This time she hadn’t given one.
“I’ve got to see you,” she had said. “It’s important. Can you come over later when I get off work?”
“Tonight? Heller, we were just out last night. You know thisweek is off limits. I’ve got finals to study for.”
“I told you, it’s important.” There had been an edge to her voice, something that didn’t happen often with Helen. Usually if he told her something, she accepted it without question. “I wouldn’t call you like this if it wasn’t. You know that.”
“Can’t you tell me what it’s about?”
“No.” She had left it at that. Just a flat no. He was intrigued in spite of himself. He did have exams to study for, and he had a date later for coffee with Ashley Something-or-other from the Tri-Delt house, but nothing that couldn’t be shoved over a little.
“Well, if we make it early,” he said. “Right after dinner.”
“That’s fine. The earlier the better.” She hadn’t asked him to eat with her, and he was fine with that. Those domestic evenings with Helen running around serving pot roast by candlelight were rough to handle. He knew what she was aiming for, and it wasn’t what he was aiming for, and the whole game was making him jittery.
“I’m calling from the studio,” she said. “I’ve got a webcast to do in a couple of minutes. I’ll see you around seven then, okay?”
“Okay,” Barry had said.
The conversation had left him curious. So curious, in fact, that he hadn’t bothered to go to the dining hall for dinner. He had just stopped at a Wendy’s and picked up a couple of burgers and a Frosty. Now here it was, barely past six-thirty, and he was climbing out of his car and starting up the walk that led past the pool to the steps to the second-level apartments.
The pool and the area around it were crowded. The spring evening was still pretty cool, but the pool itself was heated, and there were some polar bear types splashing around and plenty of pretty girls sitting high and dry in deck chairs, taking the first opportunity of the season to show off their figures in bikinis.
For a moment he stopped, just enjoying the view, a little surprised that Helen wasn’t among them. She had a figure that was better than the best of them, and she wasn’t one who minded displaying it.
“Hi,” called one of the girls, a shapely little brunette in a red and white halter and short shorts. “Are you looking for an apartment? There’s a vacancy on the second floor.”
“Nope,” Barry replied, giving her a measuring glance. “Not this year, anyway.”
Actually, he would have given anything to be able to live in a place like this, but it wasn’t his mother’s idea of something the old man should finance. He was damned lucky, when it came to that, just to have gotten into a frat house.
He went on around the pool and up the stairs, pausing to glance back at the brunette, who had turned sideways in her chair and was still watching him. Then he went on down the upper deck and rapped on the door of Helen’s apartment.
He had to wait a few minutes for his knock to be answered, something that seldom happened at Helen’s. Then the door opened and she was standing before him. She looked good, as always. Her honey-colored hair was pulled back from her face and held in place with a gold band, and her violet eyes were carefully shadowed and outlined to make them even lovelier. She was wearing pale blue pants and a silk blouse with a chunky crystal necklace at the throat; evidently she had not changed clothes since coming back from the studio.
“Good,” she said. “You’re early. I was hoping you might be.”
“I’m glad I didn’t disappoint you.” Something was wrong, Barry decided. Something was decidedly strange; this wasn’t the way he was usually greeted. “What’s up, anyway?”
“Come on in,” Helen said. “We can’t talk here.”
He stepped through the doorway and knew instinctively that someone else was in the apartment. He glanced at Helen questioningly.
“Who’s here?”
“Julie. Julie James.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” He followed Helen into the living room where the other girl was seated on the sofa. “Hi, Julie. Long time, no see. How is everything going?”
“Hello, Barry,” Julie said stiffly.
She wasn’t as cute as he remembered her, that was for certain. Not that she had ever been the beauty that Helen was, but she had always had enough sparkle so that the lack of real looks went unnoticed. Now that glow seemed to have faded. Her eyes looked huge in a face that was too small to hold them.
“Well, hi,” Barry said again. “It’s good to see you. I thought you’d kind of dropped us off your friend list.”
“I came here for a reason.” Julie’s eyes went past him to Helen. “You didn’t tell him?”
“No,” Helen said. “I thought you ought to be the one. It’s your letter.”
“What are you talking about?” Barry asked them impatiently. “What’s the big secret?”
“It isn’t a secret,” Julie said shortly. She gestured toward a sheet of notebook paper that was lying on the coffee table.
For a moment Barry gazed at it unseeingly. Then the words took shape for him, and he felt his breath catch in his throat.
“Where did that come from?”
“It came in the mail this morning,” Julie told him. “It was just there, stuck in with a lot of other letters. There wasn’t any return address.”
“ ‘I know what you did—’ ” Barry began to read the statement aloud. “That’s crazy! Who would send you something like that?”
“I don’t know,” Julie said again. “It was just there.”
“Have you mentioned anything to anybody? Is there somebody who would know?”
“I haven’t said a thing.”
“Helen?” He glanced across at her. Her delicate, fine-boned face looked as bewildered as Julie’s. “Nobody. I haven’t said a word to anybody either.”
“Well, neither have I. We made the pact, didn’t we? So there’s no way this has any meaning. It’s some joke, somebody taking a jab at Julie.”
