Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job (2 page)

We got the onions at the store, and I got enough extra milk to make pudding for supper, and we were on our way home when Irene said, “Don't look now, Darcy, but I think we have a couple of admirers.”

Irene is always thinking we have admirers.
All a boy has to do is glance in our direction, and she thinks he's stricken with us. None of them has ever asked us for a date, so it's hard to tell. Neither Mom nor Mrs. Pappagoras would allow us to go out with boys yet, anyway. Irene's mother says when she's fifteen, and my mom isn't committing herself yet; it depends on how mature I am, she says, and she doesn't mean how well my figure is coming along. I didn't get excited when she said we had admirers, figuring it was just her wishful thinking again.

“Look. That car parked there when we went in the store, and it's still there. They haven't gotten out or anything. Just be casual, look across the street, under that big tree.”

I looked, of course. Slowly, casually, the way she suggested. And stubbed my toe on the curb, so the sack split when I nearly fell, and an onion rolled out into the street.

“Oh, classy, Darce,” Irene told me. “I'm sure they're impressed with our grace and beauty now.”

I went back for the onion, absent-mindedly. “It's the same car,” I said, thinking aloud.

“Same car as what?” She shot a surreptitious
glance toward the black car, squared her shoulders to make the best of the yellow T-shirt, and pretended not to be interested in the car under the oak tree.

“The same one I saw earlier today when we left the Foster place. It followed us home and drove back out onto State Street.”

I'll say one thing for Irene, she's not the type to let petty jealousy ruin a friendship. “Darcy, maybe you really do have an admirer! Did he follow you, for sure?”

“I don't know. It looks like the same car. I didn't notice the license number, though.” I stopped and turned around, pretending to be looking past the car at some kids on the sidewalk. I didn't even know them, but I waved, not caring if they thought I was crazy. I wanted to get the number off that license plate.

“Who is it?” Irene asked, turning around too.

“I don't know. Have you got a pencil? The license number is 823 7AV.”

She didn't have anything to write with, and neither did I, but Irene repeated the number as we turned and kept on walking. “Eight-two-three, seven A V. It almost rhymes,
we should be able to remember it. Eight-two-three, seven A V.”

“There are two guys in it,” I said, when I'd repeated the number too. “I couldn't see them very well, it was too shady there. Young though, weren't they?”

I shifted the sack, hugging it against my chest so the onions wouldn't fall out again. “Come on, I need to get home and start supper so it'll be done when Mom gets home from work. It's Dad's bowling night, so they'll want to eat on time.”

We were to be delayed once more, however. As we approached our corner—I wanted to turn and look to see if the black car was still there, but I didn't quite dare, for some reason—a familiar black-and-white police cruiser eased along the curb and stopped just ahead of us.

“Clancy,” I said, thinking it was a friend of my brother Tim's, but it wasn't Clancy. This was a new officer, one we'd never seen.

I felt Irene going into her terrific posture act beside me, and heard her murmur. “Ummm, is he ever cute!”

Mom says Irene is boy crazy, but I had to
agree with her. The new cop didn't look much older than Tim, and he had brown curly hair and a nice face.

“Hi,” he said.

We've been taught not to talk to strangers, but cops didn't count as strangers. At least I didn't think they did.

“Hi,” we both answered, and stopped to look through the open window of the patrol car.

“Either one of you happen to be named Diana? Diana Hazen, maybe?”

I realized then he was looking at the gold-colored barrette in my hair, in the shape of a D. I shook my head. “No. I'm Darcy Stevens, and this is my friend, Irene Pappagoras.”

“If you're looking for Diana Hazen,” Irene said, before I could continue, “that must mean she's run away again.”

The young officer consulted a paper on a clipboard. “Diana Hazen, age thirteen. You know her?”

“We're all in the same grade, but she's in a different homeroom,” Irene offered. “She runs away all the time.”

“She does?” he looked at his paper as if
expecting to find evidence of that there. “Do you know where she usually goes?”

