The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline (3 page)

The police might also think that she was briefly interested in breeding cocker spaniels or something,
but that would be a mistake. It had to do with the eye make-up and hair styles. She had taken out a book called
Grooming a Dog
by mistake.

But mostly they would find that she had checked out books about prehistoric eras, extinct mammals, fossils, reptiles, and paleontology. They would be able to figure out from them that Caroline was more interested in being a paleontologist than she was in eye make-up or in raising champion dogs.

So it was definitely one way to figure out what Frederick Fiske was interested in. She looked at the letter from the library again. The overdue book was called
Forensic Toxicology.
She didn't know what either word meant.

"Forensic" meant, she found from the dictionary, "pertaining to legal proceedings."

Well.
That
was interesting. If Frederick Fiske intended to start murdering children, there were certainly going to be legal proceedings.

Actually, Caroline thought, she really had to give him credit. It was pretty clever to read a book about legal proceedings
before
he murdered anyone.

She checked the library letter again and searched through the dictionary for the second word, "Toxicology." When she found it, her eyes widened. She read the definition twice to be sure it said what she thought it said.

"Toxicology (tok'si-kol'o-ji)
n.
(toxic + logy). (See
TOXIC
.) The science of poisons."

It was horrible. Horrible horrible horrible. It made Caroline think vaguely of eggplant. She shuddered, and put the dictionary away.

It confirmed what she had already known, down deep. "Eliminate the kids" could, conceivably, have meant, Send them off to live with their father in Des Moines. Every now and then, Caroline's mother threatened to do just that, usually when Caroline and J.P. had been fighting a lot. Once, at the end of a long rainy Sunday, when Caroline and J.P. had been at war all day, they ran through the apartment throwing ice cubes at each other. The whole fight had started over ice cubes. Caroline had poured herself a ginger ale that morning, and she had said to her brother sarcastically, "It sure is nice to find ice cubes in the refrigerator occasionally," because usually he never refilled the ice trays.

J.P. had just looked at her in a fake friendly sort of way while she drank half the glass of ginger ale. Then he had said, casually, "I spit in the trays before I put them in the freezer."

By the end of the day, their fight had escalated into major warfare, with ice cubes as weapons. Finally their mother had thrown down the book she was reading and shouted, "That's
it?
If you two don't stop it this
instant,
I am sending you both to Des Moines to live with your father!"

It was the sort of thing parents said once in a while. But Frederick Fiske wasn't a parent. He lived alone
on the fifth floor. No children ever came to visit, Caroline was quite sure.

And the library book cinched it. An angry parent might be tempted to send a bratty child to Des Moines, but an angry parent would never start studying up on the science of poisons. Eggplant, maybe. Not poisons.

Only a murderer would do that.

"What is all this secret telephoning?" asked Mrs. Tate. "You're not in any kind of trouble, are you, Caroline?"

"No," said Caroline casually. "I'm just calling Stacy about an assignment."

That wasn't a lie. She took the telephone into the bathroom, closed the door as far as she could over the cord, and said loudly, when Stacy answered, "Hi, Stace. I'm calling you about an assignment."

Then she lowered her voice. "Listen, Stace, it's not a school assignment. I just wanted my mother to think that it was. It's a detective assignment."

"About the murderer?" Stacy was whispering, too, although she didn't need to. Stacy had her very own private telephone, in her bedroom. It was yellow, to match the decorator bedspreads and curtains. There were some really good things about being rich.

"Yeah. Can you go out this afternoon? It's not very far."

"Sure. I'll just tell my mother I'm going to the art museum. She always thinks it's terrific that I go to the art museum all the time."

"I didn't know you did."

"I don't. Half the time I'm down in the basement going through the trash. But I can't tell my mother
that.
"

"Well, listen. I want you to go to East Fifty-second Street. That's not far, is it?"

"Nope. I can get the bus at the corner and be there in twenty minutes. Or I can jog and be there in ten."

"Whichever. Anyway, it's important." Caroline took Carl Broderick's letter out of her pocket and read the name and address to Stacy. "Just check it out, would you? He's an accomplice. He may be the mastermind, in fact."

