Under Locker and Key

by Allison K. Hymas

  “Since when do I need you to ‘let’ me do anything?”

  “Good point, but what I mean is . . . I’ll confess to the charges. You won’t need evidence.”

  Becca raised an eyebrow. “Am I supposed to take your word on it? What if you just want me to stop looking for evidence and then you’ll deny everything at the last minute?”

  She was right to be suspicious. “Tate. Tomboy Tate? She got blamed for the fire alarm.”

  “I know. I heard about it this morning. My friend Elena called me and told me everything.”

  “You were right: My actions did get someone hurt. I want to make it right.”

  For a moment that felt like it lasted three math classes, Becca eyed me. “If you get caught now,” she said, “that’s the end of it. Your work, your legacy, everything. The teachers will watch you too closely for you to start again.”

  “I know that.” Boy, did I know it. Which was why Case and Hack couldn’t know what I had planned.

  Becca watched me, her eyes locking into mine. I didn’t drop my gaze. She nodded, and smiled. “I’m glad you’ve come around. It’s better this way, you know. Tate will go free with your confession, and you’ll receive a reduced punishment for coming clean.”

  “I suppose I should feel better about that.”

  “I would, if I were you.” Becca smiled. “I wonder what your parents thought of my performance back there?”

  I felt the blood rush to my face. “My parents. Oh man, they saw you haul me off like that.”

  “I bet they think I have a crush on you.”

  I groaned. “I know. Why’d you have to do that?”

  Becca shrugged. “It got the job done. Whatever your parents think, Mark’s goons will only see our famous feud. You’re right; he’ll never imagine we’re working together. But a good show doesn’t hurt. By the way, I’ve got some important news for you.”

  “What?”

  She looked at me, brow crinkled. “It’s not good.”

  My skin prickled. “We knew it wouldn’t be.”

  “I talked to Mark this morning, pretending I was looking for evidence against you. He got excited and told me one of his friends saw you on the phone with someone acting shady. Apparently, I should keep my eye out for an accomplice.”

  “So he is watching me at home.” I’d hoped I was just being paranoid. “Wait. Was I the one acting shady, or was it the someone on the phone?”

  Becca grinned. “You.”

  “Okay. Watch your grammar.”

  “Grow up. And in case you’re getting any ideas, I am not your accomplice.”

  “Wouldn’t want you if you’d have me.”

  “There’s more. After school on Monday, Mark is going to tell the principal he saw you using the key. When he’s asked for proof, he’ll take McDuff to your locker, and when they get it open, they’ll find a stash of stolen property.”

  “Placed there by him, using the master key. And then it will be my word against his, and the evidence will be in his favor.” I clenched my fist so hard the nails bit into my palm.

  “I should let you go down for it. It would solve everything.”

  “You won’t because Mark will walk free. How do you know all this?”

  “Mark told me this morning. Exactly what I just told you, and like you, I understood what he meant. Mark said he knew you kept your ill-gained goods in your locker, but he was waiting to tell the authorities because he wanted to be sure you really took the key before turning you in, but if what you say is true—”

  “It is,” I interrupted.

  “Then Mark is just planning it as vengeance in case you attack again. Then he’ll turn you in and you’ll get burned for his crime while he walks free.”

  I jumped. “Who are you? The Becca I know would take every opportunity to remind me that this was my crime and I should be burned for it.”

  “Mark’s the mastermind. You were just his pawn.”

  I put a hand on my chest. “Ouch. I thought I was the criminal mastermind.”

  “Maybe one of several. You’ll burn for your own crimes; we’ve decided on that. But let’s deal with Mark first. What do you want to do now that we know your head is on his chopping block?”

  I had spent all night figuring that out. “We proceed as planned.”

  “Are you sure?” Becca said, peering at me. “That means Mark will go to the principal on Monday.”

  “I know. But so will you, right?”

  “Not if we don’t get Mark before then.”

  “Then we’ll have to be ready for him Monday morning, early. Before he can do anything.”

