Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (27 page)

I blink at her and out of my mouth comes a real intelligent, “Uh …”

What was I going to ask?

She laughs. “Or maybe you took a wrong turn?”

There are lots of chairs crammed into this office. Two in front of the desk, two off to the side, and one near another door that’s straight across from the door I’d come through.

Oh. And then there’s the one she’s sitting in.

So I guess my brain figures it’s okay to let my shaky knees take a little break, ’cause before I even know what I’m doing, I’m sinking onto the edge of a chair in front of her desk, holding my skateboard across my lap. “Uh, no. I, um … I’m actually wondering if you have files on people who work … or
worked
here.”

Her smile fades a little. “Files on … Why would you be interested in that?”

“Because … um …” And then my mouth just starts motoring. “You know how at schools they make you fill out an emergency contact form where you have to put down who to call in case something happens? Like, if I fall and break an arm, they know who my doctor is and who to track down and say, Hey, this idiot daughter of yours was riding her skateboard down a ramp and fell and broke her arm. You know … that kind of thing?”

She grins at me. “Sure.”

“So is there something like that at places where people work?”

Just then the door on the other side of the office opens and Teddy Bear walks in saying, “Hey, Courtney—” and then he sees me. “Oh, hi. You her sitter for tonight?”

I shake my head and look at Ruby Red, who laughs and says to him, “Give me five, would you?”

And that’s when the weirdest thing happens.

I hear that pack of dogs again.

Grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff, grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff
.

Only this time the dogs go from being somewhere out there in the distance to being
loud
.

And
tinny
.

Before I can finish blinking, ol’ Teddy Bear’s swept his cell phone out of his pocket and is going out the back door saying, “What’s up?”

Half of my brain feels stun-gunned, and the other half is zapping around trying to wake up the first half. But it’s like there’s a force field between the two halves and nothing’s getting through.

“So yes, we have personnel records,” Ruby Red is saying, “but it’s against the law for me to share them with you.”

“Huh? Oh.”

“Who were you wanting to know about?”

Half of my brain’s screaming, Get up! Leave! but apparently my mouth’s wired to the other half, because it says, “Michael Poe.” Then real fast, I add, “I know he’s a little strange and all that, but he’s been really nice to a friend of mine and we’re worried about him because he hasn’t been home in two days.”

She stares at me a minute, then says, “I wouldn’t worry about Mike Poe. I’d worry more about your friend.”

“My friend? Why?”

She cocks her head a little. “I wouldn’t let my kid anywhere near him.”

I just sit there, perched on the edge of the chair, and finally the lightning-storm half of my brain starts to break through to the stunned half. “So I should ask the police to look into his … what did you call them? Personnel records?”

“The police?”

“Well, you’d show it to them, right? So they could try and track him down?”

She stares at me a minute, then says, “Well sure. But I just can’t imagine a young girl like you would have any concern over a strange man like Michael Poe.”

I stand up and tell her, “I just want to know he’s all right.”

“Well, here,” she says, twisting around in her chair and opening a filing cabinet. “Let me make sure we even have contact records on him. He was hired so long ago … I don’t know what the policy was back then.”

So I wait while she paws through files, and that’s when I notice that her calendar has
BURIAL
written in red in certain boxes, with a time and a name underneath.

Something about that gives me the shivers. Her calendar goes from July to December—half a year laid out in front of her. And in the blink of an eye you can see what sort of month Death had.

He was really busy in September.

There are, like, eight
BURIALS
.

Not so busy in October—there were only two.

But already November had two written on it, and it wasn’t even a week old.

“Here we go.” She pulls a file halfway out, then thumbs through it and shakes her head. “All we’ve got is a mailing address and his phone number.” She gives me a sorry-honey look and says, “And I don’t think anyone here’s going to be able to tell you much, either. He’s a loner, and, sweetheart, honestly, you should stay away from him.”

“So no one here’s seen him the last two days?”

She shakes her head. “He was let go, you know.” I nod, so she adds, “There was a reason for that.”

I tell her thanks and start to leave, but stop. “Maybe
you
could call his number? As a favor?”

She hesitates, then shrugs and says, “Sure, I can do that.” And after checking the file again she picks up the phone on her desk and punches in the number. And I’m watching her wait as the line rings, expecting her to tell me there’s no answer, when suddenly her face clicks into action and she says, “Michael? … Yes, this is Courtney, I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s a girl here who’s concerned because she hasn’t seen you in a couple of days.… Uh-huh … Uh-huh … I’m not sure, let me ask.” She covers the mouthpiece and asks me, “What’s your name?”

“Sammy.”

“Sammy?”

I nod. “And my friend’s name is Elyssa. He calls her Lyssie.”

“It’s Sammy and Lyssie,” she says into the phone.

I put out my hand and whisper, “Can I talk to him?”

“Sammy wants to talk to you, is that okay?” But as she
listens her eyes get bigger and bigger, and then she says, “I’ll relay that,” and drops the phone on the base like it’s contaminated.

“What did he say?”

“To put it in polite terms, he wants all of us to leave him alone.” She shakes her head. “It’s sweet of you to be concerned, but honestly, he’s not someone you should be associating with.” She looks up at me. “And obviously he’s fine.”

I take a deep breath and say, “Well, thanks,” then head out the door.

Now, I was feeling kind of stupid. Stupid and a little bit mad. I mean, why had I wasted so much time thinking about Dusty Mike? Why had I been so worried? I really
didn’t
know him, and it was pretty clear from what he’d told Courtney that he didn’t care if Elyssa and I were worried about him.

