Down the Rabbit Hole (14 page)

“What assets?”

“Still considerable, at that stage of the game,” said Mr. Samuels. “But it took Philip only a few years to squander most of it.”

“How?”

“Time-honored method,” said Mr. Samuels. “Philip loved the theater, as I said, but didn't really have a lot of talent for it. What he had was a lot of money, so he started hiring professional actors to perform at Prescott Hall, and before you knew it he was backing Broadway plays. Those Manhattan sharpies fleeced him PDQ.”

“Is that why he took off for Alaska?” Ingrid said.

“Might have been part of it,” said Mr. Samuels. “He wrote a letter to
The Echo
, kind of famous at the time, claiming it was about finding himself and all that hooey.”

“Why didn't he take Kate Kovac with him?”

“Good question,” said Mr. Samuels. “One I haven't actually considered be—” He stopped himself, his gaze narrowing on her. “You seem rather
well informed on all this. I don't recall if you've explained what you're doing here.”

“School report,” Ingrid said.

“On what?”

“Pretty much anything.”

“Figures.”

“I'm doing ‘The Life and Death of Kate Kovac.'”

“Well,” said Mr. Samuels. “Well, well, well. And what did your teacher say about that?”

“You know teachers,” Ingrid said.

“Not anymore,” said Mr. Samuels. “The kind of teachers I knew are long—”

At that moment, Nigel farted, ridiculously loud, as though he had an amplifier inside him. She glanced down at him. “Nigel!” He was still totally conked out, his plump chest rising and falling peacefully. Ingrid felt herself blushing like she was the culprit. She was surprised to see that Mr. Samuels looked embarrassed too. That was kind of nice.

He cleared his throat. “So you've come for information on Katie Kovac.”

“Yes.”

He reached for a folder. “Your timing couldn't be better. It just so happens I'm preparing her obituary. Know your way around a copy machine?”

“Yes,” said Ingrid.

“Then you can make copies of everything in here for yourself.” He pointed to a copier in the corner.

Ingrid opened the little railing door and approached his desk. “Thanks, Mr. Samuels.”

He handed her the folder. “She seems to have begun on a promising note. Philip Prescott met her at the drama school. Evidently she was an early experimenter with performance art.”

“What's that?” said Ingrid.

“Hooey,” said Mr. Samuels.

Ingrid took the folder over to the copier. There were only four clippings inside, all small and yellowed, three of them from old issues of
The Echo
, the fourth from the
New Haven Register
. The headline on the fourth clipping read
BUTISITART
? The accompanying photograph showed a pretty young woman standing beside—what was this?—a hanged man made of balled-up and twisted audiotape. Just like—oh my God.

Ingrid scanned the article, faster and faster as she went along:

“Hey!” said Mr. Samuels. “Where are you rushing off to?” Ingrid, clutching the copies with one hand, returning the originals with the other, heading toward the door, barely heard.

“Don't forget your dog.”

She heard that. Alarm of that magnitude was hard to miss.

“Nigel!” He opened one eye, unmotivated, uninterested, unaware. A nonvoter, and with good reason.

T
HAT'S WHAT YOU CALL
doing your best?” Ingrid said.

Nigel, trotting along beside her, gave no sign that he'd heard.

How did this go, exactly? She tried to relate Main Street to the Flats in the picture of the town that was taking shape in her mind. She was concentrating so hard, she barely noticed Coach Ringer pop out of a deli two doors ahead, brown bag in hand. Ingrid almost passed him, probably would have if she hadn't caught that hard-to-miss slogan on the back of his Towne Hardware jacket:
SCREWS FOR YOUSE SINCE
1937. She hit the brakes, her Univega
squealing to a stop. But not too loud: Coach Ringer kept going without a pause.

So did Nigel. Ingrid watched helplessly as he followed at Coach Ringer's heels, tail wagging, bonehead determined and why not say it?—yes—dogged. They crossed Bridge Street. Towne Hardware stood on the corner. Coach Ringer, still unaware of Nigel, went in. The door closed in Nigel's face. He stood outside, one forepaw raised in that characteristic way of his, a parody of a smart, pointing dog.

Ingrid rode across the street. “Nigel!” she called to him in a stage whisper. His head swiveled around in that strange slow way he had; poised on three feet, he gazed at her without recognition.

“You moron,” she said, pretty loud.

He lowered that fourth paw and trotted over.

