That Boy From Trash Town (2 page)

"And that's when I just about lost it myself," she told him with an unrepentant giggle.

By the time Whitney finished relating the story of the infamous Portopotty Incident, Dean was chuckling openly, and the lines of strain had left his face. The tired, worried look was gone from his eyes, and the deep grooves in his forehead had disappeared.

Staring at him, she felt like a traitor for even thinking of reminding him of his work, but she had just thought of something concerning the Gutierrez case.

"Has anyone talked to the little girl?" she said without preface.

And being Dean, he knew immediately what she was talking about. "Sure," he said. "The police questioned her and so did I. Her mother says she was hiding under the bed when the fight took place, and the girl has confirmed that. She says she didn't see anything."

"But no one has talked to her alone, without her mother present?"

He shot a questioning look at her. "You think that would make a difference?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, probably not, but..." She hesitated, reluctant to bring up unpleasant memories. "Dean, would you have said anything bad about your stepfather while your mother was around?"

He stared at her for a long time, frowning. But the frown wasn't from displeasure. It was more as if he was suddenly absorbed in his own thoughts.

Seconds later he rose abruptly to his feet. "You might be on to something, Whit. By God, you just might be on to something."

Without another word, he opened the door and went into the house.

He probably didn't even remember that she was there, she thought with a wry smile. But Dean's neglect didn't really bother her, he was always intense when concentrating on a case. He was just that kind of man. Her kind of man.

Rising to her feet, Whitney moved across the yard, and, after giving the sleeping dog one last pat, she went through the back gate to the alley.

The narrow lane was as clean and orderly as the houses were. All of the plastic garbage cans were color-coordinated and neatly aligned; and flowering bushes peeked cheerfully over the top of well-kept wooden fences.

Most of the houses on Macon Street were 1920's models that young, upwardly mobile couples had bought and restored to their former glory, but the street hadn't always been such a pleasant place to live. When Whitney was six, she'd thought that the street, and the people who lived on it, were somehow different from real people. Like creatures from another world, she found them to be both exciting and scary. Mostly scary. Everyone except Dean. Even back then, when he was well on his way to becoming a juvenile delinquent, Dean had been her hero. And Whitney had badly needed a hero.

When Lloyd Grant died in a boating accident, Whitney had lost more than a father. She had lost her friends and her home, as well, because only weeks after her father's death, she and her mother had left Winnetka, Illinois, and moved to San Antonio.

Anne Harcourt Grant had family in San Antonio. Lots and lots of family. Rumor had it that the Harcourts had been in the Alamo city since Moses was a boy. They were an institution in south central Texas. They were old money. It didn't matter that the fortune Great-great-grandfather Harcourt had acquired before the turn of the century had been made in a real estate scam. Time had obscured the origin of the Harcourt fortune, and each succeeding generation of the family had not only added to the coffers, but had carefully put down another layer of varnish over the self-assumed Harcourt esteem.

Ames Harcourt, Whitney's maternal uncle and the present head of the family, didn't actually work, but he hired people who did, people who invested and acquired. To Whitney, turning a large amount of money into an enormous amount of money didn't seem a worthwhile goal, but it apparently gave Uncle Ames a good deal of satisfaction.

On returning to the bosom of the family, Anne and Whitney had taken possession of a graceful little two-story cottage at the back of the Harcourt's thirty-acre estate. The cottage had been built for Grandmother Harcourt, Whitney's great-grandmother, who had spent her last twenty years there. Uncle Ames called it the Dower House, a pretentious title from a pretentious man. Luckily for Whitney, the cottage sat on the back edge of the property, almost a quarter mile from the main house and Uncle Ames.

When she first arrived in San Antonio, five-year-old Whitney knew nothing of Harcourt history. She had only known that she and her mother were going to be with family. And although her father's death had knocked the wind out of her, she comforted herself with the thought of having cousins to play with, children who would be more than friends because they were blood.

It didn't take he long to discover her mistake.

Whitney had five new cousins. Uncle Ames had two girls and a boy—Allie, Baby and Ames Junior—and Aunt CeeCee, Anne's older sister, had a boy and a girl—Tad and Muffy. Whitney could have gotten used to the ridiculous names, but their attitude was something else. For some reason, all her cousins hated Whitney on sight.

With the exception of Uncle Ames's infant son, her cousins were all older than Whitney, but they went to the same private school that she did; they even had the same riding instructor and the same dance teacher. By all rights, that should have given them something in common. But somehow, from the very beginning, Whitney was out of step.

The Harcourt cousins didn't hesitate to show Whitney that they noticed the difference and were offended by it. They played spiteful little tricks on her when the adults weren't looking. Sometimes the tricks were harmless—like tying knots in the ribbon straps of her ballet slippers, or telling nasty things about her in whispers to the other children at school—but sometimes the tricks were more serious, like the time one of them pot a burr under her horse's saddle.

The day it all changed, the day she learned how to get along with her cousins, came almost a year after she and her mother had moved to Texas.

On a muggy summer day, after their shared riding lesson, her cousins began teasing her, the way they always did. But this time a challenge had been issued, and a challenge had been accepted.

To prove she wasn't a sissy-baby, Whitney was to go through the hedge that surrounded the Harcourt estate and bring back proof that she had gone all the way to Macon Street, in the middle of a section of houses that her cousins called "Trash Town."

Ignoring her cousins' jeers, Whitney crawled under the hedge and marched away from them.

It wasn't until she had passed a couple of streets that she realized what she had gotten herself into. During the two-block walk, Whitney had come to understand just why they had called it Trash Town. Rubbish was everywhere, and everything was broken-broken cars in the driveways, broken toys in the yards, broken furniture on the porches. Even the streets were broken. And it suddenly occurred to Whitney that if she stayed there, she might get broken, too.

