Finders Keepers (36 page)

Elmer looks up, frowning. “Something funny? About Steinbeck, perhaps?”

“Absolutely not,” Morris says. “It's . . . I have a medical condition.” He runs a hand down one damp cheek. “It makes me sweat, and then I start laughing.” The look on Elmer Fudd's face makes him laugh again. He wonders if Andy and Elmer ever had sex, and the thought of that bouncing, slapping flesh makes him laugh some more. “I'm sorry, Mr. Yankovic. It's not you. And by the way . . . are you related to the noted popular-music humorist Weird Al Yankovic?”

“No, not at all.” Yankovic scribbles his signature in a hurry, rips the check loose from his checkbook, and passes it to Morris, who is grinning and thinking that this is a scene John Rothstein could have written. During the exchange, Yankovic takes care that their fingers should not touch.

“Sorry about the laughing,” Morris says, laughing harder. He's remembering that they used to call the noted popular-musical humorist Weird Al Yank-My-Dick. “I really can't control it.” The clock now reads 3:21, and even that is funny.

“I understand.” Elmer is backing away with the book clutched to his chest. “Thank you.”

He hurries toward the door. Morris calls after him, “Make sure you tell Andy I gave you the discount. When you see him.”

This makes Morris laugh harder than ever, because that's a good one. When you see him! Get it?

When the fit finally passes, it's 3:25, and for the first time it occurs to Morris that maybe he hurried Mr. Irving “Elmer Fudd” Yankovic out for no reason at all. Maybe the boy has changed his mind. Maybe he's not coming, and there's nothing funny about that.

Well, Morris thinks, if he doesn't show up here, I'll just have to pay a house call. Then the joke will be on him. Won't it?

24

Twenty to four.

There's no need to park on a yellow curb now; the parents who clogged the area around the high school earlier, waiting to pick up their kids, have all departed. The buses are gone, too. Hodges, Holly, and Jerome are in a Mercedes sedan that once belonged to Holly's cousin Olivia. It was used as a murder weapon at City Center, but none of them is thinking about that now. They have other things in mind, chiefly Thomas Saubers's son.

“The kid may be in trouble, but you have to admit he's a quick thinker,” Jerome says. After ten minutes parked down the street from City Drug, he went inside and ascertained that the boy he
was tasked to follow had departed. “A pro couldn't have done much better.”

“True,” Hodges says. The boy has turned into a challenge, certainly more of a challenge than the airplane-stealing Mr. Madden. Hodges hasn't questioned the pharmacist himself and doesn't need to. Pete's been getting prescriptions filled there for years, he knows the pharmacist and the pharmacist knows him. The kid made up some bullshit story, the pharmacist let him use the back door, and pop goes the weasel. They never covered Frederick Street, because there seemed to be no need.

“Now what?” Jerome asks.

“I think we should go over to the Saubers house. We had a slim chance of keeping his parents out of this, per Tina's request, but I think that just went by the boards.”

“They must already have some idea it was him,” Jerome says. “I mean, they're his
folks
.”

Hodges thinks of saying
There are none so blind as those who will not see
, and shrugs instead.

Holly has contributed nothing to the discussion so far, has just sat behind the wheel of her big boat of a car, arms crossed over her bosom, fingers tapping lightly at her shoulders. Now she turns to Hodges, who is sprawled in the backseat. “Did you ask Peter about the notebook?”

“I never got a chance,” Hodges says. Holly's got a bee in her hat about that notebook, and he
should
have asked, just to satisfy her, but the truth is, it never even crossed his mind. “He decided to go, and boogied. Wouldn't even take my card.”

Holly points to the school. “I think we should talk to Ricky the Hippie before we leave.” And when neither of them replies: “Peter's
house
will still
be
there, you know. It's not going to
fly away
, or anything.”

“Guess it wouldn't hurt,” Jerome says.

Hodges sighs. “And tell him what, exactly? That one of his students found or stole a stack of money and doled it out to his parents like a monthly allowance? The parents should find that out before some teacher who probably doesn't know jack-shit about anything. And Pete should be the one to tell them. It'll let his sister off the hook, for one thing.”

