Chain Letter Omnibus Read online

  “What if you were to wear a mask,” Alison said, not trying to be funny. Since reading the task, she had been turning over in her mind whether she would have what it takes to run naked through school at lunch. Given a choice between doing it and dying, she still couldn’t decide. All she knew for sure was that she was glad she wasn’t Fran.

  “Everyone would know it was me. No one has hair like mine.”

  You mean, no one has a body like yours.

  “You could pin it up, or cut it even. I think a mask would be permissible. The Caretaker has not struck me as inflexible.”

  Fran groaned, her hands gesturing helplessly. “But I would still have to do it! And I would get stopped before I could get away. I can’t run very fast. One of those gorillas on the football team would grab me and rip my mask off.”

  “You’re probably right, there,” Alison agreed. Out of habit, she went to drum her knuckles on the table, as she often did when she was thinking hard. The bandages across her fingers stopped her. Alice had performed Saturday night wearing gloves. Friday’s performance, of course, had never reached Act II. The same doctor who had treated Tony had taken care of her. They would probably be seeing more of the guy. “You know, Fran, you don’t have a bad figure. Would it be so terrible if everyone saw . . . ”

  “No!” she cried desperately. “I can’t do it! Don’t you see? Why aren’t you helping me? You’re supposed to be my friend.” Her head fell back onto her arms and she wept uncontrollably. A couple of minutes went by as a wave of compassion stole over Alison. She reached out and stroked Fran’s hair as she would have a child’s.

  “I do have an idea,” she whispered.

  Fran, sniffling, raised her head. “What?”

  “That you go away.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere, it doesn’t matter. Remember last Friday how you told me your parents keep hassling you about visiting your senile grandmother in Bakersfield? Why not call the poor lady tonight and then tell your parents that you feel so sorry for her that you really must go and stay with her for a week or so? You’re finished with the courses required for graduation. And your electives are pretty much winding down, especially now that you have completed the sets for drama. They’ll let you go.”

  Unlooked for hope dawned on Fran’s face. It didn’t last. “The Caretaker will find me. He knows everything we do.”

  “Don’t tell anybody where you’re going.”

  “But you know!”

  “I won’t even tell Tony where you’re hiding, trust me.”

  Fran thought about that for a minute, when suddenly, a peculiar expression darkened her features. To Alison, it looked positively fiendish. “You really like Tony, don’t you?” Fran asked. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “He is important to me,” she answered carefully. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” Fran shrugged, averting her eyes. Alison was suspicious of the sudden shift in tone and believed she had a glimmer of what Fran might be considering.

  “You’re my friend, Fran, and you’re in trouble,” she said quietly, firmly. “And I intend to do everything possible to help you. But if you want my help, or the help of anyone else in the group, then you better remember where your loyalty lies.”

  Fran folded the newspaper and went to stand. Alison stopped her. “What are you doing?” Fran cried, trying to squirm away. “Let go of my arm! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her obvious guilt confirmed Alison’s suspicion. Staring her in the eyes, she let go of Fran and Fran stayed where she was. “You’re thinking of going to the police.”

  “No, I’m not!”

  “Yes, you are. You would turn Tony in and hope . . . ”

  “Neil says we should! And he’s a good person.”

  Alison nodded. “But Neil has not gone to the police, even though he thinks Tony should. He’s too honorable to do anything behind his friend’s back. He’s not like you. You think if you report the crime, you’ll be absolved of all responsibility. I know how your mind works.”

  “You know nothing of my mind!” Fran swore, proud and bitter.

  Is that true? This was a side of her friend she had never seen before. Fran whined, worried, and wept. Fran did not shout out pronouncements, that is, not to anyone’s knowledge. Alison picked up the Caretaker’s letter. A tiny seed of doubt, like so many others she had collected of late, sprouted in her mind.

  “Maybe I don’t,” she said quietly.

