Blindfold (17 page)

She was not yellow-bellied. She was not lily-livered. She was not, would not be, could not be, a coward.

She took three deep breaths and let them out. Then she jumped down from the van to follow Helen and Lane.

into an "0" of surprise when Maggie joined them. "Oh, you poor thing," she breathed in the whispery voice that Scout called "sexy." "Look at your face!" Maggie had removed the bandage, but the laceration beside her nose was still an angry red. "Does it hurt a lot? We didn't think you'd be here today, after what happened last week." Waving a hand toward Bennie, she added, "We were sure you wouldn't ever come near this place again."

"Are you staying for the ceremony?" Bennie asked. A small, blonde girl with wide blue eyes and a friendly smile, she had no enemies, and Maggie felt a twinge of envy. No one would ever blow up a kitchen with Bennie in it.

"Yep. I hope the mayor doesn't talk forever." Maggie glanced toward the speakers' platform, a hastily constructed wooden structure. Her mother wouldn't be giving a speech, now that her project had been canceled. Maggie's eyes moved to the left and up. "How are they doing with Lady Justice?"

Bennie pointed to the very top of the old courthouse. "See those guys way up there at the top? They've already unfastened the metal bolts on the bottom of the statue. They were up there first thing this morning, and they've been working ever since. Someone said the statue is just about ready to be taken down. The crane's right over there." She pointed again, this time to the bright yellow machine sitting some distance from the rows of chairs, on the only stretch of green lawn that hadn't been uprooted and replaced by cement.

Maggie's eyes followed Bennie's finger. "Well, it's

big enough, but I still don't see how they're going to get Justice down from there."

Before either girl could answer, Scout appeared at Maggie's side, slid into the chair beside her, said hi, and answered her question. "See that big metal jaw on the end of the crane? Looks like a scoop?" He, too, pointed.

Maggie saw it. A giant scoop, dangling like a child's sandbox toy from the end of the crane's long, uptilted arm. "That bucket? Is it big enough? The statue is huge."

"It better be. If that thing tumbles out of the bucket, guess who it's going to land on. They put these chairs too close to the building."

"It's not going to tumble out of the bucket." Tanya said confidently. "You shouldn't think bad things, Scout. Sometimes thinking them can make them happen. I honestly believe that."

Scout grinned at Maggie. It was the same slightly crooked grin she had first fallen madly in love with. At thirteen. It seemed a thousand years ago now. "That's our Tanya," he whispered, "the poster child for positive thinking."

"I called you last night around ten-thirty. Your mom said you were out."

The grin vanished. "How would she know? She was pretty out of it when I got home." Then, in a different tone of voice, "I thought you were busy last night. Must have been a short evening if you were home making phone calls at ten-thirty."

Before she could answer him, Whit arrived and took a seat on the end of the front row. He looked

tired, and Maggie wondered if he'd been lying awake all night . . . thinking about her? Nice thought, but probably not true. He didn't look in her direction, and she realized it must appear to him that she and Scout had come here together.

"I got home early," was all she said to Scout. Then, lightly, "So where were you?"

His eyebrow arched. "I can't ask you where you're going, but you can ask me where I've been? Doesn't sound like equality to me"

Maggie laughed. "You could have asked me where I was going."

"Would you have told me?"

"Sure." Liar. She wouldn't have said, "I'm going to Picadilly," because the look of pain on his face would have been too much for her. She really was a coward!

But she was here, wasn't she? In the place that she least wanted to be. She could have stayed home, and she hadn't. So maybe she was getting braver.

Maggie looked in Whit's direction twice, but his eyes remained steadily on the rooftop, as if he thought the crew of workers struggling with the heavy statue couldn't function properly without his scrutiny.

"I don't know why we all care so much about that rec center," Scout said. "I mean, we're all out of here in two years. We won't have much time to use it."

"It'll be for adults, too. When you're living here and working for your dad, you and your family can use the center."

Scout's head whipped around and he stared at Maggie. "I'm not staying in Felicity! I'm out of this town the minute I graduate, putting it as far behind me as I can."

