Shadows on the Train (3 page)

Hee hee.

Except that she who snickers last snickers best. Now Liesl could insult me all she wanted, while I had to maintain a saintly silence at all times. Or else, as Mother warned me, I'd be grounded for a year.

I took my place on the bench. Liesl was beckoning Talbot over from the pitcher's mound for a “personal consultation,” as she called it. I weighed the immediate bliss of an insult or, even better, a running tackle against a year's worth of being grounded. If only Mother hadn't laid that on me. Why couldn't she be one of those irre–sponsible parents?

Talbot and Liesl consulted at the plate. This consisted of Liesl giggling shrilly and waving her hands a lot. After a while, Talbot returned to the pitcher's mound and tossed some balls at her. She hit them all smartly into the outfield. Liesl was one of the best athletes in school.

I applauded dutifully with the other girls. You had to appreciate someone's talent at something, even if they were otherwise thoroughly weasely.

At the opposite side of the park, under some maple trees, I glimpsed a patch of scarlet. It was a woman in a red dress, with a little boy clinging to her hand.

Normally I wouldn't have thought anything of this. The far end of the park was crammed with jungle gyms, swing sets and slides; moms and tots came here all the time. In our own kidlet days, Pantelli and I practically lived here. Pantelli, a tree fanatic from day one, used to sit in the sandbox, suck his knuckles and stare longingly at the maples.

But the woman in red was talking to—Ardle McBean! Talking intently too. The maple branches picked up a gust of breeze and waved in front of the woman, the boy and Ardle. I craned this way and that to focus on them.

The woman's free hand rose to her face. She was wiping tears away…

“You'll get a stiff neck with all that craning, Dinah,” Talbot called.

“Now, Talbie, you're supposed to be paying attention to me,” Liesl cooed, with just a bit of an edge to her voice.

She, too, spotted the flash of scarlet. “There's Mrs. Zanatta,” Liesl tossed back at her buddies on the bench. “With that weird kid of hers who doesn't speak.” They all laughed.

Poor little guy, I thought. Why doesn't he speak? I wished Liesl had that problem.

Madge showed up with a picnic basket crammed with brownies and lemonade. Liesl put on her good manners. She was impressed by Madge's cool glamor and was always asking her about makeup and fashions.

While everyone snacked, Talbot gave us pointers on smashing balls. “
Far away
,” he added, with a look at me from under the dark forelock that Liesl had spent most of spring term drooling over.

Everyone laughed except me. “What's the matter?” Madge whispered to me. “Liesl Dubuque would kill to be the target of Talbot's teasing.”

I stared at Madge. She laughed and gave me one of those annoying, older-sisterly knowing looks. “Dinah, you're clever, but you're not always smart.”

“Here's your cap, Dinah,” one of Liesl's friends giggled. She passed the cap, with its red-lettered
GARDEN PARK
SOFTBALL ACES
on gray, along to me.

Liesl's pointy face thinned into an exclamation mark of panic. “Not now, Bertha,” she snapped, glancing uneasily at Madge.

But I was already reaching for it. “I was wondering where this was,” I said.

“This isn't the time,” Liesl protested.

What was with her?

I jammed the cap on my head. And right away felt something cold and gooey trickling into my scalp and down my face and ears.

Eggs
.

“Apples.”

I said the word somewhat indistinctly, as the shampoo Madge was working into my scalp was foaming around me and I didn't want to swallow any of it by mistake. My verbal analysis of the shampoo's scent glug-glugged down the sink along with the foam. I did like the apple smell, even if I was indignant about Liesl's prank.

And about Madge scrubbing my hair at the sink. I'd jumped in and out of the shower, but my sister took one look at my barely damp hair and said stronger measures were called for.

“I have to retaliate against Liesl,” I'd objected.

“If you do, you'll be grounded for a year.”

“That's so un—”

Before I could get the “fair” part out, my head was shoved in the sink. “Raw eggs are the toughest thing to remove,” Madge said now, sounding suspiciously satis–fied as she wrenched my hair about. “Somebody smeared raw eggs on Jack's windshield while he was holding a SOAC rally.” SOAC stood for Spotted Owl Advocacy Committee, the student wildlife conservation group Jack was running this summer. “Jack had to take soap, water and a scrub brush to the glass before he could even think about driving.”

