The Secrets of Tree Taylor (12 page)

I knew that Eileen was studying in the kitchen, and Mom was standing in front of me. So something must have happened to Dad—Dad, who was angrier at me than he’d ever been.

“No, it’s Jack,” Mom said.

My head buzzed. Mom went blurry. Images flashed through my mind at the speed of light. Jack … shot. Jack … in an ambulance. Jack … hunched over the wheel of his car. Bloody. Jack … in a hospital, hooked up to tubes, the way Grandmother Taylor had been her last trip to the hospital.

“Tree, he’s okay. Did you hear me?” Mom had me by the shoulders.

“Wh-wh-what?” Did I? Did I hear her?

“Jack’s all right, honey.”

“He is? Honest?”

“Yes. I’m sorry I scared you. I should have told you that first.”

She should have. But Jack was okay. That’s what mattered. That was all that mattered.

“I knew you’d want to know.” She let go of my shoulders. “Donna just called. There’s been a robbery.”

“A robbery?” I’d never heard of a robbery in Hamilton. Kids took cars at night sometimes and went joyriding. But they always returned the cars, and the owners rarely knew anything was wrong. “Where? What’s it got to do with Jack?”

“It was at the IGA, in the meat department. I guess an armed robber—”

“The robber had a
gun
?”

“Tree, listen for a minute. I’ll tell you everything I know—everything Donna knew, anyway.”

I nodded and bit my tongue, praying she’d get on with it.

“Okay. A man with a gun—I think Donna said he wore a mask—stormed into the IGA and demanded money from the cash register. But there wasn’t much there. So he said he wanted everybody’s watch and wallet. But there weren’t many
customers in the store, thank goodness.” She stopped and sighed, like she didn’t want to tell me the rest.

“Mom, please!”

“He went back to the meat department and told them he wanted all of
their
money from
their
cash register.”

“There’s no cash register in the meat department,” I protested, picturing the whole thing, with Jack in the middle. Jack, with his long apron and the silly white hat they made him wear.

“The robber didn’t know that, honey. And when they told him they didn’t have a register in the meat department, I guess the robber didn’t believe them.”

“What do you mean?” I could tell we were getting to the bad part. I wanted her to spit it out, not piece it out the way Donna passed along gossip.

“He went behind the counter—the robber, that is. Shirley was there. He grabbed her in one arm and waved the gun around in his other hand, threatening to shoot her.”

Shirley had worked at the IGA forever. She had to be a hundred years old. I waited, my heart not beating, the blood stuck in my veins.

“I can’t imagine what Jack was thinking,” Mom said. “He came up behind them—behind the robber—and he … he stabbed him with the butcher’s knife he had in his hand.”

I gasped.

“Shirley got free. The robber reached for her again. And Jack tried to stop him. They struggled, and—”

“Mom, is he okay? Is Jack okay?” I was shouting. I caught a glimpse of Eileen standing behind Mom. I hadn’t seen her
come up. I could barely see Mom anymore because of the tears that wouldn’t stop.

“I told you, Jack is all right,” Mom insisted. “He got cut, but Donna said he refused to go to the hospital. Maybe I should call your dad.” She said this last part like she’d just thought of it.

“Did the robber get away?” I hoped he wouldn’t come back and try to get even with Jack. What if he wanted revenge?

Mom looked at Eileen. Then she faced me and whispered, “No, Tree. The robber didn’t get away. He … he died.”

“What?” I didn’t think I’d heard her right.

“He’s dead. Jack killed him.”

Before I even knew what I was doing, I was on my bike. Pedaling faster and faster. I needed to get to Jack. He was injured.

And he’d killed somebody. How was he going to live with that? I knew him. He would never get over taking someone’s life.

Halfway up Main Street, the rain picked up. Giant raindrops slammed my face, stinging my eyes. I had to keep blinking to see across the railroad tracks.

Pulling into the loading dock behind the IGA, I spotted the sheriff’s car next to Jack’s. Out front, maybe a dozen people huddled under the awning.

I dropped my bike and dashed for the back door. It opened into the meat department. Right away I saw Jack talking to Sheriff Robinson.

“Jack!” I broke into a run and didn’t stop until my arms were around him. I couldn’t stop crying.

