by Lesley Kagen
“Cat got your tongue, Sally?” Rasmussen was dressed all in his heavy blue cop uniform. I watched as a bead of sweat crawled from beneath his hat and skimmed over that vein in his temple.
Troo said, “We been over to the zoo.”
If I’d had something other than a piece of Dubble Bubble in my stomach, I would have thrown up. How could my own sister speak to him?
“The zoo, huh?” Rasmussen said. “Well, if my memory doesn’t fail me, the zoo is close to the lagoon, isn’t it?”
I dared not take my eyes off of this Frankenstein monster with very big dimples sitting on our front steps.
“Sally? That’s right, isn’t it?” he asked. “The lagoon is just across from the zoo?”
What a faker. He knew we’d been over there. He’d been watching us.
“And how was Sampson today?” Rasmussen asked.
Troo said, “We didn’t go see Sampson.”
“Don’t get around much anymore,” I said before I could stop myself.
Rasmussen stopped smiling. “What was that?”
“Don’t pay too much attention to her, Officer. Sally imagines things. Like don’t get around much anymore.” Troo giggled. “She thinks that’s what Sampson is singing to himself all the time.”
Rasmussen laughed loudly and it was such a good one, a little like the way a bowling ball sounds when it goes down an alley.
“Oh, so you have an imagination then, Sally?” he said. “That’s a good thing. My sister Carol has an imagination and she ended up writing books.”
Mother thought my imagination was a bad thing and that always made me feel real hopeless because if I coulda changed it for her, I woulda.
Mrs. Goldman was still in her window, watching. Thank God Almighty. If I had to grab for his gun and shoot Rasmussen, Mrs. Goldman would hide me in her attic just like the Anne Frank girl in that book she gave me last summer for helping her and Mr. Goldman out with their garden.
Rasmussen turned to see what I was looking at and then tipped his hat at Mrs. Goldman, who let the curtain slide back. When we were working together earlier that morning pulling weeds, I’d almost told our landlady that Rasmussen was after me since she didn’t seem to like cops all that much and sometimes she called them the Gestapo. Now, I wished I’d told her.
Rasmussen pointed to the step below him. “Why not take a load off, Sally?”
I took a step back.
He looked at me kinda funny and said, “Somebody pulled the fire alarm over near the lagoon a little while ago. Fire Chief Bailey told me he thought he saw two girls hiding behind the Wahlstroms’ garage.”
He’d murdered Junie Piaskowski at the end of last summer. He’d probably murdered Sara. And I knew how he’d gotten away with it. Because Troo was right, Rasmussen acted nice. He even volunteered up at the school’s paper drive that we had every year to raise money for the missionaries. He was strong, too. I remembered how he picked up the load of papers I’d brought up to school in my Radio Flyer and swung them up onto the scale like it was nothing to him. And how he’d said, “Congratulations, Sally. You’re the big winner for the day.” Then he handed me a quarter and a free pass to the fish fry that we had every Friday night in the school cafeteria even though I didn’t have half as much paper as Willie O’Hara, who was so good at collecting things.
“Sally?”
I looked over at Troo.
“Are you having a little flight of imagination?” She was getting herself worked up like she’d gotten drunk on that Coke. She was also giving me that smile where just one corner of her mouth went up. It was a bad smile. A teaser’s smile. “Officer Rasmussen wants to know if you pulled the fire alarm.”
“You already know you could get into serious trouble for making a false alarm. You were warned about that last year, right?” Rasmussen took off his cap again and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m glad to hear it wasn’t you, Sally. Always felt you were a girl of excellent character.”
He was trying to butter me up. Trick me into confessing. I looked down at his shoes. They were brown and scuffed with run-down heels. Not like the black ones he had on the other night when he chased me down the alley. And he had on white socks with blue dots on them. Not the pink-and-green argyle ones. But he could not fool me.
“Well, I’m going to ask around the neighborhood about that alarm. Maybe it was a couple of the Latour girls. You two remember what I told you last year about talking to strangers, right?” He stood. Goodness, he was a tall, tall man.
“Why haven’t you found Sara yet?” I blurted out.
