Behind the Curtain (9 page)

“T
HIS CHILD,” SAID MS
. Groome, “has a rather wild story I suppose you should hear.”

“Hello, Ingrid,” said Chief Strade.

“You know her?” said Ms. Groome. They stood by the chief’s patrol car at the bottom of the high school steps.

“From way back,” said Chief Strade. He was a big man with a big rough face and watchful eyes.

“Has she been in trouble before?” said Ms. Groome.

Chief Strade ignored her. “What happened, Ingrid?” he said.

“I got kidnapped, Mr. Strade,” Ingrid said. Her voice wobbled a little; she fought to keep it steady.
“I jumped out of a car.”

“On the morning of MathFest, by happy coincidence,” said Ms. Groome. “I’ve heard a lot of excuses in my time, but this one really takes the cake. You would not believe the lengths some kids will go to these days to get out of—”

Chief Strade held up his hand, a powerful hand with fingers like sausages. Ms. Groome fell silent.

“First of all,” said Chief Strade, “are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Nowhere at all?”

“No.”

He gazed down at her. “Tell me the whole story.”

“It…it was horrible,” Ingrid said. And then the tears came—she couldn’t help it. “I thought I was going to die.”

“You may not know,” said Ms. Groome, “but Ingrid has a lot of acting ability. A leading light of the Prescott Players, I’m told.”

Chief Strade turned to her. “Ms. Groome, is it?”

“Correct.”

“Thanks for your input, Ms. Groome. If I need more, I’ll be in touch.”

Ms. Groome’s head snapped back. “I’m sure you know your business,” she said, “but it’s just
common sense that jumping out of cars leaves a mark, and there’s not one on her.” She walked back up the stairs and disappeared inside the school.

Ingrid wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve. “That’s because I rolled down the hill,” she said.

“What hill?” said the chief.

“I don’t know, exactly,” said Ingrid. “Where I jumped out.”

“Why don’t we start at the beginning?” said Chief Strade.

Ingrid started at the beginning, tried to tell a sensible story: garage, bike, shimmering spiderweb, swimming pool smell, duct tape, lock mechanism. It all got totally messed up. She could see that in Chief Strade’s eyes. And when she got to the part about jumping from the car—

“A moving car, Ingrid?”

“Yes.”

“About how fast?”

“I don’t know.”

—his eyes went quickly to her face and hands. She checked her hands too: not a mark, as Ms. Groome had pointed out.

“You rolled down a hill?” Chief Strade said.

“Yes.”

“Then walked through some woods?”

“Yes.”

“And came out at the football field?”

“Yes.”

“Scoreboard end?”

“Yes.”

The chief nodded, as though something added up. “You went into the garage at eight thirteen.”

“Or maybe a minute later.”

“And got to the high school ten minutes after this math thing, which ended at nine thirty.”

“Yes. Now I want to go home.”

“All right,” he said, just for a moment laying his hand on her shoulder.

They got into the cruiser, Ingrid sitting up front with Chief Strade. “Seat belt, please,” he said.

Ingrid buckled her seat belt. They sat there for a moment. The chief’s car smelled of coffee and pine trees. She took a long, slow breath.

“Handle a quick detour first?” the chief said. “See if we can’t find this hill of yours?”

“Okay.”

A light rain began to fall as he pulled away from the high school. Ingrid shivered.

“Heat?” said the chief.

“Thanks.”

He turned on the blower, drove a few blocks. “Didn’t know you were a math whiz,” he said.

“I’m not,” Ingrid said.

“No?”

“I hate math.”

“Then how come you’re in this MathFest competition?”

Was it a competition? A math competition with a fun name: of course. So slow sometimes to clue in. “It was a punishment,” Ingrid said.

The chief’s eyes shifted toward her, real quick. “For what?”

“Fooling around in class.”

“What kind of fooling around?”

“Passing a note.”

“What was in the note?”

“I was just asking the word for something.”

“What?”

“For contradictions in terms—like giant midget.”

“They’ve got a word for that?”

“Oxymoron,” Ingrid said.

He glanced at her again. “Teachers must see worse notes than that,” he said.

Ingrid shrugged. He turned onto Benedict Drive,
a road she didn’t know. A curvy road with not many houses, and a sign saying
TOWN DUMP
, pointing straight ahead.

