Debutante Hill (19 page)

“I believe him!” Lynn said suddenly. “Dirk didn't take that wallet! He wouldn't do a thing like that!”

She did not know how she knew, she just knew. The certainty in her voice swung everyone's attention in her direction.

“How—” Mr. Ryan began.

But Brenda interrupted him. “Of course, Lynn Chambers is going to stick up for him! Lynn and Dirk have been going together all through Christmas vacation. In fact, I just mentioned to Lynn this morning that I had left the money locked in the car. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she told Dirk about it herself!”

When she thought about it afterward, during the long, wretched time afterward, it was that moment that Lynn remembered. Not the time in the principal's office waiting for her parents and Mrs. Peterson to arrive, not the interview itself, with her mother's pale face on one side of her and Mrs. Peterson's outraged one on the other, but that first unbelievable moment when Brenda had faced her in front of the whole crowd of people and said, “She told Dirk about it herself!”

“Why, that's not true!” Lynn had gasped in horror. “It's not true at all! What a perfectly terrible thing to say!”

“Brenda!” Nancy's voice broke into the conversation,
equally horrified. “Brenda, that's
Lynn
you're talking to! How can you say such a thing?”

There was a rustle in the crowd as a slender, red-haired girl pushed her way forward until she was by her friend's side. “Brenda's upset, Lynn. She can't mean it—”

“I do mean it!” Brenda said. “I did tell Lynn just this morning. You were there, Nancy—you heard me yourself—”

“All right, all right,” Mr. Ryan cut in quickly, evidently feeling he had let the scene drag on far enough. “This isn't the time or place to go into this. There are only four people involved, and I want them to come with me to the principal's office. The rest of you move along. Your lunch hour's half over already, and if you don't get over to the cafeteria in a hurry, you're going to be pretty hungry the rest of the day.”

Amid much muttering and glancing at watches, the crowd began to drift away.

Brad spoke for the first time since he had advised Dirk to empty his pockets. “I don't have to come, do I? I don't have a thing to do with this—I'm not even a student here. I was just a bystander, and I've got a date somewhere else in about five minutes.”

Mr. Ryan hesitated. “Well—”

“Thanks.” Brad threw Lynn an amused glance and gave Dirk's shoulder a pat of encouragement. “Good luck, Masters. Hope everything turns out O.K. for you!”

He walked over to his car, got in, and started the engine.

“Are you going to let him go?” Lynn asked, as the car pulled out of the parking lot. “He was in on everything, just as much as Dirk was.”

“But he didn't have a gym bag with the wallet in it,” Mr.
Ryan reminded her quietly. “Come on, you three—let's go over to the principal's office and see if we can't get this thing straightened out.”

The next few hours always seemed to Lynn like a nightmare—an odd, distorted nightmare, with everyone in the wrong places doing the wrong things. Several times before she had been in the principal's office on class business and noticed students sitting miserably on the long benches along the back wall, waiting to be interviewed about misconduct. She had always regarded them with a kind of pitying scorn—they were the students who were caught smoking or playing hookey or writing words on the washroom mirrors. They had no connection with Lynn or with the Hill crowd, and she seldom knew their names or saw them again.

And now, Lynn thought, I'm one of those students!

She seated herself with as much dignity as possible on the end of the bench.

Mr. Ryan spoke for a few moments with Mr. Curtis, the principal. Then the two men walked over to the bench.

“This is serious business,” Mr. Curtis said quietly. “I don't want to go into it until your parents are here. Can you tell me where I can reach them?”

Brenda answered quickly, giving her address and telephone number. Lynn did the same.

Dirk looked defiant. “My dad's working.”

“We want to call him, anyway,” Mr. Curtis said. “I'm sure he can get off from work for a little while for something as important as this.”

“He won't,” Dirk said bitterly. “He doesn't give a darn about what I do.” But after a moment, he gave the name
and telephone number of Hendricks' Grocery Store, where his father worked in the afternoons.

