The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline (11 page)

Joanna Tate turned from the sink, where she was washing lettuce, and surveyed the table and Caroline standing beside it, looking depressed. "Well," she suggested, "how about if we move the table into the living room? If we shove the blue wing chair over, it would fit there. Then we could cover it with a tablecloth. And I do have candles. I don't have silver candlesticks, but we can put the candles in—let me think.
Here. We can put the candles in these two little juice glasses. How about that?"

She handed Caroline two small glasses that had once had pineapples painted on them. The pineapples were mostly scrubbed away. Caroline stood two yellow candles in the glasses, and brightened. "Yeah," she said. "If I squish them down in hot wax, they'll stand up okay. Thanks. And yes—let's move the table into the living room. That's a neat idea."

They each took an end and maneuvered the table legs around the kitchen door and into the living room. Caroline shoved the blue chair into a corner, and she and her mother dragged the table to its new spot.

J.P. opened his bedroom door and peered out, frowning. "All that thumping and crashing is messing up my electronic work," he complained. He looked at the table. "What are you guys doing? You're not going to wax the kitchen floor again, are you? You waxed it last year."

"Nope," said his mother. "We're going to dine graciously tonight. Here, Caroline: a tablecloth." She took a white embroidered cloth from a drawer and tossed it to Caroline. "Candlelight too, J.P. A real honest-to-goodness dinner party."

J.P. leaned on his bedroom door and watched as Caroline straightened the cloth on the table. He made a face. "Can I eat in my room?"

"Absolutely not. You're going to eat here, and
you're going to use decent manners," said his mother. She stood back and admired the effect of the tablecloth. "I wish we had flowers," she said.

"I hate everyone who's coming," announced J.P., swinging his bedroom door back and forth.

"You don't even know Mr. Keretsky," Caroline said angrily. "Mr. Keretsky happens to be a world-renowned scientist."

"Scientist ha," said J.P. "You call dinosaurs a
science
?"

Caroline grabbed a candle and took aim. "Don't throw that," warned her mother. "It'll break, and I don't have any others."

"And I hate Stacy Baurichter," J.P. continued, jumping up to grab the top of the door and dangle himself from it. "Stacy Baurichter is a big fake-o jerk."

"Quit doing that to your door," said Joanna Tate. "You'll break the hinges."

"Stacy Baurichter told me that she thinks you're cute," said Caroline sarcastically. "Cute cute cute." She began to fold napkins.

"Liar," muttered J.P. He dangled for a moment and then let himself drop.

"And I expect you both to be polite to Fred Fiske," Mrs. Tate said. "Don't forget to thank him for the cannolis."

"BE POLITE TO WHOM?" asked Caroline, dropping a napkin on the floor.

"Fred Fiske," said her mother. "I invited him to join us. There's plenty of food."

"Oh,
great,
" said J.P. "That's just great, Mom. Now I definitely want to eat in my room."

"No way," said Joanna Tate in her don't-argue-with-me voice. "I'm going to finish washing the salad stuff. Caroline, you set the table. For
six.
That's S-I-X. Six." She went to the kitchen.

Glumly Caroline began to put six napkins around the table. J.P. stood in his doorway, watching. "I'm going back to my electronic invention," he said finally. "Because I'm going to use it.
Tonight.
"

During the afternoon, after Caroline had set the table for dinner and dusted the living room once more, she helped her mother in the kitchen. Together they baked a chocolate cake and forced each other not to open the oven every five minutes to peek at it. Caroline removed the strings from what seemed fourteen million string beans; she sliced them into a saucepan. "A normal vegetable," she said. "About time."

Her mother peeled potatoes. "Where's J.P.?" she asked. "What's he doing? He usually peels potatoes for me."

"I'll check," said Caroline, and she slid down from the kitchen stool. She went to J.P.'s closed bedroom door and listened. Inside, she could hear mysterious buzzes and crackling noises. She knocked on the door.

"Don't come in," said J.P.

"It's only me," called Caroline softly. "Mom wants to know what you're doing."

J.P. opened the door, motioned her inside, and closed it behind her. On his desk she could see a tangle of wires and switches.

"Look," whispered J.P. He gingerly picked up one green wire with an exposed copper end and touched it to the end of a red wire. Sparks flew, and a tiny column of smoke curled up into the air.

