Meanwhile every two or three minutes Mr. Gil also erupts with loud snorts of laughter but immediately pretends he's coughing and eventually clears his throat and politely says, "Excuse me."
But that only gets Mr. Bernard guffawing again. They both sound as if they're choking on extra-hot chili dogs.
"I know. It's terrible," Mr. Bernard finally admits. "I don't have any idea what the minister said. I ran to the men's room, but Uncle Oscar was in there doing something with his colostomy bag, so I dashed out the front door. Every time I attempted to stand in the back of the room, I just burst out laughing again."
"Well, we couldn't wait any longer. I just said that you'd taken ill from the stress of it all," says Ms. Olivia. She seems neither angry nor amused by the entire incident.
"I'm sorry, Mother. Really, I am."
"I can't believe you put Hallie up to that," Ms. Olivia scolds him as I glide the Buick into our block. "What's wrong with you?"
"I just wanted to be sure," Mr. Bernard replies.
"The Second Stockton Theory," Mr. Gil says and then cracks up again.
"And when have I ever lied to you?" Ms. Olivia asks.
"That's it exactly. You never have, and I still can't believe the things you do."
Then Mr. Bernard and Mr. Gil burst into gales of laughter, and I'm not far behind.
Chapter 43
Blackjack! ♥
The day after the funeral Mr. Bernard sends me off to the Star-Mart for cardboard boxes so that he can pack up his father's law encyclopedias and donate them to the Judge's alma mater. When I arrive back at the house the front door is wide open and the downstairs is ablaze with lights. Officer Rich's blue pickup truck is parked in the driveway.
I assume the worst—that Ms. Olivia has collapsed from grief—and rush toward the house in silent panic. But Ms. Olivia is standing inside the vestibule and assures me that everything is all right. In fact, she says that everything is more than all right, that Christmas has come a bit late this year. And it's then that I notice Craig's black Audi parked on the other side of the circular driveway. What is he doing here?
The first truly explanatory words come from Officer Rich, who is waiting to greet me in the living room. "I'm so sorry, Hallie," he says. But not in the way that you would say, "I'm so sorry to hear that you're going to prison for good."
Craig appears from the dining room and out of nowhere gives me this big hug, though I can't get the full benefit because with all the commotion I still haven't taken off my coat. However, it feels good all the same. And I can see that this public display of affection does not go unnoticed by Ms. Olivia. Thank goodness Mr. Bernard is banging around in the kitchen, or else he'd probably be pulling faces over Craig's shoulder.
"Sit down, everyone. I'll make us all some tea," Ms. Olivia announces. "Now, Hallie, I've already heard how you tracked down the thief who stole the golf money, but I'd like Officer Rich, Craig, and you to explain it again. I'm still not positive I entirely grasp the entire escapade. And get Bertie. I want Bertie to hear every word."
Once we've all gathered in the living room and Ms. Olivia has made tea and Mr. Bernard has brought out a plate of petit fours, Officer Rich unravels the mystery step by step, just like they do on television.
"Well," Officer Rich begins, but then takes out a handkerchief and mops his moist brow, apparently a little uncomfortable with so many eyes intently staring at his flushed face and bulky self. "For background you need to know that Lorraine Shaeffer is the Chairwoman of the Golf Tournament Committee—Hallie goes to school with her kids, Sheryl and Brandt." He nods in my direction. "At least she used to." Officer Rich takes a sip from the teacup Ms. Olivia has passed him, but he's a large man and looks silly drinking out of a dinky china teacup. Apparently sensing this, he quickly sets it down on the coffee table.
"So Lorraine dropped the money at Mr. Exner's store, since he's the treasurer, and watched him put it underneath the counter," Officer Rich continues. "Then she asked to see some ladies' golf gloves that she knew were kept in the back area and simply took the money and put it right back into her purse. She also knew that Jane Davenport would be working at the store that afternoon and thus would probably be blamed, unless Mr. Exner assumed that he'd mislaid the money and decided to replace it himself to avoid the embarrassment of having to admit his own carelessness."