“How do you and Ms. Groome get along?” the chief said.

“All right.”

“Who’s Joe got for math again?” the chief said. “I forgot.”

“Mr. Proctor.” Joey was in Pre-Algebra. That was where Ingrid belonged too. Then none of this would have happened.

“One thing’s for sure,” Chief Strade said. “Joe’s no math whiz.”

Up ahead, Benedict Drive curved sharply to the left. Chief Strade pulled over. They got out of the car, walked to the side of the road. A thin strip of dirt bordered the pavement. Beyond that, the ground sloped steeply away to a gully below. Beyond the gully lay the woods.

“This it?” said the chief.

“I think so.”

“Pretty sure?”

“I think so.”

The chief peered down the slope. Rain fell steadily. A drop trickled off the brim of his hat.

“Help me out on a few things,” he said. “You were still taped up when you popped the trunk?”

“Yes.”

“And jumped.”

“Yes.”

“Duct tape, the silver stuff?”

“Yes.”

“But you ended up getting it off somewhere.”

Ingrid pointed down the slope.

“So you didn’t see a thing—not the car, not the driver, nothing.”

“Nothing,” said Ingrid.

The chief put on a pair of white plastic gloves, like investigators on TV. “How about we go after those pieces of duct tape?”

“Okay.”

“Only if you’re up to it,” the chief said. “I could drop you off, come back.”

“I’m up to it,” Ingrid said.

They started down the hill, the scrubby grass matted and slick now with rain. There wasn’t much grass in the gully at the bottom, mostly stones, stunted brown weeds, patches of dirt. Not much cover at all: It only took a minute or two to establish that the duct tape pieces weren’t there.

“Sure this is the spot?” the chief said.

Ingrid gazed into the woods. Trees like any others, a thick carpet of damp leaves on the ground, no landmark. And it had all happened so fast.

“I think so,” Ingrid said.

The chief walked to the edge of the woods, lifted some leaves with the toe of his big black shoe. No duct tape.

“Thing with these woods,” he said, “is they’re the only ones that back onto the high school.” He faced the hill, peered up at the crest. “And this is the only slope into them off Benedict Drive.”

“So the duct tape has to be here,” Ingrid said.

“Got to be,” said the chief.

Ingrid wandered around in the gully, the rain falling harder now, flattening her hair. No duct tape. Was it possible an animal had dragged off the pieces or a bird had flown away with them?

“Something on your mind?” said the chief, behind her, his voice quiet.

She turned to him. “Don’t you see?” she said.

“See what?”

“Whoever did this must have come back and picked up all the duct tape. There’s no other explanation.”

“For what reason, Ingrid?”

“To get rid of the evidence,” she said. “Maybe his fingerprints were on the tape.”

“Why do you say
his
?” said the chief.

“It just came out.”

“Did you hear any voices?”

“Just on the radio.”

“The radio?”

“Or CD player. I heard that song ‘I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues.’”

The chief nodded. “Elton John. I’ve got all his stuff.”

“You do?”

“Big fan,” said the chief. He lifted up a fallen branch Ingrid had seen him lift already, tossed it aside. No duct tape.

“Maybe whoever it was left footprints,” Ingrid said.

Down in the gully, water was collecting in puddles. Little rivulets trickled down the slope.

“Not a good day for footprints,” the chief said. “Let’s get you home.”

But he stopped at the hospital on the way.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

“Got to,” said the chief.

A quick checkup: not a mark on her. Totally unharmed.

“Oh, sweetheart!” Mom said, her eyes filling with tears. She held on to Ingrid.

They were in the kitchen at 99 Maple Lane—Chief Strade, Mom, Ingrid; Dad still out with the Sandblasters, Ty still at Greg’s. The chief told Mom the whole story. Mom squeezed Ingrid tighter and tighter until it got to be too much and Ingrid backed away.

“But who would do something like this?” Mom said.

“Can’t know for sure because Ingrid ruined the plan so fast,” said the chief. “But it usually comes down to two types—someone after ransom money or a sicko.”

“But we’re not rich,” Mom said. “And we don’t know any sickos.”

That last remark was pure Mom. Ingrid had never loved her more than she did at that moment.