It was only a matter of about twenty minutes before Mrs. Chambers arrived, and an instant later Dr. Chambers himself strode in. He shook hands with Mr. Ryan and spoke to Mr. Curtis, whom he knew from Rotary.

“What is this ridiculous thing, Clint?” he asked briskly “Are you actually accusing my daughter of being mixed up in a robbery?”

“Of course not, Nathan,” Mr. Curtis said easily. “She just happened to be on the scene when this thing happened, and I thought you would want to be in on it while we got it straightened out.”

“Well, good—I'm glad you called me.” Mollified, Dr. Chambers walked over to the bench and seated herself on one side of Lynn. Mrs. Chambers was already on Lynn's other side, talking to her softly.

A few moments later, Mrs. Peterson rushed into the room, chattering excitedly. She flew to her daughter's side and put her arm around her. “Brenda, baby!” she breathed dramatically. “Are you all right?”

“Of course, I'm all right,” Brenda told her. “It's the hospital money that—”

At that moment the door opened again, and another man walked in. It was Mr. Masters. He came slowly into the room, moving heavily. His weathered face was lined with worry. He glanced at the group of people before him, nodded briefly at Lynn, and then his eyes settled upon Dirk. Without a word, he went over and sat down beside him.

“Dad—” Dirk looked up in amazement. “I didn't think you'd come!”

“Not come? I'm your father, aren't I?” Mr. Masters turned his gaze upon Mr. Curtis. “What is this all about?”

It did not take long to go over the story. Brenda told about leaving the wallet locked in the car and about coming back to the parking lot to get her lunch money and finding the car door standing open.

“The wing window was forced open,” she said, “and the wallet was gone, and Dirk here and another fellow were just starting away from it. I insisted that they be searched, and Dirk had the wallet in his gym bag.”

“But I didn't take it!” Dirk insisted. “I don't know how it got there, but I didn't take it. I went out to the parking lot to meet my friend, Brad Morgan. He was picking me up to help do some work on his car. He was there when I got there—we talked a few minutes and then started to walk over to where his car was parked. Now I think back on it, I remember the door of the Peterson car was standing open, but I hardly noticed it at the time.”

“But you had the wallet!” Brenda exclaimed. “And Lynn could have told you it was in the car—I mentioned it to her myself this morning—”

“That's an absurd accusation,” Dr. Chambers broke in angrily. “Lynn wouldn't have anything to do with stealing anything. You carelessly left a wallet lying on the front seat of your car. Anybody looking in the car window would have seen it there. Nobody had to be informed about it.”

“But Lynn
could
have told him.” Brenda turned to her mother. “Lynn never has liked me, Mother, especially since I became a debutante and started going around with her old crowd. And she knew that I was responsible for the money and would be in trouble if anything happened to
it.” She turned back to Lynn. “I don't think you would ever actually break into a car and take something, but I do think you could have told Dirk about it. Why, the way you stuck up for him out there on the parking lot proves you have some connection with it. You can't think he is innocent!”

Staring back into Brenda's cold blue eyes, Lynn's anger was tempered with astonishment . . . Why, she actually believes what she is saying! She isn't just trying to get me in trouble—she actually believes it!

But all she could think of to say was, “I do think Dirk is innocent. I don't just think it—I
know
it.”

“And I know it, too.” Mr. Masters' deep voice rang out strongly through the small room “My son may have done some foolish things in his young life, but he is not a thief. And he is not a liar. If he says he doesn't know how that wallet got in his bag, then he doesn't know.”

In the silence that followed these words, Dr. Chambers got quietly to his feet. “Whatever you decide here, Clint, I don't think it involves us. I've probably got an office full of patients waiting for me by this time. If it's all right with you, I'm going to take my wife and daughter home and get back to work.”

Mr. Curtis nodded in agreement. “All right Nathan. Thanks for coming down. I appreciate it.”

“I appreciate your calling me. Good afternoon, Brenda—Mrs. Peterson.” With one arm around his wife and the other around his daughter, Dr. Chambers swept them out of the office.

