Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  Then before they can ask me any questions, I slam down the phone, turn around, and nearly slam into Grams.

  “What was that?” she asks me.

  So real fast I tell her about the guy on the landing having a heart attack.

  She shoves hair off her forehead with the back of her hand and gasps, “Oh dear! Let’s go!”

  She calls, “I’ll be right back, Rose!” and after she grabs a flashlight from home, we both hurry over to the fire escape.

  Grams was amazingly quick on the stairs, and when we reached the fourth floor, she knelt down by the man and took his pulse.

  It was too late, though. I could just tell—he looked way too peaceful to be alive.

  “Oh dear!” Grams says over her shoulder. “I think he’s gone!”

  Sirens are screeching down Main Street, so Grams shoos me off, whispering, “Go! I’ll take care of this. See if you can help Rose.”

  So up the stairs I fly, feeling shaky and sick to my stomach.

  No matter how much I didn’t want to believe it, it was still true.

  I’d scared a man to death.

  THREE

  Rose Wedgewood knows I live with Grams. I’ve never actually admitted it to her, but she knows. And she’s turned out to be the biggest sweet-talking blackmailer the world has ever seen. Early on she said, “Don’t worry, sugar. I’ll keep your little secret,” then immediately started asking me to do all sorts of errands and chores.

  The thing about Mrs. Wedgewood is, I don’t think she wants to be a sweet-talking blackmailer. Underneath it all I think she’s probably a nice person. But she says that moving to assisted living—which, believe me, she needs—would be like “opening the coffin and steppin’ in,” so instead, she blackmails us into helping her stay at the Highrise. She calls us on the phone to send us on errands and have us do her laundry and stuff like that, but for emergencies she doesn’t bother with the phone. No, for emergencies she bangs on her bathroom wall.

  Now, that’s probably because most of her emergencies happen in the bathroom.

  And her definition of “emergency” can be pretty broad. Sometimes she’s dropped her wig on the floor and can’t pick it up. Sometimes her walker’s out of reach and the bathroom floor’s wet and she’s afraid of slipping and crashing through to the apartment below. Sometimes the toilet paper roll’s run out and she needs us to get her a refill from under her sink.

  Usually, though, she bangs on the wall because she’s fallen off the toilet.

  I don’t want to get into the gross details of how or why this happens, but man, is she good at it. And it takes both Grams and me to hoist her back onto the throne.

  In all the times I’d been inside her bathroom, though, I’d never seen her in all her bald, naked glory on the shower stall floor. I didn’t even think she took showers. From her usual, uh, aroma, I figured she sponged off maybe once a week and called it good.

  “Sammy!” she gasped when she saw me. “Where’s Rita? I thought she’d left me here to die!”

  I whipped the double-sized beach towel she’d made me sew together off the rack and covered her body. “Are you kidding? She wouldn’t do that.” I studied the situation a minute. She was sort of on her side, with her back end toward the door.

  “I should never have tried a shower,” she moaned. “What got into me?”

  “Let’s just get you out of there.” I knelt in front of the shower and put out my hand. “Here. I’ll help you sit up, and then maybe you can get on your knees. Then I’ll get the walker and…we’ll go from there.”

  So she takes my hand, making it practically disappear inside of hers, and after I wedge my knees up tight against the curb of the shower, I go, “Ready? One, two, three!” and pull back as hard as I can. Trouble is, instead of her moving anywhere, my knees slip out from under me and I go flying into the shower.

  I land with a sloppy thump right on top of her, and even though the towel’s between some of us, it’s not between all of us. And I’m sorry, but being sprawled out over all that flubbery blubberyness freaked me out.

  “Aaaah!” I cried, and quicker than a cat tossed in ice water, I backed out of there.

  “You almost had me! Try again,” she says.

  I did not want to try again, but I knew there was no escaping it. So finally I take a deep breath and lean in, and this time I brace myself by putting one foot against the curb of the shower.

  I pull, and she swings up, up, up, until she’s sorta sitting, using one arm to prop herself up.

  “Okay, both hands right here,” I tell her, tapping on the curb of the shower. “Then get up on your knees. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll sure try, sugar,” she says, panting hard. “But first can you hand me my wig? I am so embarrassed to have you see me like this.”

  I want to say, You’re kidding, right? because her bald head’s nothing compared to her bald body. But I can tell she’s serious, so I get her curly black head-mop off the counter and wrestle it onto her head.

  When I’m done, she looks like one of those enormous beached seals with a wig on. It seems to give her confidence, though. “All right, sugar,” she says, “let’s do it.”

  So with big groans and moans she finally gets up on all fours.

  I drape the towel over her back, and as she’s peering at me through the shower door opening, she now reminds me of one of those maharaja elephants.

  “Okay!” I tell her. “Good job.” I grab the walker and put it up to the curb. “You’re almost there!”

  “Give me a minute,” she pants. “And I’m going to need your help getting up.”

  I just stare at her, because helping her up means I’ve got to get in the shower.

  It means I’ve got to grab her under her armpit and heave-ho.

  It means…

  I try to block the grossness of it all from my mind and squeeze past her into the shower.