Irene shrugged, and this time she wasn't doing it for effect. “She never goes very far. They always find her. Maybe the next time you find her, you shouldn't take her home. Maybe you should find out why she runs away so often.”

His face was friendly, interested, intelligent. “You know why she runs away?”

“Because her dad's mean to her,” I said, at the same time as Irene said, “She hates it at home. They hit her.”

The officer, who wore an identification badge that said “Chris Roberts,” had keen hazel eyes. “You sure of that?” he asked.

“That's what she said, when we asked why she had the bruises,” I told him. We didn't know Diana very well, because she was never allowed to attend school parties or games or anything. But Irene and I had both been there when someone had asked her about the black-and-blue marks.

“I saw finger marks on her arm, once,” Irene said. “Where her dad grabbed her. She
doesn't talk about it, much, but I'm pretty sure it's true, they hit her.”

“Do you know if she ever talked to anybody at school about it, being mistreated? Teachers, or the school nurse?”

“Not that we know of,” Irene answered. “If anybody asked Mr. Hazen about it, he'd probably just hurt her worse as soon as they were gone. So why would she tell? Especially since the police always take her home.”

He took a pen out of his shirt pocket and held it poised over the paper on the clipboard. “In case I want to talk to you young ladies again about this, could I have your names, addresses, and phone numbers?”

We gave them to him, and he waved a hand at us and drove off. Irene giggled. “Do you realize a man has finally asked for our phone numbers?”

I laughed, too, and then I turned to look after the police car.

It was just turning a corner, beyond the store.

The black car was gone.

I rode my bike up the Fosters' driveway at five minutes to one the next afternoon and looked around for a place to park it. It wasn't the kind of house where a bicycle would look right on the lawn or leaning against the front porch. Actually, it wasn't a porch, just a roof over dark red tiles inside the Spanish-style arches across the front of the house, and I decided I'd better take the bike in there under the roof. I didn't want anybody to come along and steal it.

I rang the bell and waited, feeling a bit fluttery in the stomach. Freddie Cyphers was a little demon, but he was a lot smaller than I was, being only five, and there was only one of him. The Martino kids were girls, two and three; and if you read them stories and fed them periodically, they seldom caused any problems at all.

The Foster kids were going to be a new ball game altogether.

The door swung inward, and a plump, gray-haired lady stepped backward to let me enter. “I take it you're Darcy? The new sitter?”

“That's right,” I said, and tried to look confident.

“I'm Mrs. Murphy. I have about twenty minutes before I leave for the dentist's office, so I'll show you around a bit. The children are playing in the backyard; they're looking forward to having you here while I'm gone.”

I'll bet they are, I thought, and remembered Jeremy sticking out his tongue and gesturing at me with his thumbs in his ears.

“Ordinarily, they'd have had lunch before this, but Jeremy cut himself this morning and I had to take him to the emergency room for some stitches, so we got behind. I'm sure you can fix them something. There's tuna mixed in a bowl in the refrigerator, and fruit. Eat whatever you want yourself, of course.”

“I just had my own lunch,” I told her. “Thank you.”

Tuna fish, I thought. It seemed like in a
house as big and fancy as this one, they'd have something different from what the kids had for lunch at our house.

“This is the living room, of course,” Mrs. Murphy said, indicating the room at the side of the wide, tiled entrance hall, where I'd sat on the oatmeal-colored sofa for my interview. “Usually I get the children to play somewhere besides here. Dr. Foster likes this room to be tidy when she comes home.”

I nodded, understanding. I could imagine the kids getting peanut butter and jelly on those pale sofas or the cream-colored carpeting. When I'd told Mom about that carpet, she'd raised her eyebrows and said, “With three kids?” in an incredulous voice.

We paused before an open doorway. “This is Mr. Foster's study. There's no reason for the children to be in there, either, nor in the master bedroom.”

