Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher (19 page)

So I did, and since nothing was up, I stayed at Hudson’s. And I did try to tackle my own homework, but Mikey wanted me to help him with his, so I wound up quizzing him on his spelling words and coaching him through his math instead.

Now, while we’re working, Hudson delivers snacks. Sliced pears. Almonds. Carrot sticks. Some kind of seedy cracker. It’s a lot different from the brownies and cakes he used to serve, but all of us munch away, and it really does taste good. Then when Mikey’s homework’s all done, Mikey asks, “Do you want to go on my power walk with me?” His face is totally lit up as he says, “Maybe we’ll see Captain Evil!”

“Gee, Mikey, I wish I could, but I still have
my
homework to do.”

Good ol’ Hudson to the rescue. He maneuvers Mikey away from the table, saying, “Why don’t you and I go scout around for Captain Evil and let the girls do their homework?”

“Uh, I can wait for them to finish,” Mikey says, looking back at us.

“It would be a
long
wait,” I tell him.

Marissa nods. “Go on, Mikey. We’ve got a
lot
of homework.”

So Mikey and Hudson take off, and while they’re gone,
Marissa and I buckle down and get some serious work done. I write up my lab report for science, finish an English worksheet, and finally face off with my hardest subject—math.

And I’m actually making good progress on the math when Marissa says, “Wow. They’ve been gone a long time.”

I look up at her and say, “Maybe they’re hot on the trail of Captain Evil,” and that’s when I notice something outside move.

Something that was in the window a second ago but disappeared.

Something
hairy
.

Not a cat. Or a rat. Or any other windowsill-walking creature.

This hairy thing had gone straight
down
.

“What?” Marissa asks, looking over her shoulder. “What did you see?”

“I think someone’s spying on us.”

“Spying on
us
? Who?”

We give each other a quick look, then shove back from the table and charge for the door.

Marissa and I bolt out the front door, fly down the porch steps, and race across Hudson’s lawn to the side of the house where the window is.

And who do we trap in the shady strip that’s between the house and the side fence?

Nobody.

The fence divides Hudson’s property from his neighbor’s, and it cuts away as you get closer to the sidewalk. It’s lower. Something you could just jump over.

So I back up to the low section and look behind the neighbor’s side of the fencing.

Nobody there.

So I look this way and that, back and forth, all around, and so does Marissa.

“Are you
sure
you saw something?” she finally asks.

And I
am
starting to wonder if my eyes had been playing tricks on me, but when I go back to the window and start checking around, I discover prints.

Not footprints.

Fingerprints
.

Well, not the kind you can dust for and then take into
the lab to analyze. These were more like finger
marks
. And they were
in
the dust.

“Look!” I say, pointing to the eight smeared lines on the windowsill. “That’s where they held on when they were looking through the window.”

She thinks a minute, then says, “When you first said someone was spying on us, I thought it might be Mikey, since he’s into the whole spying thing now. But there’s no way he could move that fast.”

“And Hudson would be around here somewhere.”

She looks at me with wide eyes. “What if it was Danny?”

“Danny? Why
Danny
?”

“What if he did a reverse lookup?”

“A what?”

“You know. Someone calls you and you don’t know who it is? Even if they didn’t leave a message, their number’s recorded, so you can do a reverse lookup on the computer and find out who called. It shows the address.”

I give her a serious squint. “Or you can just call the number back to find out who it was … ?”

Marissa pulls a face. “Not if you didn’t want them to know you cared.”

I slap a hand to my forehead. “The reverse lookup would have shown Hudson Graham! And I didn’t leave a message, so he wouldn’t know it had anything to do with you!” I drop my hand and just stare at her. “You have
got
to quit obsessing!”

She gives a little pout. “Well, what if it was Casey?”

“Oh, good grief! Stop it!”

She stands there a minute looking really dejected, then
says, “Well, if it wasn’t anyone we like, then this is giving me the creeps.”

“No kidding.”

She edges toward the porch. “I think I want to go back inside.”

But I’m not done looking around yet, so I head out to the sidewalk and check up and down Cypress, hoping to see someone running away or hiding behind a tree or being chased by a dog. Something!