  Fran went to the sink and started, of all things, to wash the dishes. Alison studied the list of names and wondered if there was a significance in the Caretaker’s choice of who went first, and who went last.

  “So what are you going to do?” she asked when Fran was done with the dirty plates and glasses. Drying her hands on a towel, Fran came back to the table. Her burst of authority appeared gone and she was the same old twitching adolescent.

  “Your idea sounds good. I guess it’s my only choice.”

  “Do you swear that you won’t go to the police?”

  Fran hesitated. “I won’t.”

  “I hope for your sake you don’t.”

  Chapter Eleven

  We have to talk,” Tony said, coming out of a lengthy kiss in the cramped confines of the front seat of his car, taking back his left leg which had somehow intertwined with Alison’s right leg. They were not lying down but they were far from sitting. Neither of them was missing any articles of clothing, though Alison’s blouse was halfway unbuttoned. They were both soaked with sweat—the afternoon sun pouring through the windows had the greenhouse effect in full gear—but that did nothing to diminish his enjoyment of her skin, which was unimaginably soft and sensitive. Making out with Alison was a new experience for him. She seemed to melt right into him, unlike other girls—Joan for instance—who had always been anxious to have as many buttons pushed as quickly as possible. But the lot at the back of the city park was no place to get too carried away. They could get a ticket.

  “No,” Alison protested, tightening her embrace, her eyes closed. He didn’t resist and in fact began to fiddle with the belt on her pants. What prevented him from investigating further was the sudden appearance of a jogger, who seemed to come out of nowhere.

  “Got the time, buddy?” The guy—couldn’t he see what was going on here?—was leaning against the car, his middle-aged beer gut hanging over the door handle. Tony sat up quickly and checked his watch.

  “Three-fifteen.”

  “Thanks, bud.” The jerk poked his fat scruffy face closer. “Hey, aren’t you Tony Hunt?”

  “No,” he said flatly, staring straight ahead. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see red-faced Alison trying to fix her bra.

  “Sure you are! I was there when you threw that seventy-yard bomb against Willmore High. I never thought that ball was going to come down. You were great!”

  “Thank you.”

  “I bet you’ll be a pro one day. Hey, can I have your autograph?”

  Tony looked directly at him. “No. Get the hell out of here.”

  The man’s proud grin disappeared. He spat on the ground. “Sorry to take up your precious time.”

  When he was gone, Alison asked, “Do people often recognize you?”

  He shrugged. “Only when I’m trying to hide.” He laid his head back on the hot seat. “Where were we?”

  Alison chuckled. “You were trying to make a fallen woman out of me.”

  He smiled. “You’ll have your chance later.”

  “My chance!” She socked him. “The gall of this jock.”

  He laughed. “Just kidding.” He rechecked his watch. He had lied to the guy, it was three-forty-five. With the exception of Fran—tucked away only Alison knew where—the group was scheduled to meet in fifteen minutes in the rocket ship in the children’s playground, a hilly quarter-mile walk from where they were now parked. He scanned the area to make sure none of the others were visible. If Joan caught him necking with Aliso
n, that would be bad. If Neil saw him . . . it was best not to think about it. He added, “We have to talk.”

  She was wearing tight blue jeans and a stretched yellow blouse, looking irresistibly cute with her sudden seriousness.

  “You said that already. About what? Us?”

  “All of us,” he said. “You and I have to compare notes. We can’t do that when we’re all together. There’re always too many petty interruptions.” He paused. “Do you have any idea, Alison, who the Caretaker is?”

  She scratched at the healing cuts on her hands. “He says he’s not one of us. If that’s true, where can we begin?”

  “Why do you suppose he used the word, ‘painfully,’ when making that clear?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But, it’s weird, when he said he wasn’t one of us, I believed him! Everything he’s done to us so far has been to expose us for what we are. I can’t help feeling he would tell the truth when talking about himself.”