Since I was now late meeting Casey, I decided to make a beeline into the old section by taking a shortcut across the pavement that went around the office. I’d never paid any attention to the office area part of the cemetery before, but now I saw that it was way bigger than just the office—it was a whole little complex. Next to the office was an open storage unit that had canopies and AstroTurf and casket gurneys inside it. And behind that was a wide paved area and two big garages. The garage doors were all open, and I could see a riding mower, a flat trailer, and some sort of oversized Tonka truck thing with a boom and a winch coming out of it.

So that was all a little surprising, but what made me do
a double take was something completely unexpected. There, in the big breezeway area between the office building and the garages, parked in the middle of two pickup trucks, a silver van, and a golf cart, was the Deli-Mustard Car.

I look around quick for the Vampire, and I can feel my heart speed up and my hands start to get clammy. He
had
seen me—at least the back of me—without my zombie disguise when we’d escaped the funeral parlor. And since I’m wearing the same shoes and jeans and sweatshirt I’d had on then, the last thing I want is to come face to face with him.

Since the nearest place to really get out of view is behind the Sunset Crypt, I cut up to it as fast as I can, then catch my breath and make sure nobody’s watching.

I can’t see the cars anymore because the garages are in the way, and I also don’t see the Vampire anywhere. So I head out, moving toward Sassypants’ grave, but staying behind as many of the big monuments as I can.

Casey’s already at our spot. “Hey,” I pant as I dump my backpack and skateboard and give him a hug. “Sorry I’m late!”

“I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”

I kind of roll my eyes. “I
was
early, but then I got sidetracked.”

“Sidetrack Sammy,” he says with a grin.

“Yeah, that’s me.” So we sit down and I tell him about running into Elyssa and going back to the graveyard with Holly and getting dive-bombed by an owl and checking Dusty Mike’s mail and Officer Borsch hanging up on me
and all of that. Then I take a deep breath and say, “But that wasn’t the sidetrack. The
sidetrack
was going into the cemetery office.”

“Why’d you go there?”

So I tell him about the personnel records and meeting Ruby Red and Teddy Bear’s dog-pack ringtone and Dusty Mike wanting to be left alone, and about having to cut up to the Sunset Crypt because of the Deli-Mustard Car.

“Wait. So the Vampire’s here? Now?”

“Somewhere! Or at least his car is. And since he saw you
and
me at the funeral home, I do
not
want him to see us.”

He wraps an arm around my waist and scoots me in close, and for some reason he’s grinning. “Copy that, Sidetrack.”

“I’m serious!”

He gives me a kiss. “I am, too.”

I shake my head and sigh. “This whole thing is so confusing. And I feel so … jumbled. Like I can’t tell right from wrong anymore. Or good from bad. Or something. It’s like what
sounds
and
seems
reasonable feels … off.” I look right at him. “Why would a man not take in his mail, not answer the door, and yet answer the phone?”

Casey shrugs. “Maybe he’s in lockdown? Depressed? Not getting out?” He eyes me. “Maybe he saw it was you?”

“What’s he got against me? Besides, there’s no peephole in the door, and the curtains were closed and didn’t move. I watched. Plus it was dark. No light anywhere.”

“Maybe he went out?”

“If he went out, he wasn’t locking himself in, right?
If he went out, he would have taken his mail in when he got back, right?”

He gives a yeah-that-makes-sense shrug, and after we both look out over the graveyard a minute he says, “So maybe she didn’t really call.”

My head snaps to face him. “You mean she pretended to call? Why would she do that?”

He eyes me. “Why
would
she call? She’s the reason he got fired, right? Because he was stalking her or whatever?”

“They didn’t say
that.
”

“Well, lurking around, being a creeper … same thing.”

I blink at him. “But …”

“
I
wouldn’t make that call. Not if I got someone fired. I’d let the police do it.”

“But …”

“But she didn’t know you knew that about her, right? So she could
pretend
to make that call, no problem.”

“But …”

He waits, and when I don’t actually
say
anything, he grins and says, “You’re sure cute when you’re baffled.”

I laugh and punch him in the arm. “Shut up!” But right away my mind clicks back to Dusty Mike and Ruby Red. “I did ask to talk to him, but she turned it around.”

“Turned it around? How?”

“She said Mike wanted to know my name, so I told her, and after she relayed it she said he said he wanted to be left alone.”

He gives me a little smile. “Convenient. And now she knows your name.”

I just sit there, blinking.

It seems so out there.

So unbelievable.

But still.

Something about it
feels
right.

Casey and I did talk a little about school and Heather and his mom, but that got interrupted when I saw a silver van drive from over by the office toward the main cemetery gate. “There she goes,” I said, pointing down the rise. “Too bad there’s not a way to find out if she actually called Dusty Mike.” Then I throw in, “And where’s the Vampire? And what’s he
doing
here?”

“The Borschman said they’re friends, right? Him and Shovel Man?”

“Yeah, but what are they doing? Having a game of poker in the shed?”

A little while later we got our answer.

“Hey look!” Casey says, pointing at the golf cart that’s come out from behind the office. “You think that’s them?”

I stand up and squint, trying to see better. “Wish I had my binoculars.” But as the golf cart gets closer I can see that there are definitely two people in it and that the passenger has longish black hair. “I think you’re right!”

“You want to move closer?”

“Sure!”

So we gather our stuff and scurry down through the
old section, going from one big monument to the next to avoid being seen. Ahead of us, the golf cart turns off the main road and onto a smaller one, then bumps up onto the grass. It zooms cross-country, right over the graves, and when it stops, we hide behind a big grave marker and watch as the passenger jumps off and grabs something from the back of the cart.

I nod. “That’s definitely the Vampire.”