Melanie Travis 06 - Hush Puppy (20 page)

“That girl needs a puppy of her own,” Peg said as I closed the door after them.

“Don’t start. You can’t fix the entire world.”

“Says who?”

Far be it from me to argue with a force of nature. It was time to make a graceful retreat, so I did.

Jane was quiet in the car on the way back to her house.

“Is everything all right?” I finally asked.

“Yeah.” Her head turned deliberately away from me, she stared out the window.

“Your grandmother’s not going to be mad at you for coming with me today, is she?”

“Nah, she won’t care.”

I drove in silence for a few more minutes, watching in the rearview mirror as Jane’s hand methodically stroked the length of Faith’s body from neck to tail. Clearly something was bothering the girl. I wondered if it had anything to do with the secret she was keeping with Aunt Peg.

“The other day when you came to my classroom, you said there was something you wanted to tell me,” I said. “But then you never got the chance. Feel like talking about it now?”

“I guess.”

“Was it something important?” I prompted when she didn’t continue.

“Maybe. I don’t know. It was about Krebbs.”

This time I let the silence grow until Jane felt ready to end it. I knew how much the whole situation had upset her, and I wasn’t about to push. After a few minutes, Jane made eye contact in the mirror.

“Remember last Monday when we met in the basement at Howard Academy? The reason I was down there was because I was following Krebbs.”

“Following him? Why?”

“I don’t know. At first, it was just a game. You know, something to do. And Krebbs blew his top whenever he saw me, so I had to be smart about it, and sneaky, too. It was kind of like being a spy . . .”

Her voice trailed away, then came back stronger. “Anyway, Krebbs wasn’t going down to the basement because of anything he had to do for his job. He was looking for something. He’d been going down there a lot recently, and he was searching the place.”

“For what?”

“How should I know? It’s not as if I was going to ask him.”

I thought about that as we reached the traffic circle at the bottom of Lake Avenue, continued up past the library, then turned left at the light and headed east on the Post Road. What could Krebbs have been searching for? And why now, when he’d been at Howard Academy for decades? I wondered if his behavior had anything to do with the marijuana the police had found in the shed.

“Are you sure he was looking for something?” I asked. “Maybe he was looking for a place to hide something.”

“Like what?”

“Drugs . . . ?” I let the thought dangle.

“Krebbs? You’ve gotta be kidding.”

Obviously the girl didn’t read the newspaper.

“Was he searching anywhere else?” I asked. “Or just in the basement?”

“That’s the only place I saw him, but I wasn’t around all the time. He was interested in that storeroom that had all the records. Krebbs didn’t bother reading them like you did. He just pawed through the boxes.”

No wonder the records had been such a jumbled mess by the time I’d gotten to them. “Do you think he found what he was looking for?”

“Nah. Right up until the day he died, he was still going down there.”

Abruptly, I realized what Jane wasn’t saying; what she’d wanted me to know all along. I turned onto a side street, pulled the Volvo over to the curb, and turned in my seat to face her. “That’s why you were the one who found Krebbs after he’d been stabbed. You were looking for him, weren’t you? You were going to follow him again.”

“Yeah.” A small, silent tear rolled down her cheek. “It was just a stupid game. I didn’t think anyone would get hurt.”

“Oh, honey.” I reached over the seat and gathered the small girl into my arms. “Krebbs didn’t get hurt because of you, or your game. None of this is your fault.”

Jane sniffled. “That’s not what Brad says.”

“What?” I drew back. “What does Brad say?”

“That I never should have gone over to Howard Academy in the first place. That I should have minded my own business. When I found Krebbs, I should have just left him there rather than shooting my mouth off about what I’d seen. He says now we’re both going to end up in big trouble, and it’s all my fault.”

“You’re not going to get in any trouble,” I promised.

“Try telling that to my grandmother. Before she thought I was doing okay. Now she’s really pissed about all the school I’ve been missing.”

“You didn’t honestly think you were going to be able to keep that charade up forever, did you?”

Jane shrugged.

“A full semester of mono?”

She jutted out her chin. “I might have developed complications.”

I fought the urge to smile. “And then what?”

“Who knows? I’d have figured something out.”

I eased back into the front seat and turned on the car. “You know Brad’s wrong, don’t you? You didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have done. Well, except cutting school.”

“Gran’s fixed that now. I have to go on Monday. She’s going to drive me to Central Middle School and walk me to the classroom.”

“I’m glad to hear that. It will be good for you to start going to classes. You’ll make some new friends, too.”

“It’ll be boring.” Jane sounded sulky; but also, thank goodness, resigned. Hopefully that meant she wasn’t planning to find another dodge.

We pulled up in front of her house and parked beside the driveway. She took her time unfastening her seat belt, and stopped to give Faith a long hug good-bye.

“Do you want me to go in with you? I’d be happy to explain to your grandmother where you were.”

“No, it’ll be okay.” She climbed slowly out of the car and shut the door behind her.

“Now that you’ll be busy with school, I guess we won’t be seeing each other as much.”

Jane shrugged as if she didn’t care, but it wasn’t hard to read the expression in her eyes. Like the other people who’d come and gone in her life, she thought I was abandoning her.

“Wait,” I said. I fished in my purse for a piece of paper and a pen. “Here’s my phone number. If you need anything, call me. Or even if you just feel like talking, okay?”

Jane folded the paper carefully and put it in the pocket of her jeans. I hoped she remembered it was there before the pants went through the laundry.