"You're not going to work for your dad?" Hadn't he said, a long time ago, that he probably would? When had he changed his mind? And why hadn't he told her?

"You're kidding, right? After what he did?" Scout's father had divorced Scout's mother so he could marry another woman. They were living in Nestegg, in a house even larger and more impressive than Scout's. "I wouldn't go to work for him if he paid me in gold bullion. He cheated on my mom, Maggie! And dumped her. And he can apologize until he's purple, but that doesn't change anything." His blue eyes bleak, he shook his head. "Man, if there's one thing I can't stand, it's a cheat!"

Chagrined, Maggie realized how long it had been since she'd spent time alone with Scout. She'd known the divorce had upset him, shocked him, as it had everyone in Felicity. But she'd had no clue that he was still so bitter. She knew that he saw his father occasionally. To Maggie's surprise, Scout's mother insisted on it. But clearly, Scout hadn't forgiven him.

To change the subject, she asked, "Why are they even giving speeches today? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a ceremony when the statue is placed on the new building?"

Scout, his anger gone as suddenly as it had appeared, laughed. "Oh, they're doing it then, too.

There's another ceremony scheduled for next week, when they raise the statue to the roof of the new-courthouse. You know our mayor. Carter P. Rockwell wouldn't miss an opportunity to sound off. The old windbag does love an audience."

Maggie groaned silently. Another ceremony? Another opportunity for disaster, if you asked her. Unless Sheriff Donovan had solved, by then, the mystery of who was doing what and why it was being done, gathering so many people together in one place again was just inviting trouble. Even now, she could feel a sense of dread gathering inside her like the dark clouds beginning to block out the sun overhead.

They all sat and talked quietly among themselves. People were arriving in spite of the threatening skies. There wasn't that much to do in Felicity on a Saturday afternoon. But even if there had been, Maggie thought few residents would be willing to miss this. The statue had been in place on the old courthouse for more than sixty years. If the workmen were successful and Lady Justice made her way to the roof of the new courthouse, she would probably be up there even longer than sixty years. So what was taking place today wouldn't happen again for a very long time. No one wanted to miss it.

"I've never understood why that statue is blindfolded," Tanya said. "I mean, how is she supposed to know if someone is guilty if she can't even see them?"

"She doesn't do the judging," Whit pointed out.

"People on juries do that. Like our peer jury. What that statue represents is how fair and impartial Justice is supposed to be."

Maggie, not interested in the discussion, had already tuned out. She was more interested in watching the workmen at the top of the old courthouse, struggling with the huge, heavy statue. As she watched, the crew on the top of the building, using ropes and chains in some sort of pulley arrangement that Maggie couldn't see clearly, suddenly tipped the statue forward, letting it fall slowly, heavily, until it landed in the uplifted scoop of the crane.

To Maggie's surprise, the statue settled in firmly, though its head extended beyond one edge of the scoop. Still, it looked secure enough that it seemed certain to stay in place during the long, slow descent.

Maggie breathed a little easier. The statue was not going to fall on them. Like Tanya said, why anticipate disaster? You just might get it.

Because the burgeoning crowd had begun to collect in front of the peer jury's chairs, Whit suggested they stand up and move to one side to get a better view. "Over there," he said, pointing, "below the speakers' platform. We can see the whole thing from there."

The chain suspending the scoop whined a protest as the loaded bucket began its descent.

The statue came down without incident. But as it slowly lumbered closer to the lower floors, it became harder to see over the heads of the crowd.

"I want to see how they get that big old thing out of the scoop," Maggie said to Lane, and signaled to her to push her way through the crowd.

Lane shook her head. "Impossible. It'd be easier to break through a stone wall. We'll have to ga around."

Realizing that she was right, Maggie leaned forward to tug on Scout's sleeve. "We can't see. We're moving. You guys coming?"

He nodded and alerted Whit, Alex, and Helen. Lane had already rounded the speakers' platform, keeping one arm in the air as a directional signal. Maggie tried to keep her eyes on the red sweatsuit as she fought to find an opening in the solid mass of shoulders and arms and legs and chests.

"The statue's almost down," someone behind her said.