There was no one to help her. The people she had passed on the street stared at her. And without exception, they all had tight, mean looks on their faces.

So she sat down on the curb and did what she would never have done in front of her cousins. She hid her face between her knees and cried.

"What are you sniveling about, kid?"

Wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, she looked up. The person standing beside her looked like a man, but was probably little older than Tad. His skin was tanned a deep copper, and his dark hair was long and unkempt, with features that were strong in his thin face. And he had the same anger in his eyes that she had seen in the other residents of Trash Town.

Staring up at him, Whitney stopped crying and swallowed several times in nervous reaction.

"What are you doing in Trash Town?" the boy snarled at her, the anger blazing even hotter in his dark eyes.

"I live here," she lied. "Down that way." She pointed vaguely in a direction. Rising to her feet, she added, "I'm going back home now. It was nice meeting you. Goodbye."

She had begun to walk away when the sound of his laughter stopped her. She turned back to look at him and was instantly captivated by his laughing face.

"Sure you live here," he said, still laughing. "Everybody in Trash Town wears riding pants. Now give. What're you doing here?"

The question made her remember her predicament. She drew in a shuddering breath and sat down on the curb again. Leaning forward, she rested her chin against her fists and sniffed a couple of times.

The boy sat beside her, and after a moment he put his arm around her shoulders. "Come on, kid. What's the problem?"

"Do you know Tad Harcourt?"

"Sure," he said immediately. "Me and Tad, we're just like this." He held up a pair of crossed fingers.

The words made it sound as if he was teasing, but his voice had grown hard again. She studied his face. "You don't like him, either? He's my cousin."

"Bummer," he said in sympathy, then an instant later he whistled softly through his teeth. "You're a Harcourt?"

"Yes... bummer," she echoed mournfully. "At least, Uncle Ames says I am, but I don't know why I have to be a Harcourt when my name is Grant. It says so on my birth certificate. Whitney Daryn Grant. If my Daddy hadn't got drowned I could still be a Grant and live in Winnetka, but he did. Sometimes I cry, but not in front of Tad. The Daryn part of my name is from my father's mother. She's dead, too, but she was probably real sweet. The Harcourts are mostly mean. 'Specially Tad. He hates Amesy... that's Uncle Ames and Aunt Jocelyn's little baby. Tad hates a little baby. And just because he wanted to be the only boy. I think that stinks. Baby, now, she's not too mean. She's mostly just dumb. But the others are great big snots. Allie calls me Spitney and Muffy says I have cow eyes and I don't think she's ever seen a cow, because their eyes are brown and mine are blue. I like our house, but you know what? I don't call it Dower House like the others do. Don't you think that sounds like it would make your mouth pucker if you took a bite? I call it Sweet House because it's the sweetest house, and I-"

"Quiet!"

She stopped talking and looked at him, not in the least offended.

"Do you always talk so much?" he asked warily.

"Yes," she admitted, "but it's mostly to myself. Mother is always busy with something else, and I Wouldn't talk to my cousins for anything. I mean not like I'm talking to you. I have to talk to them at—"

"I get the picture," he said, interrupting her again. "But what does all that stuff have to do with you being over here in Trash Town?"

She studied his face. "It's an ugly name. I wouldn't call it that if I lived here. Don't you mind people calling your home something ugly?"

Apparently it was the wrong thing to say, because the mean look came into his eyes again. "Are you gonna tell me why you're here or not?"

She gave a heavy sigh. "Tad and the girls said if I'm not a sissy then I have to bring back proof that I've been all the way to Macon Street." She glanced around, then back to him. "Do you know which one is Macon Street? I can't find any street signs."

He stared at her for a moment, his expression reflective, then he stood up. "Come on," he said abruptly.

Without hesitation, Whitney followed him. They walked down a dirty, weed-infested alley and presently stepped across what had once been a chain-link fence, entering a yard filled with knee-high grass.

"Stay here," he said as he jumped and caught a low limb on a huge oak tree.

"Wait," she whispered urgently as he began to disappear into the leaves. "Whose house is this?"

"Mine," he said without looking back.

"Then why can't you use the door?"

"Because my stepfather got laid off again," he called back to her. "If I go through the house, he'll pick a fight, and I'm not in the mood today."

Whitney could certainly understand that. She felt the same way about her cousins.

"Wait," she said again as he began to move. "You didn't tell me your name."

"Dean....Dean Russell. Now will you pipe down and let me take care of business?"

She watched him climb in through a second-story window, then she stood quietly waiting for him to return. Seconds later he dropped out of the tree and landed a foot away from her. Pulling a battered street sign out of his shirt, he handed it to her. She turned it over gingerly. Macon Street.

"I ripped it off a couple of weeks ago," he said.

"You mean... you mean you're giving it to me?" she asked, surprise and pleasure making her voice squeak.

He shrugged his thin shoulders. "You need it more than I do. Besides I can get all the street signs I want."

Although he was making light of the gesture, Whitney knew he had given up a great treasure, and she couldn't thank him enough. She thanked him until he told her to shut up again.

"What do you do when they start raggin' you?" Dean asked as they walked back through the streets of Trash Town.

"I punch them," she said, swinging her fist at the air to give him a sample of her right hook.

"Well, that's where you make your mistake," he told her. "Since they're all bigger than you, you couldn't do 'em much damage, and when you start fighting, you're showing them that they can get to you. I found out a long time ago that you gotta show bullies that nothing they can do bothers you, and they're not nothing but a fly buzzing around your head. If you act like their worst tricks are just a big, stupid joke, they'll get tired of doing it. They'll go find somebody that cries or gets mad. See what I mean?"