“But if he's in some kind of jam he doesn't want them to know about, and he still wanted to talk to someone . . . you know, an adult . . .” Jerome is four years older than he was when he helped Hodges with the Brady Hartsfield mess, old enough to vote and buy legal liquor, but still young enough to remember how it is to be seventeen and suddenly realize you've gotten in over your head with something. When that happens, you want to talk to somebody who's been around the block a few times.

“Jerome's right,” Holly says. She turns back to Hodges. “Let's talk to the teacher and find out if Pete asked for advice about anything. If he asks why we want to know—”

“Of
course
he'll want to know why,” Hodges says, “and I can't exactly claim confidentiality. I'm not a lawyer.”

“Or a priest,” Jerome adds, not helpfully.

“You can tell him we're friends of the family,” Holly says firmly. “And that's true.” She opens her door.

“You have a hunch about this,” Hodges says. “Am I right?”

“Yes,” she says. “It's a Holly-hunch. Now come on.”

25

As they are walking up the wide front steps and beneath the motto EDUCATION IS THE LAMP OF LIFE, the door of Andrew Hal
liday Rare Editions opens again and Pete Saubers steps inside. He starts down the main aisle, then stops, frowning. The man behind the desk isn't Mr. Halliday. He is in most ways the exact
opposite
of Mr. Halliday, pale instead of florid (except for his lips, which are weirdly red), white-haired instead of bald, and thin instead of fat. Almost gaunt. Jesus. Pete expected his script to go out the window, but not this fast.

“Where's Mr. Halliday? I had an appointment to see him.”

The stranger smiles. “Yes, of course, although he didn't give me your name. He just said a young man. He's waiting for you in his office at the back of the shop.” This is actually true. In a way. “Just knock and go in.”

Pete relaxes a little. It makes sense that Halliday wouldn't want to have such a crucial meeting out here, where anybody looking for a secondhand copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
could walk in and interrupt them. He's being careful, thinking ahead. If Pete doesn't do the same, his slim chance of coming out of this okay will go out the window.

“Thanks,” he says, and walks between tall bookcases toward the back of the shop.

As soon as he goes by the desk, Morris rises and goes quickly and quietly to the front of the shop. He flips the sign in the door from OPEN to CLOSED.

Then he turns the bolt.

26

The secretary in the main office of Northfield High looks curiously at the trio of after-school visitors, but asks no questions. Perhaps she assumes they are family members come to plead the case of
some failing student. Whatever they are, it's Howie Ricker's problem, not hers.

She checks a magnetic board covered with multicolored tags and says, “He should still be in his homeroom. That's three-oh-nine, on the third floor, but please peek through the window and make sure he's not with a student. He has conferences today until four, and with school ending in a couple of weeks, plenty of kids stop by to ask for help on their final papers. Or plead for extra time.”

Hodges thanks her and they go up the stairs, their heels echoing. From somewhere below, a quartet of musicians is playing “Greensleeves.” From somewhere above, a hearty male voice cries jovially, “You
suck
, Malone!”

Room 309 is halfway down the third-floor corridor, and Mr. Ricker, dressed in an eye-burning paisley shirt with the collar unbuttoned and the tie pulled down, is talking to a girl who is gesturing dramatically with her hands. Ricker glances up, sees he has visitors, then returns his attention to the girl.

The visitors stand against the wall, where posters advertise summer classes, summer workshops, summer holiday destinations, an end-of-year dance. A couple of girls come bopping down the hall, both wearing softball jerseys and caps. One is tossing a catcher's mitt from hand to hand, playing hot potato with it.

Holly's phone goes off, playing an ominous handful of notes from the “Jaws” theme. Without slowing, one of the girls says, “You're gonna need a bigger boat,” and they both laugh.

Holly looks at her phone, then puts it away. “A text from Tina,” she says.

Hodges raises his eyebrows.

“Her mother knows about the money. Her father will too, as soon as he gets home from work.” She nods toward the closed door of Mr. Ricker's room. “No reason to hold back now.”