“Can I check the garage?” the chief said.

“Of course,” said Mom.

The chief went into the garage.

Mom turned to Ingrid, her eyes wetting up again.

“I’m all right, Mom.”

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

“Sure.”

“Not…hurt in any way?”

“Don’t worry, Mom. It’s over.”

The chief came back in the kitchen.

“Anything?” Mom said.

He shook his head. “There’s only one other possibility I can think of,” he said.

“What’s that?” said Mom.

Chief Strade turned to Ingrid. “Do you have any enemies?” he said.

“Enemies?” said Mom. “She’s thirteen years old.”

“Other than Ms. Groome,” said the chief.

“The math teacher?” Mom said. “You think she had something to do with this?”

“It’s a joke, Mom,” said Ingrid.

“Sorry,” said the chief. He actually blushed a little. It looked very weird on that craggy face.

“But I don’t understand,” Mom said.

“Mom, forget it,” said Ingrid. “No enemies,” she told Chief Strade.

“See?” said Mom. “No enemies. So where are we?”

“I don’t know,” said the chief. He turned to Ingrid. “Remember
The Sign of Four
?”

“What’s that?” said Mom.

“Sherlock Holmes,” Ingrid said; the chief was a Holmes reader too.

“One of my favorites,” the chief said. “That’s where Holmes says, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

“And therefore?” said Mom.

The chief unfolded three fingers, one at a time. “Ransom—no note, no call. Sicko—no evidence. Enemies—don’t exist.” He unfolded a fourth, his ring finger, although the chief, divorced, wore no ring. He gazed at that finger, glanced at Ingrid, lowered it without saying anything.

“What does that mean,” said Mom, “if it’s none of them?”

“Not necessarily anything,” said the chief. “We’ll just have to forget motive for now, get busy with some old-fashioned grunt work.”

“Like what?” said Mom.

“Fingerprints first,” said the chief. “State crime lab’ll be here Monday. Meantime, don’t touch anything in the garage. And for now, Ingrid better not go anywhere alone.”

“Oh, God,” said Mom. “Is she still in danger?”

“My gut says no,” said the chief. “But we can’t rule it out.” He moved toward the door, stopped. “Anything you’ve left out, Ingrid? Anything else you want to say?”

“No.”

He gave her a long look, then nodded. “That was an incredible thing you did.”

“Thanks.”

It was only after Chief Strade had gone that Ingrid thought about the word
incredible
, a word that no one took literally but in fact did have a literal meaning. The literal meaning was
not believable
.

“S
HE WANTS TO GO
to soccer,” Mom said.

“She does?” said Dad.

They sat around the kitchen table—Mom, Dad, Ty, Ingrid. Ty’s eyes were open wide.

“It’s the playoffs,” Ingrid said.

Ty nodded. That made sense to him.

“Playoffs?” said Mom. “What difference does—”

“If she feels up to it, she should go,” Dad said.

“I feel up to it,” Ingrid said. In fact, she really wanted to get out there, to run around, to play.

“How does she know what she feels?” Mom said. “This all just happened. She could be in shock.”

“She looks kind of the same as always,” Ty said,
peering at her from across the table.

“Hey,” said Ingrid. “I’m right here. Stop talking about me in the third person.”

“She’s right,” said Dad.

The whole family went to the soccer game, excluding Nigel. Dogs had to be leashed at the soccer fields, and Nigel didn’t do well on a leash. Mom, Dad, and Ty crossed the field to the aluminum stands on the far side. Ingrid walked toward the bench, where the girls were huddling around Julia LeCaine, a few of them bouncing up and down with pregame jitters. Ingrid usually had pregame jitters too, but not today. Kind of a strange interval, no one else knowing yet what had happened that morning. Correction: She had jitters, all right, just nothing to do with soccer.

Stacy—yes, Stacy, now back on the As where she belonged—saw Ingrid and said, “Hey, Ingrid—got any gum?”

Julia LeCaine spun around. She saw Ingrid too, at the same time possibly stepping in a hole, because she staggered a little. “Ingrid?” she said.

“Hi,” said Ingrid. “Sorry I’m late.”

Julia looked at her watch, stared at it in a funny
way, like maybe it wasn’t working.

The ref blew his whistle.

