Shadowmaker (6 page)

“I’m not familiar with Gooley’s Wash,” Mom said. “What is it?”

“It’s a stream of sorts. Mostly it only has a little water in it, but it carries a lot of water when it rains.”

“Are there other houses near you?”

“Yes. There’s the Werts and the Bantrys. The Werts are gone all day, both of them working full-time at their store, but Mrs. Bantry has been poorly ever since their son moved the old couple into their new house.”

“These are all new houses?”

Anita must have nodded, because Mom said, “What was the land like before the houses were built?”

“I don’t know,” Anita said. “I never got down there, never paid much attention.”

“It was all open country? No buildings at all?”

“Oh, there’s a building,” Anita told her. “I thought you meant what was on our prpperty itself. There’s a company nearby that’s been there for a long time. It’s a waste disposal company run by the Hawkins brothers. They’re the ones who built and sold the houses.”

It was all I could do to keep from groaning out loud. I knew that Mom was thinking the same thing I was. A waste disposal company could mean illegal dumping of toxic waste. That would mean a red flag to Mom. But she had the novel to write, and she couldn’t get sidetracked. Not now!

“Give me your address,” Mom said. “We can make an appointment for you to show me around your property.”

“I can’t do that,” Anita said, and I could hear the fear in her voice. “I thought you could just do whatever it is you do to find out about these things, and no one would know it was me who came to see you.”

“Seeing the property and talking to the people who live on it is part of what I’d need to do,” Mom said.

“I knew I shouldn’t have come. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“I don’t understand, Anita,” Mom said. “Who are you afraid of? Who would cause the trouble?”

“My husband, for one,” Anita answered. “He’s not only kin to Billy Joe and Bubba Hawkins, he works for them, as do a lot of people in Kluney.”

Her voice grew fainter and I could tell that she was walking to the kitchen door. “Leave me out of it,” she begged. “Please!”

“
You
came to see me,” Mom reminded her, “because of the baby you lost and because of your little boy. You asked for my help, but I can’t help
you
if you don’t help
me.
”

“I—I’ll think about it,” Anita mumbled. I heard the door slam and her shoes slapping the pavement as she ran up the walk toward her car.

As I came inside Mom dropped the hands she’d been holding to her forehead and sighed.

“I should have left the porch when I realized I could hear everything you and Anita were talking about,” I told her, “but I wanted to hear. I listened in. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Mom said. “I would have told you about the conversation anyway.”

“Toxic waste in Brownsville, toxic waste in Kluney. Isn’t that kind of odd?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, there are sources of toxic waste all over our country,” Mom said.

“I thought there were government laws about getting rid of toxic waste.”

“The laws work only when people cooperate,” Mom said. She glanced at her computer screen, which was still lit, hit the save key, and turned it off. “Want to come for a ride?” she asked.

“Where?” I asked.

“I want to see Anita’s house. It
must
have been built on landfill.”

“And you think the landfill covers toxic waste?” I asked.

“There’s a good chance,” she said. “For years some of those waste disposal companies buried fifty-five-gallon drums filled with everything and anything, and the drums deteriorate and leak.”

“Down to Gooley’s Wash and out to the sea,” I said.

Mom and I looked at each other.

“It’s nothing but guesswork,” I said. I was beginning to feel desperate about that look Mom gets when she’s intent about something. “Anita doesn’t know anything about
landfill, and anyway, there’s lots of landfill that isn’t contaminated with toxic waste. I think you should stay out of all this. You came here to write a novel … remember?”

“Anita asked for my help.”

“Sure, but then she told you
not
to investigate. She told you to leave her out of it.”

“I can’t just ignore the situation.”

“Mom!” It came out like a groan. “What about your novel?”

Mom looked pained. “For a little while it will have to wait,” she said, and reached for her handbag and car keys.

The area to which Mom drove was pretty, in a way, with grassy lawns and oak trees, and the three lots Anita had told us about were good-sized. The houses, though, were simple, wooden rectangles, each of them painted white with colored trim. About a quarter of a block past them, where the road turned, was a high double fence—eight-foot cedar boards behind heavy chain link. There were warning signs to stay out, but—as we drove past the open gate—we could look inside the fence to two large brick buildings. Parked in front of the buildings were four trucks labeled
HAWKINS
BROTHERS
WASTE
DISPOSAL
, and a number of cars. Judging from the depth of the fence on each side, there was a great deal of land behind the buildings too.

