Blackthorn Winter (28 page)

Ivy ran to me, red-faced and tearful. "Polar is ruined!"

"Murdered," said Edmund. "Just plain murdered."

I looked at the pieces of stuffed animal Ivy held out in her two hands and closed my eyes against the vision of that beloved toy now savagely beheaded and smeared with red paint. Further stab wounds rent the white fluffy fabric of the headless body. "Who did this?" I whispered.

"And
why?
" wailed Ivy. "Why does somebody hate Polar?"

"You know it's not really about Polar," Mom said gently, coming over and taking the paint-stained remains from
Ivy's hands. "It's a message to us." She looked at me. "And there's another message on the doorstep."

I moved like a sleepwalker past Veronica and Duncan, expecting another beach stone. But outside of our cottage, Polar Bear's attacker had printed in red paint right on the stone step:
YANKEES GO HOME.

"What are Yankees, anyway?" asked Edmund.

"We are," Ivy said sadly. "Americans."

I remembered Rodney Whitsun calling me a Yankee, teasing me about jogging. I rubbed my forehead as if I could delete the memory by pressing hard.

"Duncan and I saw it first," Veronica told me, her eyes gleaming with excitement. "Ooh, I can't believe anybody would be so nasty!"

"What were you doing here, anyway?" I asked abruptly.

"Veronica stopped by to see if I was interested in a job that's opening up at the Old Ship," Duncan clarified, frowning at me. "They're hiring part-time kitchen help—and she wanted me to have first crack at getting the position. I told her I couldn't do it because I can't get home from school early enough, but then we thought of you, Juliana. Because you don't go to school, I mean not in the regular way. And you're British as well as American, right? So you'd be able to work legally in this country, right?"

"I guess so," I said distractedly. "I mean, I do have dual citizenship. Ivy and Edmund and I all do, because of Mom." I was thinking it was very odd indeed that Veronica happened to stop by at the same time Polar had been found.

"The hours are weekdays from three till seven," Veronica added. "Starting tomorrow. It's dull, but the pay's not too bad..."

"Anyway, I thought we should come tell you about the
job," Duncan continued, "and then of course as soon as we got to your door we saw ... it. So we knocked—"

"Ooh, it's just so
hateful!
" said Veronica, wide-eyed.

"But why would anybody hate us?" demanded Ivy. "What have we done?"

"Nothing," I said, giving Veronica a look. Why was she so excited? Was it because she knew a
lot
more about what had happened than she was letting on?

"Well, somebody's pretty mad about
something.
" Mom laid the bear on the wide window ledge, then closed the door. "I'm going to ring the police again." She crossed the sitting room to pick up the phone and started upstairs with it.

"Again?" Veronica jumped on the word. She was quick, that girl. Quick like a fox.

"Oh, yeah. We're getting to be really good friends with the local police," I told her. I could hear Mom walking down the hallway to the privacy of her studio.

"Yesterday there was a rock," Duncan informed Veronica, and then filled her in about the warning. Ivy and Edmund, who hadn't known about yesterday's message, listened with wide eyes.

"Wait a second," I interrupted. "How did the bear get on the doorstep? Last night Ivy left it over at your place. Quent said he'd look for it and bring it over when he found it."

"And he did." Duncan's voice was calming, smooth. Why did it grate on my nerves? "I was just going to bed late last night when Quent found Ivy's bear in our little downstairs bathroom off the front hallway. He told me he was going to stick it in a plastic bag—to keep it dry—and put
it on your doorstep. He wanted Ivy to have her bear back as soon as she woke up."

"Where is Quent now?" Mom asked Duncan, turning to peer down at us from the stairs.

"He had to leave for London early—around six, I think. He'll be furious when he hears."

Mom nodded, then continued upstairs to phone the police.

"Was the bear in the plastic bag when you two found it?" I asked Duncan.

"No..." Duncan looked at Veronica. "Did you see a plastic bag, Ronnie?"

"Nope. I didn't see anything or anybody except for Henry Jukes—"

"Henry!" I exclaimed. "Where is he?"

"He arrived at the same time I did, didn't he, Dunk-o?

What's he here for?"

