I tried to remember who had been in that pianobox. Suddenly I remembered that it was fat little Betty Lafferty. I blushed in the darkness. She would certainly remember that day. She and Skin Mosher had been in there together, hiding from the rest of us. That was just before her family had moved away, taking her along.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked, innocently.
“Well, I guess you had sort of a crush on Mosher.” I remembered that Hubey had fallen feet first, busting the boards on top of the pianobox. One of the boards had smacked Betty on the top of the head. She was a kid that I had never played with much. I guess the time I saw her with the blood running out of her reddish hair was the first time I had ever really noticed her.
“Could be,” she said.
“What did your folks say when you got home?” I asked.
“They never found out about it,” she said, a giggle in her voice.
I frowned in the darkness. That was strange. I remembered that her father had walked her down to the doctor’s, with her crying every step of the way. It wasn’t possible that Betty had forgotten. You never forget the major catastrophes of childhood. Of course, the major catastrophe had come a week later when the truck had run over Mosher and killed him.
“I wonder what ever became of Skin Mosher?” I said casually. I remembered that little eleven year old Betty Lafferty had gone to the funeral two days before she had moved away.
“Gosh, I don’t know,” Betty said.
It was getting stranger and stranger.
“Remember the time when you were sitting behind Carol Jorgasen and cut off her braids with the teacher’s shears?” I said softly. I had never heard of anyone named Carol Jorgasen, and to my knowledge Betty Lafferty never cut off anyone’s braids.
“I sure do,” she said. “I caught the devil for that.” She yawned and stretched. “Guess I better get back to my bed, Hank. Sweet dreams.”
I waited until she crossed the room, put her hand on the knob. Then I spoke up in a tight, strained voice.
“Just exactly who are you? You aren’t Betty Lafferty.”
I could have counted slowly to ten before she answered.
“What kind of a joke is this, Hank?” she laughed and said.
“It isn’t a joke. Who are you?”
As she walked back toward the bed, I reached up and clicked on the bed lamp. There was no expression on her usually cheerful face. She sat on the bed again, even though somehow I didn’t want her so close.
“I needed a job,” she said. “I wanted to work for somebody like you. I went to your old neighborhood and talked to the people who are still there that knew you. I wanted to pretend that I was from the same section. It would give me a chance to talk to you. By accident I found out about Betty Lafferty. She moved away when she was eleven and you were thirteen. She was killed in England during the war. I memorized a lot of stuff and came to see you and told you I was Betty Lafferty. It worked. Is there anything wrong with that?”
I wanted to be fair. “You could have told me of your own accord, Betty, or whatever your name is,” I said. “You knew a month after you came with me that I was satisfied and that I would have kept you on and probably laughed at the trick you played on me. Why did you wait so long? You came to work for me six months ago.”
Her face looked doughy, the eyes lifeless and dull. “I would have come to you much sooner, Miss Ryan. It took a little time to find you, you know. Your press releases call you Laura Lynn. I suppose you were trying to hide behind that name.”
“What do you mean?”
“I suppose you didn’t want to be known as Henrietta Ryan, after what happened. I didn’t get to you soon enough, you know. I didn’t have the money to follow you to Chicago.” Her voice was as lifeless as her face.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I didn’t want to tell you to your face. But I might as well. It doesn’t make any difference, I suppose. I wanted it to be quick.”
“You wanted what to be quick?” The fear was like something black and velvety that was slowly beginning to fill my throat.
“My name is Carla Planck. Ever hear of George Planck?” Her lips pulled back from her teeth in an odd grin.
I had heard of the name, somewhere. I repeated it softly. George Planck. Of course! George Planck was one of those fur robbers. George Planck was the one that died two hours before Dad did.
Betty saw by my face that I remembered.
“He was my brother,” she said softly. “I thought about it for a long time. George would never do that sort of thing. I was his kid sister. I was by his bed when he died. He told me before he died that he was trying to help your father catch some thieves and your father shot him.”
I tried to laugh. “He was trying to make you feel good. His prints were all over the gun he killed my father with.”
