Madhattan Mystery (12 page)

“Sure, no prob,” Lexi said. “I'll put together something really yummy for you.”

It looked as if Melrose was picturing her dream meal while she chomped mercilessly on the ice, fingering the metal studs that outlined her entire right ear. “So, meet me tomorrow morning at the lobby clock with the chow—around ten-ish—and I'll see if I can hook you up.”

Lexi nodded in agreement, and before she could give Kim Ling a victory look, Kevin was whispering in Lexi's ear. Something about having to cut City Camp for the second day in a row if they followed through with that stupid plan; plus, lying to Aunt Roz and breaking the rules again. “We'll work it out,” she whispered back, but all the plotting and dishonesty was already gnawing at her gut.

“No secrets,” Melrose warned, still chomping.

“Family stuff,” Kevin said.

Kim Ling licked a splotch of tomato sauce off the corner
of her mouth and turned to Melrose. “So, why'd you run away from home in the first place?” she asked, broaching the touchy subject with the delicacy of a Mack truck. “Details.”

“Mind your business.”

Kim Ling's eyes narrowed. “Just asking an innocent question.”

“Well, knock it off.”

“Okay. I take it back.”

“Good.”

With an impatient exhale, Kim Ling innocently plucked the straw from her cup and shook off the droplets. She flattened it on the table with her thumbnail, then slowly and methodically began folding it into sharp, even zigzags, eyeing Melrose the whole time as if the runaway was a deadly cobra about to strike. “Deadbeat dad?”

“Drop it. Stop grillin' me.”

“Alcoholic mom?”

“I said,
shut your face
!”

Melrose shot up in an instant rage, almost toppling the table. Drinks spilling. Kevin squawking. Ice flying everywhere.

Lexi quickly scooped the icy slush into her cup, acting as if that was the problem. “Don't worry, I've got it.” This was a peacemaking technique she had seen her mom use a thousand times—pretending things were perfectly normal right when the stuff was hitting the fan. “Kim, uh,
why don't you and Kevin go wait upstairs—by the main entrance. I'll meet you guys in, like, five minutes.”

Surprisingly, Kim Ling immediately got up from her chair and shouldered her backpack. “C'mon, Kev,” she said, trudging away, “before I say something I'll really regret.”

“Too late.” Kevin grabbed his backpack too, but his worried face was staring at his sister. “Lex? You sure you don't want me to—”

“Go ahead. I'm okay.”

He ran to catch up with Kim Ling as Lexi kept cleaning up the mess. She watched as, little by little, Melrose's fists uncurled and her nostrils stopped flaring, until finally she crumpled into her seat with a thud.

“She didn't mean anything,” Lexi assured Melrose, dabbing at what was left of the spill with wadded napkins. She could feel all eyes in the food court on them and hot embarrassment tightened her neck. “It's just her warped, in-your-face personality. And it's all the time too. But she's not a bad person.” She eased into her chair, forcing a smile, which withered quickly in Melrose's steely gaze. “Really.”

“Sorry about that.” Melrose double-palmed her tears away across her dirty face. “It's just that—I lose it sometimes when people like her start to judge.” She shoved the wet plate away. “I ain't sayin' she was totally off. My new stepfather, Frank. He's a real loser.”

Lexi felt like she should say something, ask a question,
since the girl was obviously opening up—but she didn't want to cross the line and set her off again.

“My ma married him after I begged her not to,” Melrose went on, “so it's kinda like she picked him over me. Whatever. I hate his freakin' guts.”

“I totally understand! My dad's on his honeymoon right now with my new wicked stepmother. Can't stand the woman.” A something-in-common spark had definitely ignited, but quickly fizzled into another awkward silence. At least now Lexi felt she had her complete attention. “Don't you ever get scared—if you don't mind my asking?”

“All the time. There's a lot of messed up people livin' on the streets. You don't know. Druggies, weirdos. It's brutal.” She blew her nose into a napkin. Lexi handed her another one, which she began shredding into long strips. “If it gets real bad, I hide out over at this church, St. Agnes—it's about a block from here on Forty-Third just past Lexington—till things cool down.”