“Ah, Tree,” Jack said. “Not you too?”

I let him go and stood back to see for myself that he was okay. I looked for a stab wound. His apron was smudged, but no bloodier than usual.

“I’m fine, Tree. Settle down, okay?”

“Looks like Donna is faster on the draw than we are.” Sheriff Robinson was holding his cowboy hat in both hands and turning it.

I stared up at Jack. “What does he mean?” I glanced around, studying the meat room floor for signs of struggle. There was blood on the cutting blocks, but nowhere else that I could see. “What’s going on, Jack?”

Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “I should have known. It was Donna. She called and asked for the millionth time,
What’s new at work, Jack, honey?
So I made something up. I didn’t think she believed me. I was teasing, for crying out loud. But she must have called the whole town.”

Sheriff Robinson gave me a tired smile. “Sorry you got worried, Tree. We’ve been trying to call Donna and tell her what happened—what
didn’t
happen, more like—but the line’s busy.” He looked back to Jack. “I’ll take a drive over there.”

“Again, Sheriff, I’m really and truly sorry. Man, I can’t even believe all the trouble from one measly phone call—”

“Well, now you know. Don’t mess with your mother.” Sheriff Robinson slipped his hat back on. “Then I reckon I’ll be headin’ up north for my date with those bass. Your mama caught me just in time. I was walking out the door.”

“Sorry about that,” Jack said. “Good luck fishing.”

The sheriff nodded to us and left through the main entrance.

The second he was gone, I turned on Jack and slugged him as hard as I’d ever hit anybody. “Don’t you ever do that again!”

“Ow!” Jack rubbed his arm.

“I mean it! I thought you were dead! Then I thought you killed somebody! And all the time, you were just—” I couldn’t finish. The mix inside of me felt violent, like atoms breaking loose, ready to explode into the universe in some new kind of bomb.

“Tree, I’d never want to upset you. You know that. I’m really—” He stopped, frowned. Then he burst out laughing. “Where on earth did you find that getup? You look like a melting candy cane.”

I looked down at the hideous outfit sticking to my skin. Then I slugged Jack again, harder, and stormed out of the IGA.

As I pedaled home in the rain, I shook with anger, and with something worse than anger—fear. I’d believed every word about the robbery because it would have been exactly like Jack to try to save somebody and get hurt doing it.
That
was the truth in his story. It could have happened. In an instant, he could have killed … or been killed.

That was a truth I never wanted to face.

I had never been this mad at Jack. And it wasn’t just the way his prank had scared me to death. He’d changed the way I looked at things. Before, I’d never been afraid of the future, but now I understood a secret about “tomorrow,” and I blamed Jack. I knew how quickly and completely everything could change.

Jack’s fake story had even made me confused about journalism. What if I heard a story about somebody, and then I wrote about it, thinking it was the truth. Only it wasn’t. People would believe what I wrote. They would believe me.

At home, Dad took the lead in how we handled each other. There was no mention of our office blowup or the Kinneys. We didn’t talk about much of anything. We were polite. I told him about Jack’s fake robbery, and he almost reacted like normal Dad. But underneath the normal, I felt a chill. I wondered if that was how the Russians and Americans felt
their
cold war.

I hated feeling so far away from Dad. But at least I wasn’t grounded. On the other hand, if I’d gotten to pick between a cold war and being grounded, I’d have chosen grounded.

I knew I needed to visit Mrs. Kinney again. Only this time, I’d be prepared with more than a plate of macaroons. I wanted more background information, so I could ask her specific questions. I wished I could have talked with Sheriff Robinson, but maybe he had clued in the new sheriff before going fishing. Or maybe the new sheriff had gone to the hospital to talk to Mr. Kinney. Rumor had it that he was in St. Joseph Hospital, forty-five miles from Hamilton. It would be great to hear what Old Man Kinney had to say about the shooting. I phoned the sheriff’s office.

Mrs. Berger answered on the first ring and reported that
Officer
Duper was in the office. But when he heard it was me on the phone, just a kid, he told Mrs. Berger to explain that he was much too busy to talk to a “minor.”

