I replaced the lantern and followed what I assumed was the path the murderer and Frana had taken, moving around the edge of the stage and toward the back door that led to small wooded copse where students sometimes studied on warm days. In fact, I read a good part of Les Miserables in the shade of one of the sycamores there.
Frana and friend had followed this route without being seen. Someone knew the auditorium would be empty then.
I opened the door and stepped out into sunlight, disoriented. I reached in my pocket and extracted the cigar wrapping and fingered it. Probably every other man in Appleton smoked Grand Avenues, a popular Milwaukee cigar, save the pipe and cigarette smokers. Many teachers at the high school did, and even the principal. Maybe even August Schmidt. And Homer Timm. I’d seen him with such a cigar, the tip of one often visible in his breast pocket. I thought of him singing that awful tune in the hallway…
“Miss Ferber!”
I screamed, spun around. There I was, face to face with Homer Timm, and for a second I thought I’d imagined it-conjured him up with my demonic thoughts. But no, the man stood there, feet away, with one of those loathsome cigars actually planted between his teeth.
“You startled me,” I stammered.
“I stepped out to enjoy the afternoon and have a smoke. I didn’t expect to see you, Miss Ferber, emerging like a moth into this abundant light.”
“I was just being. ” I almost said girl reporter but thought the words too lame and questionable.
Homer Timm puffed on his cigar, but he never took his eyes off me. He spotted the cigar wrapper in my hand. “What’s that, Miss Ferber? Evidence?”
“Evidence?”
A wry grin. “Are you still doing Caleb Stone’s job?”
“I thought I’d trace the route of the…you know…” I faltered. His steely eyes, unblinking, alarmed me.
“A young girl getting too nosy, perhaps.” He puffed on the cigar.
“I was curious.”
“And what did you discover?”
“Nothing.” I tucked the cigar wrapping back into my pocket.
“A cigar wrapping?”
I pointed behind me. “I found it at the top of the stairs.”
“I wonder how it got there.” He stepped close.
I backed up. “I have no idea.”
“But you have a suspicion?”
“Not really.”
“You don’t lie very well, Miss Ferber. Usually you’re so forthright.”
“Well, I need to…” I looked past him toward the woods. Beyond that grove of trees lay Lovers Lane. No one was in sight.
“You seem nervous.”
I looked him in the face. “You’re making me nervous, sir.”
“I’m just here having a smoke.” He puffed on the cigar. “What did you learn today, Miss Ferber?”
“Learn?”
“This is a school, and I recall you as an exceptional student. Not in mathematics, of course; but in Speech, the power of which you seem to have lost. And in Composition, as in reporting what you see. You are a reporter.”
“Nothing,” I blurted out.
He took another step forward, and I didn’t like what I saw. There was about him a ferocity. No, that was too intense, I thought. Wrong word. No, it was an edginess-sinister at that-trying now to mask itself as innocent banter. I closed my eyes and saw lightning flashes.
I started to move away.
“Stay a moment.” He looked over my shoulder.
“No, I…”
“We need to talk. I think you have the wrong idea…”
“I have no idea.” That sounded dumb even to me.
“You seem to know something.”
“No.”
“Stay.” His voice grew more insistent.
“I’m expected…”
As I started to move, he reached out and actually touched the sleeve of my dress, a quick gesture that alarmed more than it stopped me.
I ran past him, smashing through some hedges, my dress catching on the briars, and kept running. I thought he might follow me, but when I paused, breathing hard, gasping, he was nowhere to be seen.
I nearly toppled down the five cement steps of the Crescent office, where Sam Ryan, sitting by himself at his desk, looked up, bewildered. “Miss Ferber, for God’s sake. You look like you fell into a bramble bush.”
I checked myself in the small mirror behind Miss Ivy’s desk. I saw a wild-eyed girl, hair undone from its combs, my velveteen box hat lopsided, and a smear of grime across my chin. Worse, I’d torn the hem of my dress, which trailed after me like an unraveling ball of string. I was trembling.
Concerned, Sam rose and poured me a glass of water and motioned for me to sit. “Tell me what happened.” I sank into a chair-it happened to be the absent Matthias Boon’s chair-and I gulped the water. Images flooded me: that hideous Homer Timm approaching me, his fingers grasping the sleeve of my dress. My new dress, I thought, the fabric shipped from Chicago. A gift from one of my cousins. Now I would have to burn it in the basement furnace.
Sam drew up a chair and the two of us sat-the old shriveled man and the young shivering girl who always wanted to please him-so close that I could see a shadowy yellow cast in his watery eyes. Wildly, I thought, Sam will be dead within a year or two.
“Tell me,” he repeated.
Slowly, sipping the water, I talked of my trip to the high school-Sam frowned at that-after my talk with Esther. Of Homer Timm’s undue interest in Frana, her visits to his office, the cigar wrapper, his being an authority, a man of trust. I speculated but what did I really know? Sam looked unhappy. But then I was talking, building the story: I wove a picture of terror and fear and surprise; I presented Homer Timm as a man who had something to hide.
Sam listened closely. “Miss Ferber, he should not have scared you like that, but it doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. Nothing you say…”
“Haven’t you heard me?”
Sam suddenly looked over my shoulder, his eyes wide..
A voice behind me, loud, booming. “I have.”
I swiveled to see Mac standing in the doorway of the printing room, just standing there, his face purple with anger. I screamed and thought, Lord, I do more screaming than a damsel tied to a railroad track in a penny-ante nickelodeon reel.
Mac approached me. “I heard what you say,” he roared in a thick whiskey voice. “I know something is wrong with him. I smell it like a dead animal.”
“I don’t know…”
Sam held up his hand and smiled. “You have not been aware of it, dear Miss Ferber, but Mac has been worrying about you moving through the Appleton streets by yourself, especially at night. More so after the murder, to be sure. You may not have noticed but at times he’s been following you. Guarding you, as it were.”
I looked at the hulking, simple man, now grinning with embarrassment. “There’s a killer out there,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Sam beamed. “Mac, I’m afraid your secret is out.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“How would you have reacted?”
“I’d have been furious. I don’t need protection.”
“There you go. Well, Mac’s an old-fashioned guy who’s taken a liking to you.”
Confused, I was hesitant to look at the big man filling the doorway.
“Miss Ferber, my apologies.” Mac bowed. “I ain’t mean no harm. But you travel in places where women ain’t supposed go. And at night.”
I was ready to say something but stopped. All right, play chivalric knight, if you must. Stand in the rain until your armor gets rusty.
Mac was looking at Sam Ryan. “One night at Mrs. Zeller’s I hear Homer Timm slipping out the door, quiet, on tiptoe, so no one hears. I catch sight of him, sneaking out. Up to no good, I know. So I follow him. He walks and walks. I seen you walking home from the theater by yourself. He watched you from the shadows. He spies on his brother. He walks around the high school. He even walked past the house of that dead girl Frana. I follow him, not trusting such a man.” He looked at me. “A couple times, lately, he stood by your father’s house. He watches you. Your friend, the pretty girl. He’s a dangerous man, that one. Up to no good. A shadow in the streets. Some nights when I see you about, sooner or later, he’s nearby.”