Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway (27 page)

“I was afraid no one would believe me! I'd never once called the police on him! So I buried him quick, only I didn't put him down deep enough.”

We were both quiet a minute, then I said, “But there was also the disability money, right? I mean, if he was
dead
, his disability checks would stop, but by pretending he was alive, you still had money coming in.”

She looked so miserable. So broken. “He never let me have any cash. I always had to beg for every nickel. And since we were cut off from everyone, I thought I could pretend and just go on the way I had been for a while. But then that whole mess with the city council came up and I was trapped. I couldn't
un
bury him. Not in the state he's in now.” She shivered. “I had to wait 'til he was nothin' but bones. And if they took the property, they'd for sure find him when they did the gradin', and I'd wind up in jail!”

“So you don't really want to live there, you just didn't want them to find the body.”

“I hate that shack! Bein' there gives me nightmares! It's haunted with hateful words and deeds.” She shivered, then said, “Why I thought jail would be so much worse is beyond me.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “No one wants to lose their freedom—especially not after finally gettin' some.”

I thought about that, then said, “You know, maybe you won't have to go to jail.”

“Oh, I'm going. After what I've done?”

“Well, maybe it won't be for all that long. Mrs. Willawago's a witness—she knows how mean he was to you. And if you just tell the jury the truth, maybe it won't be so bad.”

Her eyes welled up, but then she sniffed back the tears and said, “So what gave me away? How'd you know it was Marty in there?”

I sort of cocked my head at her. “A lot of things—but specifically? Your socks.”

“My
socks
?”

“Remember when I ran into you in your backyard? You were dressed up as Marty, getting ready to put your boots on? Your socks were dirty in a weird way. On the toes, mostly. Then tonight when I saw you were wearing your husband's shoes, something sorta clicked. But we got busy ice-blocking, and I didn't put it all together until I saw Patch with the arm. That's when it hit me that the socks were dirty like they'd be after doing some gardening in your sandals. And
then
it clicked that I'd never seen the two of you at the same time, and how troubled you'd been about my, you know,
trespassings
, and that the big changes in Marty—no more beer cans, no more shouting, him shielding himself from the sun—those weren't changes in
him
, those were changes because he was
gone
. And then, of course, those threats made total sense—you were trying to get the public on your side.” I shrugged. “And being upset enough about Patch to get rid of him made sense, too.”

“I was desperate! I knew he'd reach Marty if I didn't do something. So the night everyone was at the council meeting, I dug him a way out.” She rubbed her forehead. “That was a terrible thing to do, I know, but that dog wouldn't quit! And tonight he finally reached his mark.”

“Did you know he'd gotten away with … part of Marty?”

She shook her head. “I
feared
so. He'd dug that whole corner of my yard up, clear under my back fence. So I figured he was on the loose, and I did look all over for him, but I had to get back and hide Marty again.”

I checked around for Patch—he was having a golden time demolishing chicken bones, but Marissa was trying to get them away.

“So tell me this — was Mrs. Willawago in on the threats?”

Her eyes bugged a little. “The Church Lady? You've got to be kiddin'.” Then her eyes sharpened down on me a little and she asked, “Why would you think so?”

I gave a little shrug and said, “Let's just say she hasn't always lived by ‘Thou shalt not lie.’”

“Oh?” she asked, and let me tell you, it was a very interested
oh
.

So I laughed and said, “It's kind of funny, actually. You tried real hard to convince people that your husband
wasn't
buried in the backyard, and she tried real hard to convince people that hers
was
.”

She hesitated. “You mean to say Frank's
not
scattered in her backyard?”

“That's right.” I sort of grinned because I couldn't really help it. “Last I saw he was scattered all over her closet.”

She started to say, “What—?” but just then we heard Billy's voice going, “Right over here!” and saw flashlights bobbing along the tree corridor.

It was Billy with the Hummer driver, and bumbling right behind them were Squeaky and the Chick.

“Where's the perp?” Squeaky says, hand at the ready on his holstered gun.

“There he is!” Billy says, pointing to Mrs. Stone.