27

The first thing Pete becomes aware of when he opens the door to the darkened inner office is the billowing stench. It's both metallic and organic, like steel shavings mixed with spoiled cabbage. The next thing is the sound, a low buzzing. Flies, he thinks, and although he can't see what's in there, the smell and the sound come together in his mind with a thud like a heavy piece of furniture falling over. He turns to flee.

The clerk with the red lips is standing there beneath one of the hanging globes that light the back of the store, and in his hand is a strangely jolly gun, red and black with inlaid gold curlicues. Pete's first thought is Looks fake. They never look fake in the movies.

“Keep your head, Peter,” the clerk says. “Don't do anything foolish and you won't get hurt. This is just a discussion.”

Pete's second thought is You're lying. I can see it in your eyes.

“Turn around, take a step forward, and turn on the light. The switch is to the left of the door. Then go in, but don't try to slam the door, unless you want a bullet in the back.”

Pete steps forward. Everything inside him from the chest on down feels loose and in motion. He hopes he won't piss his pants like a baby. Probably that wouldn't be such a big deal—surely he wouldn't be the first person to spray his Jockeys when a gun is pointed at him—but it
seems
like a big deal. He fumbles with his left hand, finds the switch, and flips it. When he sees the thing lying on the sodden carpet, he tries to scream, but the muscles in his diaphragm aren't working and all that comes out is a watery moan. Flies are buzzing and lighting on what remains of Mr. Halliday's face. Which is not much.

“I know,” the clerk says sympathetically. “Not very pretty, is he?
Object lessons rarely are. He pissed me off, Pete. Do you want to piss me off?”

“No,” Pete says in a high, wavering voice. It sounds more like Tina's than his own. “I don't.”

“Then you have learned your lesson. Go on in. Move very slowly, but feel free to avoid the mess.”

Pete steps in on legs he can barely feel, edging to his left along one of the bookcases, trying to keep his loafers on the part of the rug that hasn't been soaked. There isn't much. His initial panic has been replaced by a glassy sheet of terror. He keeps thinking of those red lips. Keeps imagining the big bad wolf telling Red Riding Hood,
The better to kiss you with, my dear
.

I have to think, he tells himself. I have to, or I'm going to die in this room. Probably I will anyway, but if I can't think, it's for sure.

He keeps skirting the blotch of blackish-purple until a cherrywood sideboard blocks his path, and there he stops. To go farther would mean stepping onto the bloody part of the rug, and it might still be wet enough to
squelch
. On the sideboard are crystal decanters of booze and a number of squat glasses. On the desk he sees a hatchet, its blade throwing back a reflection of the overhead light. That is surely the weapon the man with the red lips used to kill Mr. Halliday, and Pete supposes it should scare him even more, but instead the sight of it clears his mind like a hard slap.

The door clicks shut behind him. The clerk who probably isn't a clerk leans against it, pointing the jolly little gun at Pete. “All right,” he says, and smiles. “Now we can talk.”

“Wh-Wh—” He clears his throat, tries again, this time sounds a little more like himself. “What? Talk about what?”

“Don't be disingenuous. The notebooks. The ones you stole.”

It all comes together in Pete's mind. His mouth falls open.

The clerk who isn't a clerk smiles. “Ah. The penny drops, I see. Tell me where they are, and you might get out of this alive.”

Pete doesn't think so.

He thinks he already knows too much for that.

28

When the girl emerges from Mr. Ricker's homeroom, she's smiling, so her conference must have gone all right. She even twiddles her fingers in a little wave—perhaps to all three of them, more likely just to Jerome—as she hurries off down the hall.

Mr. Ricker, who has accompanied her to the door, looks at Hodges and his associates. “Can I help you, lady and gentlemen?”

“Not likely,” Hodges says, “but worth a try. May we come in?”

“Of course.”

They sit at desks in the first row like attentive students. Ricker plants himself on the edge of his desk, an informality he eschewed when talking to his young conferee. “I'm pretty sure you're not parents, so what's up?”

“It's about one of your students,” Hodges says. “A boy named Peter Saubers. We think he may be in trouble.”