The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (25 page)

Kate and I said good-bye as Ed climbed into
the car. If he saw what happened, he didn’t let on. I backed the
car out of the driveway, shifted into first gear, and drove away.
We were going to a picnic of the Western New York High School
Mathematical Society. The group met periodically, and members from
various schools gave presentations on mathematical fallacies and
stuff like that.

I had just been invited to join, and in fact,
the picnic was the first function I was attending. Ed had been a
member since the beginning of the school year. It was interesting
that mathematical ability ran in both of our families, even though
we had been separated for several generations. Barney also
belonged, but he was driving separately with Dr. Graves and another
member from the Carter High junior class.

After I asked Ed how he was feeling and he
answered that he was feeling all right, I said, “I have something
to tell you about the necklace.”

Ed looked wary and said, “What’s that?”

“It’s not in the hayloft.”

“What did you do, dig out the bales all the
way down to the floor? We agreed to wait until spring.”

“No, but I did manage to climb down to the
floor and look for it.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

Ed’s voice was heated but not passionate. I
knew why. I mentally braced myself and said, “I know you lied about
the location of the necklace. I know that Ralph said it was in the
southwest corner of the hayloft.”

“Have you been going through my things?” Ed
was almost yelling now, his English accent very pronounced. “So
that’s what you were doing the day you were there with Kate. You
bloody bastard. Asking Kate to the dance was a cover. Or maybe a
bribe. She helped you find it.”

“Leave Kate out of it. I did it myself. Yes,
I went through your stuff, and I found Ralph’s map. But that’s no
worse than you lying about it.”

Ed wasn’t through yelling. He kept going on
and on about what a terrible person I was. I was afraid he was
going to attack me, and I would wreck the car. Maybe I should pull
over.

“Not only did you go through my private
possessions, you took one of my magazines,” he ranted.

“Do you have them catalogued or something?
Yes, I took your bloody magazine. Your mother came home early, and
it was either take it or have her find it. Look, we both are at
fault. You lied to me, and I went through your stuff. But the point
is, there is no necklace. I searched the hole thoroughly, and it
just ain’t there. So either there never was a necklace, or somebody
removed it.”

Ed was silent for a few seconds while he
contemplated that statement. Then he said, “How do I know that you
didn’t find it and keep it for yourself?”

“Do you think I would be telling you about
doing this if I had found it and didn’t want to share it? I would
have hidden it someplace else. Then come spring when the bales were
cleared, we would look for the necklace together, and it wouldn’t
be there, and I would put on an innocent pose.”

“Since you say you didn’t remove all the
bales, maybe you’re making up the story of looking for it to get me
off the track. Maybe you didn’t look for it at all. But with me out
of the way, now it’s all yours.”

I was about to say that Sylvia had seen me
look for the necklace, but I didn’t want to drag her into it,
especially since the fact that we had been together might get to
Aunt Dorothy. Nothing I said was going to persuade Ed.

“If you like, you can come up to the hayloft.
I’ll show you how I got down to the floor. You can go down there
yourself. Then maybe you’ll believe that I actually did it.”

Ed had an apprehensive look on his face.
Maybe he was claustrophobic, like Natalie. In any case, that shut
him up for a few minutes. When he spoke again, he was a lot
calmer.

“Sorry I spouted off about the necklace, old
man,” he said. “I guess I hoped it was true. Now I realize that it
was a figment of Ralph’s imagination.”

“That’s a good point,” I said. “Why did Ralph
create the map in the first place? If he actually hid the necklace,
he wouldn’t need the map to find it again because it was a simple
location to remember. I don’t think Ralph was into drawing treasure
maps just for the fun of it. And if there were no necklace, that
makes it even more unlikely. Unless he was fantasizing that there
was one.”

“Maybe Ralph was a little bit bonkers. I
think it runs in our family.”