"Quent hired him to chop down two dead walnut trees at the back of the garden. He came yesterday afternoon and was working until pretty late, and he's at it now—can't you hear him?"

When we all stopped talking and listened, we could hear the faint buzz of a chain saw at the back of the large garden. Would Henry Jukes have had time to murder an American polar bear before he started working? And—would he?

I just didn't believe this was a message from some anonymous anti-American lout, trying to scare us out of England. I had a feeling it was a message from Liza's murderer.

Liza's murderer was scared.

Somehow the murderer knew that I wasn't convinced Simon Jukes was guilty. The murderer wanted to stop me
from talking about my suspicions, stop me from nosing around. The murderer was worried I was getting close to the truth.

"Oh—wait!" Veronica exclaimed. "Henry wasn't the only person I saw around here. I saw the Thurbers. They were just driving down Water Street, and they waved. Mrs. Thurber rolled down her window and said they were leaving early to get to an appointment with their adoption agency. She was so excited!"

"They don't live on Water Street," Duncan observed.

Veronica's eyes sparkled. "And I bumped into none other than Oliver Pethering just outside your front wall, Dunk-o. Just as I was arriving. We said good morning, and he told me he called round your place on his way to the shop to tell Quent about a new shipment of wines."

"So he did," said Duncan. "He stopped by just before you got here, Ronnie. But Quent had already gone off to London. I'll give him the message when I see him tonight."

My eyes darted from Duncan's face to Veronica's, trying to keep their account of things straight.

Questions tumbled over themselves in my head: Had Oliver left the beach stone on our doorstep yesterday, and then slipped into the garden again today, determined to leave another nasty message—and found Ivy's bear already on the step? Had Oliver destroyed the toy and painted the new message? Or was the stalker more likely to have been Henry Jukes, taking a break from tree cutting? Were those stab marks on the bear, as I'd thought—or chain-saw tracks? And the red paint—was it the same as the paint on yesterday's rock? Had it come from the Coopers' house, or from Rodney and Andrew's place? And those Thurbers! What were they doing taking a little detour off the main
drag onto Water Street—when they were supposedly rushing off to their adoption agency? What about Celia Glendenning? She had left our house before we went to bed, and she could have hidden in the garden. She could have seen Quent leave the bear in the plastic bag. She could have come creeping back.

I looked over at Veronica, studied her face. Or ... was the culprit right here, under my nose?

Duncan was looking at me intently. I scowled at him. "What?"

He shrugged. "You look so fierce, that's all."

"You'd look fierce, too," I told Duncan, "if you kept getting threatening messages!"
And if every single person in England seemed threatening,
I thought to myself.

"Well, at least you can't pin this one on my grandparents, can you?" His voice was mild.

"What?" yelped Veronica. "You mean she thinks your
grandparents
are going around defiling little girls' teddy bears? Come now, that's a low blow, Juliana—even for a Yank. Little old ladies and gentlemen don't
do
things like that. Maybe in California they do, but not in
England.
"

"Maybe it was Jean and Leo Thurber," Duncan suggested. "Just stopping by for a bit of criminal activity on their way to their adoption agency."

Both of them made me sick. I sat at the kitchen table ignoring them, my mind racing as I tried to piece the puzzle together. Henry Jukes could have beheaded the polar bear; so could Oliver Pethering. But what about Veronica herself? I had a bad feeling about that girl.

Or ... even
Duncan
could have done it—to get back at me for suspecting his beloved grandparents!

Well ... no. Even my paranoid brain had to reject that
possibility outright. I hadn't known Duncan long, but I couldn't picture him hurting Ivy that way. He was right: I was acting like a lunatic. But nothing made sense and so anything seemed possible, even things that couldn't be.

Something else wasn't making sense, but I wasn't sure what it was. Something seemed wrong—here, in our cottage, just like last night. But what? Celia Glendenning wasn't hiding anywhere this time, so what was it? I looked around the room, trying to figure out what felt off-balance.

"The police will be here soon," Mom said, coming downstairs and replacing the phone. "Veronica and Duncan, I'm afraid they said they want to speak to you, too. I hope you won't mind waiting."

"Ooh, not at all! At last—some excitement in my humdrum life!"

I couldn't tell if Veronica meant to be cute or if she was serious. Either way, she was so annoying, I couldn't bear it.