“He believed me,” Lynn said afterward, in the car on the way home. “I said I didn't have anything to do with the robbery, and Mr. Curtis believed me.”

“Of course, he believed you,” her father said.

“But he didn't believe Dirk. Dirk said he was innocent too.”

“Dirk had the wallet,” her mother reminded her gently.

“Even so—” Lynn tried to put her thoughts into words. “If the wallet had been in
my
bag, and I had said I didn't know how it got there, they would have thought twice about it, wouldn't they? Because I'm Lynn Chambers, because you are Dr. Nathan Chambers, and we live on the Hill? It would have made a difference, wouldn't it? I mean, they would have listened to me when I said I didn't put the wallet in the bag, and they would have tried to figure out some other way it could have got there, instead of just taking it for granted that I had stolen it.”

“Yes,” Dr. Chambers said quietly, “they probably would have.”

 

When Dodie came home from school that afternoon, no one had to tell her about the robbery, she was bursting with excitement about it already.

“It's all over school!” she exclaimed. “Dirk Masters has been expelled. Mrs. Peterson is being surprisingly decent about it, though. She says that, since she has the money back, she isn't going to have the police called in.”

“That
is
sweet of her,” Lynn remarked caustically. Then she said, “Dirk didn't take that wallet, Dodie.”

Her sister looked surprised. “What makes you think he didn't? They found it in his gym bag.”

“I don't care where they found it; he didn't take it. You should have seen his face when they opened that bag and the wallet fell out! Why, he was just as surprised as anyone
else. He looked as though he couldn't believe it.”

“They must be pretty sure,” Dodie said, “if he's been expelled.” She frowned. “There's some other talk too, Lynn. It sounds crazy, but somebody told me that Brenda was trying to drag you into it.”

“She was,” Lynn said. “But she couldn't do it.”

“Imagine!” Dodie exclaimed angrily. “How could she have the nerve? Aren't you furious?”

“No,” Lynn said slowly, surprised at her own words, “I'm not. That's funny, isn't it, considering how I've always felt about her? But I'm not. I think she actually believed what she said. And—and I kind of respect her for coming out and saying it, with me right there and Daddy and Mother standing behind me. I never thought she had it in her to do something like that.”

“Well,
I
don't respect her,” Dodie said decidedly. “I think she's horrid. And I'd keep an eye on her, Lynn. Just because she wasn't able to convince Mr. Curtis, don't be so sure she is simply going to let the whole thing drop.”

“Oh, don't be silly!” Lynn exclaimed irritably, wishing Dodie's tongue were not quite so pointed. “I'm sick of talking about the whole thing. Let's drop it and forget about it.”

She was to remember her sister's words, however. The next morning, when she got to school, the Hill crowd was assembled in its usual place, just left of the front steps. They were talking when Lynn first saw them. All of them seemed to be talking at once, in the way they had when they were discussing something exciting.

Lynn quickened her pace, but as she reached them, the talk seemed suddenly to die away.

Someone said, “Hi, Lynn!”

It was the signal for everyone to turn toward her. Silence hung heavy and strained over them, an odd, uncomfortable silence for which there seemed no reason.

“It wasn't the way it is when they're all discussing the debutante parties, and I come up,” Lynn explained to Dodie later. “That has happened lots of times, and they just say ‘hi' and go right ahead. I was sort of on the edge of the group, but I was not shut out of it, if you know what I mean.” She hesitated, trying to keep the hurt from showing too much in her voice. “It was as though they were talking about
me
—as though they were in the middle of saying something about me, and I walked in on it, and—and—”

She stopped, not knowing how to describe it. Finally she continued, “I felt as though I ought to say ‘excuse me' and turn around and walk away.”

Dodie nodded slowly. There was no surprise in her voice when she said, “I can imagine.” Then she asked, “Was Brenda in the group?”

“Yes,” Lynn said, “she was.”