“You know what I think? I think Ralph was
needling you. He had been listening to your stories about equality
and how unfair life was, and he created the map to get to you. The
promise of riches. Maybe you two were fighting about the map on the
balcony of the auditorium. It was creased and worn, which means
somebody had been carrying it around. Another thing I know is that
you weren’t attending class when Ralph was killed. That means you
could have been with him.”

I stopped. I had said more than I intended
to, trying to get a reaction out of Ed. He was silent. I glanced at
him, apprehensively He was looking out the window. I knew he had
heard me. I turned on the car radio, and we listened to top 40
songs on WKBW while I pondered Ralph’s thought process. And Ed’s.
Why did teenagers act like idiots sometimes? I should be an expert
on that subject, but I didn’t know the answer.

***

The picnic was held at the home of one of the
girls who was a member of the mathematical society. She was from
another school district some miles from ours, and her home was more
of an estate than a home. It featured a three-story white house
with gables and turrets and acres of green lawn that somebody had
to mow. I was glad it wasn’t me. I had mowed the extensive lawn at
the farm with a power mower that I had to walk behind and push. It
took a lot of time and effort. The farm’s lawn was a fraction of
the size of this one.

Barney and Dr. Graves were already there, and
Tabitha, a girl from Carter who I hadn’t met before. When I had a
chance, I asked Barney how the car ride with Dr. Graves had
gone.

“Do you mean, did he get fresh with me? No,
I’m afraid not. I guess I’m a little too old for him. And Tabitha
is the wrong sex. So I have nothing new to report.”

About thirty of us ate a lunch outside on
picnic tables arranged on the lawn, in spite of the coolness of the
weather. We were tough Western New Yorkers, able to survive
freezing winters. This was nothing to us. However, I was glad that
I was wearing a warm jacket. But as the sun got stronger, the day
grew warmer, and eventually, I was able to take off my jacket.

Veronica, the daughter of the owners of the
estate, sat at the same table we did at lunch. When I asked her who
mowed the lawn, she laughed and said, “Oh, we have a gardener who
comes and does that.”

I felt foolish to have asked the question,
but I looked to see whether Ed was listening. He thought my family
and Aunt Dorothy were rich, but Veronica’s parents must really be
rich.

Veronica was telling us about her property.
In addition to a pond that froze in winter and was used for
skating, and an aboveground swimming pool that was emptied in
winter so it wouldn’t freeze, she mentioned that her family had
built a bomb shelter.

Bomb shelters were talked about in the
newspaper all the time, because of the cold war with the USSR. What
would we do if a nuclear attack was launched against us? Where
would we hide? These scare tactics had us picturing helmeted
soldiers sitting in underground silos, with their fingers on the
launch buttons of ICBM’s, waiting for the signal from on high. Bomb
shelters were the answer. Some employers offered loans to their
employees who wanted to build them.

Ed, who had been uncharacteristically silent
since we arrived, perked up at the mention of the bomb shelter and
said, “Is it underground?”

“Yes.” Veronica pointed to a grass-covered
slope that went up from where we were sitting to the house, and
said, “It’s buried under the lawn. I’ll show it to you after
lunch.”

CHAPTER 26

Actually, the first event after lunch was a
talk by a student from another school. We were invited into the
house by Veronica’s parents. The living room was large enough to
hold the whole ground floor of our house in Atherton. It was
covered with various area rugs with exotic designs. A large fish
tank dominated one corner and was filled with all kinds of colorful
fish. The teens flopped on the overstuffed couches and chairs, and
the excess sat cross-legged on the floor while a boy told us about
the wonders of topology.

One of the more interesting demonstrations he
gave was to take off a vest he was wearing while keeping his jacket
on. Then he said, “The same principle can be used by a girl who
wants to take off her bra without taking off her sweater.”

That sounded like something I might have
said—once. I looked around to see whether Dr. Graves or another
adult would shut him up, but he talked so casually that he was
getting away with it. He looked as if he expected one of the girls
to volunteer to demonstrate, but of course none did. The idea was
to slip a strap off one arm and then to shove the whole bra through
the other sleeve. I wondered whether there was a practical
application.

