Blindfold (22 page)

There is nothing the girl can do. The road is slick, the tires of her car old and smooth.

The nondescript blue sedan skids to the left, sliding wildly like a sled on hard-packed snow. The two left tires slam into a completely submerged stone barrier, hitting it hard. The car flips over, into the flooded culvert, landing upside down in the water.

The other car slows, but doesn't stop. It hesitates,

engine running, just long enough to make certain that no one climbs up over the embankment to safety.

No one does.

With a satisfied shifting of gears, the predatory car speeds away, its taillights glowing a triumphant red on the dark country road.

that position -- maybe hand over the reins to Scout -- she had to help.

"You're not going over there," Lane said in disbelief when Maggie talked to her on the phone Tuesday night. "I don't believe you! After what happened to you? It had to be ten thousand times worse than what happened to me. How can you, Maggie?"

"I have to. If I don't, I'll be running from shadows my whole life. I'll just steer clear of the two damaged wings, that's all. Anyway, they took that ... Dante ... out of there. Mrs. Guardino is arranging for a memorial service. I wonder if anyone will go?"

'Whit will. Probably Scout, too, and maybe Alex. Helen won't. She isn't helping with the moving stuff, either. I just talked to her, and she says no way. Neither is Alex."

"Are you?"

"If you are, I am. My mother will have a fit, though. Maybe I'd better not tell her exactly where we're going to be this afternoon. What she doesn't know can't hurt her, right? If she finds out I went within ten feet of that place, she'll ground me till I'm ninety-six."

"It's going to be a grubby job. I'm wearing the oldest, rattiest clothes I own." Maggie asked Lane if the sheriff had come up with any news about the well cover.

"Nope. Not as far as I know, anyway." Lane paused, then added, "You don't think it was Helen?"

Maggie gasped. "Lane! You told Helen you knew it wasn't her. Were you lying?"

"I wasn't really lying. She was so upset, I was just trying to make her feel better until we knew more, that's all. She could have done it, Maggie. She's strong enough to handle a small power saw. And you were there when she shouted how she hated the old courthouse. Why not Helen? She always wanted it torn down. Always."

"Well, the sheriff doesn't agree with you." Maggie heard the hostility in her voice. But how could Lane? Helen was one of her best friends. Maybe that tumble into the well had jumbled Lane's brain. "Or he wouldn't have let Helen go."

"He might just need more proof. But I didn't say she did it, Maggie, so don't get all defensive on me. I just said she could have."

"So could more than fourteen thousand other people in Greene County. It wasn't Helen."

It did seem weird, Maggie thought as she hung up, that Helen had waited so long to admit that she knew Dante well. Just like Whit. Maybe that was why Helen had defended Whit's right to privacy. Maybe she was really talking about herself.

Maggie had half expected her mother to change her mind about canceling the committee's plans, but Sheila Keene was adamant. "No way. Absolutely not. I know a lost cause when I see one. We've already begun negotiations for that old warehouse downtown, and I have big plans for it. No, Otis Bransom can rest easy in his grave now. His old house is about to do the same."

I wish I could be sure that would make a difference, Maggie thought as she left her own house. But I don't. Not anymore. Whatever was going on in Felicity, it wasn't because Sheila Keene and her WOH had planned to restore the old Bransom place to its former glory. If that were the reason, Lane Bridgewater wouldn't have fallen into that well, because that had happened after the plans had already been canceled.

Then what?

Maggie knew the minute she arrived on campus that something was up. There were always a few kids lingering near the wide stone steps, reluctant to go inside. But on this gray, cool morning, there was a throng. As she parked the van, she could almost hear the buzz of gossip. She didn't think it could be about her. Her horror in the coal bin was two days old. Hardly news.

Something else was going on.

What novft

Her friends were already there, standing at the foot of the steps. Helen pushed her way through the crowd when she saw Maggie advancing. "You'll never guess!" she cried, grabbing Maggie's arm to pull her back toward the others. "You haven't heard or you'd have a different expression on your face. Maybe joy, although I guess that's kind of gross. But I wouldn't blame you."

"What? Helen, what's going on?"