Mom pulled inside the gates in order to turn the car around. A guy in dirty work clothes, with at least two days’ worth of gray beard, immediately popped up out of nowhere and tapped at her window.

As she rolled it down he asked, “What can we do for you?”

Mom smiled. “Nothing,” she said. “I just needed a place to turn around.”

“Lost?”

“I’m headed back to Kluney.”

He pointed at the road and said, “Just go back the way you came, Miz Gillian.”

As Mom blinked with surprise, he gave her a humorless smile. “Seen you in town,” he told her, and then he said something puzzling: “Guess Billy Joe wins the bet.”

Mom didn’t ask him what he meant. Hawkins Brothers Waste Disposal and Anita’s house were well behind us before either of us spoke.

“He knew you,” I said. “It was like they were waiting for you to show up.”

“I should have guessed, just from what the sheriff told us.” As she spoke, I could hear Mom’s fuse growing shorter. “So many, many places, all over the country, where greedy people think, ‘We’ll bury the stuff and no one will care.’ Well,
I
care!”

“Can’t you just turn the problem over to the proper authorities?”

“Not yet,” Mom said. “I have to get the facts. Obviously no one wants to face what’s probably happening.”

“Do you really think the Hawkins brothers have been burying toxic waste?”

“In this country you’re innocent until proven guilty.”

“But you’re going to insist on looking into it?”

“Yes.”

“What about your novel?”

Mom got such a longing, agonized look on her face, I was sorry I’d asked, but she said, “If it’s meant to be written it’ll get written.”

Rats!
I thought.
That isn’t getting me back to Houston!
I decided there was no point agonizing over it. Usually things turned out okay.

But they didn’t. Late Wednesday night the wall behind my bed shuddered and thumped as something crashed into it, exploding my dreams. I woke up so fast, I leaped out of bed off balance and ended up flat on the floor.

Mom raced into the room, scooped me up, and staggered toward the switch for the outside lights.

“What’s the matter with this?” she muttered as she jabbed the switch up and down. “It isn’t working.”

By this time I was at the window. The moonlight wasn’t much help, but I could make out enough to see a figure raise an arm high. He let fly, and a rock slammed against the side of our house. Even knowing it was coming, the thud made me jump. “They’ve knocked out the lights,” I said. “They’re still throwing rocks.”

Mom turned on my bedroom light and reached for the phone. Her cheeks burned red, and she spoke angrily. “Tell him to get here now! None of this showing up fifteen minutes after they’ve gone!” she demanded. “I’m a taxpayer, and I want the sheriff to protect me and my daughter!”

I heard a car start up. Within seconds the shadows had shifted, dissolved, and were gone.

Mom held the phone on her lap and looked up at me with bewilderment. “Who are they?” she asked. “Why are they doing this to us?”

She didn’t expect an answer, which was just as well, because I didn’t have one to give her.

S
heriff Granger didn’t have an answer either. This time Mom didn’t offer him coffee. She gave him nothing but the facts.

He nosed around the yard with his flashlight and warned Mom about stepping on broken glass. “I wouldn’t replace those lights,” he said. “You’d just be lettin’ yourself in for the same kind of trouble, long as you keep your house shinin’ like a grocery store havin’ a grand openin’ sale.”

“But the lights weren’t turned on!” Mom insisted.

He frowned at her as though catching her in the worst kind of lie. “They’d have to be on in order to have kids shuck rocks at ’em.”

“They weren’t on,” Mom said stubbornly. “Besides, what makes you think it was kids?”

“Who else throws rocks at lights?”

“You’re the sheriff,” Mom snapped. “That’s up to you to find out.”

He slowly shook his head. “No point in causin’ trouble over a bunch of kids actin’ up. I’ll put out word I’m lookin’ for ’em, and if I catch ’em their daddies will warm their britches. You won’t have any more trouble.”

