I WASN’T THE ONLY ONE TO TAKE HEAT FROM my dad after we found the body on Coulter’s Point.
The next day, Chief McKenzie lowered the boom on Jeddy so hard that it looked as if he’d never have another afternoon off in his life, not for lobster-pot hunting or anything else.
“I’ve got to get a job,” he told me when we met on Monday for our walk into town to the school. “My dad said I’ve got too much free time on my hands and it’s leading to trouble.”
“What trouble? That we found that stiff?”
“No. I don’t know if it’s even about that. He said I’m too old to be hanging around on beaches. If I want to make money, I should get a real job.”
“How about working at the store with me?” I said. “I could ask my father if Mr. Riley would hire you. You wouldn’t make that much, but we could do it together.”
Jeddy shook his head. “Dad already signed me up to start next week at Fancher’s chicken farm. I’ll be mucking and plucking and watering the flocks.”
“You won’t make anything there!”
“Isn’t that where your dad worked one time?”
Jeddy said it was. “That’s how he got me the job.”
We walked along in gloomy silence. Chicken-farm work was dirty and smelly. There seemed to be nothing more to say in the face of such a blow. Jeddy’s fate looked sealed even worse than mine. I felt so bad for him that I almost let loose and told him about the Black Duck, if only to cheer him up. But we were passing the police station across from Weedie’s just then and a knot came in my throat and I kept quiet.
We were almost to school when I thought of something else I could bring up.
“So, about that body, what do you guess happened to it?”
“I don’t guess, I know. It got took,” Jeddy said. He was still sore about the whole thing, I could see.
“Well, I know that, but the question is, why?”
“My dad told me not to talk about it.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “My dad told me that, too. But we’ve got to talk about it. That’s the most interesting part, that they told us not to talk about it.”
“My dad said we could get in hot water by sticking our noses in,” Jeddy said. “I think it’s big-time mobsters fighting with each other.”
I nodded. “Could be. The thing I keep wondering about is how the body got took. No way you could get a boat in at low tide. And there was no mark on the beach. It’s like it somehow got lifted.”
“Lifted?” Jeddy said. “You mean like lifted up?”
“Yes.”
Jeddy frowned. “I don’t see how.”
“You don’t?” I already knew where this was leading.
“Well . . .” He gazed at me. I could almost see the flash go off in his brain. He was remembering the far-off drone of a motor across the bay, the glimmer of silver wings in the sky.
“That plane we saw!”
“Right. If it had pontoons, it could’ve landed out in the water. Those seaplanes draw less water than most boats.”
“But it was windy that day. They’re no good in the wind.”
“The wind went down, remember? It was almost calm by the time we got back there. A plane could’ve coasted in pretty close. Somebody could’ve got off and grabbed the body and gone right back up. Wouldn’t have taken more’n a few minutes.”
“Might’ve been the Coast Guard,” Jeddy said. “They’ve got seaplanes.”
“The Coast Guard doesn’t go around stealing bodies. If they pick up a body, you hear about it.”
“I guess it was somebody else, then. The only thing is, how would they have known where the body was? We were the only ones that knew about it. That plane would’ve needed somebody to tip ’em off where to land.”
“I guess somebody did tip ’em off.”
Jeddy paused and looked over at me. “Charlie’s got a radio in the station,” he said.
I nodded. “Remember how he took an ice age to get to your house?”
“And he didn’t want us going back on the beach.”
“Your dad wasn’t too happy we were there, either,” I reminded him.
That brought us to a standstill. Neither one of us wanted to make a guess as to what it might mean. I waited to see which way Jeddy was going to jump, whether he’d do what his dad wanted and shut up, or stick with me.
“Well, I think it’s unfair,” he said, at last. “We found that body and we should be able to know what happened to it. They can’t treat us that way, keeping us out of everything.”
“You’re right!” I said. I pounded him on the back.
“If a plane came in there, it was in broad daylight. Somebody must’ve seen it or heard it,” Jeddy went on. “Who lives down around that beach?”
“Nobody. It’s too far out. Except there’s old one-eye, Tom Morrison. He’s got a shack on the salt marsh behind the dunes.”
“That crackpot. I heard he eats raccoons.”
“I heard he’s got a raft and poles around all night hunting blue crabs,” I said. “How about if we go down and pay him a visit?”
“Good idea.”
“Soon,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m for it.”
“Before he forgets. He’s that old.”
“All right with me.”
At this point, we entered the school. And we were proceeding with the most dutiful intentions across the front foyer toward our classroom when the earsplitting clang of the day’s opening bell burst over our heads. This was a brand-new electrical device, hooked up that fall to replace the principal’s old hand bell, and we nearly jumped out of our skins. But then, as we were recovering, we looked around and noticed something.
Absolutely no one was in sight.
The front hall was empty. So were the corridors. All the students and the teachers were inside their rooms, and the principal had gone back into her office.
“We’re late!” Jeddy whispered ecstatically.
“Too late!” I crowed with delight.
A crafty look came into Jeddy’s eye. “I’m beginning to wonder if we were ever here,” he whispered.
I shook my head solemnly. “I didn’t see us.”
Without another word, we turned and ran back out the school door, and I remember how the early spring sun beamed down our backs as we hightailed it in glory across the fields toward the shore.