Billy is totally amped—ruddy faced, out of breath,
wide-eyed—he looks a lot more like a little boy than a swashbucklin' pirate, that's for sure. So I tell him, “It's okay, Billy—the he's a she, and she's all done fighting.” Then I take Marty's grotesque arm and put it down in front of Squeaky, saying, “I don't think you want the remaining remains to remain staying where they're presently harbored at this time.”

“Eeew!” the Chick squeals when she sees what it is. And when Squeaky realizes it's part of a corpse, he backpedals like crazy, shouting frantically into his radio for backup.

“No need for that,” Mrs. Stone says wearily. “The rest of him's in my backyard.” She heaves a sigh, then stands and says, “I'll show you.”

“What about … the
arm
?” the Chick chokes out. She looks at Squeaky. “We can't just leave it here….”

Mrs. Stone sighs and waves it off, saying, “Aw, let Patch have it.”

“Eeew!” we all say.

She lets out a bitter laugh. “It's the kind of end that hand deserves.”

Squeaky's pretty green around the cheeks as he looks at the arm, but he says, “No, we need to, uh, properly execute the collection of this, uh, physical and material evidence.”

Marissa pulls another plastic bag out of her duffel and holds it out for him. “Does this help?”

He nods and swallows hard as he accepts the bag, but it's obvious he doesn't know how to get the arm inside the bag. And really, who wants to touch a corpse arm?

Well, besides Patch, of course.

So since I still have Marissa's mittens on, I decide to help him out. I pick up the arm, shove it in the bag quick, and say, “There you go.” Then I peel off the mittens and eye Marissa like, Wash or dump?

“Get
rid
of them!” she says, wrinkling her nose.

So I shove them in the bag, too, and Squeaky doesn't seem to mind. He nods and says, “I appreciate the help.”

So Marty's gross arm is now out of sight and, apparently for Billy, out of mind. “Ahoy then, mateys!” he says to the cops. “Carry on!”

So the cops follow Mrs. Stone back to her house, and after Marissa gathers the rest of our stuff, we get Patch to follow, and we traipse along behind.

And somewhere along the corridor of trees, the driver shakes his head and says, “I've had some wild nights in that Hummer, but yo ho, man, nothin' compares to this.”

Then Casey waves the Jolly Roger flag a little and grabs my hand. “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me,” he sings softly, looking at me with a smile.

But Billy overhears and starts the song in earnest. And there's something about that song that makes it impossible
not
to join in. So there we are, in the middle of the night, waving the Jolly Roger, marching along behind cops and a killer, laughing and singing at the top of our lungs.

It was a first date none of us will ever forget.

Arg!

Mrs. Stone did wind up going to jail. Hudson, Grams, and I visited her there, which was really weird, let me tell you. For one thing, being at the jail is freaky. It's all steel doors and block walls and echoing halls.

Mrs. Stone, though, didn't seem like a caged animal, sitting in her cell. She was acting like she had when she'd shown Squeaky and the Chick where her husband was buried—calm.

“I'm glad it's over,” she told us, and that's when it really hit me that there
is
real freedom in the truth.

Even if it puts you in jail.

To a small degree I knew how she felt. I mean, getting my “little” secret out of the closet had been a huge relief. I guess there's something about not carrying the burden of the “sin,” as Mrs. Willawago would call it. Something about getting it out that lets you breathe again.

And speaking of Mrs. Willawago, she was coming to visit Mrs. Stone just as we were leaving. No one had woken her up the night we'd discovered the truth—I'd just put Captain Patch in her backyard while Mrs. Stone confessed her crime.

So bumping into Mrs. Willawago was pretty uncomfortable
after the way she'd thrown me out of her house. But she just ignored me as she spoke to Grams and Hudson. “Poor lost lamb,” she said about Mrs. Stone. “But the Lord is watching over her. He will help her through this time.” Then she told them how she'd offered to post Mrs. Stone's bail, but Mrs. Stone had refused. “She's repentant, I know, because she told me jail was a fine place for her to stay.” She pulled some brochures out of her purse. “I've been to the battered women's shelter for ideas on educational opportunities and work-training programs. I'm hoping this will help her prepare for a decent life after her sins have been accounted for.”

