Mac’s mouth twitched.
The door opened, and Byron Beveridge tripped down the five steps, brimming with news. When I looked toward the printing shop, Mac was gone.
“Got the latest on the murder.” Beveridge’s movements were a little too jaunty, his voice too spirited. “Not from Chief Stone, of course, that piece of incommunicative granite, but from Jarvis Hull, who barbers his hair. The coroner says Frana was killed on Friday. Sometime that afternoon or night. It rained all day Saturday and no one went into Lovers Lane. Another thing. It seems the chief interviewed Christ Lempke again, and the man mentioned scaring away a young man from under Frana’s locked, upstairs bedroom window the other night, a young man identified as Jake Smuddie from Lawrence University.”
“I know him.” I spoke in a small voice.
“You do?” Miss Ivy asked.
“He’s a freshman at the University. He used to be Frana’s boyfriend…”
Sam looked perplexed. “What was he doing playing Romeo under her balcony the other night?”
Byron Beveridge kept trying to interrupt. “If you all would let me finish…” We waited. “The uncle said Frana had seen him sometime last year, but had jilted him, forced by her family who insisted she wasn’t ready for marriage. He didn’t take rejection kindly. He’s been a pest at the farmhouse, and Frana’s father once scared him with a blast from a shotgun. Kept coming back like a bad penny or a hungry dog.”
Boon sneered. “Nice friends you have, Miss Ferber.”
I spoke to Byron. “Did Chief Stone talk to Jake?”
“He did. Out at the university. But Herr Professor interrupted and put an end to the interrogation. Said his son had nothing to do with Frana any more, whose death, he said, was the result of a life lived carelessly. Caleb remarked he was not through questioning the boy, not by a long shot.”
I fought the sudden image of the strapping footballer Jake, those strong hands twisting Frana’s delicate neck. No, no.
No.
When I returned home around three to take my father for a short walk, I discovered Kathe helping Fannie with cleaning the parlor and dining room carpets, the beginning of Fannie’s early summer housekeeping. In a hurry to be done, she was dragging carpets to the back clothesline and attacking them with the ferocity of a Saracen warrior. I sought her out in the yard, but Kathe didn’t want to talk about Frana’s death. She closed her eyes and shook her head vigorously when I expressed sympathy. Frana and Kathe were friends-though rivals. When I asked about Jake Smuddie, Kathe glowered.
“Leave him out of this,” she snarled. “He ain’t part of this. He got nothing to do with it.”
I asked her about the rumor of Frana getting on the train with a drummer. “Who told you that, Kathe?”
She turned away, dropping the carpet beater. I’d learned that Caleb Stone and Amos Moss were interviewing the guests at the Sherman House, especially the traveling salesmen there; and I’d heard through Sam Ryan that, in fact, three men had left on the 3:01 on Friday afternoon, alone. Chief Stone was tracking them down. Could one of those men be the murderer of Frana? One of those bilious, portly, scratching men who tucked themselves with their indigestion and gout and sample cases into the worn seats of the Chicago and Northwestern train. When I mentioned the drummers, Kathe looked ready to say something, but stopped.
“Where is Jake Smuddie?” I asked her.
Infuriated, Kathe swung around, eyes blazing. “You leave him alone.”
I suddenly knew where to find the footballer.
Of course, he wouldn’t be at his home. Doubtless Herr Professor wouldn’t lock up the young man as Frana’s parents unsuccessfully tried to do with her. No, watching Kathe assault the carpets in a fury, I realized Kathe would be joining Jake after she left the Ferber household. I knew that Kathe and Jake often lingered, out of both sets of parents’ forbidding eyes, in the gazebo in City Park, the sheltered retreat set back in a grove of white pines, a cool summer haven and now, in serene June, a hiding place. He’d be there, waiting for Kathe to finish her work.
Within minutes, walking briskly, I approached the gazebo from the side and startled Jake Smuddie, sitting on a bench, dressed in his football jersey. He was leaning over a thick tome, concentrating, his face inches from the book. He turned, expecting someone. “I’m not Kathe.”
He smiled and stood. The book toppled to the ground. I noticed the title:
“I can see that.” A pause. “Hello, Edna.”
My heart fluttered as I looked at the handsome boy.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m not hiding. We-Kathe and me-we always come here.” Then he swallowed. “Yeah, I guess I’m hiding. From my father. He thinks I’m at the college library, studying.” He pointed at the book, which now rested on his boot. “But I couldn’t stay at home. He’s not happy with me these days.” He gave me a wispy smile. “He says I’ve brought shame to the family.”
“Well, have you?”
He looked hurt, and I regretted my sharpness. I stared into his wide, milk-fed boy’s face on that rough-and- tumble physique. I’d never thought him capable of anything untoward, though I gave him considerable license because he was so handsome. Attractive souls, I’d learned long ago, had a freedom in life that mere mortals-the bland, the dull, and the otherwise-didn’t possess. Plain girls learned that lesson early.
Unlike the other boasting boys, Jake Smuddie was always a decent sort, with a quiet manner. Boys like Jake never noticed me, but, peculiarly, Jake
“What?” I stared into his handsome face.
“I want you to have this.”
A beautiful edition of
That night, showing off the book at the dinner table, perhaps saying the name “Jake” a little too much, Fannie boiled over. I’d been watching her simmer. She, the pretty girl, had a not-so-secret crush on the footballer, and, unlike me, had notoriously (and unsuccessfully) flirted with him at school dances and even in broad daylight on College Avenue. Jake had ignored her. Now, eyeing the Shakespeare in my hand, she sniped, “He probably stole it from his father’s library.”
“I think it’s a touching gift.”
Fannie drew in her cheeks, narrowed her eyes. “He probably knows the only companion you’ll ever have is a book.”
“Fannie!” my father thundered.
“Well, I’m not sorry.”
Jake’s only fault was his lap-dog devotion to the beautiful young blond girls of town. Which must be some sort of punishable crime in the universe I created in my mind.
“I’ve been foolish.” Jake picked up the dropped book.
“Chief Stone giving you a hard time?”
He blushed. “I should have told him right away about my stupid visit to Frana’s home.”
“When was that?”
“The night before she, you know, died.” His voice cracked.
“Good God.”
“I know, I know.”
“Why did you go there? You’re courting Kathe Schmidt, no?” I waited, but he didn’t answer. His eyes were watery and he rubbed them with the back of his hand. “Who you’ll be meeting here shortly, right? After she pounds the Ferber carpets into perdition.”
A genuine smile, warm. “Kathe’s a little slip of a girl, Edna, but she packs a mean wallop with a stick.” He
