away yet. "It's very expensive, you know, putting on a trial. If someone came forward now and said they knew that I hadn't done it because they'd done it themselves, the first thing everyone in Greene County would think is how much money they'd wasted on my trial. Next, they'd be mad because this new person claiming to be guilty would be say-ing they'd all been wrong. The sheriff, the deputies who searched our farm, the police here in town, the DA, the judge, the jury, they'd all feel like fools. It'd make them look stupid. No one else in the county would believe it, either, because they'd look like fools, too. There wasn't one person around here who ever believed I was innocent."

"I did," I said. He was saying that no one would believe the truth even if they heard it? That was pretty dumb. Not that I was planning on coming forward and admitting the truth. Of course I couldn't do that. How could I? That would ruin everything. I still had high school ahead of me, and I was really looking forward to it, especially, frankly, now that Christy wasn't going to be around to spoil everything. No, whatever I did for Dante wasn't going to include giving a full confession. But I couldn't let him go to prison for something he hadn't done. U I always knew you didn't do it"

"Haw?"

"Haw what?"

"Haw did you know I didn't do it?"

"I just did. I do "I was standing, leaning against the white stone wall outside of his cell. "I know you could never do something so awful."

"And I want to know how you know that." His head was still down, his voice very quiet. But then he looked up at me, and there was something in his eyes, after all. Something searching, questioning. He seemed to be studying my face very carefully, almost as if he'd never seen it before.

"You knew Christy was making me crazy," he said. "Knew it better than anyone. And you know how mad I can get because you've seen it happen. Like the time January got out Remember? TJiat old caw got out of the barn and trampled all over the pumpkins I was growing for U-H. I'd sweated over those damn things, and finally got them to almost the right size for the county fair, and then

January came along and made pumpkin pie out of them. Remember how I yelled and hollered? I think I even kicked the poor old thing. "

His eyes came back to life again, just a little, as he talked. "And then there was the time Christy told me she was going into Felicity to the movies with Amy Dunne. But I went into town that night and ran into Amy at the Dairy Queen and she finally admitted that Christy was out with Aaron Clements. Remember? You were with me when I found Aaron's car parked up on Shelter Hill, and there wasn't anybody in it because the two of them were in the woods somewhere, probably laughing at me for being so stupid. So I let all the air out of every single one of Aaron's tires, and smeared mud all over the windshield." Dante laughed bitterly. "Aaron loved telling that story at the trial. He puffed up like a pigeon, relishing every word."

"You had a right to be mad that night."

"That's not the point. The point is, you know I have a temper. So I repeat my question. How do you know I didn't kill her?"

Of course he'd known all along that since he hadn't killed Christy, someone else had. But I'm convinced that it wasn't until then that it first occurred to him the someone else just might have been me. I could tell by the way his eyes narrowed. He didn't want to believe it. I could see him fighting the idea.

I don't mean that it was impossible for him to believe that I could have done it. He knew I couldn't stand Christy. No, what was really impossible for

him to believe was that I was apparently willing to let him go to prison for it. That was what he was having a hard time accepting.

I don't remember how I got out of there. I think I mumbled something about knowing he hadn't done it because I knew he didn't have it in him to kill anyone, said I'd see him later, and got the hell out of there.

But he'd be thinking about it, I knew that much. And what would he do when he had finally accepted the truth?

I went home and tried to figure out what J was going to do.

pointed that the building might come down? Disappear, as if it had never existed?"

'Well, sure. I mean, I'm all for preserving history. But," he added, "considering the fact that we almost disappeared yesterday, and you came close to being obliterated last night, can you blame me for thinking your mom is right?"

Maggie shuddered. How close they had all come. Especially her.

Scout called next, complaining that he'd tried before, only to find the line busy. He sounded indignant because she'd been talking to someone else. She didn't tell him who it was. When he said he'd be over later, something Whit, too, had promised, Maggie didn't argue. If she was going to spend the day at home, might as well have company.

When she went back down the stairs and into the kitchen, her father was gone. Her mother was on the telephone. She hung up just as Maggie walked in and slid into a white wooden chair at the table.

Mrs. Keene turned around, her brows knit together. Her face was very pale. "I don't like this," she said slowly. "I don't like it at all."

Maggie looked up inquiringly. "What don't you like?"

Her mother's words came slowly. "That was Trudy Newhouse. Her husband, Sam, is a volunteer fireman. She said they couldn't find anything wrong with that old stove."