“This is when Coach Ringer gives the pep talk,” said one of the girls.

They all looked at Julia, standing motionless, mouth slightly open but not saying anything. Did she have pregame jitters too? The whistle sounded again. Coach Ringer’s pep talks were usually pretty confusing, but Ingrid didn’t like the idea of going out on the field without a pep talk, and she could see on the faces of her teammates that none of them did either.

“What was that thing you said the last time?” asked another girl.

“Last time?” said Julia, licking her lips. She looked a little pale, pregame jitters or maybe coming down with something.

“‘Whatever it takes,’” said Ingrid. “Wasn’t that it?”

The girls nodded, but not enthusiastically. Ingrid thought she knew why: It was a game, right? That made “whatever it takes” a little over the top.

“How about—let’s win it for Coach Ringer?” said Stacy, which was pretty cool considering her history with him.

“Yeah!”

They clustered tight together, raised their hands
high, making a kind of cone in the sky.

“Coach Ringer!”

“That’s as loud as you can do?” said Stacy. “Come on now, so he can hear it down at the hospital.”

“COACH RINGER!”

Then they went out on a cold, rainy afternoon and beat up on Torrington, four to one. Glad to win, glad that Stacy was back on the team, glad to be muddy, they went through the handshake line—“good game, good game, good game,” no spitting on their palms first, or any of that other boy stuff—and returned to the bench for the coach’s postmortem. Julia was already gone.

“Different style of coaching,” said one of the parents, coming across the field.

“Works for me,” said another. “How are the girls going to relate to an old coot like him?”

One thing about Ingrid: She never took naps during the day. But after the game, rain falling hard now and the wind really blowing, she went down to the TV room. That old couch, the one that used to be in the living room before Mom upgraded at Pottery Barn—so comfy. She pulled up Mom’s mohair blanket, clicked through the channels. Wall-to-wall college football. Ingrid didn’t care about college
football. She cared about Echo Falls football, specifically how Ty was doing. A disk was in the DVD player. She hit Play to see what it was.

An impossibly beautiful black-and-white face appeared on the screen. Were any faces in the whole history of the human race ever really as beautiful as that? The face spoke. The voice was beautiful too: “Oh, Rick.”

No, not
Casablanca.

But it was. Mom’s favorite movie—Ingrid had tried to sit through it once, a sappy tale about always having Paris or something like that, with a song about do or die that had made Mom cry tears in buckets. None of that was important, except for the fact that Mom and Dad had actually named Ingrid after Ingrid Bergman, the star of the picture. In the whole history of Hollywood there must have been thousands of female movie stars to pick from, including Daisy Duck. Mom and Dad could have done way better.

Rick told the piano player never to play that song again, or possibly to keep playing it, as a sort of punishment, although who was being punished wasn’t clear. Cigarette smoke curled upward. A ceiling fan spun. Ingrid’s eyes closed.

Whiz. Thump.

“Phone.”

Ingrid awoke, dim light in the room, blue screen on the TV, portable phone lying in a curl of the mohair blanket.

Ingrid picked it up. “Hi.”

“Hi,” said Joey.

“Hi.”

“You, um,” said Joey, “all right?”

For a moment, she’d forgotten the whole thing. Now it all came back: shadowy garage, swimming pool smell, darkness. “Yeah,” she said.

“Like what happened?” Joey said.

“Didn’t your dad tell you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well that’s what happened.”

“You got kidnapped.”

“Yeah.”

“And escaped out of a car trunk?”

“Yeah.”

“And all this, um, duct tape, was gone?”

“That’s right.”

“Um. Are you okay?”

“I played soccer this afternoon.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You win?”

“Four one over Torrington.”

“Cool. Score any goals?”

“No.”

Silence.

“So,” said Joey.

“So?”

“Like, why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would someone do that to you?”

Ransom—no note. Sickos—no evidence. Enemies—none. What other possibilities were there? “I don’t know,” Ingrid said.

Silence.

“What’s up, Joey?”

“Thing is,” said Joey, “guess who came over here.”

“Just tell me.”

“Ms. Groome.”

“Ms. Groome came over to your house?”

“She just left.” Joey paused. “She was talking to my dad. In the kitchen. You know the front hall at our place?”