Faith pressed her nose against the window and watched the small, slender girl walk down the driveway toward the back door. The Poodle looked as bereft as I felt. You can’t fix the whole world—hadn’t I just told Aunt Peg that?

Yes, but I could sure as hell work on my one small portion of it. I’d be seeing Jane again, I was sure of it.

 

When I got home, it looked like half the neighborhood was at my house. Lights were on, the front door wasn’t quite closed, and several cars, including Sam’s, were parked in the driveway. After my recent experiences at Howard Academy, my first thought was that some sort of disaster had occurred.

I parked by the curb and hurried across the yard with Faith. As I reached the front steps, the door opened. Alice Brickman stood in the doorway, looking mortified. Behind her, I saw my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Silano, pass through the hall. She waved to me gaily and continued toward the living room. Loud music was coming from that direction.

“I am so sorry,” said Alice.

I raced up the steps. By the time I reached the top, we were eye to eye. Alice has strawberry blond hair, pale, luminous skin, and a wonderful smile. Unfortunately, she takes those assets for granted and spends too much time worrying about the fifteen pounds she never lost after her daughter, Carly, was born three years earlier.

“What’s happened?” I asked, trying to fit past her. “Is Davey okay?”

“Sure.” Alice blinked. “He’s fine. At least he was a few minutes ago, the last time I saw him.”

Mothers of little boys learn that tactic early: never make promises unless the child in question is within view.

“He and Joey are playing Nintendo,” said Alice. “I’m afraid that’s how this whole thing got started.”

“What whole thing?” I had to raise my voice; someone had turned up the volume on the CD player. Two men I’d never seen before were manning the controls.

“This gathering. Whatever. This afternoon I ran out of things for the boys to do. Carly was having a play date, and they were bored. You know how it goes.”

I could imagine. One bored six-year-old boy could make a nuisance of himself; two could drive a mother to distraction.

“So Davey got this idea that everything would be all right if they could come over here and play Nintendo, which annoyed the crap out of me because you know perfectly well that Joey has a Nintendo set of his own, except that Joe is an idiot.”

Joe was Alice’s husband, an attorney with one of the big firms in Greenwich. He’d recently decided that playing video games would stunt his children’s intellectual and emotional growth. Consequently, he’d unplugged the Nintendo system and consigned it to the attic.

As we were speaking, the idiot in question strolled down the hallway from the kitchen, beer in hand. For no reason that I could see, he was wearing tennis whites. Sam, who was also holding a cold bottle of Bud, was right behind him. He was grinning broadly.

“Most men are idiots,” I said sweetly. “It’s to be expected. Then what happened?”

“Well, you know how you gave me a key in case of emergencies? I figured this was sort of close, except I didn’t want the boys to be here all by themselves so Tina and Carly and April and I came with them . . .”

Tina and April, I surmised, were the mother-daughter combination that formed the other half of Carly’s play date.

“. . . and then Sam showed up because he was looking for you and seemed to think you had this long-standing agreement that the two of you would get together on Saturday nights even though he hadn’t called to confirm or anything, and there was no reason he should expect you to be here . . .”

There we were, right back to that idiot thing again.

“. . . then Joe got home from playing doubles. Apparently he’d invited the other three guys back to the house for a beer, but we didn’t have any, so he saw my note saying where I was and came over here to yell about the beer thing, except that you had plenty once Sam showed him where the spare case was in the garage. And you know how men are, they had to make a big production of putting some in the fridge and some in the freezer and by the time they got that all figured out, Joe had forgotten what he was mad about in the first place . . .”

By now, my eyes were beginning to glaze over. If Alice didn’t stop and take a breath soon, she was going to pass out on the floor.

“Mrs. Silano?” I asked weakly.

“Who?”

“Edna Silano? My neighbor?”

“Oh, right. I guess we were causing somewhat of a commotion and she seemed to know you weren’t here.” Alice shielded her mouth with her hand, and whispered, “I think she watches from behind her front curtain.”

She did. I was surprised Alice hadn’t realized that sooner. Some days I think we entertained her better than television.

“So she came over to make sure that the house wasn’t being burglarized—”

“By four kids, two mothers, and a team of racquet-wielding doubles players?”

“Something like that. Anyway, Sam gave her a beer and invited her to join the party and she’s been here ever since. I hope you don’t mind, we’ve ordered pizza.”

Mind? By now, I was frazzled enough to think that was a delightful idea.

“So everyone’s okay?” I asked.

“Just dandy.” Alice grinned. “Come on in and join the party.”

Faith trotted into the house and went in search of Davey. Before I’d even had time to hang up my coat, Sam reappeared with a second, icy bottle of Bud. Unlike Aunt Peg, he immediately noticed the bandage on my arm.

“I was going to call you last night,” I said. “But I fell asleep instead.” I took a minute to bring him up-to-date on what had been happening at Howard Academy.

Sam looked appalled when I got to the part about Faith’s and my close call. I decided to distract him by mentioning where I’d been all afternoon.

“You and Sheila and Peg, all together in one place.” He gulped, considering the implications. “Did everything go all right?”

“No furniture got broken. No breakables were thrown.”

“What about unbreakables?” Sam muttered under his breath, looking far from reassured.

“Sheila’s an interesting woman,” I said. “I can see why you might have married her.”

“You can?”

“Sure. She’s smart, she’s attractive, she’s sexy.” I trailed my fingers lightly down his arm and let them brush across the front of his jeans. Then I turned and walked away. “And you were obviously young and deluded.”

Sometimes, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as having the last word.