What I see instead is a whole lot of nothing.

And then all of a sudden I spot Mikey and Hudson rounding the corner at the end of the block.

“Hey!” I call over to Marissa, who’s waiting for me on the porch. “Hudson and Mikey are almost home!”

“Was it them?” she asks, coming toward me.

I shake my head, ’cause the two of them are obviously serious about their power walk. “Geez, look at them go!”

When Mikey spots us, he makes like it’s a race to the finish. His arms and legs go into hyper-pump, his red cheeks huff and puff, and he keeps checking over his shoulder to make sure Hudson’s not going to pass him.

“Wow,” Marissa gasps. “I think you’d call that
running
.” Then she hollers, “Go, Mikey!”

So I cup my hands around my mouth and act like I’m an announcer at a horse race. “It’s Mikey McKenze out in front, Mikey McKenze holding the lead! Mikey McKenze pulling ahead! Listen to the crowd go wild! Ladies and gentlemen, Mikey McKenze is … the … winner!”

He doubles over when he reaches us, panting like crazy
as he leans his hands on his knees. “We …,”
huff, huff
, “…  saw …,”
huff, huff …

“Captain Evil?” I ask.

He shakes his head and huffs and puffs some more before gulping in air and saying, “That girl you almost beat up at the mall!”

I blink at him. “The one who called you Blubber Boy?”

He nods like crazy, still panting away.

“Where?” And I can feel a lightbulb going on over my head.

He points behind him. “She was running thataway.”

Marissa and I look at each other, and at the same time we say, “It was Heather!”

I turn to Mikey. “Someone was spying on us through the window, but they got away before we could catch them.”

Marissa asks, “Where was she?” and since Hudson’s standing there now, he says, “She was around the corner, almost to Cook Street. And she seemed none too happy to see Michael.”

“Bus-ted!” I put my arm across Mikey’s shoulders. “Way to go! You just cracked the case!” Then I nod and tell him, “You know what? I think you’ve earned yourself a code name.”

He looks up at me all rosy-cheeked and shiny-eyed. “How about Spy Guy?”

I laugh, ’cause it’s like he’d already been thinking he needed a code name. I look at Marissa. “Well?”

She nods and says, “Spy Guy it is!”

“Yeah!” he says, giving the air a little punch.

As we start toward the house, Hudson asks, “Hasn’t Heather tried following you home in the past?”

Which was true. Heather’s tailed me home quite a few times before, but I’ve always managed to ditch her. It’s been on my way to the Senior Highrise, though, and I’m in a state of hyper-paranoia whenever I go home. I’ve never actually worried about being followed anywhere else. I mean, what’s it matter? A friend’s house is just a friend’s house, not the place I live illegally. Not the place where Grams could get kicked out if people
found
out.

Still, I couldn’t really believe Heather had managed to follow us to Hudson’s. Not with the way I’d been looking over my shoulder for the FBI or whatever. But then I
had
been kinda wrapped up in worrying about Billy. So I tell Hudson, “Sorry I let her tail us. If she eggs the place or—”

“
I’ll
catch her!” Mikey cries.

We all laugh because it’s just so … 
cute
. But Mikey goes, “Really! I will!” so I get serious and say, “I know you will.” I look at Marissa. “I think this boy needs a cape!”

She nods. “Spy Boy to the rescue!”

“It’s Spy
Guy
,” he tells her.

“Oooh. Sorry!”

I eye her. “Yeah, Marissa. You don’t want to mess with Spy Guy.”

Mikey slaps five on me, then says to Hudson, “You got any weights? I need to build some muscles!”

Marissa and I look at each other like, Whoa, this is out of control! I mean, there’s no way a nine-year-old boy is
going to be
bodybuilding
, but Hudson just gives us a wink and tells Mikey, “I do. But you’re going to have to let me teach you proper form.”

“Let’s go!” Mikey cries, and bounds up the porch steps.

Marissa shakes her head. “Unbelievable.” And as we go back to the table to finish our homework, she says, “And what a relief that it was only Heather, huh?”

I laugh. “A relief? If Vince is Captain Evil, she’s Commando Evil!”