“Yeah.”

“You can hear what goes on in the kitchen from the hall. I snuck down there.”

“And?”

“She was saying all these bad things about you.”

Did that really surprise Ingrid? Maybe not. But it made her sick for a moment, just the same.

“Like what?” she said.

“Stupid stuff.”

“Tell me.”

“Really dumb.”

“Joey—are you going to tell me or not?”

“She thinks you made it all up.”

“Why would I do that?”

“That’s what my dad said. And she told him it was all to get her back for making you go to MathFest.”

“That’s so wacked.”

“Yeah.”

“Did he tell her she was out of her mind?”

Pause. “He didn’t say much, just kind of listened. She, uh, thinks you’re, um, what’s that word?”

“What word?”

“Means, like…” Joey lapsed into silence.

“Like what?”

“Like when you, uh…”

“Manipulative?”

“Yeah, that’s it—she thinks you’re manipulative. You’ve got everybody fooled.”

“She said that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your dad knows me.”

“Yeah.”

“So there’s no way he’s going to believe her.”

Silence.

“He believes me, right?”

More silence. At last Joey said, “I believe you, Ingrid.”

Ingrid went upstairs. “Anybody home?”

No answer, even though she knew Ty had to be around somewhere. She glanced in the driveway. No cars. But Chief Strade’s cruiser was parked across the street. For a moment, Ingrid thought maybe he was standing guard. Then she noticed he wasn’t actually in the car but at the Grunellos’ front door, talking to Mrs. Grunello.

Mrs. Grunello wore a pink housecoat and had pink curlers in her hair. She pointed at the birdbath on the front lawn. Chief Strade went over, walked around it, said something. Mrs. Grunello shook her head. The chief said something else. Mrs. Grunello
looked across the street at 99 Maple Lane and shook her head again. She closed her door. The chief got in the cruiser and drove away.

Ingrid stood in the hall for a long time, gazing out at the Grunellos’ house. It seemed to get closer and closer, as though she were crossing the street. The next thing she knew, Ingrid
was
crossing the street. She had to know.

She knocked on the Grunellos’ door. Mrs. Grunello opened up. She still had the curlers in but now she wore a wine-colored pantsuit instead of the housecoat, and held a lipstick in her hand. Her eyes: surprised for a second; then a shift to some quick thought; and back to their normal expression, warm and friendly.

“Hello, Ingrid,” she said.

“Hi, Mrs. Grunello,” said Ingrid.

“Are you all right?”

“Sure,” said Ingrid and saw an opening. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t really know,” said Mrs. Grunello. “That is, Mr., uh…”

“Mr. Strade?”

Mrs. Grunello laughed, a laugh that somehow told Ingrid that Mrs. Grunello realized she’d been
watching from across the street. “He didn’t exactly tell me the reason for his questions,” Mrs. Grunello said.

“What kind of questions?” asked Ingrid.

Mrs. Grunello paused. “He didn’t say I couldn’t discuss it, either.”

Ingrid waited.

“I got the idea that maybe there’d been a stalker or something in the neighborhood this morning,” Mrs. Grunello said.

“Yeah?” said Ingrid.

Mrs. Grunello nodded. “Mr. Strade asked if I’d seen a car parked outside your house between eight and eight thirty.”

“And?”

“I didn’t. And it just so happens I was out on the front lawn the whole time.”

“You were?”

“Working on the birdbath.”

“The birdbath?”

Mrs. Grunello pointed. “Prepping the base for this new protective coating stuff I got from Towne Hardware. The stone’s starting to dissolve, like it’s getting eaten away by acid.”

“Oh,” said Ingrid.

“I hope it’s not pollution,” said Mrs. Grunello. “That would be scary.”

“Very,” said Ingrid. All of a sudden she heard Nigel barking, no doubt right behind the door at 99 Maple Lane.

“But the point was I didn’t see any cars parked on the street,” Mrs. Grunello said. “None even drove by the whole time I was there.”

From inside the house, Mr. Grunello called, “Where the hell are my tassel loafers?”

“Where they always are, in the closet,” Mrs. Grunello called over her shoulder. She lowered her voice back to normal and added, “You dope.” And then to Ingrid: “So what’s this all about?”

“I wish I knew,” said Ingrid.