 

Left on Bridge, then right on Hill, a long, gentle descent with train tracks at the bottom. The next street should be—

And it was. Packer. A minute or two later, Ingrid pulled up outside 337, Nigel panting beside her. She leaned her bike against a telephone pole.

Trash barrels lined the street. Garbage day. There
was only one barrel outside 337, aluminum, with empty liquor bottles on top. The house itself was quiet and—

Oops. She no longer had the key, so cleverly put back in Mom's pocket, or so she'd thought at the time. A little late for realizing that now. Ingrid was turning over several plans for getting into 337, none too promising, when the garbage truck rumbled up. The guy hanging on at the back, who wore a pirate-style bandanna, jumped off, hoisted the trash can, and dumped its contents in the mouth of the truck. The bottles and all kinds of junk went crashing in, including—

“Hey!” Ingrid said.

The man in the bandanna turned to her. Now she had a better view. Lying on top of all the trash from 337 was a big clump of audiotape, no longer in the shape of a hanged man, now just a basketball-size tangle.

“That's a mistake,” Ingrid said.

“Huh?” said the man in the bandanna. He banged on the truck body. Some machine inside started up. A big metal arm began to move, squashing up all the trash.

“No,” Ingrid said, rushing past the man in the
bandanna, reaching in, inches ahead of that metal arm, and grabbing the audiotape.

“What the hell?” said man in the bandanna.

“This wasn't supposed to go,” Ingrid said.

“Coulda got your stupid arm caught in there.” The man's eyes went to the tape and his face scrunched up in a combination of puzzlement and anger. A question was forming on his lips when a voice called from the front of the truck.

“What's the holdup?”

The man in the bandanna said a word he shouldn't have in front of her and jumped up onto his narrow platform. The truck moved on.

Ingrid picked up an empty plastic shopping bag, left behind in the gutter, and got the squiggly mass of tape inside, trying not to mush it up any more. Then, the bag hanging from one handlebar, she headed for home, Nigel beside her, his pace brisk at first but falling off fast. They got about a block past Benito's Pizzeria, maybe a third of the way home by Ingrid's calculations, when a passing car slowed down, began driving along beside her, just a few feet away.

Ingrid glanced at the car. A white car with big writing on the side:
ECHO FALLS POLICE
:
TO PROTECT
AND SERVE
. What was this? The driver was motioning for her to pull over. Ingrid pulled over, straddled the bike. The cruiser stopped in front of her. The driver got out. A big guy with lots of decorations on his uniform: Chief Strade.

“Any idea why I stopped you, young lady?” he said. And then, coming closer: “Ingrid?”

She knew damn well why he'd stopped her. He'd figured it out, understood everything, the whole twisted chain of events, and now she was in big, big trouble. Trial by jury.

“Sorry, Mr. Strade,” Ingrid said.

He glanced at Nigel, back to her. “You're a smart girl,” he said. “I'm surprised.”

She hung her head. Tears were on the way. In seconds she'd be blithering, her mixed-up story flooding out.

“Our helmet law is strict for very good reasons,” said the chief.

Helmet law?
Ingrid actually reached up and touched the top of her head, maybe the dumbest thing she'd ever done, like a circus clown. “Oops,” she said, the tide of tears ebbing fast. “I left it in the garage.”

“Won't do you much good there, will it?”

She gave the right answer.

He nodded. Maybe this would turn out all right. The very moment she had that thought, Nigel got the notion to raise up all the hair on his neck and growl at Chief Strade. The chief looked at Nigel with distaste and said, “Isn't this a school day?”

“Oh, yes,” said Ingrid. “I'm actually working on a project.”

The chief opened the car door. “Hop in,” he said. “You can tell me all about it on the way back.”

“On the way back where?” Ingrid said.

“To school,” said the chief. He popped the trunk and laid the bike inside, the shopping bag still on the handlebar. “Can't let you ride without a helmet.”

“What about Nigel?”

“They let you take him to school?”

“He…um,” said Ingrid. “Waits outside.”

“I suppose he can ride in back,” the chief said.

“In the caged part?” said Ingrid. “Where the prisoners go?”

The chief opened the back door. Nigel climbed in without being asked, almost jumped in, really, except he was too fat for jumping. A model prisoner.

 

Dad drove with one hand on the wheel, sometimes just a finger. Chief Strade drove like Mom, both hands on the wheel in the proper ten minutes to two position, the difference being the size of the chief's hands, almost touching at the top.