"Will they be able to fix Polar Bear, Mom?" asked Ivy.

Mom's voice was soothing. "I don't know, dear. But I'm sure they'll help clear this awful mystery up in no time. So don't you worry."

They all moved to the sitting room to wait for the police, but I stayed at the kitchen table, too angry and sick and afraid to move. The voice from my dream was back in my head, ringing hollow assurances:
We'll be fine, just fine. Now don't you worry about a thing...

 

O
FFICERS
L
INK AND
Petersen arrived and took everyone's statement. Predictably, they told us the ruined stuffed toy was just a nasty prank. There was a lot of anti-American feeling in the world; perhaps someone in Blackthorn was making a political sort of statement. They would look into
it. Mom nodded, reassured. But I shook my head in disbelief.

Still, there was no arguing with the police. They put the corpse of poor Polar into a plastic bag as evidence, promising to give it back so Mom could try to wash and repair it after they'd had the police photographer take pictures of it. Ivy ran to the mantel to get the photo from last year's birthday party—the photo of her and Edmund with their stuffed animals balanced on their heads—so they could see what Polar Bear had looked like before the attack. The officers studied the photo and made appropriately soothing comments.

And that's when I caught my breath—finally realizing what had been bothering me since the night before, finally seeing what was off-kilter. I hadn't seen it before—
because it wasn't there,
and that was the problem. My school photo was not on the mantel with the other framed pictures.

Had it fallen? I looked swiftly around the fireplace. Should I tell the police? But Mom was showing them out now. Veronica was leaving, too, thank goodness, needing to get to work at the Old Ship. That left Duncan at the kitchen table.

"Celia Glendenning was here last night," I told him, sitting in the chair across from him. I related how she'd been in the bathroom when I'd come home.

"Probably she was just returning the key, as she said." Duncan shrugged. His cheeks grew redder till they almost matched his fiery hair. Then his eyes flashed at me and his voice grew hard. "I'm getting really
sick
of the way you see danger in everything and everybody."

I glared back at him. "Well, Celia
did
sneak in here, and I think she stole my school picture, too. She was carrying a
big tote bag. It would have fit!" Our angry eyes met and held for a long moment. Yes, he was gorgeous and caring and the only boy I knew who could make my pulse race, but he was also obstinate and thick-skulled and annoying. I could tell he felt the same way about me.

Mom came back to the table. "What's this about your picture?"

I pulled away from Duncan's gaze. "It's not on the mantel, Mom. I noticed just now. But I felt there was something wrong last night; I just didn't figure out what it was. I think Celia took the picture, Mom! But that's so weird. Why
would
she?"

Mom sank into a chair and scrubbed her fingers through her hair. "Who knows, Juliana. Who knows what's going on around here. I just don't know what to think anymore, and so it's probably best if we just try to forget it."

"
Forget
it?" My voice rose. "How can we just ignore what's happening?"

"Look, Celia is the least of my worries just now. She brought the key back and used the toilet. Or not ... who cares? Your photo was on the mantel yesterday—that I know for sure, because I dusted it. But it's gone now. Maybe I moved it and don't remember. Who cares? I've got a mutilated polar bear and a very upset little girl, and I'm supposed to be getting ready for an art show and I don't have any time to paint because of all this weirdness!"

Mom's voice cracked. "I just wanted to come to a place that was peaceful and quiet, where I could focus on my work. I never expected ... all this."

See?
I wanted to say.
That's what happens if you walk out on Dad!
But this time I kept my mouth shut.

Mom sighed and smoothed her hair. "Okay, right. Let's
get organized. Yesterday Ivy and Edmund and I were invited to visit with Sophie and Charlie-Tom and their mum. There's a puppet show at the library, and then they've asked us back to their place for lunch and to spend the afternoon. So I think that's what we'll do. Something nice and normal." Mom looked at me. "Would you like to come, too, Jule? Or do you and Duncan have plans?"

I looked at Duncan.

"Are we still on for our picnic?" he asked me, taking a deep breath. "Because if we are, let's get going. Granny was last seen packing enough for an army. She'll be waiting for us. We can walk up to their house and collect the basket, and then head for Castle Hill."