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the street. “Stop a minute.”
    “That’s a really cool
building, but not quite what I had in mind,” Chad said dryly as he
pulled to the curb.
    I recognized this place
from pictures Cora had shown me. The two-story school had a central
bell tower, and a third-story dormer with small diamond-shaped
panes. Close behind the building was a chain-link fence, with the
Petite Sauble River just beyond. I hadn’t realized the building was
so near the river. I wondered where the schoolkids had played. The
structure obviously hadn’t been in use for a long time. Some
windows were broken out and covered with plywood. Nevertheless, it
was a handsome building.
    “Ma? Hey, are you in
there?” Once again, I’d been lost in thought until Chad’s voice
brought me back. Maybe I had been spending too much time alone
lately.
     

Chapter 7
     
    “Sorry. I’m still
discovering things around here too. A friend told me about this
building, but it’s even more beautiful in real life.”
    “Beautiful?” Chad asked
with some disdain. “Looks pretty spooky to me. A great place to
scare some friends on Halloween. Maybe I’ll come back in October
and bring my buddies.”
    He put the car in gear
again, and we continued straight for a couple of blocks till
Liberty ended where West South River Road veered off to the right,
close to the water. I pointed. “Take this. It’s even closer to the
river than US 10.”
    “Now we’re getting
somewhere.”
    We drove for a few minutes
past several large year-round homes, stately Victorian mansions,
until the road narrowed and the space between the pavement and the
river became filled with black willow trees, brushy sumac and
overgrown grape vines. Occasional clumps of deep purple asters
brightened the scene. The water wasn’t visible, and there appeared
to be no cottages along this stretch. “I don’t know which sections
have been built up by summer people,” I apologized. At least I’d
been in Cherry Hill long enough to know what cottage owners were
called.
    “We’ll find them,” Chad
said with the confidence of the young. But, the landscape still
didn’t reveal any driveways on the water side. “I’ve been thinking
about your dead body.”
    “What? It’s not my
body!”
    “You know what I mean. It’s
just too weird, a name so much like the newspaper guy. Doesn’t seem
like a coincidence,” Chad said.
    “I agree, but he’s much
younger than Jerry Caulfield. Shorter, too. Even if someone was
trying to hurt Jerry, they couldn’t have mistaken the two
men.”
    “No, the similarity isn’t
their looks, but their names. It’s more like some kind of
threat.”
    “Seems awfully
far-fetched.”
    “Maybe. But it’s pretty
unlikely that a man who lives hours away, that no one seems to
know, would come up here and get himself murdered by accident in a
town with someone whose name is so similar.”
    I grinned. “Murdered by
accident?”
    “My point
exactly.”
    “But what could it mean? It
doesn’t make much sense any way you look at it. And I don’t think
they know where he was killed.” I was sure the Sheriff hadn’t
mentioned it, but maybe he knew and wasn’t telling.
    “I think it’s a warning. I
think someone wants to tell Jerry Cauliflower that he should be
careful.”
    I clucked my tongue, and
tried not to smile. “Caulfield, Jerry Caulfield. But who would have
that big of a grudge against Jerry?”
    “Don’t ask me. It’s your
town. Think about it. People with that much power always have
enemies. And he’s old. He’s had time to collect lots of
them.”
    “Maybe, but I haven’t been
here long enough to hear much against him.” Jerry didn’t seem that
old to me, but he did have control of considerable property in
town. And I knew that four generations of Caulfields had lived on
the upper edge of Cherry Hill society. Poorer folks always resented
those with money. However, if this was a warning, a lot of planning
had gone into it. Luring Jared Canfield to