Craig is bouncing up and down on the ottoman and leaning forward as if he's about to jump in at any moment but restrains himself.
"Anyway, she bought a pair of gloves, said good-bye, and went to her car. Only as she was pulling out of the parking lot, she saw Hallie turning in on her bicycle and couldn't believe her luck—the town miscreant—sorry, Hallie—had turned up at exactly the right moment."
"But I still don't understand how Hallie connected Mrs. Shaeffer to the money," says Mr. Gil.
"Hallie," Officer Rich says and still looks dubious, no longer about my innocence but by the resolution itself, "I wonder what could have possibly led you to believe that Sheryl and Brandt's mother might be commingling funds at the brokerage firm? Did one of her kids say something to you?"
"Brandt was willing to spill the beans, but I didn't need him to," I say. "I'd seen Mrs. Shaeffer out at the Indian casino a few times. And I saw Brandt at the track once. I just started to wonder if maybe the whole family has a gambling problem."
I catch Mr. Bernard glancing at Mr. Gil as if to say, Indian casino?
"But Hallie," says Officer Rich. "What was it about being at the Indian casino that made you suspect her of stealing the money? Lots of people from town go there. It's not illegal."
"For one thing, when we were playing poker Al made that comment about Mrs. Shaeffer being his stockbroker and losing money for him. Then whenever Mrs. Shaeffer ran into me at the casino she left right away, which I thought was kind of strange. It was the middle of the day when most people are working, but hey, it's a free country. So I just assumed it was because I went to school with Sheryl and Brandt and she didn't want them to know what she was up to. But there was this time I was watching her play from the Crypt, you know, when they were processing me right before barring me from the casino for good ..."
Once again Mr. Bernard's expression distracts me. Upon hearing "the Crypt" and "barring me from the casino," his eyebrows shoot up like window shades.
"So I was looking down and I could tell that she was leaking twenties. Because she was hunched over the cards all tense-like and clutching her purse real tight to her lap. You know, with that hollow expression of a loser who's betting money she doesn't have. And so after the golf money went missing it just occurred to me that if she had a gambling problem and needed money badly enough to steal it from the store, then she might be filching it from her customers as well. Only it didn't all come together until I was looking at Mr. Gil's stock options."
Officer Rich finally understands the missing link. "So that's what made you ask Craig to go down to Mrs. Shaeffer's brokerage firm—"
"It was Hallie's money," Craig interrupts him, obviously wanting to be sure to give credit where credit is due. "I just did it the way she told me to."
"Right," acknowledges Officer Rich. "Hallie had Craig open a trading account and instructed Mrs. Shaeffer to use her own judgment as to what stocks to purchase. It's called a discretionary account."
"She told me to say that I was interested in high-growth companies," adds Craig, not wanting any of the pieces of the puzzle to be overlooked. "You know, genetic engineering and biotechnology." He looks over at me with pride.
"But here's the clever part," says Officer Rich. "Hallie had Craig write the check to Mrs. Shaeffer personally, knowing full well that she couldn't legally cash the check on behalf of the brokerage house she worked for. So she should have asked Craig to rewrite it payable to the firm."
"But she didn't!" says Craig, eager to get to the good part.
"Right," says Officer Rich. "Mrs. Shaeffer deposited the check into her personal account. And then she sent Cr
aig statements indicating that he'd purchased stock in some extremely risky companies that just happened to be trading near their record-high prices."
"The statements were bogus," adds Craig. "Computer generated."
"And when he closed the account Mrs. Shaeffer sent a generic bank money order with the little cash that remained, which a brokerage firm would never do, of course. They have their own official checks and drafts and so forth," explains Officer Rich.
"So the firm investigated her records and found that she'd been losing money for people and trying to cover the losses with funds from other accounts," says Craig.
Mr. Gil and Mr. Bernard just sit there with astonished looks on their faces, as if Officer Rich has suddenly morphed into the sheriff on the television show Murder, She Wrote. Meanwhile, Ms. Olivia serenely sips her tea and appears as if she knew it would work out like this all along.