"What should I look for?"

"I don't know," Caroline whispered. "Just see what's at that address. Probably it won't be a Poisoning Center, or anything. But there might be clues. Look for clues."

"Gotcha. I'll call you back in, say, an hour or so."

"Right."

"Caroline," Stacy said ominously before she hung up, "if no one ever hears from me again, give that
address to the police, would you? They'll find my body there."

"Right. But don't take any dangerous chances, Stacy."

"I won't. But if after, oh, three days, say, I don't return—"

"I will, Stacy. I promise. But be careful. Remember, it's
children
they're after."

"I'll wear lipstick," said Stacy. "I got some Crimson Shadows lipstick at the drugstore, just for assignments like this."

"Stacy's calling back in about an hour," said Caroline when she went to the kitchen for lunch. "She's doing some research for an assignment we have together."

"Fine," said her mother cheerfully. "Want a pickle with your sandwich?"

Caroline and J.P. each took a dill pickle.

"The phone may not be working in an hour," announced Caroline's brother. "I'm going to do some experiments on it after lunch."

"Don't. Touch. That. Phone," said Caroline angrily, with a mouth full of bologna sandwich.

"She's absolutely right, James," said Mrs. Tate. "The phone company said they were going to charge for the repairs next time you experimented with the telephone."

"Well," said J.P., chewing, "can I borrow your radio then? I need to experiment with
something.
"

His mother sighed. "All right. You can use my radio. But don't wreck the alarm, okay? I can't be late to work Monday. I was late twice last week, once because you ruined my toothbrush, James—"

"I had to clean the gunk out of my motor with
something,
" J.P. explained.

"—and once because I couldn't find my pocketbook."

Caroline sighed. "I already said I was sorry, Mom. I was examining the alligator skin under a magnifying glass, and somehow it ended up under a whole pile of stuff on my desk."

"It isn't alligator, anyway. It's plastic. That pocketbook only cost fourteen dollars. If I lose my job because I'm late one more time, I won't even be able to afford a
plastic
pocketbook. I'll have to become a bag lady."

"I'll support you in your old age, Mom," said Caroline. "After I'm a paleontologist, I'll send you a check every month, from Asia Minor or wherever I am."

"Me too," said J.P. "When I'm an electrical engineer, I'll be really rich."

"Maybe by then I will have married a millionaire," said their mother. "In the meantime, do either of you want another sandwich, bearing in mind that this bologna cost $1.89 a pound?"

"Me," said J.P.

"Pig," said Caroline sweetly, and ducked just in time to evade the dill pickle that her brother threw her.

"Sometimes," sighed their mother, "I wish that I had remained childless."

Back in her room, waiting for Stacy to call, Caroline curled up on her bed with her stuffed Stegosaurus. She began to think about dinosaurs in general, and about the particular contribution that she would make to science after she was a qualified paleontologist.

Caroline had begun to develop the Tate Theory of Evolution. According to her theory, certain people alive in the twentieth century had not actually evolved very much from prehistoric times. Of course, they were disguised as civilized people, because they wore clothes and held jobs and went to school and did all the things that civilized people are supposed to do.

But the man at the Laundromat was a good example. He really had been very much like the buck-toothed Apatosaurus, with his nose too high on his face. Fortunately, old Apatosaurus was weak and dumb and harmless; probably that man would go home from the laundry and eat some lettuce and cucumbers for lunch, since Apatosaurus was a plant-eater. He wasn't a danger to society, but he was a good example of Caroline's theory that some people are little more than barely evolved dinosaurs. She was surprised that no scientists had noticed it yet.

James Priestly Tate, for example. Talk about a creepy-crawler. Her brother was a perfect example of a practically unchanged Coelophysis. Small, skinny, with a rat face and lousy posture. Little clawlike hands and a terrible disposition. And a carnivore, to boot. J.P. had gnawed into that second bologna sandwich as if there was no tomorrow, just the way a Coelophysis would. J.P. even ate eggplant.

