Dew Drop Dead (5 page)

Later, David went across the street to Sebastian's house. “Nothing new,” Sebastian told him, code for, “My dad hasn't lost his job yet and we're not moving anywhere.” Upstairs in his bedroom, Sebastian told David about the program at First Church.

“Corrie called me an hour ago,” he said, flopping down on one end of the bed and leaving room on the other end for David. “She wanted to know if we'd work with the youth group giving out food and clothes to homeless people.”

“Why didn't she call me?” David asked.

“She wasn't sure you'd want to do it since you're not a member of the church.” He didn't mention that Corrie had also told him she thought David had the social awareness of a slug.

“Are you going to do it?” said David.

“Sure.”

“Then I will, too.”

Sebastian smiled at the depth of his friend's motivation.

The boys fell silent for a minute, then David asked, “So what do you think, Sebastian? Do you believe it?”

Sebastian knew just what David meant. “No way,” he said. “The guy was dead. You want to go out there with me tomorrow?”

“To do what?” David asked. “Alex said they were closing the place up tight as a drum.”

“I don't know to do what,” said Sebastian. “I just want to look around. Something isn't right. I have this hunch . . .”

He let the rest of the sentence drop. David knew from the faraway look in Sebastian's eyes that there was no point in asking what he'd been about to say. If David wanted to find out, he would just have to go with him. Back down Dead Man's Hill.

Back to the Dew Drop Inn.

“I CANT BELIEVE
you're going out there again,” Corrie said with a curiously parental tilt of her head. The bell was about to ring for French class. “I'm not going with you.”

“I didn't think you would.”

“Really, Sebastian, that place gives me the creeps.”

“You said you liked it.”

“Not anymore. Besides, the case is closed.” She opened her workbook to check a page of homework, then looked up to find Sebastian staring at her. “Isn't it?”

Sebastian heard the sound of their teacher's voice out in the hall. “You know as well as I do there was a dead body on that bed,” he whispered, turning in his seat and leaning across Corrie's desk so no one else would hear.

“Ooo, look at the lovebirds,” Adam Wells called out from across the room. Sebastian zapped him with a rubber band.

“I'm not so sure,” Corrie said in a hushed voice. “I think Alex is right. The man was drunk. He never
heard us, that's all. Besides, where did he disappear to? Corpses don't just get up and walk away.”

Sebastian was about to attempt an answer when there was a loud and violent
B-R-R-R-R
!

“Mes amis, mes amis!”
the French teacher sang out in a voice slightly discordant with the bell's reverberation.
“Comment allez-vous aujourd'hui?”

“Très bien, merci,”
the class droned in unison, sounding anything but.

“I don't know,” Sebastian said softly as he turned back in his seat. “Maybe
this
corpse did walk away.”

“Qu'avez-vous?”
the teacher asked of Sebastian. “What is the problem, Monsieur Barth?”

“Nothing,” said Sebastian. “I mean,
rien.”

“Bon,”
the teacher said, turning to pick up a piece of chalk and face the board.
“Allons-y.
Today, the relative pronoun.”

“Rien,”
Sebastian muttered to himself.
“Rien
but a walking corpse.”

BY LATE TUESDAY
afternoon the temperature had dropped again, and although it was only a week into November, winter was in the air and fast working its way into the bones. The grounds of the Dew Drop Inn were covered with fallen leaves and frostbitten weeds that crackled as the two boys made their way, step by careful step, over them.

“I still don't know what we're supposed to be looking for,” David called out, his voice muffled by the collar of the turtleneck sweater he'd pulled up over his mouth.

“I'm not sure either,” Sebastian called back.

David stopped in his tracks. “Great!” he shouted. “I schlepp all this way, figuring you'll tell me what we're doing once we get here. And now you say you don't know! This is crazy!
You're
crazy!”

Sebastian didn't look up as he continued his search. “I didn't say I didn't know what we were doing. I said I wasn't sure what we were looking for. Listen, if there
was
a dead body on that bed Saturday afternoon and there
wasn't
a dead body on that bed Saturday
night, and if there is no sign of that dead body anywhere in the inn, then . . .”

He stopped speaking and arched his back, twisting his neck from side to side. Even at a distance, David could hear the bones in Sebastian's neck crack.

“Then?”

“Then the body must have been removed. Right?”

“If you say so.”

“In which case, there should be some kind of evidence that the body was removed. Right?”

“If you say so. Just one thing.”

“What's that?”

“How come we're looking for evidence and the police aren't?”

Sebastian waited for one last crack, straightened his neck, and began scanning the ground again. “Because,” he said, “they subscribe to one theory—the theory of the drunk in the bed—and I subscribe to another.”

“Which is the theory of what?”

“Murder.”

“Oy vay,” said David.

“What'll you give me if I'm right?” Sebastian asked.

“My sister,” David said. He lowered his eyes to the ground and resumed looking for anything that might be considered evidence. Even though he found
nothing very interesting, he glanced at the boarded-up windows from time to time and wondered if Sebastian was right. That body had looked awfully dead to him, too.

“What's this?” he heard Sebastian say. He went running. Sebastian was crouched over a crumpled red-and-white wrapper.

“An empty cigarette pack,” said David. “Don't tell me you're going to say
that's
evidence. I've spotted about ten of them already. Besides, dead men don't smoke.”

“Murderers might. But you're right. There's nothing conclusive there.”

“There's nothing conclusive anywhere,” said David with a shiver. “I think it's gotten ten degrees colder in the last five minutes. Can we go home now?”

Sebastian stood and regarded the inn once more. “Let's start at the dining room window and walk over to the woods,” he said, as if David hadn't spoken. “The window was the only way out before Alex came and opened the front door.”

“Um, excuse me,” David said. “I'm cold.”

