I tiptoed down the path and then set the pot down outside another window that looked into the dining room, which seemed a lot like ours but didn’t have Pabst Blue Ribbon beer bottles all over the shiny wooden table. But it did have something else. Something so astounding that I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it. There, on the dining room wall, surrounded by a golden frame-and I could see this so clearly because there was a little light above it like a lamp-there was a picture of Junie Piaskowski in her First Holy Communion dress. It was the same picture of her that Rasmussen had in his wallet, only a lot bigger. I ducked down when he walked through the dining room. He didn’t even stop to look at the picture. Just went past it like it was no big deal.
I closed my eyes and thought maybe I had lost every one of my marbles. But when I opened them, there she still was-Junie. Then Rasmussen walked by again, now in his underwear, which were the boxer kind, and a bare naked chest. He turned off all the lights except for the one above Junie’s First Holy Communion picture and disappeared again with that little dog. I looked back at Junie again. She was smiling on an island of white light in the dark, her hands folded on her lap like she was praying the rosary she had wound around her fingers.
Rasmussen was the worst kind of creature there could ever be! Not only had he murdered and molested Junie, he had her picture hanging in his dining room like he was bragging. Like Mr. Jerbak did about those deer heads hangin’ on the wall up at the Beer ’n Bowl.
I had to go wake up Ethel and tell her immediately. Here was the proof! Maybe now she wouldn’t think Rasmussen was such a good ole boy. I didn’t even put the flowerpot back. I just ran right through the garden, back into the alley and through the screen door, past Troo and into Mrs. Galecki’s house. Ethel’s bedroom was off the kitchen like Nell’s was in our house and I didn’t even think of knocking, that’s how scared I was. I jumped right onto her bed and began shaking her by the hip. “Ethel… Ethel Jenkins… wake up.” Which I hated to do, because I knew that she was not good at this sort of in-the-middle-of-the-night scariness because that KKK club had given her some very bad memories. That’s when Ethel said the KKK liked to come. In the black velvet cloak of the night.
Ethel sat right up real fast. She had something over her hair like a hat or something. And she had on a white frilly nightie. “What’s wrong!?”
“Oh Ethel, you have to come see. You have to come see.” I pulled on her hand and she tossed back the sheet. She slid her feet into the slippers that she called mules and then let me pull her along out on the screen porch.
Ethel whispered, “Is it Miss Troo? Is she feelin’ poorly?” She looked over at Troo, who hadn’t moved one iota on the little straw couch.
“Troo’s fine,” I whispered back. “It’s Junie Piaskowski.”
Ethel looked at me when I said that and then put her hand on my forehead to check if I had a temperature. “You know, you’re beginning to worry Ethel.”
“Just come with me real quick, Ethel. Real quick. I have something to show you that you are not going to believe!” She looked at me again and then back at Troo but followed me back to Rasmussen’s, her mules slapping. Ethel stopped for a second after we went through the gate into his garden and did a whistle and said, “That man has a green thumb like I never seen.” She picked off a small tomato and popped it into her mouth, and then because she was getting more awake now and wondering what the heck I was doing, she said, “Miss Sally, I believe you are havin’ some kind of nightmare or walkin’ in your sleep. Let’s go back to bed.”
In my most serious voice, one I didn’t even know I had until right then, I said, “Ethel, no!”
Ethel frowned down at me because I was not using my manners, but she came along to the side of the house anyway. I stood back up on the flowerpot, but she didn’t need to do that because she was taller than a lot of men. I pointed at Junie’s picture and figured I didn’t need to say anything else. That picture, like Granny said, was worth a thousand words. When Ethel saw Junie in her little white Communion dress and veil, a mixed-up look came over her face. She looked down at me and said, “What is wrong with you, child?” acting like it was la de da normal that Rasmussen had a picture of dead Junie Piaskowski hanging on his dining room wall.
I got so mad and sad all at the same time that I burst right into tears.
Ethel said, “It’s okay. It’s all right.” She ran her hand carefully down my back, like I was one of Mrs. Galecki’s china dolls. “Miss Junie’s with Jesus in Heaven.”
“Ethel, d-d-don’t you understand?” I pointed at Junie’s picture again. “I saw them together last summer at the Policemen’s Picnic and they were flying a kite and Rasmussen was lookin’ at Junie in a certain kind of way… like he loved her or something… and he even had his hand on her shoulder and he was touching her and then she turned up dead. He’s the murderer and molester. There’s the p-p-proof.”
Ethel’s mouth dropped almost down to the sidewalk. And then she said in her lowest voice, the one that sounded like a box fan on a hot day, “Oh my, my, my, my, my.”
What was wrong with Ethel? Why wasn’t she running to wake up Mr. Gary, who would call the police on Rasmussen?
Ethel lifted me up off the flowerpot and set me gently down on the ground. “We need to have a talk, Miss Sally.”
I jerked my hand out of hers and whisper-yelled, “Ethel!” “Come here to me.” She pulled me into her bosoms and swatted me a little one on my butt. “Now just settle down so I can tell you what’s goin’ on here. It ain’t what you think.”
I let her lead me around the corner of the house and over to Rasmussen’s green glider that still had a slight smell of that orange aftershave he wore. We sat down and she rocked us a few times and then said, “You have gone and done some jumpin’ to conclusions, which is a bad business to be in.”
“But, Ethel…”
“Just hush up for one minute.” I was so jumpy mad that I tried to get up off the swing, but Ethel grabbed me by the arm and reeled me back down. “The reason Mr. Rasmussen was lookin’ at Miss Junie like he loved her was cuz he did. He was Miss Junie’s uncle. I thought you knew that.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, because I was sure I’d heard her wrong.
Ethel said slowly, pronouncing each word very carefully, “Junie was Mr. Rasmussen’s little niece. His sister Betsy’s girl.”
I just couldn’t believe it. This man was the evilest thing walking around on two feet.
Rasmussen had murdered and molested his own niece!
I couldn’t talk for a minute because suddenly I didn’t trust Ethel, which made me feel really deep down slimy. “Poor Dave. Little Miss Junie was the apple of his eye.” She stopped rocking us and said, “For land’s sake, why’d you go and think he’d murdered her? Why, Mr. Rasmussen, he can’t even murder one of God’s worst ideas, that’s what a good man he is.”
“I’m sorry to have to say this, but you are so wrong, Ethel. Rasmussen did murder Junie and he murdered Sara Marie, too.” My mind felt like the inside of a beehive. “And he’s got a picture of me in his wallet so that means he’s coming after me next.”