A Candidate for Murder (2 page)

“Maybe the men were talking about something top secret,” Justin suggested.

I made a face. “What have you got in mind? C.I.A. and spies?”

He laughed, then said, “What
were
they talking about?”

“I can’t remember much about it,” I told him. “Some guy was giving them problems. I don’t think what they said was important, and I didn’t understand it anyway.”

“If that guy at the door was one of them, then he’s just an old grouch,” Justin said. “Don’t worry about him, Cary. You’ll never see him again.” He looked toward the buffet table and added, “I’m getting hungry. Are you?”

“Yes,” I said, and tucked my hand in Justin’s as we made our way to the buffet table. Justin was right. The guy was just an old grouch. Forget him!

Later, when I came in, Mom raised her head from the pillow to ask sleepily, “Was it a good party, Cary?”

Justin’s good-night kiss was still warm on my lips, and nothing else mattered. “You know it,” I said.

I looked toward Dad’s side of the bed, but it was empty. “Dad hasn’t come to bed yet?” I asked. “It’s awfully late.”

“I came upstairs about eleven thirty,” Mom told me. “Charles was still meeting with his campaign managers.”

“There weren’t any cars in front of the house,” I said. “They must have gone.”

Mom sat up and swung her feet to the floor, wiggling her toes into the slippers next to the bed and turning on the lamp on the bedside table. “He’s been working too hard on this campaign. I’d better go down and remind him that he needs his sleep.”

She pulled on her robe as she walked toward the open door into the hall, and I followed her.

Dad’s campaign.
I thought of Mark and the way some of the kids were acting. “It’s kind of hard to get used to the idea of Dad running for governor,” I said. “It makes everything so … so different.”

Mom put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a quick hug, resting her cheek against mine. “There’ll be some changes in our lives,” she said, “but most of them will be interesting and exciting.”

I smiled and hugged her back without answering. Dad had announced his candidacy three days ago. Since then the phone had hardly stopped ringing, our house was usually filled with people I’d never seen before and whose names I couldn’t remember, Dad had been missing sleep, and Mark had been even more of a nerd than usual. Interesting and exciting changes? I had my own opinion about that.

Early Sunday afternoon people began arriving, and I couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. I smiled and nodded and shook hands, glad that they all were too busy to want anything more from me. Some of the faces were familiar, but there were new ones, too; and everyone was talking about television slots, telephone appeals, speaking tours, and all the stuff that has to do with a political campaign.

My best friend Allie’s house was a safe haven. Allie and I swam in her pool, listened to the music on a couple of new discs, and talked and talked—about the party some, but mostly about guys.

Allie’s mouth is a little too big, her nose is a little too long, and she’s at least two inches taller than any of the other girls in our class. No matter how many times Allie’s mother reminds her, Allie slumps, and if a dish crashes in the school cafeteria we can be pretty sure who dropped it. If we’d been given grades a few years ago when we took the Neiman Marcus class on good manners for preadolescent young ladies, Allie would have flunked, and what’s more, she wouldn’t have cared. But in spite of being a klutz, Allie’s one of the best-liked girls at Gormley Academy—where we go to school—maybe because life almost always looks good to her and she isn’t uptight about anything. I always feel good when I’m with Allie.

Allie’s mother came out to the patio carrying a phone. “The call’s for you, Cary,” she said.

I raised my head from the chaise lounge where I’d been tanning. “I wonder what Mom wants.”

“It’s not your mother,” Mrs. Richards said. “It’s a boy.”

“Justin?” I wondered why he’d call me here.

As her mother walked back into the house, Allie grinned at me and whispered, “Just pretend I’m not listening in.”

I took my finger off the mute button. “Hi, Justin,” I said.

But it wasn’t Justin. “I suppose you think what you did was funny!” someone shouted in my ear.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“It’s Mark,” he said.

I wondered what was bugging him. “Oh, Mark, your
party last night was great. Allie and I were just talking about how much fun …”

He interrupted. “Sure, sure, great party. You showed me how much you liked it.”

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

“You know.”

“No, I don’t. I really don’t.”