Maggie's heart plummeted. First the sheriff and his questions about the beam, now this . . . "Then what was it?"

Thoughtfully fingering a blue plaid dish towel she was holding, Maggie's mother said, 'Well . . . Trudy's husband has the weirdest idea." Her eyes on Maggie's were very wide, and perplexed, as if Trudy had handed her one of those maddening, multicolored cube puzzles. "Sam thinks someone deliberately turned the gas on, but didn't light the burner--to let gas seep out into the room, knowing no one would identify the smell because Billy Scully's barbecue cart was right outside the open windows. He thinks that's why you and I had headaches. From the fumes."

Maggie nodded. "And my stomach was upset, too."

Sheila Keene's mouth was set grimly. "I just can't believe Sam's right. The stove could have been turned on accidentally. Maybe I brushed up against one of the knobs when I was rushing back and forth. As for the explosion, Sam thinks someone tossed a lit match through the window. But I think that's reaching, too. The gas fumes would have been drifting outside, through that open window. Anything could have set off that explosion. Maybe Walter Meadows lit one of those foul cigars of his. Or a spark from the barbecue pit could have done it."

Maggie's knees felt soupy. She wanted to accept her mother's theory. Because what Trudy's husband was suggesting was just too... too ugly. Too scary. The idea that someone might have deliberately planned to blow up the kitchen in the old courthouse was terrifying. Especially since she was the

person who had been inside that kitchen at the time.

But the sheriff had said maybe the beam hadn't collapsed all by itself. Clearly, he hadn't shared that theory with Maggie's parents, or her mother wouldn't have that skeptical look on her face.

Trudy's husband had to be wrong. The sheriff had to be wrong, too.

But what if they weren't?

"Of course," Maggie's mother continued, 'If Sam is right, and that gas was turned on deliberately, it was turned on by someone who is against us."

Maggie heard again the blast, saw again the flash of light, felt the floor rock beneath her feet. "Against usV

"Well, not you and me, dear. I meant the Women of Heritage. And our move to save the old courthouse, that's what I meant."

"But / was the one who almost became landfill." If someone had done it on purpose, had they known she'd left the kitchen? Or hadn't they cared?

"I'm sure that part was accidental, Maggie." Sheila Keene tossed the dish towel aside, as if it were getting in the way of her thought processes, and indeed, her eyes cleared when she was no longer burdened by the checkered cloth. "Even if the gas was turned on deliberately, and I'm not saying it was, I'm sure it was by someone who expected the kitchen to be empty. After all, the bazaar was being held outside."

Maggie wanted her mother's words to calm her fears, as they were meant to. But after what the

sheriff had said ... "But if the person who turned on the gas was watching from outside, waiting to toss a lighted match in through the window, he'd have seen me in there."

Her mother's lips pursed. "How could someone standing outside the window toss in a lighted match without being seen?"

"Oh, Mom, it was so crowded at the food lines, he could have tossed a bomb in that window and no one would have noticed."

"Well, then," her mother said, "look at it this way. If he was watching and waiting for just the right moment, he waited until you were out of the kitchen, right? That means he never intended to hurt anyone. All he was trying to do--and that's if there even was such a person--was screw up our plans to renovate. That's all."

"That's allT Maggie cried. "Isn't that enough? People could have died!"

Walking over to the table to slide into a chair opposite Maggie, her mother said slowly, as if she were just now making up her mind about something, "Maggie, since we're discussing this, I have to ask you something. Did you show those plans I gave you to anyone yesterday?"

"Plans?" Maggie thought for a minute. "No. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. Never mind. I just wondered. But if you didn't..."

"Don't do that! I hate that! Tell me why you asked me about the plans."

It was her mother's turn to sigh. "Oh, all right, I

guess I might as well." She slid a paper napkin out of the chicken-shaped red-and-white plastic holder on the table and began folding its edges as she talked. "The beam that gave way in the basement yesterday was clearly marked on the first page of those plans."

"Marked?"

"There was a note on it stating that the beam was weak and needed to be replaced. That beam and two others. They were clearly visible in the drawing, and it would have been obvious to anyone looking at the plans that the beam in question was the one nearest to the coal bin door. Which would make it easy to locate. Anyone who saw that first page would have known that it would take very little to make that beam collapse. A well-placed kick, a hefty shove ..."

Maggie stared at her mother. "You've been talking to the sheriff."