“I’m sure she’ll turn up soon and there is nothing in the world to be worried about.” Rasmussen sounded heartbroken when he said that, which only made me feel more disgusted with him. He walked down the last two steps and brushed against my arm, which made me shiver. Then he pointed at the Kroger bag and said very seriously, “You gotta pay back Mrs. Kenfield for those Kleenex, Troo. Remember the Fourth Commandment.”
Troo’s eyes got real big, almost as big as Granny’s thyroid eyes. “Yeah, I was goin’ to do that,” she said, trying to put the bag behind her back like out of sight, out of mind.
“See that you do,” Rasmussen said. “And I’m sorry that your mother is sick. Maybe one of these days, you can come over to my house. Got a new puppy who likes little girls a lot.”
“Thank you, Officer Rasmussen,” Troo said. “The next time we go to see Ethel and Mrs. Galecki, Sally and me will stop by.” She was being what Hall called a little brownnose, like that new guy named Jim who was working up at Shus ter’s.
After Rasmussen started up the block toward the Latours’, Troo laughed and said, “Well, that was a close one.” She rolled over onto the grass and when she did her tummy made this erupting noise. “I’m famished.”
I was still watching Rasmussen. He was talking to Willie O’Hara, who was pointing to his bike tire. Rasmussen knelt down to look at it and said something to Willie, who was nodding. Then Rasmussen stood up and cuffed him on his head. Willie smiled up at him like he was the bee’s knees. Like Daddy always said, the devil can take any form he wishes.
“How ’bout we head over to Granny’s?” I said, feeling safe since I knew Rasmussen would be grilling the Latours for the next half hour. I was hungry, too, and Granny would at least give us a cuppa. That’s what she called cups of tea. And if Uncle Paulie was there, he’d probably just ignore us and work on one of those Popsicle stick houses he was always building. Granny had about a ton of those Popsicle stick houses all over her little house. Everywhere you looked, there was another one. Troo liked Granny, but Uncle Paulie gave her the creeps. Especially when he wanted to play peek-a-boo, which was his very favorite game. Troo said it was just cooties, but I thought I finally understood why she didn’t like him. O’Malley sister mental telepathy. Uncle Paulie reminded Troo of the crash.
Troo said, “I don’t have time to visit with Granny. I gotta start up on my Kleenex flowers.”
In two more days there would be the parade of bicycles and relay races and a picnic and finally, the fireworks over at the lagoon. Fourth of July was the best holiday of the year next to Halloween and Christmas.
“Where you two been?”
Troo and me looked up. Nell was standing above us on the steps. Her hair was brown just like Troo’s grocery bag and came a little lower than her neck and she was now wearing it in something called “the bubble,” which was also what Nell’s figure looked like. That might be a slight exaggeration. Mother said Nell was voluptuous. (This is like lush.)
“Around,” Troo said, searching for a four-leaf clover, which is something she did sometimes when she got around grass.
“I’ve been looking for you all morning,” Nell said. “You wanna go see Mother?”
“What do you mean, do we wanna go see Mother?” Troo asked like she didn’t care at all.
“Eddie’s aunt Margie is a nurse over at St. Joe’s and she said she’d sneak you two in, if you want.” Nell was dres
sed in clean clothes because she knew how to run the washing machine and the wringer. She looked like a grown-up in her pink pedal pushers and pink blouse. You could see her white bra peeking through the third and fourth buttons. Her bosoms were getting so big! Like all they’d needed was this hot, humid summer to grow as round and ripe as watermelons.
“Nell, your bosoms are huge,” Troo said, reading my mind. “They’re practically blocking out the sun. What the hell you doin’ to ’em?”
Nell snorted. She knew Troo was nothing but jealous. Ever since Fast Susie had shown us her bosoms, Troo would lift up her shirt every morning at the mirror behind our bedroom door, and if she stood just right, her bosoms did look slightly bigger, but I thought that was because there was a wave in the mirror.
Nell crossed her arms across her chest. Barely. “You wanna go see Mother or not?”
Troo plucked a blade of grass from the lawn and stuck it in her mouth. She shut her eyes. She was thinking.