"Zap," muttered J.P. "If you touched that, Caroline, you'd turn into a grilled cheese sandwich."

"I have no intention of touching it," she replied, moving farther away from his desk. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Show me which chair Fiske is going to sit in at dinner," he said. "I'm going to wire it. It'll be a do-it-yourself electric chair."

Caroline backed away even farther. "Oh, no, you're not," she said. "No way. You're not going to kill anybody at my dinner party. Not even that Tyrannosaurus Frederick Fiske."

J.P. looked at her impatiently. "Of course I'm not going to kill him, stupid; do you think I'm crazy? I don't have enough juice to kill him, anyway. I'm just going to
stun
him. Then, when he's stunned, sitting there helpless and stupefied, we'll confront him with
all the evidence—in front of witnesses—and we'll call the police."

"But, J.P., it's a dinner party! It's going to be gracious dining, with candles and everything! Couldn't you do it another time?"

J.P.'s voice was determined. "How many chances do you think we'll get, Caroline? His deadline's the first of May—you know that."

He opened his door and peeked out. "How long will Mom be in the kitchen?" he whispered.

"A while. The cake's almost done, and then we have to make the frosting."

"You keep her in there, okay? And show me which is his chair."

Reluctantly Caroline pointed through the crack in the door. "The one at the end. Opposite Mom. You and Stacy will be on the side by the wall, and I'll sit with Mr. Keretsky on the other side."

J.P. eyed the distance between his door and the chair where Frederick Fiske would sit. "Okay," he said. "Got it."

"J.P.—"

He interrupted her. "Make sure Mom stays in the kitchen while I wire the chair."

"Does it have to be during the dinner party?" Caroline almost wailed. "We're having mashed potatoes and chocolate cake and—"

"I won't do it till the end of dessert," J.P. said. "If you're sure it's chocolate cake."

Caroline trudged back to the kitchen. "Cake should be done, Mom," she announced with phony cheerfulness. "Tell me how to start making frosting. And you stay right here and watch me, okay? I don't want to mess it up."

Glancing behind her, she could see J.P. on all fours, crawling from his room to Frederick Fiske's chair with some wires in his hand.

Gregor Keretsky was the first to arrive. Caroline met him downstairs at the front door and nodded when he asked in a low, concerned voice, "Is this necktie all right?"

"Brown and beige, with some yellow squiggles," she told him. "It will go with the candles."

He was carrying a bouquet of daisies. "For me?" asked Caroline in delight.

"No," he said, smiling. "For your mama. Because she is so kind to invite me for dinner. For you I have something else, something special." He patted the pocket of his jacket.

Mrs. Tate arranged the flowers on the table with pleasure, after she had been introduced to Mr. Keretsky. "Look," she said. "Don't they look beautiful with the yellow candles?"

Gregor Keretsky just smiled. When Joanna Tate had turned away, he winked at Caroline and shrugged. It was their secret: that the flowers, the candles, even his necktie, were all simply gray to him.

It's nice to have a secret with someone, she thought. Then she cringed, thinking of the secret she had with J.P. At the foot of Frederick Fiske's chair, curled unobtrusively around the metal leg, was a knotted ball of wires; from there they went under the rug and reappeared again on the floor leading into her brother's bedroom.

And now she had
another
awful secret, this one with her mother, who had made her promise not to tell. When they'd been frosting the cake together, her mother had whispered, "Guess what, Caroline. I have an absolute, full-fledged,
major
crush on Frederick Fiske."

Caroline had continued to swirl chocolate frosting around the sides of the cake. Her heart sank. She managed a small half-smile.

"You know the fifty-third thing I love about you, Caroline?" asked her mother happily. "You're so inscrutable."

Caroline didn't even know what inscrutable meant. But she was fairly certain it didn't mean someone who was planning to turn her mother's heart throb into a grilled cheese sandwich.

Mrs. Tate was pouring Gregor Keretsky a glass of wine when the front doorbell buzzed again, and Caroline ran downstairs to let Stacy in.

"
COMES BY BUS, LEAVES BY CAB
," Stacy announced. "I promised my mom that I'd get a taxi home, because it'll be dark." They bounded up the stairs together. "What's for dinner? And is your brother going to be here?"