“I want my film back,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You weren’t the only one on that roll,” he said. “I took a lot of pictures of the party, and I want them back.”

I took a deep breath. “Listen to me,” I said. “I’m beginning to figure out what you’re talking about. Someone took the film out of your camera, and you think I did it.”

“I
know
you did it. You or Justin.”

Now it was my turn to be angry. “We didn’t touch your camera, and we didn’t take your film! And I don’t like being accused of stealing!”

He began to simmer down. “I—I didn’t say
stealing
exactly. I mean, I thought you might think it was funny to take the film, but it isn’t.”

“We didn’t do it.”

There was a pause and this time his voice was almost pleading. “You were the only one who got mad about having your picture taken, Cary. Nobody else did. If you didn’t take the film, then I don’t know who else to ask. I really want my film back. I haven’t got any other pictures of my party.”

I calmed down, too. “Maybe one of the guys just
wanted to kid you,” I told him. “You’ll probably find the film in your locker tomorrow.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. This all has to be a joke of some kind. Why would anybody want the film for any other reason?”

“I guess so,” he mumbled. His voice became more hopeful as he added, “Cary, if you hear anything … I mean, if you find out who … I want my film back.”

“If I find out anything about it, I’ll let you know,” I said. I hung up the phone, placing it on a nearby table, and said to Allie, “I don’t know why anybody would play a joke on Mark. He can’t take it.”

“He’s pretty much of a nerd,” Allie agreed.

I felt a little guilty. After all, we had all gone to his party, hadn’t we? And a lot of his other parties over the years. “He tries to be nice,” I said. “He’s really not so bad. He can even be kind of fun sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” Allie said and raised one eyebrow so high it wiggled.

I couldn’t keep from giggling. “Well, anyway,” I told her, “I hope whoever took Mark’s film gives it back.”

“I wonder if he got a picture of Bitsy in that awful thing her mother brought her from Paris,” Allie said. “It’s a Claude LeBlanc, but it was all wrong for Bitsy. She looked like an African polar bear.”

“There aren’t any polar bears in Africa,” I said, and rolled over on my stomach, laughing.

“Well, a walrus, then,” Allie said. She went on with a crazy story about Bitsy’s run-in with one of the science teachers at Gormley, and I laughed until there were
tears in my eyes. I put Mark and his missing film completely out of my mind.

When the sun began to go down, I knew I had better get home and finish the report that was due in history.

“See you tomorrow,” I told Allie, and climbed into Mom’s blue Cadillac, which she sometimes lets me use.

I’ve had a driver’s license for months, and I wish I had a car of my own, but Dad said, “Don’t even think about it until you’re a senior.” Dad sometimes says he runs a tight ship, and he’s not talking just about his oil company.

As I drove out of the circular drive in front of the Richardses’ house, the car’s headlights turned on automatically, but it wasn’t so dark that I couldn’t see the car that pulled from the curb behind me, its lights off.

At first I expected the driver to notice he was driving without lights, but he didn’t, so I flicked mine a couple of times as a signal. But his lights stayed off, and his car stayed the same distance behind me. I cut down the nearest side street and picked up speed. When the car without lights did the same, I was positive I was being followed.

This had never happened to me before. I was so terrified that for a moment I grew dizzy, and the shadows and shapes of trees and houses wavered and blurred.

“Hang on,” I told myself out loud and took a couple of sharp, deep breaths. “Don’t let go. You can handle this.”

Okay. Sure. I’d handle it. But how? What was I going to do?

W
as it my imagination, or was the car closing in? I tromped down on the gas pedal, and the Cadillac shot forward as I headed for the traffic on the nearby boulevard. These neighborhood streets were dark and quiet, and I wanted people around for safety.

As I reached the boulevard the traffic light was just changing, but I managed to squeal around the corner before it turned red. From the sound of horns and the screech of brakes behind me I knew that the other car had made it through the light, too.

I had to slow, and I dared a glance in the rearview mirror. The car that tailed me had its brights on now, creating such a glare that I wasn’t able to read the license number or see what the driver looked like. All I could make out was a dark, broad silhouette which was definitely that of a male.