I jumped up and said, “I’ll go.” Since I couldn’t find the money for a stamp for my letter, I needed to tell Mother in person what Daddy had told me before he died. That he forgave her. Because if she really was dying, she’d want to know that happy news when they saw each other in Heaven.
“You comin’?” I asked Troo.
“Naw.” She picked up her bag of Kleenex and walked toward the backyard.
That got me worried. Troo, who was braver and prettier and smarter and more outgoing than me, thought it might not be a good idea to see her dying mother. That gave me second thoughts and I almost went after her.
But then Eddie Callahan pulled up in his Chevy car. It was turquoise and white and had fins so if you should accidentally drive it into the lagoon that would be okay. Nell had told me Eddie got a really good deal on this Chevy car because the old owner was in big trouble with the bookies. I was pretty sure that had something to do with the Finney Library. Maybe the old Chevy owner didn’t pay his dues, which could really get Mrs. Kambowski riled up, and that was why the bookies had to sell the car to Eddie. To pay her off? I’d ask Troo later. She’d been spending a lot of time at the library lately. Probably doing some more cheatin’ on the Bookworm Ladder.
“W hat’s cookin’, good-lookin’?” Eddie said to Nell’s bosoms, which it seemed he was not able to take his eyes off of. I couldn’t blame him. They sorta stuck out of Nell’s chest like the headlights on his car.
I got into the backseat and Eddie turned up the radio real loud and we headed down Vliet Street toward the hospital listening to “Love Potion #9.” When we were stopped at the corner of North and Lisbon, Eddie said, “Damn, was I speeding?” He was looking into his rearview mirror around the fuzzy dice.
I turned in my seat and looked out the back window and there was Rasmussen, his gumball flashing.
Eddie pulled over to the curb and blew his breath into his hand, which was very thoughtful since you should never have bad breath when you’re talking to a cop. Suddenly Rasmussen was at Eddie’s car window. He leaned his head in and looked directly at me and said, “Sally, could you get out of the car?”
Eddie, being so glad that he wasn’t getting a speeding ticket, reached back and pulled me over to the front seat and shoved me out the door.
Rasmussen sat down on the curb a little ways away and called over to me, “Sit down, please.” He took off his hat and I thought again what nice full hair he had, even though there was a rim around it from the hatband. The top half being darker with sweat and the bottom half more the color of sweet corn from the farm when it was ready to get picked.
“I just got done talking with Fire Chief Bailey,” Rasmussen said after I sat down a few feet away from him. “Do you know the firemen found a shoe over near the lagoon and that it looks just like one that Sara Heinemann was wearing the night she disappeared?”
Glad that I’d been right, I began to pick at a scab on the cut I got from the Kenfields’ prickly bushes the night I was running away from Rasmussen in the alley.
“Sally?”
Rasmussen smelled extra good. Not like Aqua Velva like Daddy, but something else that smelled like an orange does the second you take off the peel. “You won’t get in trouble. Just tell me the truth. Did you find that shoe?”
I looked back at the Chevy. Nell and Eddie were not even looking my way. If he was quick, Rasmussen could grab me and stick me into the trunk of his car and when people asked later about Sally O’Malley, he would say, “Gosh, the last time I saw her she was heading down North Avenue. I think she said she had to pick up some Kleenex at the Five and Dime.”
“Sally?”
I looked down into the street below the curb. There was a Popsicle stick, so I picked it up and would give it later to Uncle Paulie.
“I know what a bad time you and your family are going through,” he said so kindly. “I really do.”
No, he did not! Was his mother dying? Was his stepfather mean drunk all the time? Did he have a dead father he’d made promises to and a little sister to keep safe and an older sister who was being a complete moony love dope? For a second, I thought, Go ahead, just steal me, molest me, murder me. Just get it over with. And it scared me to think like that. That kind of thinking did not show the kind of stick-to-itiveness that Daddy expected from me.
“You need to tell me the truth, Sally. It’s important.”
“I pulled the fire alarm. Troo found the shoe underneath the big willow tree at the lagoon.”