J.P. came out of his bedroom when Stacy arrived. To her surprise, Caroline saw that he was wearing his sports jacket and his only necktie. "All of a sudden there's a dress code for electronic events?" she murmured in his ear as she passed him on the way to the kitchen. But J.P. paid no attention. He also paid no attention to Mr. Keretsky, beyond a polite how-do-you-do. He paid a
lot
of attention to Stacy Baurichter, who began to giggle and fool with her hair.

Finally there was a knock on the door, and Frederick Fiske was there. In unison, after the introductions, Caroline and J.P. said politely, "Thank you for the cannolis, Mr. Fiske." Caroline added meaningfully, "We both ate them Friday night." They watched his face.

He'll squirm uncomfortably, thought Caroline. He'll wonder why we're not dead. There was enough arsenic on the cannolis to kill a Triceratops.

But Frederick Fiske didn't squirm at all. He grinned and said, "I'm glad you liked them."

He had brought a bottle of wine as a gift. Caroline thought briefly that she should change her list of evidence to read "
Very Severe
Alcoholism," but the list had been stuffed into one of the galoshes, on top of the cannolis. And, of course, her very own mother and Gregor Keretsky were sipping wine as well.

She would bring out the list when the police arrived. Frederick Fiske would be stunned by then, dazed and stupefied; probably she and J.P. should tie him up. Then the police would come. She would present the list and the evidence itself: the cannolis dusted with poison, which could go to the lab for analysis; the arsenic that had been cleverly hidden in Fiske's Baby Powder can; the sinister pink rubber glove, probably filled on the inside with Frederick Fiske's fingerprints; the damning notes from the secret agent; and of course the corpus delicti, which probably still had poison on its tiny whiskers.

Suddenly she noticed that J.P. was inching closer to her on the couch. The adults were all talking about what a lovely spring day it had been. Stacy was listening politely and nodding, and inch by inch J.P. was moving over toward Caroline until he was close enough to whisper in her ear.

"He's not going to be grounded," J.P. said in a very low and very perturbed voice.

Caroline looked at him, puzzled. "Of course he's not going to be grounded," she whispered back. "He's going to be electrocuted. You and me, J.P.,
we're
going to be grounded—probably for months—if this scheme doesn't work right."

J.P. shook his head impatiently. "He's not going to be grounded electrically, because he has rubber soles on his shoes," he muttered. "I don't think the zap
will work unless he takes his shoes off." He sidled back to his place on the couch and smiled politely at everyone.

Caroline frowned. Maybe, she thought, it would be just as well if the zap didn't work. Then this pleasant dinner party wouldn't be disrupted by police, and they could all have second helpings of chocolate cake, and—

No, she thought. Fiske will find a way to sprinkle poison on my cake and J.P.'s. Maybe he'll even do Stacy's. The agent said to eliminate the kids. Even though he's sitting there posing as Mr. Nice Guy, and even though my mother has a full-fledged crush on him, and even though he seems to like her a whole lot and maybe even regrets by now that he has to eliminate the kids—still, he's under orders. If we don't zap him tonight, he'll still be at large, and his deadline is May first, and he probably has poison in his pocket, ready to use.

"It's such a warm night," Caroline said aloud. "I guess I'll take off my shoes. Maybe we'd all be more comfortable with our shoes off. What do you think, J.P.?" She kicked off her sandals and wiggled her bare toes. Her mother gave her a very dirty look.

"Good idea," said J.P. loudly. He pried off his dress shoes, one after the other. "Stacy? Everybody?"

Stacy giggled. "Sure, J.P.," she said. "You have great ideas." Stacy untied her shoes and took them off.

The adults were all looking at them curiously. Finally Joanna Tate said, in a flustered voice, "Well, the forty-third thing I love about Caroline is that she's sometimes completely unpredictable. Just when I'm feeling very proud of her good manners, she surprises me by doing something very strange. J.P., too." She glared at Caroline and J.P.

Caroline ignored the glare. This is for your own good, Mom, she thought. You will thank me for this.

"Mr. Keretsky?" said Caroline. "Wouldn't you like to take your shoes off, too?" She looked very meaningfully at Gregor Keretsky. He looked a little confused. He stared at Caroline; then he stared at his shoes, as if there might be some explanation there. He hitched up his trouser legs a little and peered at his shoes with a quizzical frown.