“St. Agnes, hmm.” Lexi found her fascinating, this Melrose Merritt—and talking to her alone wasn't as frightening as she had thought. “So, we're still on for tomorrow, right? Ten a.m. by the clock?” Melrose nodded, and in a strange burst of enthusiasm, Lexi dug a marker from her backpack, scrawled her cell phone number across a fresh napkin, and slid it across the table. “Call me—you know, if you're gonna be late or anything.”
Giving my number to a runaway. I've officially lost my mind
.

Melrose stopped shredding and pocketed the number, thanking Lexi with a curious half smile. Lexi half-smiled back.

“So, how long has it been since—?”

“Since I left the Bronx? I dunno, a few—” Suddenly Melrose's eyes went horror-flick wide and she slid down her seat like a dead body, ending up in a heap under the table. “Don't turn around,” she warned from below in a raspy whisper.

“Why?” Lexi's heart sped up. “What?”

“Cop!”

Lexi gave it a five count and nonchalantly glanced through her fingers at the policewoman ordering food at the counter. When she turned back around and peeked under the table, Melrose had vanished.

Later, as Lexi was speed-walking through the main concourse toward the Forty-Second Street exit to meet up with Kim Ling and Kevin, feeling oddly content that Melrose had told her the truth, she happened to notice the listing of Metro-North train stops posted over the ticket counter.

Manitou. Marble Hill.
Melrose. Merritt
. With two
r
's and two
t
's.

A screaming car alarm woke Lexi with a start the next morning. Dawn's first glimmer was seeping in through the blinds of her aunt's living room and Lexi feared she would never be able to fall back asleep. The metal bar on the pull-out couch felt welded onto her ribcage, and her mind was already up and doing mental aerobics. At first, thoughts of the jewel thieves were creeping through her brain; and then she couldn't stop thinking about Melrose—or whatever her real name was.
Why would she lie about it? Then again, why wouldn't she?
The last image of that poor girl crouched under the table, staring up at her with frightened eyes. Too freaky.

Lexi cemented herself into a tight fetal position and began counting sheep—the ones conveniently frolicking in the pastoral scene on Aunt Roz's toile curtains. She had only seen this done in cartoons but she would try anything to get Melrose out of her mind. She was just starting
on the shepherd boys when she noticed a mysterious rainbow appear across Kevin's sleeping face.
Oh, pretty. Look at him all sprawled out on that chaise-lounge thing, dead to the world—turning colors
. The rainbow spilled over onto the fish tank that housed Romeo and Juliet, Aunt Roz's goldfish, turning them a shimmery chartreuse. It must have been the stained-glass suncatcher hanging in the window that created the colorful effect—a big pink rose surrounded by glistening borders of greens … yellows … oranges … reds …

Suddenly Lexi was eight years old again, dressed in her Sunday best and surrounded by the stained-glass windows of Our Lady of Loretto's.

“Here, cookie, drop this into the poor box while I go light a candle for Grandma Irene.” Lexi's mom had handed her a dollar bill and closed her wallet with a
snap
. “Then go grab us two seats near the front of the church, okay?”

Ten o'clock mass had been their favorite because the choir sang, but it was just the two of them that Sunday. Kevin had a gross stomach thing all morning, so Lexi's dad had decided that the McGill boys had better skip church—that these were special circumstances and “God will understand.”

Lexi and her mom blessed themselves with holy water from the font and headed in opposite directions—her mom toward the rack of glowing votives and Lexi for the poor box. Gabe seemed to be watching her. That was the name she had given the stained-glass angel in the vestibule
window, who didn't look angelic enough to be a Gabriel. He had an especially mischievous smile on his face that day, and the sunlight shining through his amber-red robes danced across the last pew of the church where the “down-on-their-luck Delaneys” usually sat.

The poor box was so loaded, Lexi really had to cram-cram-cram the dollar deep into the slot, all the while thinking of Kaitlyn Delaney, a girl in her third-grade class who always got picked on because of her frayed, musty clothes and flat, meatless sandwiches. She didn't take free stuff from friends, either, as far as Lexi knew. At least in the form of Lunchables or seedless grapes.

A thunderous organ chord pealed from the balcony and when Lexi's fingers, still wet with holy water, slipped out of the box, so did a crisp twenty-dollar bill!