His mouth turned down on the edges. “That’s all I needed to know.”
He stood up and reached into his back pocket to take out his wallet. He flipped it open and got out a card. It said: David Rasmussen. Precinct 6. Badge number 343. And a phone number. “If you should think of anything else you want to tell me, give me a call here.” He pointed down at the phone number. His fingernails had dirt beneath them. Probably from burying Sara. “Or if it’s a real emergency, you know you can come to my house and tell me.” He said kind of shyly, “I’ve got a garden. I hear you like to garden.”
How’d he know that?
I stood up and Rasmussen handed me that card with his name and number on it. Taped to the back was a five-dollar bill. And that was pretty strange. But not half as strange as the pictures I saw in his wallet. One of them was of me in my school uniform taken last year. And in the plastic area where you can put other pictures, there was Junie Piaskowski in her First Holy Communion dress, smiling her head off. She had no idea what was coming.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When I got back into the car, Eddie said, “What’d he want?”
“He was just askin’ me some questions.”
“About what?” Nell asked, rubbing on Eddie’s arm.
“Sara Heinemann.”
Eddie said, “That missing kid?”
I didn’t show them Rasmussen’s card. And I didn’t tell them about the pictures of me and Junie Piaskowski that I’d seen in his wallet. Why bother.
“I found this in the street.” I gave Nell the five dollars Rasmussen had given me to buy my silence because he suspected that I knew he was the murderer and molester. Like in that movie Troo and me’d seen. I couldn’t remember the name of it but it had to do with blackmail, which meant that somebody gave somebody else money to keep their big mouths shut or else. That’s what that five bucks was. Blood money.
When Eddie pulled away from the curb I said, “I don’t want to go to the hospital anymore.”
I wanted to see Mother and let her know about Daddy forgiving her and maybe lie down with her a bit and tell her that Rasmussen had a picture of me and a dead girl in his wallet. And I hoped that she’d believe me, but she wouldn’t. And that just made me feel sadder than being shipwrecked on a deserted island without my man Friday.
“Cool.” Eddie snatched the five bucks out of Nell’s hand as he pulled away from the curb. “Let’s go to The Milky Way.”
Nell seemed fine with us not visiting Mother, but she seemed fine with just about anything Eddie wa
nted to do. I stuck my head out the window so the air would run across my face. As we cruised down North Avenue we passed Mar sha’s Dance Studio and the abandoned tire building that Mary Lane had accidentally set on fire. I swear I could still smell burnt rubber.
“Sally?” Nell stuck her head out the window.
“Yeah?” I pulled my head back into the car so she did, too.
“Are you and Troo okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You know about Hall, right?”
She meant about him gettin’ some from Rosie Ruggins, the cocktail waitress who had a beauty mark in the corner of her lip that made her look like she’d just eaten a piece of fudge. We’d just passed Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl. Hall’s station wagon was sitting right out front. He shoulda been at work selling shoes at Shuster’s.
Nell lifted her head off Eddie’s shoulder. Her Brillo pad hairdo made her look like she wasn’t related to me at all. One day Mother showed me a picture of her and Nell’s father sitting on the fender of a car, and sure enough, Nell had her father’s chin, which was sort of squarish, and that kind of nose that was popular called a ski-jump nose.
She turned around in her seat and said in a kind voice, which really made me start to worry, “The doctor says Mother doesn’t look so good. You gotta be prepared.”
Eddie said, “Hey, you two, quit talkin’ about this dyin’ stuff. It’s a drag.” He’d stopped in the middle of North Avenue and turned on his blinker to turn left into The Milky Way. I had heard of it but had never been. There were boys in leather jackets and ducktails and girls with ponytails standing around and laughing and leaning on their cars and looking around to see who was looking. The rock ’n’ roll music was loud and they were all trying to get the attention of girls on roller skates who were bringing food out to the cars on red trays with legs.
Eddie pulled into an empty spot and stuck something to his window that had a speaker in it and said, “Hello?”
“Welcome to the Milky Way . . . our food is outta this world,” a tinny voice said, but it didn’t sound like she really meant it.