I peeked into the rooms, seeing walls of books and dark paneling in the study, a broad expanse of deep blue velvety carpet and a king-sized bed with a quilted white silk spread in the bedroom. I could understand
why they wouldn't want the kids to play in those places, but I noted the housekeeper hadn't said they weren't
allowed
in those rooms, only that it was better if they stayed out of them. I hoped that wasn't a clue that nobody
made
these kids do anything they didn't want to do, or kept them from doing what you didn't want them to do.

“This is Jeremy's room,” Mrs. Murphy said, and I looked in there, too.

There was no resemblance to the room my little brothers shared. There were twin beds with bright red spreads, a desk, two dressers, bookshelves, a toybox made to look like a train with four cars, and a whole wall of open shelves that held trucks, trains, teddy bears, a miniature farm, and about everything else I remembered seeing in Sears' Christmas catalog.

Everything was neat and in its place. I could even see under the beds, and there wasn't so much as a discarded sock visible, let alone the toys and books and records and orange peelings my brothers had under their beds.

Mrs. Murphy continued the tour. “This is
Melissa's room, and Shana's is just across the hallway.”

They were much like Jeremy's room, except that Melissa's was blue and white, and Shana's was pink and white, and the toys ran more to dolls and stuffed animals; in Melissa's there was the most elaborate dollhouse I'd ever seen, standing on a table of its own so you could walk all the way around it. Even though I was past the age for dollhouses, I felt a twinge of envy.

“The playroom is back here,” Mrs. Murphy said. “The children spend most of their time here, or in the back yard, if the weather's nice.”

The playroom was about the size of half the ground floor of our house. The carpet was a frosted dark brown, which seemed to indicate that the decorator hadn't been a complete idiot about young children; and the room had a rocking horse, a table with a set of electric trains, a music player along one wall, and all around the place more books, stuffed toys, and games than our school has in the kindergarten. There was a real rowboat, with cushions in it, and a playhouse I was sure Jeremy could
stand up in. Through its windows I saw miniature furniture as nice as the stuff in the rest of the real house, except that it was smaller.

Wow! Lucky kids, I thought.

We'd made almost a circle through the house. Mrs./Dr. Foster had a study, too, and there was a formal dining room with a crystal chandelier and murals on the walls, and a smaller family dining area, and a kitchen in pale wood with gold and white vinyl floor and counter tops and every appliance I'd ever heard of—and some I hadn't. Beyond the kitchen was a utility room; and though she didn't show it to me, Mrs. Murphy said there was a recreation room downstairs with a pool table, a sauna, and exercise machines.

“It's time for me to go,” the housekeeper said, consulting her watch. “I'll probably be back around four. The children are right out there. Oh, Dr. Foster said she forgot to ask you—can you swim?”

“Yes,” I said, still sort of overwhelmed by the house, trying to memorize it all to tell Irene about it.

“Good. The children are allowed to swim
whenever they like, as long as they have a swimmer in the pool with them. Good-bye, then, I'll see you this afternoon.”

When she was gone, I stood for a minute in the middle of the kitchen, almost wishing I was the one who'd gone to the dentist instead of Mrs. Murphy.

What was the matter with me? All I had to do was keep three little kids from killing themselves, or each other, or me, until Mrs. Murphy came back.

The kids looked up when I went out through the patio doors into the back yard. As I'd expected, it too was oversized, and there was a six-foot board fence around it.

Shana, the little one, was playing in a sandbox, spooning up sand into a bucket. As I approached, Jeremy came along and kicked the yellow plastic pail, sending it contents flying all over his sister.

I expected her to start crying, but she didn't. She snatched up the pail and hit him on the leg with it.

“You stop that, Jeremy!”

He paid no attention to her, coming to a
halt instead before me. “We told you we didn't want you for a sitter,” he said.

“I want you for a sitter,” Melissa decided. “So does Shana, don't you, Shana?”

The two year old looked me over, then nodded. “I'm hungry. Let's eat in shicken.”

“Mrs. Murphy said there was tuna fish for sandwiches,” I told them. “She didn't say anything about chicken.”

Melissa reached for the younger girl's hand. “She means in the kitchen.
Shicken
means either kitchen or chicken.”