“Is a sin still a sin if it's for a good cause?” Lexi asked her mom when she scooted into the pew next to her, smelling of candle smoke. “Like—taking something that doesn't belong to you?”

“Stealing is wrong, honey. You know that.”

“But would it still count as a major sin or just a minor one—you know, like a venial?”

“Where do you come up with such questions? And why're we sitting back here when there're plenty of seats up front?”

“To see the Delaneys,” Lexi whispered. “I don't wanna miss the look on Kaitlyn's face when she opens her hymnal and a twenty-dollar bill drops out.”

Lexi's mom clasped her hands and bowed her head in prayer. But it quickly popped up again. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what did you do?”

It had been so worth it. Kaityln acted like it was some kind of miracle. An act of God. Little did she know, it was an act of Lexi.

After mass, on their way out of church, Lexi's mom had quickly shoved a handful of bills into the poor box—and with the guiltiest look on her face. But Gabe had seemed
very
pleased.

Lost in a pinwheel of stained-glass yellows, blues, and greens, Lexi found herself half awake and back in her twelve-year-old skin again, curled up on Aunt Roz's foldout couch and staring bleary-eyed at the suncatcher. A high-pitched wail penetrated the walls of Apartment 5F and woke her up the rest of the way.
Miss Carelli, the opera singer across the hall. It has to be
. She was doing vocal exercises with musical accompaniment from a rattling drill tearing up the street. Lexi flopped onto her stomach and sandwiched her head in her pillow, which might have worked if she didn't have to breathe.
“Mah-may-mee-mo-mooo”
was attacking her in stereo now. It sounded like Aunt Roz had joined Miss Carelli for a duet—just as an ambulance was screaming by. “Okay, New York, you win! I'm up.”

Lexi rolled out of bed and followed the aroma of coffee into the kitchen. Her aunt, in a terry-cloth headband with a pore-cleansing strip plastered across her nose, was
leaning up against the refrigerator, holding a steaming cup of coffee.

“Morning, dear.”

“Morning, dear,” Lexi echoed. She tilted her aunt's cup to her lips and took a sip. “Blech! How could something that smells so fantastic taste so disgusting?”

“I prefer mine black, which is an acquired taste, I suppose—like caviar. Or reality TV. There's cream and Splenda if you like.”

Lexi scrunched up her nose and yawned.

“
Nah-nay-nee-no-neeew …
”

“Doesn't Patrice have a marvelous instrument? I was trying not to sing along in full voice so I wouldn't wake you kids. I didn't, did I?”

“Nah, the Big Apple beat you to it. And that brother of mine can sleep through anything.”

“I really shouldn't be singing along, but with an opera diva living across the hall, it's like getting free lessons.” Aunt Roz opened the refrigerator and stared into it, humming. “I haven't done a musical in quite a while, so I need all the help I can get. The role of Amanda Wingfield is no small feat.”

Lexi reached around her aunt and grabbed a carton of milk. “Well, they wouldn't have picked you if you weren't the best one, right?”

“Right.” Aunt Roz seemed unconvinced. “A musical version of
The Glass Menagerie
. Tennessee Williams is probably turning in his grave.” She scooped a bottle of
syrup, a container of blueberries, and a tub of margarine into her arms and dropped them onto the counter. “Wait, he's not still alive, is he?”

Lexi shrugged.

“Well, if he was, this'd kill him.”

“Ha! Good one.” Lexi poured herself a glass of milk and gave it a quick freshness sniff. Her aunt wasn't the best at checking expiration dates, but it seemed okay.

“How wonderful to be born with a magnificent singing voice like Patrice,” Aunt Roz said, busily making breakfast. “Not that I don't appreciate my own, but—you know what I mean. It's like God saying, ‘Here's a truly incredible gift. This is what you're supposed to do for the rest of your life. Now, go do me proud.'”

Lexi didn't think her own voice was all that great, but maybe—with some training … She took a deep breath and in a burst of enthusiasm, joined Miss Carelli on her next “Do-mi-so-mi-
doooh
!”

“
QUIET! YOU CALL THAT SINGING
?!”

Lexi froze with an open mouth. The angry voice sounded as if it had come through the vent next to the stove.

“That's the grouch in Four-F,” Aunt Roz whispered. “Findlay or whatever the heck his name is. What time is it anyway?”