"Calamity Hallie," Mr. Bernard finally says, happily, and gives me a round of applause as if I've just performed in a show.
"But how does the fact that this Shaeffer woman was embezzling prove that she took the golf money as well?" asks Mr. Gil.
"Oh, she confessed to that right after the manager was shown Craig's cashed check and reviewed her accounts," says Officer Rich, though not as cheerful sounding as when first proclaiming her the culprit. "I—I sort of felt sorry for her ..." But then he apparently recalls that my life hasn't exactly been a Brady Bunch rerun the past few months. "My gosh," says Officer Rich. "And to think that I gave you such a hard time about this, Hallie. I feel terrible."
"It's not really your fault," I say. "I mean, if I didn't get into so much trouble and cut school, then you wouldn't have suspected me in the first place."
"Thanks, kiddo, but that's no excuse," replies Officer Rich. "Innocent until proven guilty."
"All's well that ends well," says Ms. Olivia.
"Onward and upward," adds Mr. Gil.
"Exactly right," says Mr. Bernard. "Life is too short to be anything but gay."
Mr. Gil shoots Mr. Bernard a look.
At this point I'm the only one who hasn't thrown in my two cents, though I've donated my eight hundred dollars, which Officer Rich promises I'll get back.
However, it's Officer Rich who has the last words, which for once I don't mind a bit. "Case closed," he says.
And I realize it's the first time in almost a year that I'm not being hunted down for something or other. At least that I know of.
Chapter 44
Deal Me In «
The week following the funeral we all sit around the house encouraging one another to go out and do something, but no one does. Except for Ms. Olivia. She ventures outdoors to shovel the front walk every morning, and then heads over to her church to sort and price junk for the yearly white elephant sale.
I'm afraid she'll have a heart attack doing all the snow removal, but when I rise early to beat her to the job Mr. Bernard stops me. He explains that Ms. Olivia always recovers from tragedy through manual labor and that we should just let her go at it.
Otherwise, the gloom of the Judge's last weeks begins to fade and life gradually returns to normal. At least by Stockton standards. Mr. Bernard and Mr. Gil are both back at work. I paint trim, run errands, and work on the garage collage in the mornings. Ms. Olivia tutors me during the afternoons and writes pornography or poetry in the evening while Mr. Bernard and I prepare dinner. To provoke Mr. Bernard she threatens to pass a petition to change the name women (look what it ends in!) to Estrogen-Americans. But Mr. Bernard doesn't take the bait. He simply suggests that Ms. Olivia and her Unitarian feminist cronies start speaking in Shebonics so they'll no longer have to concern themselves with how the rest of the world labels people.
The day before New Year's Eve, Mr. Bernard appears to finally run out of steam in the kitchen and he actually orders a pizza. Even the bread machine has gone cold for the first time in months. The last few days we've been subsisting on "chicken deja vu," Mr. Bernard's code name for leftovers.
That night I head off to the New Year's Eve party at Jane's house. Mr. Gil and Mr. Bernard are both pleased that I have a function to attend. However, they aren't going anywhere. Mr. Bernard claims that once you're over thirty, New Year's Eve is amateur night. He and Mr. Gil prefer to stay home and have a nice dinner of ragout of veal and watch old Alfred Hitchcock movies.
It's the first time seeing my friends since the criminal charges against me have been dropped. Jane greets me at the front door with a big hug and hangs several black and white leis around my neck. "I heard all about it," she says excitedly. "What an incredible story! Poor Sheryl and Brandt. I invited them to the party weeks ago, but I doubt they'll come now."
Guests pile up behind me, and so we agree to catch up later.
Next I have to pass Jane's parents in the family room in order to reach the basement door. Mrs. Davenport is extra nice, and it's obvious that she's trying to make up for all the thin-lipped smiles and terse telephone greetings from when it appeared as if I was in possession of the golf money. Or worse, that by regularly conferring with Jane I was insinuating that her daughter, the only person other than Mr. Exner to have a key, had something to do with the theft.
"How's school, sweetie?" Mrs. Davenport asks me in her friendliest Southern accent and pats the empty couch pillow next to her ample behind to indicate that I should settle in for a nice long chat.