She thinks about this a minute, then adds, “Why do you think she was spying on us?”

I laugh again. “Getting even?” ’Cause Marissa and I have not only spied on Heather through her window, we’ve infiltrated her house wearing Halloween costumes.

But then the reason hits me.

And I can’t help it—I gasp.

“What?” Marissa asks.

“I’ll bet she’s looking for my
mom
.”

Marissa’s eyes bug out. “Oooooh. Now that’s scary.”

“No kidding!”

Marissa nods. “First her brother, then her dad …! You and your mom have annihilated her little world.”

“It was annihilated way before we showed up. And I’m out of the picture now, remember?”

“Yeah, but now she has someone to
blame
. And you know what? If my dad was moving away because of my archenemy’s mom, I might go psycho, too.”

All of a sudden I’m worried. “You think she’ll go psycho on my mom?”

Marissa pulls a face. “It’s
Heather
.” Then she adds,
“And she followed us here, didn’t she? She was spying through the window, wasn’t she? She was looking for something, and I don’t think it was you.” She snorts. “She can find you at school anytime.”

So that shook me up a little. I mean, my mom may be self-absorbed and inconsiderate and
willful
, but at the same time she’s weak. She faints at the sight of blood, she shrieks if she finds a mouse, and she thinks vacuuming is strenuous. And maybe I’ve gotten used to Heather going psycho on me, but picturing what she might do to my mom?

It was like a horror film flickering through my head.

Marissa got back to her homework, so I tried concentrating on finishing my math, but it was hard. My mind kept slipping to questions about my mom. Was she still in town? How had Heather finally been told? Had my mom and her dad broken the news to her … together? Had she found out some other way?

I didn’t have any answers, so I made up scenes in my head. Really wild, dramatic scenes. I even pictured my
mom
breaking it to Heather in one of the castle rooms from
The Lords of Willow Heights
. My mom was in a long velvet dress and was gliding across the room toward Heather, who was in an arched doorway wearing jeans and smoking a cigarette. “I have something to tell you,” my mom coos.

“Yeah? Well, I have something to
show
you!” Heather snarls. Then she grinds out her cigarette and produces a long, gleaming knife.

There’s no blood on the knife, but even the
thought
of blood can do my mother in. And since obviously this long,
gleaming knife was going to produce some of the drippy red stuff, my mother’s hand flutters to her forehead and she crumples to the ground.

“Sammy?”

I blink and see Marissa waving a hand in front of my face. “Huh?”

“You okay?”

“Um … yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“I was just saying … about Mikey?”

“What about Mikey?”

She kind of squints at me. “Where
were
you?”

I shake my head. “Never mind. What were you saying?”

She drops her voice a little. “I was saying how I think Mikey’s finally getting a childhood.”

I almost asked her what she meant, but all of a sudden I understood
exactly
what she meant. The McKenzes’ house is like a museum. They have glass furniture—if you can believe that—and Mikey grew up being told not to touch, well,
anything
. Plus, they live way up on East Jasmine, where the houses are, like, a mile apart and there are no kids around to play with. Plus, if you knew Mikey McKenze, believe me, you would not invite him over.

At least not the old Mikey.

And it wasn’t like his parents ever invited other kids over. With glass furniture and priceless artwork on display?

Please.

Plus, they were gone all the time, and their nanny sure didn’t want to deal with any more than she had to.

So, yeah, in a flash, I got it. I got how Mikey was finally someplace where he could go exploring. Someplace he
could turn into Spy Guy and people were cool with that. Someplace where people were actually letting him be part of the action.

Marissa tears up. “I hate to say this, but maybe my family falling apart has been a good thing.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I know I don’t,” she sniffs. “But maybe if all the money’s gone, we can start living like this?”

I give a little shrug. “Your parents would have to
want
it for it to be like this.”

She sighs. “I know. And I just can’t see them wanting it.” She gives me a quivery smile. “You have been the best friend ever, you know that? I can’t believe how nice you’ve been to Mikey.”

So we sit around and talk a little more about her brother, but finally I notice what time it is and collect my stuff, saying, “I’ve got to get home.”