"Oh, I want to see it land!" Maggie declared irritably, and darted out into the open.

She emerged in a clearing on the edge of the crowd, behind the speakers' platform, and glanced around for Lane. There she was, up ahead, one arm still in the air signaling as she hurried forward, intent on seeing the statue land.

Maggie turned to make sure her friends were still following. She saw Whit advancing straight toward her, and satisfied, turned back toward Lane.

"It's down!" someone shouted, and the ground did indeed shake, just a little, beneath Maggie's feet as the scoop containing the giant statue landed.

"Oh, darn!" she muttered. But she still had time to watch them remove the statue from the scoop,

though she couldn't imagine how they would do that or how many strong backs it would take. She would have broken into a run then, across the only patch of thick green grass left on Otis Bransom's property, if someone hadn't screamed.

The scream came from just ahead of Maggie. It was loud and shrill, and startled the crowd into a shocked, questioning silence.

But the oddest thing about it was that while it began as a shriek of terror so thin and high it assaulted every ear, it instantly dwindled to a fainter, hollow wail, as if the person making the sound was being swiftly carried away.

Maggie was frozen in place by the paralyzing sound ahead of her. She saw the statue, still in its yellow scoop, lying on the ground, the blindfolded face uptilted toward the sky. She saw the crane, motionless now. And she saw, on her left, the crowd, stricken motionless, like her. She saw, looming above all of it, the old courthouse, its dingy, uncurtained windows staring blankly back at her.

What she didn't see was Lane Bridge water.

"Lane?" Maggie questioned as the crowd waited in silence for someone to tell them it was okay . . . the scream wasn't anything .. . just some kid playing around ... nothing to worry about, folks.

No one said that. And Lane didn't answer Maggie's call.

Whit arrived at Maggie's side. Alex, Scout, and Helen were right behind him. "Where's Lane?" Alex asked. "I thought she was with you."

"Well, she was," Maggie said slowly, her eyes

searching for some sign of Lane. "She was right there, just ahead of me." She pointed. "But... but I don't see her now."

The four began moving forward slowly. People closest to them in the crowd sensed a puzzle and turned their heads to watch.

They almost didn't see the hole. Maggie would have walked right into it if Whit hadn't suddenly grabbed her elbow and shouted, "Watch out!" He waved a hand toward the ground.

They were looking then at a round, black hole. A hole large enough for someone as thin as Lane to tumble into. Dipping into the hole from around the edges was a thin carpet of grass, beneath that an inch or so of dirt, like carpet padding, and beneath that, a layer of boards, like flooring.

Maggie caught her breath. "Lane?" she asked quietly. Then, because there had been that thin, high scream, and because Lane had disappeared as if she'd been vaporized, and because she had this very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, Maggie got down on her knees at the edge of the black hole and called in a louder voice, "Lane?"

Her only answer was a groan floating up from below. It was distant and very faint. But it was enough.

Maggie sank back on her knees and lifted her head to look up at Whit. "That's where she is," she said. "She's down there."

Gathered in a group a short distance away, Lane's friends waited with fearful eyes.

Whit appeared at Maggie's elbow, put a hand on it, and pulled her gently backward until they were slightly separate from the others. His face looked strained, his easy air of self-confidence no longer apparent. "I thought it was you" he said in a voice so quiet, Maggie had to strain to hear him. He kept his hand on her arm, careful not to touch the fresh bandage covering her injury. "Someone said a girl had fallen into a deep hole, and I'd lost sight of you in the crowd, so I ... I thought it was you." The lines of tension around his mouth began to ease, and the merest hint of a smile appeared. "I should have known better. You're too sharp to walk right into a hole in the ground."

Maggie felt Scout's eyes on them. But Whit had clearly been scared ... for her. And now he seemed so relieved, she couldn't just walk away. But if he cared that much, why had he told her to mind her own business?

"I'm fine," she said coolly.

"It's Lane?"

"Yes. She was trying to get closer to the building. I don't know what a hole is doing right therg where anyone could walk right into it," Maggie added with indignation. "I guess she didn't see it because she was trying to watch the statue coming down. I was behind her, following, and she just sort of... disappeared."