Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary (17 page)

“It's business, Lucinda.”

She snickers. “And a very profitable one for him—if he can convince us to sell.”

Just then Officer Borsch comes up the hill saying, “Well, I find nothing down there. If there was a can, it's gone now.”

“What about the cap?” I ask. “Can't we use giant sieves or something and sift through the leaves for it?”

Officer Borsch looks at me like I'm talking about pigs again. He comes up the rest of the way, stomps leaves off his boots, and says, “Even if we did find it, we couldn't get any prints off of it. By now they're completely dusted over.”

“So, it's just our word that something was there.”

Officer Borsch shakes his head. “No, the fire marshal has confirmed that an accelerant was used. The cabin was definitely set on fire.”

“How in the world can they tell that?” Kevin asks, looking at the rubble.

“From the burn pattern of the timbers.”

“But there's nothing left of them!”

Officer Borsch says, “There's enough.”

Lucinda throws her hands in the air. “So what are you waiting for? Go arrest those devils!”

Officer Borsch stares at her. “What devils?”

“The Murdocks!”

“Ma'am, with all due respect, I can't go around arresting people without just cause.”

While Lucinda's telling him a thing or two about just cause, I'm thinking that maybe I didn't know the Murdocks, but their torching Mary's cabin just to get back at Lucinda seemed pretty extreme. And that the more I learned, the more it felt like this situation went deeper than revenge.

Miles
deeper.

Penny is definitely not a proud pig. I mean, it's one thing to nudge
me
from behind—it's quite another to do it to Officer Borsch.

I don't think she was trying to get him to quit arguing with Lucinda about “ancient history” and “just cause” as much as she was just sniffing him out, but she might as well have goosed him for all the noise he made. He jumps back, crying, “Hey! Heeeeey! Get away from me!”

Penny snorts after him, twitching her snout around in the air.

“You hear me? Get away!”

I grab her collar to hold her back, but she is two hundred pounds of highly motivated pork, and I'm not having much of an effect. I practically get on her and go for a ride, but still, she's not stopping.

Then this giggle consumes me. Completely. I can't stop it any more than I can stop Penny. And it's not because I think the way Officer Borsch is acting is funny. Try being attacked by a runaway pig sometime—it's scary! No, it's because I realize that Penny's in love. L-O-V-E, love.

Now a thought like that can put you in stitches, and a thought like that can make you completely useless. At least that's what it did to me—I just fell over laughing.

And while Penny's chasing Officer Borsch around a giant oak tree, everyone else starts busting up, too.

Officer Borsch yells at us, “It's not funny! Get this thing away from me!” and as he's playing ring-around-the-oaktree with Penny it dawns on him that the other police and the fire people are watching him and starting to laugh, too. That's when he decides that the only way to stop Penny is to do the job himself.

All of a sudden he quits running, spins around, and plants himself like he's ready to wrestle a bear. Penny stops, all right, then stands in front of him, snorting and sniffing and twitching her tail.

He takes a step back.

She takes a step forward.

He tries taking a step to the side.

She takes one, too.

He takes a step
forward
.

She stays put.

Lucinda whispers, “I wonder what's gotten into her!”

Now I'm not going to start talking about Oinkers in Love; somehow I don't think Lucinda would approve. I just ask, “Will she come if you call her?”

“Usually. Although she can be quite stubborn.”

We all look at her like, Well?

She says, “Oh! Oh, I suppose you're right,” then tries calling off her pig. “Penny! Come here, girl!”

Penny rolls an eye around to Lucinda, then inches closer to Officer Borsch.

“Penny, you come here this instant!”

Penny snorts and twitches her tail.

Lucinda marches up to her and wags a bony finger, saying, “Penny, mind!”

If a pig can grumble, then that's exactly what Penny did. But she came away from Officer Borsch without so much as a yank of the collar. And when she'd followed Lucinda a safe distance away, Officer Borsch lets out a deep breath, wipes his forehead, and grumbles something about cursed country living and being
way
out of his jurisdiction. Then he calls, “Can you girls make it back on your own all right? I need to wrap things up and get back to town.”