“Please don't use the word ‘SOAC' in these particular circumstances,” I begged—and instantly had to cough out a gallon of apple shampoo foam. “And by the way, I don't think my
skull
needs cleaning.”

“An appropriate choice of revenge,” Madge mused, scrubbing cruelly on as if I hadn't spoken. “You trick Liesl into cutting her hair—and she tricks you into getting egg all over yours. Our Liesl isn't lacking in humor, even if it's a mean kind.”

And Madge paused in wrench-washing my hair to toss back her own shiny, burnished red mane. Not that I could see this, but I knew my sister. She was very proud of her appearance. Who wouldn't be? Madge was slim, with vivid blue eyes and porcelain skin.

She was also decidedly
not
the type to get into feuds, even with weasels. Madge was very tidy with her life.

Then we heard a laugh-cough outside the kitchen window, and we knew a very untidy part of Dad's life was back again.

I sat on the living room sofa, toweling my hair. “If Mother sees you, she'll call the police,” I warned Ardle, who was leaning in the window.

“No police, if ya don't mind. I already got somebody else after me.” Ardle drew deeply, greedily on his cigarette, the way I knock back a bottle of water after a particularly grueling gym class. His addiction was gross but fascinating. Perhaps remembering what Dad had told him about secondhand smoke, Ardle exhaled sideways into the garden.

Madge had stomped away, refusing to have anything to do with Ardle. First, though, she'd icily informed Ardle that her fiancé was due any minute and would “deal with” him.

“Never say that to a card player,” Ardle had joked, earning an angry sniff from my sister.

I, however, was curious about Ardle and kind of liked him. “Who's after you?”

“Who
isn't
?” Ardle rolled his eyes, and then he winced with pain. “Man, in my shape I shouldn't be exercising. Anyhow, Miss Carnegie Hall, I sure need to get my envelope back. It's gotta be in your dad's effects somewhere.”

Effects
was the word the police had used when they gave Mother what Dad had on him when he died. I still remembered the plastic bag they'd handed over: clothes, shoes, wallet, keys…A pretty meager summing up of a life.

“Dad didn't have eighty thousand dollars,” I told Ardle. I'd heard Mother and Madge talking about it last night. They were totally bewildered by Ardle's claim.

“There's different ways of carryin' eighty grand,” Ardle said cryptically.

Something came back to me, delivered up from my five-year-old self like the grubby dandelions I used to proudly present to Mother. “What you're looking for, is it something about a king?”

Ardle looked startled and then laugh-coughed. “Yer a sharp one. No wonder Mike was so proud of ya!”

“King of
what
, though?”

Ardle squinted at me through his billows of smoke. “Better for you I don't say, Miss Carnegie Hall. It's a dangerous secret to have. Some mighty ruthless folks would kill to find it out. That's why, fer seven long years, I've been silent,” Ardle placed a yellow forefinger to his lips and dropped his voice, “as a fumigated cockroach.”

From behind me, Madge said angrily, “You can share your revolting similes with the police, Mr. McBean. I'm calling nine-one-one.”

A tediously predictable habit among the older Galloway women these days, in my view. “But Ardle was just…” I turned to indicate Dad's friend, but now only smoke hung over the windowsill. “Ardle?”

Beyond the smoke, a coughed reply. “I kin see I'm not welcome, Miss Carnegie Hall. Don't sweat it. Just check yer dad's effects, if you don't mind.”

I ran out to the porch. By then Ardle was hotfooting it down the hill with the funny bouncing walk he had. A gray haze accompanied him, like the cloud of dust around Pigpen in
Peanuts
.

When he was halfway down the hill, a figure detached itself from behind our huge horse chestnut tree. A medium-height, stocky, brown-haired man in a black T-shirt and jeans. The brown hair, perfectly straight, flapped down the sides of his head in a bowl cut.

The man started down the Wisteria Drive sidewalk about twenty paces behind Ardle.

At one point Ardle paused, turned sideways and flung a cigarette butt into somebody's birdbath. The man dodged behind a Japanese cherry tree. When Ardle resumed walking, the man popped out again.

He was
following
Ardle.

Was he one of the “mighty ruthless folks” Ardle had referred to?