Standing with my hand on the doorknob to the basement, I start to explain my situation. "I don't exactly go—"
"Oh yes, yes of course." She laughs as if this was a silly thing to ask. "And how's your mom? Jane tells me she's expecting ... again."
"I haven't really seen much of her lately."
Mrs. Davenport is obviously reminded that I no longer live with my folks and appears flustered as the conversation takes yet another wrong turn. "Well, I'm sure the young people are expecting y'all in the rumpus room." She seems to have changed her mind about the heart-to-heart talk, and so I finally open the door and follow the rising roar from downstairs.
Jane's parents have refinished the basement of their sprawling brick ranch house in a teen-friendly way, with a Ping-Pong table, pool table, foos-ball game, and even the arcade version of Donkey Kong. There's a downstairs refrigerator stocked with all kinds of soda pop, and they have accounts at the local submarine shop, video store, and the Mr. Cluck Chicken Wing Hut.
Once I said to Jane, "Your parents must know that kids smoke and go to third base down here every weekend." Because there are enough large throw pillows scattered around the floor to sleep about twelve. And the basement windows are always open, even in the middle of winter. Jane explained her parents' philosophy, which is basically that kids are going to get into stuff no matter where they are and so it may as well be in a place with adult supervision nearby so they can be driven to the emergency room if necessary. Her parents have promised never to go downstairs unless there's a three-alarm blaze.
The party is in full swing. Teenagers are dancing and music is playing and the boys are throwing a Nerf basketball around the room and trying to hit the girls in the boobs with it. Jane has hung thick curtains of black and white streamers in all the corners to create private make-out bungalows, and the ceiling is dotted with helium balloons that we're all supposed to pop at midnight. Only a few boys are slowly deflating them and inhaling the helium and then singing "Volare" duets in high squeaky voices. Meanwhile the junior class president, Paul Ryan, has mushed a thick layer of devil's food cake into his braces and is running around grinning at people.
Apparently everyone has heard that I solved the mystery of the missing golf money. Though that's largely my doing. The minute the cloud was lifted I told my parents and then I phoned Gwen, knowing full well that she'd have the news out within an hour. Absolutely everybody wants to talk to me about it, but when I see Craig across the room, I excuse myself and go over to him. We shoot a game of pool and I don't purposely try to lose, but I take some shots that are pretty tough, instead of
the easy ones, and because I'm out of practice and miss a couple, Craig manages to win by one ball.
The Stocktons would probably find it all pretty juvenile, but I think it's a good party. Besides, it's not as if I no longer enjoy being with people my own age. I just can't tolerate school, that's all. And now that the money has been recovered and I'm no longer a pariah, people don't pretend that they're about to miss their ride as soon as I walk over.
Jane plays a CD of television show theme songs and offers prizes to the first person who can correctly name each one. Four people play Strip Ping-Pong, except they use the Nerf basketball instead of a regular Ping-Pong ball. One of the competitors, Heather Johnson, is already drunk and has her socks and shoes and sweater off, and it's pretty obvious what the guys are trying to accomplish with that one. Mary-Ella grabs the Polaroid camera off the top of the VCR and snaps a photo of her.
The purpose of the Polaroid camera is to watch for a couple to sneak into the laundry room and then after they've been in there about ten minutes three people work together to document their level of commitment. One person swings open the door, one switches on the light, and a third takes the photo.
Brandt rolls up around ten o'clock looking more than a little stoned, or else like he accidentally inhaled a tube of model-airplane glue. He moves hesitantly down the stairs and across the room, with pupils like eight balls and his wiry frame pressed up against the wall as if he'll topple over without the added support of cement pilings. I wonder if he's mad at me for getting his mom into trouble. A relative had to come all the way from Philadelphia to post bail.
"Hey, Brandt," I say and approach the back wall. "Are you okay?"
He appears surprised not so much by my voice but by the words themselves, as if he's trying to make sense out of the question. "Yeah ... I'm just going to get something to eat," he finally replies.
Beginner's Luck Page 25