Mom took a deep breath and suddenly blurted out, “The guard at the Hawkins Brothers Waste Disposal plant recognized me.”

“Everybody in town knows you.”

“This was different. It was as though they were expecting me.”

“It wasn’t hard for us to figure out why you were here. It’s the only business around these parts you’d be interested in.”

“I told you,” Mom said firmly. “I came here to write a novel.”

“Then what took you to the Hawkinses’ company?” When Mom didn’t answer, Sheriff Granger looked at her with exaggerated patience. “The Hawkinses’ company gives jobs to many of the townsfolk,” he said. “Matter of fact, Billy Joe and Bubba are kinfolk to a lot of the people who live in and around Kluney. As I mentioned before, they wouldn’t take it kindly if you made trouble for Billy Joe and Bubba.”

Mom bristled. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothin’,” the sheriff said. “Just lettin’ you know how things are around here. As G. K. Chesterton said—”

“I don’t care what Chesterton said!” Mom interrupted.
“What kind of a sheriff are you, quoting classics instead of catching criminals?”

“Hilaire Belloc spelled it out when he wrote, ‘When I am dead, I hope it may be said: “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.” ’ ”

Mom strode to the door and held it open. Without another word the sheriff left.

The next day Mom replaced some of the lights with lower-watt bulbs, grumbling to herself, “I don’t care
what
he said.” And later that evening she put through a call to an investigator she’d worked with in Houston. “Check out something for me, will you?” she asked. “Hawkins Brothers Waste Disposal. You know what I need.”

When she hung up the phone she stood next to her desk for a moment, rubbing the back of her neck, before she murmured, “I haven’t had anything to do with these people, so why would they give us trouble?”

“Maybe it wasn’t them,” I said.

“Who else would it be?” Mom asked.

I thought about B.J., who looked at me the way he’d look at a tree roach that had wandered into the cafeteria. “The sheriff said it might be kids,” I told her.

“He’s wrong. Kids would have no reason to knock out lights that weren’t turned on.”

“They might have had another reason.”

Mom studied me for a full minute before she said, “There’s something on your mind, Katie. What is it?”

I told her about B.J. hoping I’d get out of Kluney. His friends, too, probably felt the same way.

“But there’s Tammy and Julie,” I added. “Tammy asked
me if I’d like to come home with her tomorrow and work on our history project together.”

“So it isn’t all bad,” Mom murmured.

“The only reason I told you about B.J. was so you’d know who might have thrown the rocks. As far as school goes, don’t worry. It won’t be long until June.”

Mom took my hand and led me to the sofa, settling down beside me. “I don’t buy your idea that it was kids from your school who threw the rocks.”

“Why not?”

“Some of them, like this B.J. you just told me about, may think you’re a city snob, and some may dislike you just because you’re different and didn’t grow up in Kluney, but think about it: it takes a lot of effort to gather a group together, collect the right-size rocks for throwing, get up in the middle of the night, and risk being arrested by the sheriff.”

The way Mom put it, my suspicions sounded silly, and I couldn’t help smiling.

“Now,” Mom said. “Tell me more about Tammy and her parents. And if you’re going to visit her home I’ll want to know where she lives.”

Tammy and I managed to make some progress on our history project, but we mostly talked about some of the crazy things we did in junior high.

“When I was fourteen I filled out all of a sudden,” Tammy said, “and I thought I was really cool, so when I saw this guy I liked coming down the walk, I leaned out the open window of our classroom and struck a glamorous
pose. The only problem was I misjudged the distance and fell out the window into a ligustrum bush. The guy helped me out, and that was the end of a possible romance.”

I laughed until I got the hiccups, but finally I was able to talk again. “I got so clothes-conscious I decided to come to school one day dressed like one of the models in a fashion magazine. I thought the look was fantastic, with a longish skirt and scarves around my head and neck and waist, and I had even expected people to stare with admiration. What I hadn’t expected was for all the kids to laugh. It wasn’t until my best friend pulled me into the girls’ room that I found I’d caught the hem of the back of my skirt in my pantyhose.”

“You didn’t!” Tammy squealed, and we both flopped over on the floor howling and screeching.