Declaring the smoke-infested living room a health risk, Mother and Madge sprayed it down with Lysol and shut the door. We received our next visitor, Jack's sister from down the alley, on our back porch.

Accepting a cup of tea from Mother, Geneva Rinaldi handed round the platter of butter tarts she'd brought over. Pretending I didn't notice Mother's and Madge's frowns, I helped myself to about six.

“…and our cousins from St. John, New Brunswick, of course,” Mrs. Rinaldi prattled, scribbling in a large, coiled exercise book with the words
Wedding Planner
in silver on the cover. “Let's see now—they're allergic to chocolate, so I'm afraid no chocolate at your wedding, Madge.” She chewed on her pencil. “Maybe sweetened tofu squares, instead?” She scribbled that down too.

“Um,” said Madge.

However, the two women had both launched into an endless list of aunts, uncles and grandparents who ought to be invited. Madge, shut out of the discussion, gave me a helpless glance.

She and Jack had originally hoped for a small wedding, after which they'd settle into their studies—Madge at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Jack at the University of British Columbia, where he planned to study history and politics and eventually become a teacher.

“Mfglmtch,” I said, my mouth full of tarts, by which I meant,
You'd think it was Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi's wed
–
ding from the way the two of them are carrying on.

Normally each woman was quite sensible: Mother, shy and dreamy; Mrs. Rinaldi, good-humored and practical, like Jack.

In one of those weird, sisterly psychic moments, Madge thought of Jack at the same time. She whispered, “Jack can't make it here after all. He was just leaving, but somebody called ‘LaFlamme' showed up at his office and insisted on seeing him. What kind of name is ‘LaFlamme'?” Madge added crossly.

Mrs. Rinaldi peered distractedly up at Madge from the detailed notes she'd started making on pew flowers. “What's this about flames?” she demanded. Then Mrs. Rinaldi relaxed and chuckled. “Oh, you mean Jack's
on
fire
, as it were. All men are like that before the marriage, m'dear. It soon changes! Why, my Luigi barely
looks
at me anymore.”

Madge's eyes widened. She gaped at her future sister-in-law. Then she burst into tears and ran from the room.

“Oh, dear,” Mother exclaimed, with a flash of her normal worried motherliness. “Perhaps I should go to her…”

Mrs. Rinaldi patted Mother's hand. “Typical bride behavior, Suzanne. Nerves of gossamer! If you want my opinion,” and Jack's sister leaned forward confidently, “we'll get a lot more wedding work done on our own.”

The two women were so busy I polished off most of the tarts on my own. Then, feeling a tad stuffed, I waddled round the room for exercise. “I'll tell you something
inter
–
esting
,” I interrupted Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi, feeling that this planning nonsense had dragged on long enough. “Today, Liesl Dubuque emptied raw eggs on my head.”

Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi stared. “Poor girl!” Mrs. Rinaldi exclaimed.

“Yes,” I agreed, basking in this sympathy-for-the-victim attention, a rare experience for yours truly. “It took ages to wash—”

“Poor, poor Liesl,” Mrs. Rinaldi continued, and Mother nodded along with her. “Dumped by her dad while he goes traipsing around the world with his new wife. And you know, Suzanne, wife number two isn't
quite
as young as he thinks…” The two women raised their eyebrows significantly at each other.

“The Dubuques can't be at all easy to live with,” Mother said. “Not used to having children around, for one thing. That Mr. Dubuque, always shouting about the proper care of his tomato plants! Meanwhile, here's Liesl, trying desperately to fit in…”

I would have made retching noises, but at that moment Pantelli's head popped into view over the windowsill. He was carefully removing leaves from a lilac bush for his leaf specimen collection. At the sight of Mrs. Rinaldi's butter tarts, he pointed to his mouth. Subtle, Pantelli was not.

Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi were engrossed in a debate about orange blossoms versus calla lilies. I raised a tart. Pantelli opened his mouth wide. I threw.

There are reasons besides lack of height that I don't make the basketball team. As with everything about me, it seems, my throw just had too much energy. The tart sailed right over Pantelli— “AAAGGGHHH!”

Mother and Mrs. Rinaldi jumped up, clattering their teacups. “Nice one, Di,” Pantelli commented.