  “If the Caretaker is as complicated as he appears, his truth might also be complicated, and mean more than one thing. Also, he may have made a slip. He broke his pattern. He drugged me before I tried to win the races. He tampered with the set before you had a chance to flub your lines. It was like he knew what we were going to do, like he was one of us.” He pulled a tattered piece of the Times from his pocket, smoothing it on his leg. Fran hadn’t sent him a letter; nevertheless, Kipp had received one this morning. It had been identical to Fran’s except Fran’s name had been missing. The accompanying ad in the paper had been given in the familiar code. Translated, it read:

  K. C. Tell Everyone Cheated SAT Tell M.I.T.

  Such an announcement, Kipp said, would ruin his academic career. He refused to do it. He did not appear worried about the consequences of his refusal.

  “Let’s go through the group one by one and bring up anything even remotely suspicious,” he said. “Let’s start with Kipp.”

  “You start; you know him better than me.”

  Tony hesitated, reconsidering what he was doing. A few kissing sessions and here he was ready to pour out his deepest suspicions to this girl he had scarcely spoken to up until a few weeks ago. Then he looked at her again and decided if she was the Caretaker, he was already done for. “Kipp is smart,” he began. “More than any of us, he could have planned this. His kinky sense of humor reminds me of the Caretaker. I like him a lot, I assume he likes me, but he can be indifferent at times. I’d never seen him wearing a seat belt before, but he had his on when he hit the wall. When you and I were sitting by the snack bar during the track meet, I saw Kipp and Joan going through the ice chest. Also, right from the beginning, he was opposed to the possibility of the Caretaker being one of us.”

  “He sounds guilty as sin. What’s his motive?”

  “I can’t see us coming up with a motive for any of us. Tell me about Fran.”

  “A couple of weeks ago, I would have put her at the bottom of the list. But now, I’m not so sure.” She began to count on her fingers. “Fran did not seem to mind painting over Teddy. She constructed the set that gave out on me. I told her to leave and told her where to go, but she could have put the idea in my mind a few days before when she mentioned someone she felt obligated to visit. She’s smart, too, even if she doesn’t act it. Most of all, she’s always been the odd one out: never gone out with a boy, never been given much respect. Isn’t that the standard B-movie background for a vengeful teenager?”

  “Does she like you, really like you?”

  “I’d always thought she looked up to me. But lately, I’ve been sort of putting her down. It’s a bad habit I’ve gotten into.” She shook her head. “You know, this is freaky having to look at your friends this way.”

  “That’s why we’ve postponed doing it.”

  “Tell me about Neil?”

  “Before I do, tell me if you suspect him.”

  She seemed reluctant to answer. “I do. It’s nothing he’s done, it’s the way he is: quiet, thoughtful, polite.”

  “And those qualities make him suspicious?” he asked coldly. Why was he so keen to protect Neil? Because he was his friend? That was the obvious reason and it was probably true, and yet, as he thought about it, a deeper more disturbing motive came to mind.

  Neil speaks for me; he says what I’m ashamed to say.

  “I’m sorry.” Alison touched his hand. “You really care about him, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “Do you?”

  “I . . . I hardly know him.”

  “Of course, silly of me to ask.” He wiped his brow, rubbed the sweat into his palms. “The only thing I can think of that makes Neil a possible candidate is that he was alone beside the ice chest just before I drank the lemonade. In fact, he was the one who stocked the chest.”

  “That’s pretty incriminating”

  “But he’s always taken care of our drinks.”

  “Still . . . ”

  “The police didn’t blame him,” he interrupted.

  “Tony, I . . . ”

  “I’m sorry, I know I’m not being objective about this. It’s instinct with me, I suppose, to watch out for him. He’s always watching out for me. Did I tell you he insisted on sampling the lemonade before I drank it? He warned me to leave it alone. He’s warned all of us that the Caretaker must be one of us.” Tony shifted uncomfortably. “Let’s go on to Brenda.”