I gripped the steering wheel so hard my hands hurt, frantic to have people around me, to have people between me and whoever was in the car behind me. In the next block was a busy shopping center. At the nearest
end was a large, well-lit full-service gas station, and that’s what I aimed for.

I shot past two cars which were in line for the pumps and brought the car to a halt in front of the office. I didn’t stop to look back. I jumped out of the Cadillac and ran inside the station office.

A muscular middle-aged man in grease-stained khakis looked up from the battered desk on which he’d been leaning, studying a map. He marked his place with a dirty finger and tried to hide the irritation that showed on his face as he asked, “What can I do for you, girlie?”

I clung to the frame around the plate-glass window and studied the cars outside. “Someone was following me,” I said.

He straightened up and peered through the window. “Is he still out there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what he looked like.”

“What about the car? What make was it? What color?”

“I don’t know that either,” I told him. “It was dark. Maybe dark gray or dark blue—something like that.”

“Did you get a license number?”

“No.”

The impatience had returned to his face. “Are you sure somebody was following you? There’s a lot of cars out there. You coulda imagined it.”

He thought I was an air-head, and I felt myself blushing.
I
knew that someone had been following me, whether this man believed me or not.

“Could I use your phone?” I asked.

“Local calls only,” he said.

“It’s local. I want to call my father.”

Grudgingly, the man nodded toward the phone on the desk, and I dialed my home number.

“Don’t be busy, don’t be busy,”
I said over and over to myself, and when I heard the phone ring I sagged against the desk with relief.

Dad answered on the second ring.

In a rush of words I told him what had happened, and where I was, and he said that he and Dexter would come immediately to get me.

As I waited for them I stared out the window, eager for Dad and Dexter to drive up. Time stopped moving, and it felt as though they were taking forever.

A month ago Philip, who had worked as our handyman butler, and sometime chauffeur, left us to move to California. Dad had replaced him by hiring Dexter Kline, who moved into the apartment over the garage. Dexter’s pleasant enough, but he has an odd, faded look: pale eyes, pale skin, pale hair; and for a large man he moves very quietly. He isn’t awfully good at being a butler, although he’s better than when he first arrived and didn’t seem to know what he was supposed to do. He’s not good at fixing things either. When the pipe broke under one of the bathroom sinks, Dad had to show Dexter what to do with it until the plumber got there. But Dad seems happy with Dexter’s work. Maybe he likes Dexter because Dexter’s a serious kind of person, and Dad’s a serious person, too.

“Oh! There they are!” I burst out as Dad’s black Mercedes
pulled into the gas station. I flung the door open and raced to meet Dad, who had stepped out of the car even before it had come to a full stop.

I climbed into the Mercedes with Dad, and Dexter followed us in Mom’s car. As Dad drove I told him what had happened, and he said, “Are you sure it wasn’t a coincidence? The driver could have been taking the same route you did.”

“He turned when I did.”

“Was the street you took a direct way of getting to the boulevard?”

“Well … maybe,” I admitted. “I guess it is.”

“So anyone else could pick that route, too.”

“Yes.”

Dad thought a long moment, then said, “This person didn’t try to close in or force you off the road, did he?”

“No.” I was beginning to feel stupid about the way I’d acted. “Maybe because you’re running for office …” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

Dad gave me a quick glance, which surprised me. He’s the kind of person who never takes his eyes off the road. “Honey,” he said, “our family has always been in the public eye. We’ve taught you to take precautions, and we’ve tried to keep a protective eye on you, but it’s been important to your mother and to me that you never live in fear.”

“I know,” I said.

Dad reached over and took my hand, giving it a comforting squeeze before releasing it. “Cary, I don’t want you to start worrying about what might happen. Many
people run for office, and their families are perfectly safe.”

I forced myself to smile at Dad, even though I wanted to hide against his shoulder and hang onto him tightly, the way I did when I was a little kid and afraid of the dark. Maybe Dad was right that nothing bad would happen, but in my mind I could still see that car following me, and I knew that it wasn’t a coincidence. The driver had to have some reason for trying to frighten me.