And now—Caroline thought about her Tate Theory again—there was Frederick Fiske. Extremely tall. Big head, with a grin all the time. When she had first begun to notice Frederick Fiske, after he moved in upstairs, she had thought his grin was just the kind of indiscriminate friendliness that some adults display. Now she knew differently. Now she knew why that grin was familiar. It went with his tall body and his long strides. Probably concealed behind that grin was a whole mouthful of steak-knife teeth.

She recognized all of the symptoms. They belonged to the most terrible dinosaur of all, the one that a book she had read described as having a completely sinister pattern of life. It was the kind of life that she now knew Frederick Fiske was leading. The author had described it as: Hunt. Kill. Eat. Sleep. Hunt. Kill. Etc.

She was quite, quite sure now that her theory was correct, and that Frederick Fiske was, in truth, little more than an unevolved Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Great Killer.

When the telephone rang, half an hour later, Caroline jumped up to answer it. Her mother had gone out to the grocery store, and J.P. was in his room, busily removing all the inside parts of Joanna Tate's clock-radio.

Stacy was breathless. "I jogged," she said, panting. "All the way there and all the way back. I stepped in one dog mess and almost got hit by a taxi. But I'm safe, except my left shoe stinks."

"What did you find out?"

"Let me get my breath." Stacy panted for a minute. "Yuck," she said, finally. "Now that I can breathe normally, I can really smell my shoe."

"Take it off."

"Hold on a minute." There was a very long silence while Caroline held the phone and waited. Finally Stacy came back.

"Okay," she said. "I scraped it off into the trash-masher. Now, Caroline, listen. This is really bigger than both of us."

"What do you mean? Come on, Stacy, tell me what you found out!"

"Your guy Frederick Fiske? He's not just your ordinary murderer. He's part of a
ring.
Probably international."

"Stacy. How do you know? What did you
find?
"

"Well, like you said, it wasn't an office called Poison, Limited, or anything. It was just an apartment house, with a doorman."

"Oh, rats. So you couldn't get in. Doormen are such snots."

"That's not true, Caroline. You just think that because you've never had one.
We
have a doorman, so I know how to deal with them."

"What did you do?" asked Caroline.

"First, after I saw that it was an apartment building with a doorman, I went back around the corner and wiped off all the Crimson Shadows lipstick. I didn't want him to think I was a hooker or anything."

"Then what?"

"Then I put on my most innocent face. You know that face I can do, with my eyes all wide and everything?"

"Yeah."

"I did that face. And I went right up to the doorman and in my innocent voice—you know the one?"

"Yeah. High and babyish."

"Right. And in that voice, I said, 'Please, could I have the correct spelling of Mr. Broderick's name? I have to write him a letter for a school project, and if I don't spell it correctly I won't get a good grade.'"

"Big deal, so he spelled it for you."

"Caroline," said Stacy patiently, "doormen don't spell. He opened the door and he watched me while I went over to the mailboxes and copied it. I had my investigative notebook with me, of course."

"Stacy, I could have spelled it for you. I have it right here on the letter."

Stacy sighed an exasperated sigh. "Caroline, you'll never be a great investigator. I didn't care about the spelling. I was looking for
clues.
"

"How on earth can you find clues on a mailbox?"

There was a dramatic pause. Then Stacy said, "Right there on the mailbox, it said '
CARL BRODERICK, AGENT.'
"

"
Agent?
"

"So you see."

"See what? He could be a
real estate
agent!"

"Does a real estate agent tell his clients to kill children?"

Caroline thought. "Maybe if an apartment listing says 'No pets or children.'"

"Come on. Face the facts."

"You're right," said Caroline. "You're absolutely right. It's a murder ring of some sort."

"Is there anything else you want me to do?"

"No," said Caroline thoughtfully. "I really have to sort things out. I'll call you."

"Okay," said Stacy. "I'll be here. I'm going to type up these notes."

"Stacy, don't leave your notes lying around where anyone can find them."

"Are you kidding?" asked Stacy. "Caroline, I'm not a newcomer to this field. I type in code."

"I'm going to the Museum of Natural History, Mom," said Caroline after she had talked to Stacy.