  “She’s as old a rival as she is a friend. She really enjoyed what the Caretaker told her to do. She went above and beyond the call of duty. Lately, she hasn’t been getting along with Kipp, and I’m not sure why. She’s a complicated person. I thought I heard her laugh when I crash-landed during the play.”

  “Interesting,” Tony muttered. “Just before he hit the wall, Brenda refused to get in Kipp’s car. Tell me, did you trust Brenda before all this craziness started?”

  “Ninety percent.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I wouldn’t have trusted her with my life.”

  “Was Brenda at the track meet?”

  “Yes. She was wandering around a lot.”

  “On the field?”

  “I think so.”

  “What does Brenda think of me?”

  Alison smiled. “You wouldn’t know, would you? Brenda has a crush on you, or at least she used to. Most of the girls at school have a crush on you. She always used to talk about what it would be like to get you alone.”

  He was mildly flattered. “Used to? Does she still talk about me?”

  “No. When I told her you had asked me out, that first time, she just said, ‘That’s nice,’ and went on to something else. It’s possible she resents the two of us. Very possible.”

  “Hmm. Which of us should do Joan?”

  “Have you already done Joan?” she asked, tickling his leg.

  “That’s a secret. Hey!” She started poking at him something fierce and he had to use both hands to contain her. She sure was quick; she should have been one of his receivers. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “But I need to know for the sake of the investigation!” she protested, fighting against his hold. A slight downward turn at the corner of her mouth made him realize it was troubling her.

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He grinned. “Nothing to brag about.” He cautiously released her and she immediately slapped him on the top of the head.

  “There had better not be.” She appeared satisfied. “Joan could fill a book. Even if you were driving, I don’t think there’s any question that it was mainly her fault. Maybe she figured that the truth would eventually come out, and she set up this whole thing to make us do something that would somehow implicate us further.” Alison stopped suddenly.

  “What is it?”

  “Something that Joan said to me once.” She put her hand to her head. “Something that reminded me of the Caretaker.” She pounded her knee lightly with her fist. “I can’t remember. It’s there, but it won’t come
out.”

  “It will, eventually.”

  “Yeah, probably when the guillotine blade is falling toward my neck. Did you check on Joan’s window?”

  “Closely, last night when I was in her bedroom . . . ” Alison reacted quickly but he was waiting for her. “Jealous, aren’t you? Kipp went over, not into her house, but by her street. He brought binoculars. He couldn’t tell whether the window had just been replaced. It didn’t look like it. There wasn’t a single putty stain on the glass. But he did learn that Joan wears purple lace underwear, not that that was news to me . . . ”

  “Would you stop that!”

  He laughed. “Don’t be so much fun to tease and I will.” He checked his watch. “We had better be going. We don’t seem cut out to be detectives.”

  “They all sound guilty. Tony, did you read Murder on the Orient Express? What if it is all of them?”

  “Then we had better leave the country.” He didn’t seriously consider the possibility. But the question did raise another idea that he took very seriously, one he kept to himself.

  I am not one of you.

  That would not be a lie if the Caretaker were, say, two of them.

  · · ·

  The meeting at the rocket ship was going as Tony had feared it would. Joan kept throwing Alison nasty looks, Kipp kept ridiculing Joan, Brenda kept complaining about the time they were wasting, and Neil kept looking sad and miserable. No one even thought to ask Tony how he had fared at the paper and he had to bring it up himself.

  “They wanted to know if the ads were personally harassing me or if they were connected with an illegal activity. I had expected as much going down there, but I had also hoped to talk to the person who had taken the ads, to see if they remembered if it had been a male or female on the phone. But the supervisor wouldn’t let me in the back without ‘good reason.’ If I had told her the truth, it would have been the same as going to the police.”

  “It was a nice try,” Neil said, sitting on the sand, leaning against the low wall that enclosed the rocket ship. He was holding a half-peeled orange, nibbling on it like a bird. Last week, Tony had brought Neil’s mother over a fortified protein powder, but it did not look as if Neil had been taking it.