  “I really need to get me one of those shower seats,” she says. “And one of those spray nozzles on a hose. And maybe you could come by and help me bathe, rather than my trying to do this all myself.”

  The thought of that makes me shudder. I mean, come on! How far is this blackmail stuff going to go?

  I don’t say a word, though. I just get her to grab the walker, then I take a deep breath and scoop an arm into the flubbery abyss between her arm and her body. And as I’m straining to help her up, I’m wishing Grams would hurry back. I mean, what was taking so long? Were the police quizzing her? Was she telling them that she found the guy passed out? Dead?

  What else could she say?

  And there were a gazillion other questions running through my head. Who was the guy and what was he doing using the fire escape? Did he live in the building? And why did he have fat bundles of cash? You don’t live in the Senior Highrise if you have fat bundles of cash! You live here because you don’t have fat bundles of cash.

  And why had he been so worried about getting rid of the money? He obviously didn’t want anyone to find it on him. Had he robbed a bank? Had he stolen it from an apartment?

  But who in this place had fat wads of cash?

  “We did it, sugar, we did it!” Mrs. Wedgewood panted as she stood outside the shower in all her naked glory. “Oh, bless you, child. Bless you!”

  I was panting, too. “Okay. Well, there you go.” I wrapped the towel over her shoulders.

  “That’s okay, sugar, I’m not cold,” she said, shrugging it off. And as she clomped out of the bathroom and into the living room, Grams came hurrying into the apartment, closing the door tight behind her.

  “Oh, good!” she said when she saw that Mrs. Wedgewood was out of the shower. And even though she blinked pretty good at her as she clomped along, from the flush of her cheeks and her darting eyes I could see that Grams had bigger things on her mind than Mrs. Wedgewood.

  “So, Rose, are you going to be all right?” she asked, giving me the let’s-get-out-of-here nod.

  “I am famished,” she said, clo
mping toward her bedroom. “Would you mind fixing me some eggs? And toast. Buttered.”

  “Uh…sure,” Grams said, eyeing me.

  “I think I’m out of eggs,” Mrs. Wedgewood called over her shoulder. “Do you have any? If not, maybe you could run to the store?”

  Grams pinched her lips together and counted to ten through flared nostrils. “I’ll see what I have.”

  Grams gave me the nod again, so I followed her to our apartment and whispered, “What happened?”

  “He’s dead,” she whispered back. “But it’s all very strange. His name’s Buck Ritter and his driver’s license shows he was from Omaha, Nebraska. And there was a receipt from the Heavenly Hotel. I don’t think he lived in our building at all!”

  “Wait. Did you go through his wallet?”

  She gave a little frown. “I wanted to know who he was! If he was a Highrise resident, his neighbors would certainly not have wanted to learn about his death on the morning news!”

  “So it was your civic duty to go nosing through his wallet?”

  She gave me a prim look. “I didn’t nose.”

  “So what happened after the paramedics showed up? What did you tell them?”

  “The paramedics were fine,” she said. “They tried to revive him, but it was no use.” She was quiet a minute, then said, “He had wings tattooed on his neck.”

  “On his neck?” I asked, because she was sounding…strange.

  “On the back of it. There was a star in the middle and something written over the top. I couldn’t make out what it spelled, but it was strange to see.”

  “Because?”

  She hesitated, then said, “Because they looked like angel wings.” Then very softly she added, “Like he’d been ready to be carried off…for a long time.” She shook her head. “Never mind. It was just a strange thing to see on…on a dead man. After that the police showed up and I panicked.”

  “What do you mean, you panicked?”

  “What was I going to tell them?” she said, all wide-eyed. “Why was I on the fire escape so late at night?” She held her forehead. “So I left! The fourth-floor door was un-locked, so I just slipped inside and came home.”

  “So…nobody knows it was you?”

  Her head quivered back and forth. “And I want it to stay that way!” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs. “The whole thing was very distressing.” Her head quivered some more. “Nobody wants to die on a fire escape!”

  I cringed. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  She stopped cold. “Don’t ever say that again. Don’t even think that. It was not your fault. He must’ve had a weak heart.” She frowned. “And what got into him? He didn’t look like he was in any condition to take the fire escape down!”

  I took a deep breath because I knew something she didn’t.

  I knew about the money.

  And I was actually about to spill this extra piece of confusing information, when suddenly Grams screeches and drops the carton of eggs.

  “What?” I say, whipping around, and that’s when I see that my cat, Dorito, is stalking a mouse.

  Now, I don’t mind mice. I think they’re cute, actually. But Grams has this thing about them being disease-carrying, fang-faced, pooping varmints, and most of the people in the Highrise seem to share her view.

  “They promised us the problem was solved!” Grams said, watching the little gray fuzzball cower in a corner.

  I turned away, not wanting to see Dorito do what he’s so good at doing. Instead, I picked up the oozy egg carton and headed for the stove. And by the time Grams said, “There, that’s done,” I had the eggs cooking in a frying pan.

  “What are you doing?” Grams asked, because I had just poured the broken eggs out of the carton and was scrambling them up, plucking out little chips of shell as the eggs cooked.