They were silent a moment. Shouts and laughter drifted up from the swimming pool through the open window. For a fleeting second the brunette in the red and white shorts slid through Barry’s mind.
I wish I were out there, he thought, with a beer in one hand, just kidding around with the bunch of them. If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s to deal with a scene like this.
“It must have been Ray,” he said. “There’s nobody else it could be. Ray wrote it as some kind of joke.”
“He wouldn’t,” Julie said. “You know he wouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind. You dumped that guy pretty abruptly, you know. One day you two were an item and the next you didn’t even want to talk to him. This could be his way of getting back at you by shaking you up a little.”
“Ray wouldn’t do that. Besides,” she motioned toward the envelope that was lying beside the letter, “this was postmarked from here. The last card I had from Ray was sent from California.”
“No.” Helen spoke up suddenly. “Ray’s back in town. I saw him yesterday.”
“You did?” Julie turned to her in astonishment. “Where?”
“In that little deli across from the studio at lunch time. He was coming out as I went in. I almost didn’t recognize him, he’s changed so much. He’s real tan now and he’s grown a beard. Then I looked back, and he was looking back too, and it was definitely Ray. He held up his hand and kind of waved at me.”
“Then that’s who it must be,” Barry said. “Of all the sick tricks! The guy must have gone over the edge.”
“I don’t believe it,” Julie said decidedly. “I know Ray better than either of you, and he wouldn’t do a thing like this. He felt worse than any of us when…it happened. He wouldn’t make a joke of it this way.”
“I don’t think he would either,” agreed Helen. She reached over and turned the paper so that she could see it
better. “Is there any other way someone could have found out? Maybe by tracing the car?”
“Not a chance,” Barry said. “Ray and I spent a whole day hammering the dent out of that fender. Then we painted the car and got rid of it the next weekend.”
“Julie, are you sure you haven’t said anything?” Helen asked her. “I know how close you are to your mother.”
“I told you, I didn’t,” Julie said. “And if I did tell Mom, do you think she’d mail me something like this?”
“No,” Helen admitted. “It’s just that there doesn’t seem to be any answer besides that. If none of us told, if it wasn’t the car—”
“Did it ever occur to the two of you,” Barry broke in, “that this note might be about something else entirely?”
“About something else?” Julie repeated blankly.
“It doesn’t actually say anything, does it?”
“It says, ‘I know what you did—’ ”
“So? Last summer was three months long, you know. You probably did plenty of things.”
“You know what it means.”
“No, I don’t, and neither do you. Maybe the person who wrote it doesn’t know either. Maybe it’s a joke. You know how kids are sometimes, making crank calls and writing notes to people and sending spam. So some kid decides to play a prank—he writes a dozen of these and sends them to strangers right out of the phone book. Do you think there’s a person in the world who, getting a message like this, couldn’t look back and think of something he did last summer that he wasn’t proud of ?”
Julie digested the argument in silence. Then she said, “But we have an unlisted phone number.”
“Well, then, he found you some other way. Maybe it’s a nerd from school who has a thing for you and wants to get a reaction. Or some guy you pissed off because you wouldn’t go out with him, or the kid who packs bags at the grocery store. There are plenty of creeps in the world who get their kicks out of getting girls all shook up.”
“Barry’s right about that, Julie.” There was relief in Helen’s voice. “I’ve known some people like that myself. You wouldn’t believe the phone calls you get when you work on television! There was one guy who used to call me, and he wouldn’t say a word. He’d just breathe. I was ready to go out of my mind. I’d answer the phone, thinking maybe it was Barry, and there would just be this heavy breathing in my ear.”
“Well,” Julie said slowly, “I suppose that’s possible. I-I never thought about something like that.”
“If the thing last summer hadn’t happened, if you’d gotten this note and there wasn’t something that came straight into your mind, you’d have thought about it, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe. Yes, I guess I would have.” She drew a long breath. “Do you really think that’s it? It’s just somebody’s idea of a joke?”
“Sure,” Barry told her firmly. “What else could it be? Look, if somebody did know something, he wouldn’t be writing silly notes, would he? He’d go to the police.”
“And it wouldn’t be now,” Helen said. “It would have been back last July when the thing actually happened. Why would anybody wait ten months to react?”
“I don’t know,” Julie said. “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound likely.”
“It isn’t likely,” said Barry. “You’ve got yourself all tied up in knots over nothing. And Heller, you’re just as bad, calling me like that. You had me thinking something awful had happened.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen said contritely. “Julie called me about it this afternoon, and I reacted the same way she did. We both panicked.”
“Well, un-panic,” Barry told her. He got to his feet. Helen’s lovely apartment, which always before had seemed so spacious and luxurious, was suddenly unbearably suffocating. “I’ve got to get going.”
“Why don’t you stay awhile?” Helen suggested. “I’ve got a whole hour and a half before I have to leave for the studio.”
“That’s an hour and a half that I don’t have. I told you this was a closed week and I have to study.” He turned to Julie. “Do you need a ride? I can drop you off at your house on my way back to the campus.”