We wave him off, saying we're fine, and Lucinda calls, “So what's going to happen? Are you going to arrest those Murdocks?”

Officer Borsch says, “I'm sure we'll be sending some one over to question them,” then has a quick chat with the other uniforms before skating out of there.

Dallas lets out a sigh. “Well, I'm afraid that's that.”

Lucinda says, “What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “I know you want them to go arrest that whole clan, but it's not going to happen. They've got no evidence, they've got no proof…”

All this time, Kevin's been standing to the side, listening. But when he hears that, he steps closer and says, “Dallas is right. Nobody understands the historical value of it, Aunt Lucinda. To them it was just an old shack.”

Lucinda is quiet for a minute, looking from Dallas to Kevin. Finally, she sighs and says, “I think I'll go in and rest,” but I can tell by the look in her eye that she's not tired. Not in the least.

The four of us follow Lucinda back to the house while Kevin and Dallas stand around talking. And after we're about halfway there I say, “Lucinda, I read Mary's diary last night…”

She stops and looks at me carefully. “And?”

“And it's the most amazing thing I've ever read.”

She gives me a little smile. “Thank you.”

“I'm serious.”

Dot says, “Yeah, I found her this morning buried in her sleeping bag with the flashlight on and the diary open, and over breakfast that's all she talked about.”

Lucinda takes my hand and says, “You really do understand, then.”

I nod.

She searches my face. “Did the last page make any sense to you? Any sense at all?”

“The riddle about the gold?”

“Yes. Did it?”

“It keeps playing through my head, but no. The only thing I can think for the part…how's it go?
Where the ridge meets the rock and the rock meets the ground
…”

Lucinda nods, “Yes, that's right.”

“The only thing that makes sense to me is that there must be someplace along the ravine where rocks go from the edge of it clear down to the bottom. Is there someplace like that?”

“I've looked. Kevin's looked. Dallas has looked. Because that's what we all thought. And there are places like that, but…nothing.”

“
The box is shallow, black and crowned
…That must be
the box the gold is in? Like it has a crown stamped on it or something?”

Lucinda shrugs. “I don't know. Kevin's suggested maybe it was jeweled, but I don't know where Mary would've gotten
jewels
.”

“Maybe it's decorated with pretty stones?”

Lucinda frowns. “My hunch is it has nothing to do with jewels or stones, but what then?”

“How's the rest go?
Not far in, left and high, gold and silver, warm inside?
”

“That's right.”

“All I see is rocks in the sun, getting hot. That's the picture that keeps popping into my head.”

She sighs, “It's no use. That's what the rest of us have come up with.” Her face gets all stormy, and she starts marching again, only this time faster. “It feels like I've lost everything. Or will, soon enough. And if I can't do anything else about it, at least I can see to it that their actions don't go unavenged.”

I had no idea what she had in mind, but the jut of her jaw and the tone of her voice put me in a bit of a panic. “Lucinda, wait! What are you talking about? The Mur-docks? C'mon, they're…they're like mosquitoes. They buzz and they bite and they leave itchy spots, but they're…you know…just pests!” She was shuffling along like a locomotive, gathering speed. “Lucinda, wait! What are you going to do? You can't—”

“I'm tired of people telling me what I cannot do, what I did not see, and what I should not believe! Others seem to do what they pretty well please, and I haven't got
enough time left to worry about the consequences.”

“But what if it
wasn't
the Murdocks. What if—”

“Ha!” she says, then turns before going up the steps to a side door. “This stinks of Murdock if anything ever did. It's sneaky and mean-spirited and there's the stench of money in the air.” We follow her up the steps, but she's not about to let us in. She says, “I've enjoyed your company, but if you'll excuse me, I've got matters to attend to,” and lets the screen door slam behind her.

I look at the others and say, “What are we going to
do?
”

We stand at the base of the steps trying to decide. Nobody wants to talk to Kevin—not with the way we'd been banned from the property. Officer Borsch was already gone, and when Dot brought up talking with the other policemen, Holly pointed to the vacant driveway and said, “Too late for that.”

It was too late to talk to Dallas, too. His motorcycle was gone. Then Dot says, “We could always go talk to the Murdocks ourselves.”