The rain continued into Wednesday. I actually wished I knew a reverse rain dance to make it stop so I could get out of the house and go back to work. I couldn’t mow our lawn or the office lawn, both my chores. But I did take advantage of the time off. I wrote.

I settled into my writing nook in the living room and opened to the writer’s quote for the day:

I thought Lord Byron really did go mad. But I might have gotten him mixed up with some other poet.

At any rate, I was beginning to understand what he meant. My mind was a messy attic, with snippets of my interviews and different rumors jumbling in my head. The sounds of birds chirping and a gun blast mixed with human voices, all talking at the same time.

I put pen to paper and tried to describe the DeShon house. Soon as I’d written that, I could see Mrs. DeShon. Her words came out of my head and formed on the lines of my notebook paper. And I felt a little less crazy.

After a while, I changed gears and read the front page of the
Kansas City Star
. I tried to find the
who, what, where, when, why
, and
how
in each news story. I waded through a long article about leaders in Cambodia and Laos accusing the United States of sending spies into their countries, just because they were Vietnam’s neighbors.

After that, I dug out Agatha Christie’s
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
and decided to reread it. Since I already knew who committed the murder, I read to learn about mysteries and getting to the truth. I paid attention to the way the detective got answers out of people.

It was after noon when I finished writing my interview questions. Then, armed with an umbrella and a Bic, I ventured down to the Kinneys’ again. There were more puddles than road.

This time, Mrs. Kinney opened the door before I knocked. I think she smiled, but it came and went too fast to swear to it.

She took my dripping umbrella and glanced around for someplace to put it. “I’ll set it in the kitchen.”

I kicked off my muddy shoes and crossed to her rocking chair, where I spotted two finished baskets and one just started. “Wow! You definitely have to show these off at the steam engine show.” The weaving looked tight enough to hold water.

“I don’t know about that,” she said as she came in from the kitchen. She picked up the yellow basket. “But I think I got it right with this here one. My grandma used to make Easter baskets like she learnt from her ma. She was a Dodge, like me before I married. I read a book on where names come from. Dodge started from a fella in Gloucestershire in 1206. That’s in England. Right close to Wales. I used to dream about going there.”

I took the basket from her. “This is so cool.” The bottom was a scooped-out coconut, but the top had straw woven together.

We took our usual seats. Rain pounded the roof. “I’m starting to hate rain,” I said.

“Don’t move to Cherrapunji. Or Waialeale.”

“Huh?”

“Rains five hundred inches a year in Cherrapunji, India. Waialeale’s in Hawaii.” She pronounced it “Hawai-ya.” “Rains three hundred thirty-five days a year there.” She said this while rocking and looking at her feet instead of at me. I got the feeling Mrs. Kinney wasn’t used to talking to kids. And maybe not to grown-ups, either. In a way, she reminded me of Penny.

“Have you been to India and Hawaii?” I asked.

“Me? I’ve barely been to Hamilton.” She rocked a few times, still studying her shoes. “But I dream about going to Hawai-ya.”

“It sounds beautiful.” I put my hand into my pocket, where I’d stuck my notes with the questions I wanted to ask her. Only I couldn’t figure out how to get from Hawaii to the shooting.

“You ought to go there,” she said. “To Hawai-ya. You being a writer and all. They got some good newspapers. The
Hawaii Tribune Herald
started a new weekly for the Kona District just last year. That’s on the Big Island, where Captain James Cook was killed in 1779.”

“I’m not a writer yet,” I said, probably blushing but liking the way she called me one.

We sat in silence, the only noise the
squeak, creak
of her rocker.

“You sure know a lot of facts,” I said, trying to get us talking again. “I have trouble remembering dates and numbers. Dad remembers everything, except where he left his hat. He has a memory system. How do you remember all those facts and numbers, Mrs. Kinney?” Dad would love her weird facts. I wondered if she’d given him any.

She frowned and let her rocker ease to a stop. “I reckon remembering them facts is better than remembering things best forgot.” She glanced over at the coffee table.

The flimsy table was marred by a dozen drink rings. My mom would have killed Eileen and me for not using coasters. In the center sat a clear globe of a bowl. Rose petals floated
on top of the clear water. They looked totally out of place in the gray room, like Dorothy’s ruby slippers in a drab and barren Kansas.