The Hayloft. A 1950s Mystery

seal of approval carried a lot of weight. “Great,” I said. “I’ll be over watching the football practice.” Actually, I wouldn’t have minded watching the cheerleaders—and especially Natalie practice, but I couldn’t be too obvious about it.
    ***
    Ruth didn’t say much as we walked toward the parking lot together and I wondered whether I was going to have to pry words out of her. Compared to the voluble Natalie and Sylvia, she was about as talkative as a Greek statue.
    But when she saw the car I was driving, she exclaimed, “That’s Ralph’s car.”
    I had forgotten about that. Major error. She shrunk away from me, as though I were a car thief. Or worse.
    “I’m Ralph’s cousin,” I blurted out. “I should have told you before. I’m staying with his parents and they let me use the car.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    She looked as if she might fly away. “I should have. I thought…you might not want to talk to me. I’m sorry.”
    Ruth was still on the verge of bugging out. I opened her door and then went around to the driver’s side, trying to exude confidence I didn’t feel. I climbed in and waited. Finally, she got into the car, but she didn’t look happy about it. I started the engine, shifted into first gear, and drove out to Main Street. I stopped, not knowing which way to turn.
    “Turn left,” she said after a few seconds. That was opposite from the direction to the farm.
    Ruth smoothed her cheerleader skirt down over her knees as I tried to figure out what to say next. She finally said, “Ralph steered with the spinner.”
    I didn’t use the spinner knob that Ralph had installed on the steering wheel.
    She said, “You aren’t really writing a story for the Carter Press, are you?”
    “No,” I admitted. “But I am interested in Ralph.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “I understand you and Ralph were going together.”
    “We were going steady.”
    “Uh, how were you getting along?” That was awkward, but I couldn’t think of any better way of phrasing it. She was silent as I shoved the gearshift on the steering post into second while pulling away from one of the few traffic lights in the area. I hoped I hadn’t spooked her.
    “We were…we were going steady. We were getting along fine.”
    I thought she might have been going to say that they were in love, but that was too intimate an admission to a stranger—especially a male stranger. I tried one more time. “Were you having any problems with your relationship?”
    “No. No problems. We were getting along fine.”
    I decided to let that rest. I said, “I saw Ralph several times a year, mostly during the summer. Sometimes our families would go up into Canada and stay at a lodge on a lake for a week. I got the impression that Ralph was kind of wild.”
    “He was a little wild, but I helped to calm him down.”
    Or maybe put him to sleep. She must have exhibited more personality with Ralph than she was showing with me. Or did he just like her for her body? I preferred witty chatterboxes, myself. “How long had you two been going together?”
    “Since the start of the year.”
    “The calendar year?”
    “Yes.”
    “So you had been going together almost three months when he…”
    “Yes.”
    She would have been a sophomore and Ralph would have been a junior.
    “Did you see him on the day he…died?”
    “Yes. We sat together at an assembly that took place just before…”
    Her voice trailed off. Usually, classes sat together at assemblies, but sometimes students were able to break away and sit with their friends.
    “Where were you sitting?”
    “In the balcony.”
    “Did you ever see him…do anything unusual or daring in the balcony?”
    “One time he took me there and showed me how he could stand on his hands on the edge. It scared me half to death.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I told him never to do it again.”
    “What happened after the assembly was over?”
    Ruth was silent. I glanced over and saw a tear rolling down her cheek. Maybe I was asking too many questions. I wouldn’t press her any more.
    She wiped the tear away with her finger and said, “I had to go to class. He had a class near mine and ordinarily he would have walked me to my class, but he said he needed to talk to someone. So I went on alone.”
    “Did he say who he needed to talk to?”
    “No.”
    I had one more question. “Did you see him again?”
    She choked as she said, “No.”
    I couldn’t bear to ask her