I snicker and say, “We could go swimming with barracudas, too.”

Holly says to Dot, “You can't be
serious?
”

“Sure. Why not?”

I ask her, “What are you planning to
say?
”

“I don't know—maybe ‘Hi. We're here because Lucinda Huntley is real upset about the cabin being burned down and we're afraid she's going to do something drastic.'”

“She'd kill us!”

Dot looks me square in the eye. “It's better than her killing someone for real.”

Maybe I should have laughed, but I couldn't. I mean, sure, it seemed kind of far-fetched that an old woman, bent like a cane, would haul off and blast someone with a shotgun, but the more I got to know Lucinda, the more I believed that she actually might.

So we hiked up the hill and around the bend to the Murdocks'. And when we got to their driveway, Marissa said, “Are we sure we want to do this?”

We weren't. So we hovered there, trying to decide exactly what to say. Then I noticed something. Off the driveway on the gravel, hidden behind a hedge, was a car. And even though I could only see the taillights and the back bumper, I was pretty sure it was the Town Car that had just been at the Huntleys'. I point and say, “Look! Right up there…behind the hedge. Is that the realtor's car?”

We tiptoe up, and sure enough, there's the
SUPERSTAR REALTY
placard on the side. Holly says, “Do you think the
Murdocks
are trying to buy the Huntley property?”

I look at her and mutter, “Well, he's hiding something. Why else would he park here?” Then I get a tingle along my spine. “Do you remember the first time we met Lucinda?”

Holly says, “On the road with Dot's dad?”

“Yeah. Do you remember the car that came by?”

“Yeah…It was silver, too, but Sammy, it didn't say
SUPERSTAR REALTY
on it. I would've remembered that.”

I walk up to the car, pinch the corner of the placard and pull, and there I am with a giant sign magnet in my hand.

“What about now? Same car?”

They all shake their heads and say, “Wow,” and “Maybe,” and “I remember the windows were tinted just like those but…”

Then Marissa says, “So let's say it was. What are you saying? That
he
burned the place down?”

“I don't know! But that's pretty suspicious, don't you think?”

“So what do you want to do?”

I think about it a minute. “Let's just wait it out.”

“You mean just hang out here until he comes out? Or until Lucinda shows up?”

“Either one.”

Marissa whispers, “Guys, I don't see what good any of this is going to do. If you think the SuperStar guy is involved, why wait around here? And if you go up and tell the Murdocks to watch out for Lucinda, they'll just laugh at you. And if Lucinda really does come marching up here with a gun, she's crazy, and I'm not going to try to wrestle a gun from her.”

I shrug and say, “It's better than letting her blow someone away. I mean, I don't want her killing anyone, and I sure don't want her going to jail.”

We were all quiet for a minute, thinking about little Lucinda sitting in a jail cell, waiting to be arraigned so she could explain about wagon trains and Murdocks and the ghost of Moustache Mary. No judge would understand it. No judge would even believe her. They'd give her a sad little look and know, just
know,
that she was demented.

I whisper, “You guys can go, but I want to stick around for a while.”

Marissa says, “What are you going to do, just sit here and wait?”

I nod and say, “Really, why don't you guys go back to Dot's? I'll be there in a little while.”

Holly puts her hands in her pockets. “If you're staying, I'm staying.”

Dot and Marissa look at each other, then shrug and say, “We'll wait, too.”

We all take cover beside some bushes near the house, which is a great spot because we can see the front door and the driveway, but we're pretty well concealed from view. So we sit there, whispering back and forth about the Town Car and the Huntleys, the Murdocks and the gas can, but after a while I start getting antsy. And since there are perfectly good windows just begging to get peeked into, I decide to sneak over and see what I can see.

Marissa shakes her head, saying, “There she goes,” and Dot whispers, “Sammy…Sammy, no! Can't you just sit still?”

I put my finger to my mouth and then grin and shake my head.

Dot whispers, “You're going to get us into trou-ble…!” so I whisper right back, “No I'm no-ot…!”

She rolls her eyes, and she and Marissa stay put, but Holly sneaks over to my side and we both inch up and peek in the first window.