“No, thanks,” Julie said. “I don’t need a ride. I’ve got Mom’s car.”
“Don’t you want to stay, Julie?” Helen asked her. “We haven’t talked for ages. There must be a lot for us to catch up on.”
“Another time, okay? I’ve got a date picking me up at eight.”
“Take it easy, then,” Barry said. “It was good seeing you.” He turned back to Helen. “I’ll be seeing you, Heller.”
“Do you want to plan on doing something Monday?” Helen suggested. “It’s Memorial Day, which usually means a party of some kind around this place.”
“It depends on how much studying I get done over the weekend. I’ll call you. I promise.”
She started to get up to walk him to the door, but he waved her back down. The last thing he felt like after this was an affectionate farewell scene with Julie as an audience.
He let himself out, leaving the two girls together, and went down the steps and back along the side of the pool. The underwater lights were on now, and the crowd of exhibitionists had thinned a little. The perpetual party that always started around the pool on Friday evenings had broken, as it generally did, into several smaller parties, most of which had moved upstairs into private apartments.
Gaslights flickered along the walkway, and the greenery in the planters rustled slightly in the faint evening breeze. Barry got into his car and turned the key in the ignition.
Somewhere in the parking lot another engine came to life. Sitting quiet, Barry let the motor idle. There was no movement that he could see among the rows of parked cars.
Coincidence, Barry told himself impatiently. I’m as uptight as those crazy girls.
He flicked on the headlights, threw the car into gear, and pulled out of the lot onto Madison Avenue. He drove slowly back to the campus, glancing occasionally into the rearview mirror. There were lights behind him, but then it was early on a weekend evening, a time when streets were always busy with traffic.
When he turned onto Campus Drive the car behind him turned as well, but when he slowed and pulled over to the curb, it went on past him without hesitation and disappeared around a curve at the end of the street.
Crazy, Barry repeated to himself. Why should I suddenly start thinking people are following me just because Julie James pushes the panic button? Like I told her, there are all kinds of creeps in the world.
But he kept having the uneasy feeling that there was a pair of eyes boring into his back right between the shoulder blades when he left the car in the lot and walked back across the lawn to the entrance of the frat house.
CHAPTER 3
There was a car parked in front of the James’ house when Julie pulled into the driveway. Her first thought was that Bud had come early, but a second glance told her that this was not Bud’s cream-colored Dodge.
The front door of the house stood open, and through the screen voices floated to her as she crossed the lawn and mounted the steps to the front porch. One voice was her mother’s, lifted with unaccustomed gaiety.
The second voice stopped her. For a long moment Julie stood frozen, caught and held, unmoving. Then her mother, who was seated on the far side of the living room, facing the doorway, glanced up and saw her.
“Julie, look who’s here! It’s Ray!”
Julie opened the screen and went into the room, drawing the solid door closed behind her.
“Hi,” she said a bit stiffly. “I saw the car outside but I didn’t recognize it.”
“It’s my dad’s,” Raymond Bronson said, getting to his feet. He stood there awkwardly, as though wondering what sort of greeting to offer. Then he held out his hand. “How are you, Jules?”
“Okay,” Julie said. “Fine.” She went forward and put her hand in his, holding it formally, then releasing it. It was a harder hand than she remembered. “I didn’t kn
ow you were back. Your last card was from the coast. You said you were working on some kind of fishing boat.”
“I was,” Ray said. “The guy who owns the boat has a kid who works with him in the summers. There wasn’t room for both of us.”
“That’s too bad,” Julie said, because she could think of nothing else to say.
“Not really. Jobs like that are on-again, off-again. I was about ready to come home for awhile anyway.” He was waiting for her to sit down, so she did. Not beside him on the sofa, but in the armchair facing him. He took his seat again. “Your mom’s been telling me about your getting your go-ahead from Smith. That’s great. You must really have been hitting the books.”
“She has,” Mrs. James said with pride. “You wouldn’t have known her this year, Ray. I don’t know whether it’s because you haven’t been here to keep her out half the night or whether she just suddenly decided to buckle down, but the results have been remarkable.”
“That’s great,” Ray said again.
Mrs. James rose. “I’ve got a cake waiting to be iced in the kitchen, and I know you kids have a lot of catching up to do. I’ll bring you out a piece when I get it done.”
“I can’t stay long,” Ray said.
“I have a date,” said Julie, “in just a few minutes.”
She didn’t meet his eyes when she said it, although she knew, of course, that he would probably expect her to have a date on a Friday night. He had undoubtedly done his own share of socializing out in California. She wondered what he would think of Bud. Bud was so far from the type of boy she had dated in school, so far from Ray’s type, though Ray himself had changed tremendously since she had last seen him. He looked older. He was very tan; his light hair grew thick and long down over his ears, and his brows were bleached pale over his cat-green eyes. As Helen had reported earlier, he had grown a beard. It was short and stubby and looked as though it belonged on somebody else’s face.
They sat in awkward silence after Mrs. James left the room. Then they both spoke at once.
“It’s nice that you—” Julie began, and Ray said, “I just thought—” They both stopped speaking. Then Julie said carefully, “It’s nice that you came by.”