So it's nice that she's trying to help Mrs. Stone and all that, and if Willy-wag-a-Bible wants to stay mad at me, well, let her. If she can't balance the nice things I did against one understandable accusation, well,
amen
. I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it.

Anyway, enough about them— on to my pirate pals! This last week of school has been amazingly fun. No weirdness at all. Well, except for the number of people who have asked me where I get my high-tops—that's been
really
weird. But where the
pirates
are concerned, it's been cool. Danny and Casey and Billy chum around with us at lunch. Nick and Olivia don't, but that's just fine by me. We've started calling them Nickolivia and liplubbers because they're
way
too into each other.

The first couple of days we just talked about our night out as pirates—after all, we had
lots
to catch Holly and Dot up on. But after a couple of days we started talking
about other stuff, too. Like sports and summer plans and Heather.

Actually, I was the one who finally asked, “Where
is
your sister? She's been absent all week.”

Casey scowled. “In London.”

“London!” we all cried.

“With my mother,” he grumbled. “She thought Heather needed a positive experience after what she'd been through.”

“Oh, please,” I said.

“Exactly.” He shook his head. “I get to go camping, she visits London.”

I grinned. “Any chance she'll stay there?”

He grinned back. “One can always hope …”

Then on Thursday I dropped by Hudson's after school. I had myself some cookies and iced tea and some more cookies and iced tea, and what I found out was that Coralee Lyon refused to step down from her position as city council chair, so
talk
of a recall had turned into
action
toward a recall.

“I gathered eighty-two petition signatures this morning alone,” Hudson told me.

“
You
did?”

“Why, sure. It doesn't happen on its own, you know.”

“But … you mean you were like one of those guys out in front of the supermarket with a clipboard, asking, ‘Are you a registered voter’?”

“I wasn't
like
one of those guys, I
was
one of those guys. I'm part of a whole committee of ‘those guys.’ We're called the Recall Coralee Lyon Committee, and we
still have a lot of signatures to gather.” He grinned at me. “Want to join?”

“Me?” I said, pointing to myself like a dodo. “I'm not even old enough to vote!”

He shrugged. “That doesn't mean you're not old enough to help. If you really want things to change, you have to get involved.” He smiled at me. “Little strokes fell big oaks, you know.”

When I left Hudson's, my head was swimming with that idea. I always figured I was too young to be heard. I mean, considering my experience with adults? Please. They listen about as good as wood.

But then it hit me that things
had
changed this past year. Maybe not radically, but they had changed. I mean, my first day of seventh grade I got suspended for punching Heather's lights out. After that all the teachers and Mr. Caan thought I was trouble. And since Heather was so clever and I was so hotheaded, it had taken nearly the entire year for them to start seeing that I was more than a quick-fisted delinquent.

I was a kid fighting to be heard.

And in the beginning of the year Heather had convinced everyone that I was weird. Some kind of thrift-store-scroungin' loser. But now I have in my possession a green-sashed brassy bullfrog that says I've got unique style.

Talk about miracles!

But that miracle only happened because my friends decided to try a new way to make a change. And the amazing thing is, people
listened
.

So last night I started thinking about different ways of making the rec center happen. I mean, now that Teri Stone no longer has her terrible secret to hide, the only property owner on Hopper Street that
doesn't
want to sell their land is Mrs. Willawago. And even though she isn't my best friend or anything, I still don't think it's right to force her out. So why not just build
around
her?

They could start by moving the old railroad office next to the historical society—there's room for it there, and it sure would be historical.

But then it would probably turn into one of those boring field-trip places where you went only once in your life and forgot.

So, what if they kept the railroad office where it is and turned it into the Railroad Café—you know, part of the rec center, where kids could go have refreshments
and
soak up some Santa Martina history. Maybe Mrs. Willawago could even work there and tell stories about the old days—like a barkeep for teens, pulling sodas or sports drinks or holy water or whatever.