Helen grabbed Maggie's hand and half dragged her back to the others. They looked up when Mag-

gie squeezed through to stand with them. "Did you tell her?" Scout asked Helen.

"Nope. But I'm about to." She turned to Maggie, her eyes glinting. "Guess whose car went off Nestegg Road last night and landed upside down in that culvert along Hansen Creek? Which, by the way, was overflowing because of the rain."

"Oh, god, who?" Not someone she knew well or cared about a lot, Maggie guessed that much, or Helen's face would look pale and drawn instead of healthy with color.

"Chantilly Beckwith's. And James Keith was with her. They're in the hospital. Both of them."

Aware even in her shock that all eyes around her were watching to see how she reacted, Maggie sagged back against the black iron railing. Her voice, when it came, was husky with disbelief. "In the hospital? I thought they were in jail."

"They were. But they got out on bail. Anyway," Helen went on, "guess what they found in her car?"

"What?"

"Black construction paper. The kind someone used to make that blindfold on your creepy little doll. And rope, like the hangman's noose around its throat. And a saw. But," Helen added quickly, "not a power saw. Just an ordinary handsaw. Perfectly capable, though, of sawing that gavel into alphabet blocks."

"I heard," Alex said, "that they also found copies of diagrams of the old courthouse, including the grounds. They were wet, from the creek, so the

sheriff won't know for sure until they dry out. Even then, hell probably have to get an expert to look at them. But Til bet that's what they were. That's how they knew about the well."

Maggie said nothing. She was picturing that white-faced, black-haired girl -- the girl Helen claimed had been shy and quiet once upon a time -- and burly, angry James Keith -- who had hated the peer jury, especially its foreperson -- upside down in an overflowing ditch of cold, muddy water. "Are they going to be okay?"

"I guess so. But if Whit hadn't come along and yanked them out of that ditch, it'd be all over for them."

"Whit saved them?"

"Yep. He's a hero." Helen made a face. "Sort of. I mean, it's not like we'd all be weeping buckets if they'd died, right?"

"Helen!"

"Well, it's true. Anyway," Helen declared triumphantly, "it's all over! The sheriff thinks they're responsible for all of it, everything, including the doll and the gavel and the scale. They were at the bazaar, both of them, and probably stole the scale then, after the explosion that they caused."

"Did he say why?" Maggie asked slowly, trying to think clearly.

"Why what?"

"Did he say why they would do all those things?"

Helen frowned, and exchanged a confused glance with Lane. "Because they were mad at the peer jury, Maggie, of course! They targeted you because

i

you're foreperson, and they tried to get the rest of us in the basement. They saw us go down there, remember? One, or maybe both of them, followed us into the basement and kicked at that beam. James wouldn't have had to kick very hard. And the explosion was meant to take you out. If you ask me, they probably thought the rest of us would be working in the kitchen with you, too. Since we're your friends. And even if we weren't, we were sure to be around somewhere. They were probably hoping they'd get two or three of us instead of just you."

"And the well? What about the well?" "Same deal. They knew we'd be there. Maybe one of us would fall in, maybe we wouldn't. But it was worth a try. And it worked, didn't it? They got Lane. Except they didn't know the well had been filled in, so she's okay. That must have really ticked them off."

"What happened out at Hansen Creek?" "What do you mean, what happened?" "I mean, how did the accident happen?" "I guess they were going too fast. The road was wet, the car skidded, and ended up in the creek upside down. They were trapped inside, and would have drowned if it hadn't been for Whit."

A bell rang, and people began moving up the steps. "So," Helen added blithely, "you don't have to be afraid to go back inside that courthouse now, Maggie. James and Chantilly can't hurt us from their hospital beds. Alex and I have decided to help with the moving stuff now. Now that it's safe. Must

be a big relief to you. You're the one they hated the most."

But, though Maggie waited for the news to wash over her and remove every last ounce of anxiety, it didn't happen.

Whit had just arrived, out of breath, his hair windblown, when Maggie stopped walking and turned to Helen to ask, "Okay, I get that Chantilly and James did the gavel and the doll and the scale. But the other stuff-- the cave-in and the explosion and the well -- that doesn't seem like their speed. I mean, it was sheer luck that no one died, and I never thought of those two as killers. Does the sheriff think they did those things, too?"