  Becca smiled. She was cute when she wasn’t trying to destroy me. “We’ll have him soon. And then our business is over.”

  “And so is mine.” Why was I doing this? Oh, right, because I’d gotten in over my head, and this was the only way out. I nodded. “Okay. So, let’s coordinate phase three. Does eleven o’clock tomorrow work for you?”

  “Sounds good. Make sure you have an exit strategy this time, though.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m ready for anything. But make sure he’s not around when I’m working. Okay?”

  Phase three was going to be the hardest part of this job, and once again, I was taking the worst of it while Becca played keep-away. I would need all my gear if I was going to stay out of trouble. Well, immediate trouble.

  “Okay. Well, we have nothing more to say, do we?”

  I shook my head.

  Becca nodded. “Wait five minutes; then follow me. Don’t let anyone see us together. Good run today. First place!”

  I smiled. For a moment I really wished she’d say, You know what, Wilderson? You provide a needed service. I’m going to save Tate, let you go, and stop chasing you. But she had been chasing me for too long to let me go when she’d finally caught me.

  And for one short moment I imagined what it would have been like if she’d taken me up on my offer and took up retrieving instead of detective work. It would have been fun, I thought.

  When she turned to leave, I started walking too. We collided as she stopped short, her gym bag smashing against me at waist level. “No, you wait five minutes, Wilderson,” she said, annoyed.

  “My bad. I heard it the other way around.” I put my hands behind my back and waited the five minutes.

  When I got back to the track, the long-distance runners were in the middle of their race. Since my races were done, I went to join the crowd of spectators.

  Becca was talking to the coach. Her bag rested beside the fence, just far enough away from her to let me return the object I’d palmed earlier. I examined the item: a digital camera, small and silver. The same camera Becca carried everywhere, the one she had used to take pictures of Mark’s stash.

  I had to see. She’d tried to tape me confessing and she’d promised to find evidence to support her claim that I was behind the fire-alarm pull. Maybe she’d found that evidence and photographed it like she had Mark’s stash. I needed to know if Becca had been ready to break our immunity deal long before I decided to come clean or only just before. It would tell me if I could trust her. Also I wanted to know what she had on me besides my confession. If I was going down, I wanted to go down on my terms.

  I flicked through the pictures on Becca’s camera. A few of the races, a bunch of her friends at a pool, me in the girls’ bathroom, the shots of Mark’s stash, a few sneaky ones of my elbow vanishing around a corner (nice try, Nancy Drew), something that looked like it belonged to the mystery-meat case—wait. Go back.

  I scrolled to the pictures of Mark’s stash. All the stolen goods were heaped in the locker; Becca must have moved the trumpet case and the band jacket. And Case’s forged hall passes sat on the pile in a place of incriminating prominence.

  Had Becca noticed? She couldn’t have, not yet. These pictures were meant to prove Mark’s guilt, not Case’s. But it wouldn’t be long before she noticed and told the school authorities. They’d know the passes were fake, and they�
�d trace them back to Case. I couldn’t let that happen. I deleted every picture of Mark’s stash.

  Feeling nauseous, I passed by Becca’s bag and returned the camera. I hoped those pictures weren’t the evidence needed to bring down Mark and make him return all the stolen items. They shouldn’t be: I’d already returned everything from that day’s stash, and if my plan went well, Mark would be stopped, no problem. I just hoped Becca wouldn’t look at those pictures until after Monday.

  “Jeremy! Congratulations!” I looked up. Mom and Dad were walking over, waving and smiling. I shouldered my gym bag, smiled back, and prepared for the praise I’d earned. It would be smooth sailing from here on out.

  Or at least until tomorrow and phase three.

  ON SUNDAY MORNING I GOT up, ate breakfast, and immediately started preparations. Since I couldn’t go over to Becca’s, I’d have to trust she was doing the same. Not easy, since I still didn’t trust her. But she wanted the key back, and we’d already agreed on how this arrangement would end. No reason to betray me when I’d agreed to turn myself in.