“We'll go in five minutes,” Sebastian promised, and he crossed to the dining room window.

David watched Sebastian walk away and wondered, What if he was right? What if the murderer
had
left by that window? It was the same window, he told himself, that they'd used to get into the inn. What
if the murderer had been in there with them the whole time?

What if the murderer was watching them now?

It was dark when they reached the edge of the woods and Sebastian finally conceded that their search had been a futile one. David, who by this time had convinced himself his friend might not be so crazy after all, had really tried to find something, anything, to prove it. But there was nothing to be found.

“Unless,” Sebastian said, completing an unspoken thought, “we're missing something. Or unless . . .” He hesitated, hating to admit the possibility. “Unless,” he repeated, “Alex is right and I'm wrong.”

Ordinarily, David would have slapped Sebastian on the shoulder and said with a laugh, “Don't feel bad, Sherlock. The police have to be right sometimes.” But now, as he stood looking into the woods, whose barren trees reached up to grasp at the moon with bony fingers, he couldn't quite let go of the possibility that Sebastian, despite his doubts and the lack of evidence, was on to something.

He shivered again. This time it had nothing to do with the cold.

“SO WHERE
are the refreshments?” Adam Wells said indignantly. “I came for the refreshments.”

It was seven twenty-five on Wednesday. The meeting of the First Church Youth Group had been called for seven, and so far only six people had shown up. Three of those six were Corrie, Sebastian, and David. Corrie was in no mood for the likes of Adam Wells.

“There
aren't
any refreshments,” she snapped. “This is a meeting about hunger, Adam. I didn't think it was exactly appropriate to serve punch and cookies while we talked about starving children.”

“Okay, okay.” Adam shrugged and took a seat in the large circle of mostly empty folding chairs. His jaw dropped when he saw whose spindly legs were sprawled out across from his.

“Harley!” he said.

“So?” said Eddie “Harley” Davidson. Corrie herself had not quite gotten over the fact that one of the few people who'd managed to come to her meeting was none other than the former leader of the Devil
Riders and one of the toughest kids in the eighth grade. Even now, while Harley clenched his fists as if ready for a fight, she wondered why he was here—and if he'd be trouble. She had never seen him anywhere near the church before; she'd called him only because his name was on her list.

“Nothing,” Adam said. “I was just saying, ‘Harley!'—you know, like ‘Hey, Harley, how's it going?'”

“Yeah, right,” said Harley, his fists still tight, hard balls.

“Um, how about starting the meeting, Corrie?” said Janis Tupper, the sixth person in attendance. “I've got to study, y'know?”

“Me, too,” Corrie said with a sigh. “I was just hoping more people would show up. I don't get it. There were supposed to be eighteen people here.”

“Lesson number one,” said Harley. “Don't count on nobody for nothing.”

“Well,” Corrie said, “I hope I can count on all of you!”

“You can count on me if you serve refreshments,” Adam said. “Anybody got any gum?”

Corrie cleared her throat and set about explaining why this meeting had been called. In the state of Connecticut, she told them, over ten thousand people had stayed overnight in shelters in just one recent six-month period. Those people accounted for only
a fraction of the homeless. There were others who lived with relatives, in welfare hotels, in abandoned buildings, or on the street. Some were displaced mental health patients; others were out of work and destitute.

“These people need help,” Corrie said. “That's why my dad set up this program—to give food, shelter, and clothing to anyone who's in need.”

“How do you know who's in need?” Adam said, chomping on his wad of gum as if it were a juicy steak. “I mean, anybody could walk in here and help them-selves to clothes and food and stuff.”

“That's the point,” said Corrie. “Anybody can. The philosophy of the program is: If they come here, they're needy.”

“But—”

“No forms to fill out, no questions asked.” She looked down at her notes, intending to move on quickly before Adam could interrupt. “The youth group is going to help sort the clothes that will be coming in, make sandwiches on Saturday mornings, and give out the food at lunchtime.”

“Hey, Sebastian,” Harley said, “we should be good at that.”

Sebastian gave Harley a thumbs-up. The two boys worked together as volunteers in the school cafeteria. Sebastian hadn't realized before how much pride Harley took in his position there.

Corrie cleared her throat and said, somewhat sheepishly, “I had planned on asking half the group to come Friday night to sort clothes and the other half to come Saturday morning, but with so few people—”

“Don't sweat it,” Harley said with a wave of his hand. “We'll all be here.”

Corrie looked at Harley in amazement.
“Both
times?” she said.

“I can't come Friday night,” said David. “But I'll be here Saturday.”

“What about everyone else?” Corrie asked. No one spoke. “Great. I'll see you at seven on Friday then. And listen, if you can get anyone else to come, we need all the help we can get.”

As the meeting broke up, Corrie noticed Sebastian and Harley talking by the door.

“I still can't believe it,” Corrie said when she and Sebastian and David were the only ones left. Her hand was on the light switch as she checked the room to be sure she wasn't leaving anything behind. “I never thought Harley would come. All he said on the phone was maybe. Why
did
he, do you think?”

She turned out the light, and Sebastian said, “He told me.”

“What did he say?” Corrie asked.

“He said with all the do-gooders around, he figured what you really needed was an expert.”

“An expert?” said David. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means he would never have asked the question Adam did. It means—how did he put it?—that he knows what it's like to hurt bad and have nowhere to turn.”

THE CAT
with no tail ran to meet Sebastian at the front door of his house.

“Hey, Chopped Liver,” Sebastian said, bending down to scratch the cat behind his ears. “Where is everybody?”

“I'm here.”

Sebastian looked up to find his grandmother standing in the doorway between the living room and the front hall, her reading glasses in one hand, an open book in the other. She regarded Chopped Liver and shook her head. “That cat thinks it's a dog,” she said predictably.