Helen looked baffled. "I don't know. But of course they did them. Who else?"

Maggie didn't know. "And none of it had anything to do with Dante Guardino?"

Lane gasped. "Dante?"

Scout put an arm around Maggie's shoulders and said, "You're just thinking that way because of what happened to you. I don't blame you. James and Chantilly chased you through that hall, and then you fell, and then there was Dante, in the coal bin. So it makes sense that you'd connect them with him. But that's silly, Maggie. James always lived in town. And he and Dante wouldn't have hung around together here at school. They weren't the same type at all."

"Maybe Alice Ann ... Chantilly knew Dante."

"She didn't," Helen said. "She was never in 4-H. You're reaching, Maggie, and you know it. Why

can't you just relax and be glad thoseTtwo aren't in any shape to chase you down any more halls or send you nasty presents?"

"Anyway," Alex added, "that Dante thing, whatever it was, happened a long time ago, Maggie. It couldn't have anything to do with what's been going on in Felicity lately."

Maggie wasn't so sure. And when she glanced over at Whit, who hadn't seemed to notice Scout's arm draped across her, she knew he wasn't sure, either. He was frowning, and had the same faraway look she remembered from the night at Picadilly, when Christy Miller's name had come up. Was he thinking the same thing she was?

You don't even know what that is, her inner voice responded. You don't know what you're thinking, so how could you talk to Whit about it? You'd sound stupid, so forget it

She tried. And through a day of classes and people coming up to her in the hall to commiserate with her about her gruesome experience in the coal bin, which Maggie refused to talk about, she managed to keep Dante Guardino off her mind. So that by the end of the day, when they had all changed into old sweats and sneakers and were on their way across the street to begin the moving process, she could actually look at the old courthouse building without her heart racing and her palms sweating. That... thing in the coal bin, which she refused to think of as ever having been a person, was gone. Nothing to fear there. And now there was no chance of James or Chantilly confronting her,

threatening her in the hallways. For the first time in what seemed like a very long while, she could walk into the building thinking of it only as a tired old wreck long past its prime.

Maybe Helen was right. Though James and Chantilly hadn't seemed like killers, they had come at Maggie in that hallway with a board that had certainly looked lethal enough to her.

Deciding that Helen was right was comforting. Because if Helen was right about James and Chantilly, then she was also right about everything being okay now.

"It does deserve to be put to rest," Maggie commented calmly, her eyes regarding the building as they all trooped up the stone walkway to the front entrance. "It's been around a long time, and it's served Felicity well, I guess. Fm glad they're going to tear it down."

"Like who isn't?" Helen and Alex said at the same time.

"My mother, maybe," Maggie answered. "But she'll get over it. She's already got her eye on an old warehouse down here somewhere. Let's just hope no one objects to the WOH remodeling that"

It did feel different inside. Maybe because, with James and Chantilly in the hospital, there was no longer any reason to be afraid. Or maybe because the sun was shining so brightly outside, streaming in through the long, narrow windows upstairs in the law library, warming the huge, chilly room where they began working. Maggie, Alex, and

Helen climbed up tall, rolling library ladders to strip the shelves of thick, dusty volumes, dropping them into large, wheeled canvas bins that sat below them on the hardwood floor. Scout, Lane, and Whit manned the bins, and would wheel them out of the building and through the alleyway to the new courthouse, where everything was ready except the unfinished fourth floor. Since the third floor housing the new law library had been completed, they had been given the go-ahead to transport the books that hadn't been boxed already.

Alex had brought a portable CD player. He turned the music on, and they all got to work.

They had only intended to work for an hour or so. But they were making such steady progress, they lost sight of the time, until Maggie suddenly realized that the windows were darkening. The sun was disappearing, the light fading rapidly. She glanced at her watch. Five-thirty. It was getting dark. Safe or not, she really wasn't keen on being in this place at night.

When she pointed out the time and asked Helen to switch on the overhead light, Whit pointed to three full bins sitting at the foot of Maggie's ladder. '"We'll take these over," he said, "and bring the empty carts back. Won't take more than half an hour to unload. Then we'll come back here and we can all go grab something to eat. My treat."