  When I finished packing, my backpack contained the following: a change of clothes, three sticks of beef jerky, a length of rope, my grappling hook, my lockpick set, a pair of latex gloves, and a water bottle. Even if the worst should happen and Becca didn’t manage to keep Mark away long enough, I’d have enough gear to get out of any situation.

  Under my jacket I wore the Boy Scout uniform I’d bought at Goodwill last fall. It’s part of being extra sneaky, as I was telling you earlier. Just wait until you see what I used the uniform for. It’s kind of awesome.

  Google Maps, crossed with Scottsville Middle’s online student address book, had made it easy for me to take a scooter ride past Mark’s house the night before. I’d have no trouble finding it again. I could take my scooter, but then I’d have to hide it, so I decided to walk.

  I printed out a sheet of paper I’d prepared and left my house at about ten fifteen. I thought about taking the path through the woods behind my house—they gave me more cover, and it was usually pretty easy to spot a watcher among the monotone green and brown—but decided not to. Extra sneaky was the way to go on this job.

  A few houses down I stopped and knocked on the door. No, it wasn’t Mark’s house. This performance was for any of his thuggish pets who may have had eyes on me.

  The door opened and an elderly woman peered out. “Hi, ma’am,” I said in my most upbeat voice. “I’m Jeremy. I live down the street. My troop is doing a service scavenger hunt. Do you have any work you need done, like taking out the trash or doing the dishes?”

  “That’s a nice activity. As a matter of fact, I need someone to help me move a dresser. Think you can do it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. When we’re done, can you sign here that I completed my task?” I said, bringing out the sheet of paper I’d printed, which contained a list of possible jobs. “The first of us who finishes all of these gets ice cream.”

  She let me inside and I helped her move the dresser. It was heavy, but it was worth it for the legitimizing signature on the fake list. I repeated the deception until I reached Mark’s house. By that time I had weeded one small flower bed, taken out two bags of trash, and carried a plate of cookies to someone’s friend. Like a good little Scout. Too bad I wasn’t one.

  At last I reached Mark’s house. He wouldn’t be there, because Becca should have invited him to talk about the crime wave, or something. Anything to get him out of the way while I searched for the key. She was also supposed to case the joint a little bit. By the way, she and I had a little disagreement over the phrase “case the joint.” She thought it sounded too thiefy.

  The house looked similar to all the others in the neighborhood. A tree grew beside an upstairs window, and I saw a play place in the back with a swing and slide. Nice. How had Mark the Psychopath emerged from this picture-perfect home?

  At the top of the porch stairs sat a small planter with red flowers growing in it. Becca was supposed to leave me information about the house under it. I kicked it as I walked up the stairs, for the benefit of anyone watching me, and knelt quickly to catch it.

  Nothing. No slip of paper, no code written in spilled dirt, nothing. My heart skipped. What had happened? Was Becca okay? And more important, why did I care if she was in trouble?

  Maybe Becca hadn’t come by yet, and if so, Mark might still be home. If he saw me, the game was up. But what if Becca had come by but hadn’t been able to leave the note for me? I’d have to act now, before Mark came back.

  What to do, what to do . . . I pressed my ear against the door. It sounded pretty quiet. Maybe I could chance it. Taking a deep breath and hoping I hadn’t run out of luck, I knocked. A few minutes later a guy opened the door.

  “Yeah?” This guy looked about high school age, maybe older, and annoyed at me for interrupting him. Mark’s brother.

  Working a retrieval job takes skill, hard work, and occasionally a bit of luck. This was an example of the kind of luck I mean. Big brothers are way easier to work with than parents or the mark itself.

  “Look, I’m not buying any popcorn,” he said. He started to close the door.

  I grabbed the door, stopping it. “Nothing like that,” I said, making my voice cheerful and Scout-like. “Though I hope I can count on you later when we do that fund-raiser. No, today I’m doing a service activity for my troop and I was wondering if there was anything around the house you would like me to do.”

  “Not interested.”