I asked Veronica about that after the talk
was over. She laughed and said that the information might be useful
next year when she was in college. I felt a strong urge to get out
of high school and into college.

Ten of us wanted to go on the tour, including
Ed and me. Veronica went to the house and procured the key to the
padlock that secured the sturdy wooden door at the entrance to the
shelter. The door was set into the side of a small hill, and as
Veronica opened it, she started her lecture. From the confident
sound of her voice, she had given the lecture before and was
probably qualified to act as a docent for bomb shelter tours.

“You’ll notice that the shelter is built of
concrete a foot thick,” she said, indicating the doorframe.
“Perhaps not thick enough to withstand a direct hit, but certainly
thick enough to keep out the harmful fallout. In any case, if we
get a direct hit out here, somebody’s aim is seriously off.”

This statement produced nervous giggles. We
were beginning to wonder whether we all needed bomb shelters.

Veronica turned on a large flashlight that
she had brought from the house and said, “If you’re going to be in
a shelter for several days, what do you need to survive?”

Was this a pop quiz? She stepped through the
doorway while we contemplated that question. We followed her. The
room we entered was high enough for me to stand and perhaps six
feet wide. It was too dark for me to see exactly how long it was,
but it appeared to extend for at least twenty feet. Cans of food
and other items were stacked along one of the walls.

“You’ll notice that when the door is shut,
the space around it is sealed airtight to prevent anything
radioactive from getting inside.”

Veronica closed the door and turned off her
flashlight. It was suddenly pitch black. Several people gasped. I
felt disoriented.

“If everything is sealed, how do you
breathe?” somebody asked. “Won’t the air run out?”

“Good question,” Veronica said, opening the
door again, to the relief of all of us. “So the first thing you
need to survive is breathable air. There is a hole in the roof of
the shelter to provide ventilation.”

She shone the flashlight along the ceiling. I
saw a hole in the concrete that presumably led to the outside world
above. Ed walked over and looked directly up through the hole. I
was curious as to what he saw, but not curious enough to go over to
it.

“But if you bring in air from outside, won’t
the fallout come in with it?” I asked.

“The gamma rays produce the most dangerous
kind of radiation. They are emitted from dirt and dust sucked up
into the nuclear cloud. Once they reach the earth, they shouldn’t
penetrate the concrete and the dirt surrounding the shelter. The
hole is covered to prevent radioactive rain and other debris from
falling into the shelter. Fresh air comes in from under the
cap.”

She certainly spoke as if she knew what she
was talking about. I wondered how much of what she was saying made
scientific sense and how much was the result of wishful
thinking.

“Now, what else do we need to survive?”
Veronica asked.

“Food.”

“Water.”

“Protection against the cold.”

“Human waste disposal. Where do you pee?”

The last statement produced some giggles.

“We have all of that, including enough food
and water for six people to survive for two weeks. And a chemical
toilet.”

Veronica shone her flashlight along the floor
of the shelter. There were large bottles of water and stacked cans
of food. I saw blankets and what looked like folded up army cots
that my family had used when we went camping.

“In addition, there is a first aid kit and a
tool kit.”

“How do you light the place when the door is
closed?” a girl asked. “I assume there’s no electricity in
here.”

“In case of atomic attack, electricity will
not be functioning,” Veronica said. “We are relying on
battery-powered lights. Because of the limited ventilation, we
can’t use lanterns that burn fuel. They give off noxious
fumes.”

“So you need a lot of batteries,” someone
said.

Veronica shone her light on a box that was
labeled “BATTERIES” in black crayon on the side. It was an
impressive setup. She had answers for everything. Well, there were
a few unanswered questions, such as how six people could get along
together for two weeks in this cramped space without killing one
another, especially since the lights would have to be turned off
most of the time to save batteries. And how you would know when it
was safe to venture outside. And what would you do if you were the
only survivors in this part of the world?