I Know What You Did Last Summer (2 page)

chapter 2

It was almost dusk when Barry Cox pulled out of the parking area
behind the fraternity house and drove through the campus and then
north on Madison to the Four Seasons Apartments.

It was a familiar drive; in fact, he sometimes said jokingly to
his fraternity brothers that the car knew it so well that it could
drive there by itself.

"Sure it won't get confused?" they joshed back. "It knows the
way to a couple of other pads too."

"It keeps them straight," Barry told them smugly. "It's a smart
little bug."

It was true that Helen wasn't the only girl Barry dated, though
he was pretty sure that he was the only guy for her. Crazy too,
because living where she did, in an apartment house full of single
swingers, and looking like she did, a living doll, and
holding her showy job-well, there were bound to be plenty of
fellows howling under her window.

That was one reason he continued dating her. He hadn't planned
to once high school days were over. A college man had a wide
territory, and there were some pretty sophisticated chicks on the
University campus. Then, when she had been handed that job as
Golden Girl, it had changed things. A guy would have
to
be
nuts
to
throw over the Channel Five Golden Girl.

Now as he pulled into the Four Seasons parking lot, he grinned
to himself. Helen was doing all right for herself for an
eighteen-year-old who hadn't even finished high school. His mother
had had fits when she learned about Helen's dropping out at the end
of her junior year. "It proves what I've said from the beginning,''
she had told him. "A person is the result of his background.
That girl isn't your kind, Barry; I don't understand how you ever
started dating her."

Which, of course, was part of the reason-he knew it would bug
his mother. And then there were her looks. Helen was beauty queen
material, and the fact was already beginning to pay off for her.
Not many girls her age had their own apartments without even having
to split the cost with a roommate. Helen's older sister,
Elsa, was still living at home, stashing away half her earnings as
a cashier in a department store, hoping that maybe someday, in a
year or so, she might be able to make the break and get her own
little hole-in-the wall. And here was Helen with her own car,
classy clothes, anything she wanted, and not a worry in the
world.

So what had she been so upset about on the telephone? That
call had surprised him. Helen wasn't like a lot of girls, always
calling their boyfriends. The one or two times she had rung him at
home and got his mother on the line had cured her of that habit,
fast. Even now that he was living on campus, she seldom phoned him
unless there was a definite reason.

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 from work?"

"This afternoon? Gosh, Heller, we were just out last night. You
know this is closed week. I've got a whole raft of 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 Debbie 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 just as glad. Those domestic evenings with
Helen running around in an apron 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 d.j. show
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 room for dinner. He had just
stopped at a hamburger stand and picked up a couple of
sandwiches and a milkshake. 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 shape 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 shorts outfit. "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 his eyeteeth 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 darned lucky, when it came to that,
just to have gotten out of the home and into a
fraternity.

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 ribbon, and the violet eyes were carefully shadowed
and outlined to make them even lovelier. She was wearing a pale
blue pantsuit with a scarf knotted 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 on 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 by
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 friendship 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! That's just stupid 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. It's just some crank thing, 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 suit 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 muddle through a wayout 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 turned that guy off
pretty fast, you know. One day you were going steady 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 which 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 sandwich place 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 dumb
tricks! The guy must be off his nut."

"I don't believe it," Julie said decidedly. "I know Ray better
than either of you, and he just wouldn't do a thing like this. He
felt worse than any of us when-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 tracing the car?"

"Not a chance," Barry said. "Ray and I spent an entire day
hammering the dent out of that fender. Then we painted the whole
buggy 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 tilings."

"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 silly crank calls and writing people notes
and things. So some kid decides to play a prank-he writes a dozen
of these and sends them to people 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 particularly proud of?"

Julie digested the argument in silence. Then she said, "I'm not
listed in the phone book under my own name. Our listing is under
Mom's name-Mrs. Peter James."

"Well, then, he didn't get you out of the book but in some other
way. Maybe it's a guy from school who has a crush on you and wants
to get a reaction. Or some fellow you cold-shouldered, or the kid
who packs bags at the supermarket. 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. "Eve known some people like that myself. Why, 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
answered 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 tiling 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, 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 do something if he
knew?"