  “Come on, please? If I do more jobs than anyone else, I get ice cream. Are you sure I can’t help out? Look,” I said, pushing my checklist at him. “I can vacuum your carpets, or wash windows, or clean your room—”

  Something in there got his attention. He pushed the door open a little wider and said, “Did you say vacuum?”

  “I did. Would you like me to do that?”

  The guy smiled. As it turned out, vacuuming the upstairs was his chore for the weekend and he’d put it off. It was good luck that I’d come around offering to do his work for him.

  Or maybe it wasn’t just luck. Becca wasn’t the only one who had (or should have) cased this house. As I said earlier, I’d come here the night before, which was how I’d been able to recognize Mark’s house on sight. I just couldn’t get inside, so she’d had to do that for me. In any case, as I passed by I’d had to fake a spill on my scooter because I’d heard Mark’s mom start to nag his brother—whose name I never got—about vacuuming before the weekend was over. If he was anything like my brother, I knew that he’d do it around midnight Sunday night.

  Cons work best when you offer the mark something they want, while asking for something acceptable but a little dishonest in return. In the best-case scenario this guy would never learn I was using him, and if everything went south, he wouldn’t say a word about my involvement because he shouldn’t have farmed out his chores in the first place.

  It was the same thing that kept me safe from Mark telling anyone I’d retrieved his stash. If he wasn’t supposed to have it in the first place, he couldn’t exactly run crying to Principal McDuff, or even Becca. All Becca had to go on was my confession. Ugh. I couldn’t believe I was going to give it to her. Was it too late to back out? Yeah, probably.

  Anyway, the con worked; I was in. Mark’s brother showed me the closet with the vacuum cleaner and helped me carry it upstairs. He said politely, “Let me know if you need any help,” but his heart wasn’t in it.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, acting as cheerful as ever. “I can let myself out when I’m done, if you want. Just sign my list right now.”

  Mark’s brother happily did so. “Oh,” he said, handing the list back to me. “I should go tell her you’re here too.”

  “Her?”

  “Just a friend of my brother’s. She’s putting together some kind of surprise in his room.” Mark’s brother smiled, but he didn’t say anything. Clearly he thought that this girl (three guesses, who do you think it was?) like-li
ked his brother, but that I was too young to understand.

  I’m short, not a baby.

  And I understood perfectly. “How about I go up and tell her I’m here? Just so she doesn’t think her surprise is ruined?”

  “Sure. It’s the one on the end, that way.” Mark’s brother pointed and then went back to whatever he was doing before I interrupted him. Video games, probably. Fun, but who needs games when you live the adventure?

  I went upstairs, glancing into the other rooms as I went, checking to make sure no one but the brother was home. Far right was the parents’ room; it had a double bed and its own bathroom. In the middle of the hall was a room filled with posters of bands and an electric guitar in the corner. It smelled like the inside of Rick’s sneakers. The older brother’s. That left the one on the end. Mark’s room.

  Time to make an entrance. I plugged the vacuum in and turned it on, right outside Mark’s room. Then I threw open the door. Over by the desk Becca jumped, dropping the stack of papers she had in her arms.

  I helped her gather them. “I had no idea you were the sneaking-and-entering type.”

  “I’m a detective. It’s part of the job description.” She looked me over. “Nice uniform.”

  “Thanks, it’s vintage. I thought keeping the mark away from the area while your partner worked was also part of the job description.”

  “First off, I’m not your partner.” Becca took the papers from me and set them on Mark’s desk. Where they belonged, I assumed. She was wearing disposable gloves, and she snapped one threateningly at me. “Second, I can’t keep being the distraction. He’ll notice that you always search his stuff while I’m chatting him up. Besides, I have to find Mark’s stash.”

  “It would have been great if you could have brought me in on your change of plans here. I could have helped. How did you get Mark out of the house?”

  “Who said I did?”

  I gave her a look, and she shrugged. “I called him and told him to meet me in the park by the art museum. I gave him reasons why I might have to run suddenly, so when he realizes I’m not there, he won’t get suspicious.”