“What's the project?” he said.

Yikes. “Oh,” Ingrid said, “nothing worth mentioning.” A handy phrase she'd heard recently. From whom?

“Try me,” said the chief. “It's been a boring day so far.”

“Mine's about…littering on the bike path,” Ingrid said; the best she could come up with. “Not very interesting, like I—”

“You're pretty far from the bike path,” said the chief.

This was getting so hard. “Took a little pizza break,” Ingrid said.

“Benito's?” said the chief.

Ingrid nodded.

“Best pizza in town,” he said. “Of course Joe prefers Domino's. You know Joe.”

“Yeah.”

“Is he working on a project too?” said the chief.

“I don't think so.”

“He didn't mention it,” the chief said. “Not much of a talker, in any case. He did tell me you're quite the soccer player.”

“Oh?”

He turned onto River. The driver ahead checked his rearview mirror, slowed down right away, also seemed to sit up straighter, as though the chief could ticket for bad posture. This would have been fun, except for how nervous Ingrid was feeling, that suffocating tightness in her chest.

“Which reminds me,” said the chief. “Did you ever see Kate Kovac at one of your soccer games?”

“Kate Kovac?” said Ingrid. “No.”

Chief Strade didn't say anything for a while, maybe only a minute or two but it seemed much longer. Ingrid felt a weight pressing in the pit of her stomach, and nervousness changed to dread.

“Reason I bring it up,” said the chief, “is the red shoes I was mentioning before.”

“The bowling shoes?” Ingrid said.

“Slipped up on that one,” said the chief. “The tech people, meaning Ron Pina, did some high-resolution digital stuff. Turns out most likely they're soccer cleats.”

“Oh.”

“Pumas, it looks like.”

Meaning the resolution was high enough to show that leaping Puma logo at the top of the heel. Therefore—what about those soccer camp ID disks strung on the laces? Ingrid glanced at Chief Strade. He was looking straight ahead, his massive face blank. The writing on those ID disks was tiny, much smaller than the leaping Puma. On the basis of that, plus the fact that the chief hadn't said “Pumas,” plain and simple, but “Pumas, it looks like,” Ingrid decided that they couldn't read the disks.

“What kind do you wear?” the chief said, face still blank. A face like that—maybe it made some people think that the man behind it wasn't very bright. Ingrid was learning the truth, and fast.

“Oh, Nike, New Balance, Puma—they're all good,” she said.

“I bet yours are red,” said the chief.

Ingrid's heart almost stopped. “Why do you say that?”

“Your bike, your jacket,” said the chief. “And weren't you wearing a red sweater when you came over to the house? No need for Holmes on this one.”

“They're black,” Ingrid said, although she hardly had the breath to do it. He was an observer of small things, like her. But better.

“Black it is,” he said. “But if you hear anything about a connection between Kate Kovac and soccer, let me know. It's the best lead we've got.”

“Lead on what?” said Ingrid.

“The third suspect,” said Chief Strade.

He let them out at Ferrand Middle School; Nigel needed some urging. The chief opened the trunk, took out her bike. “That some of the litter?” he said, peering in the plastic bag.

“Yes,” said Ingrid.

“Good luck with the project,” he said, getting back in the car. Ingrid waved good-bye. His window slid open. “I don't want you riding that home, now,” he said. “Take it on the bus.”

“You can't take bikes on the bus.”

“Who's your driver?”

“Mr. Sidney.”

“From the battle of the Coral Sea?”

Ingrid nodded.

“Tell him I said it was okay.”

“That won't work with Mr. Sidney.”

The chief laughed. “Maybe not,” he said. “Does
he know who you are?”

“Sure.”

“I mean does he know you're Aylmer Hill's granddaughter?”

“I don't think so.”

“Then just tell him.”

“Why?”

“They were at Corregidor together.”

“What's that?”

“Ask your granddad,” said the chief. The window slid up. He drove off. Ingrid watched till he was out of sight. She realized he knew Echo Falls and the people in it backward and forward. It was scary.

She got on her bike and pedaled home, Nigel following. First thing, she had to get rid of those shoes. But where? Throwing them in the trash wasn't foolproof—she'd just learned that.
Bzzz.
It came to her, the best place on earth for losing things, guaranteed: the awesome pile on Ty's closet floor.