  “You want to finish?” I asked, handing over the spatula. “I’ll take the mouse down to the trash chute.”

  “No.” She got cleaning gloves from under the sink. “I don’t want you out in the hallway. Not with everything that’s going on tonight!”

  So she got rid of the mouse while I finished scrambling up crunchy eggs and making toast, and when she returned, I let her deliver the “snack” to Mrs. Wedgewood.

  It was after midnight by the time we went to bed. No police had come pounding on the door, nobody had called, Mrs. Wedgewood was tucked safely in bed, and there were no more mouse sightings. Everything seemed to be settling down, but there was no way I could sleep.

  Not with three big bundles of cash in the bushes!

  At least I hoped they were still in the bushes.

  What if one of the paramedics found them?

  What if the police did?

  What if some homeless guy camping out in the bushes did?

  Now, I’m not going to lie and say I’d be happy for some homeless guy if he found the money. I wanted it! I hadn’t meant to scare the guy to death, but really, what could I do about it?

  Nothing.

  What I could do something about was the money.

  I could go get it before someone else did!

  So when enough time had passed, I tiptoed up to Grams’ bedroom door and listened.

  And there it was—the lovely sound of Grams sawing logs.

  I tiptoed away from her door and into the kitchen.

  I got the flashlight from the tool drawer.

  I put on my sweatshirt and ball cap.

  Then I eased out of the apartment and hurried down the hall.

  FOUR

  I tried not to think about Mr. Buck Ritter from Omaha, Nebraska, as I went past the fourth-floor landing. I tried not to picture him clutching his heart or hear his voice gasping, “Throw it! Get rid of it!” I kept my eyes peeled for cops cruising Broadway. I kept my eyes on the late-night bums who sometimes hang out in front of Maynard’s Market or the Heavenly Hotel. I tried to concentrate on what was happening, rather than on what had happened.

  It was dark out. And very quiet. There were hardly any cars going along Broadway or Main. Even the pink Heavenly Hotel sign buzzing through the misty air seemed muted.

  All I could really hear was my heart, pounding like mad in my chest.

  I didn’t really know what I was going to do with the money if it was still there. I mean, if Buck Ritter from Omaha, Nebraska, had robbed someone, I’d turn it over to the police. But this didn’t feel like a stolen money situation. It felt like…I don’t know what it felt like! But Buck Ritter from Omaha, Nebraska, did not seem like a stick-’em-up kind of guy.

  I mean, had Grams or I found a gun on him?

  No!

  A knife?

  No!

  A water pistol?

  No!

  All he’d had on him were bundles of cold hard cash.

  I hurried over to the bushes where I’d chucked the money, and believe me, my eyes were checking around to make sure no one was watching.

  The bushes were a lot bigger than they looked from the fourth-floor landing. There were also a lot of them.

  I turned on the flashlight and started scouring the area, and almost right away I found one of the bundles just lying there on the ground.

  Talk about hitting pay dirt!

  The bundle was still rubber-banded together nice and snug, and when I fanned through it, the bills snapped against each other, crisp and clean.

  I felt like I was in a dream—like this couldn’t actually be happening.

  But it was!

  I started scouting around for the other bundles. I checked around the bushes and between the bushes, and when I finally spotted another bundle, half buried under dead leaves, I picked it up and giggled, “I’m rich!”

  Ten minutes later I still hadn’t found the last bundle of cash. And I suppose I could have just forgotten about it and gone home, but I knew it had to be somewhere! So I searched high and low and finally spotted it wedged inside a shrub.

  “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” I l
aughed. “It grows in bushes!”

  Then, with a quick check to make sure no one else was around, I hurried up the fire escape and slipped back into the building.

  Dorito seemed very curious about the money as I counted it on the couch by flashlight. “No!” I kept telling him as he pawed across it.

  “Mrowwww,” he said back, rubbing up against me, padding back across the bills.

  I tossed him off but he jumped right back, so I lost track, but it didn’t really matter. The bills were all twenties, and there were about a hundred and fifty of them.

  It was more money than I’d ever seen before in my life.

  And I couldn’t believe it—it was mine!

  The first thing I did in the morning was check to make sure I hadn’t been dreaming.

  Yup, there was the money, stashed in the bottom of my backpack.

  Which meant that yup, I’d scared a man to death on the fourth-floor landing.

  I tried not to think about that.

  It’s better to focus on the positive, right?

  The trouble was Grams. She was in the kitchen humming softly as she made oatmeal, and I was feeling torn. Should I tell her about the money? What would she think? What would she do?

  Knowing her, she’d have the money turned over to the police by noon.

  But…why should we?

  What would the police do with it?

  Keep it for evidence?

  For what crime?

  Murder on the fourth-floor landing?

  There was no way I wanted to open that can of worms!

  So I casually shoved my backpack under the couch and once again tried not to think about the fact that there was a dead man involved in my hitting the three-thousand-dollar jackpot.

  I headed for the kitchen. “Smells good,” I said, sounding as sleepy as I could in my hyped-up, flush-with-cash state.

  Grams gave me a quick kiss, then continued scooping oatmeal into a second bowl. “I barely slept a wink last night. That poor man! What a place to end your days!”