Connect the Dots

by Keith Calabrese

  Looking for Mr. Kaplan * Please Don’t Stop the Music * Photographs and Memories * Oliver Has a Hunch * Imagine the Odds * A Not So Simple Google Search * Matilda Goes Dark * Butterflies, Chaos Theory, and the Third Kid

  Matilda spent the weekend going through all of George Kaplan’s purchases, and by Monday she had a search grid of roughly ten square blocks.

  “It’s a lot of ground, I know,” Matilda said as she pointed out the shaded area on the grid map laid out on the cafeteria table. “But I’ll bet anything George Kaplan lives somewhere in there.”

  Frankie leaned over the map. “Hey, I know that area,” he said. “This helps a lot, Matilda.”

  “Could I come with you when you walk Archie after school today?” Matilda asked. “Get a ground view of the area?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Frankie said.

  “I can come, too,” Oliver offered.

  Matilda considered. “You better not, Oliver. Kaplan doesn’t know us. But if he saw you wandering around his neighborhood, it might tip him off.”

  “She’s got a point,” Frankie said.

  “Wow.” Oliver chuckled. “Well, if you two are finally agreeing on something, I’m not going to get in the way.”

  That afternoon, Matilda joined Frankie on his walk with Archie. The big dog took to her instantly, licking her face with such overwhelming intensity that Frankie actually heard her giggle.

  “What?” she said as she wiped some of Archie’s slobber off her forehead. “Did I miss a spot?”

  “Huh? Oh, nah, I think you got it all.”

  About four blocks into the walk, Matilda said, “Are we heading away from the search grid?”

  “Yeah,” Frankie said. “Have to make a quick detour first.”

  They approached the old Cadillac on the top of the steep hill. It didn’t take long for the orange tabby cat to dart across the sidewalk and under the car. Archie lunged desperately, banging his head into the tire block and snapping his jaws in what even he had to know was a pointless attempt at snagging his prey.

  “Oh my goodness,” Matilda said, startled. “He nearly caught that cat.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Frankie said. “They do the same thing every day. We get about ten feet from this house, then the cat darts from behind a bush right in front of Archie and ducks under this car. That cat’s got it timed perfectly.”

  “Then why do you keep walking this way?”

  “I think they both kinda enjoy it,” Frankie said. “I figure, give them a little fun. What’s the harm, you know?”

  They walked Archie for over an hour but only covered a small fraction of Matilda’s search grid and spotted no black Town Cars.

  “We could spend weeks searching like this,” Matilda said, plopping down onto a patio chair in Steve’s backyard. “And then, we could walk right past their safe house and not even know it because no one’s home.”

  Frankie filled Archie’s bowl with water and sat down as well. “Maybe we’re going about looking in the wrong way,” Frankie said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, today we walked all around one section of your search grid,” Frankie said. “And spent a lot of time on small side streets that were too far off the main intersections. But what if we could make it so that I stayed on the bigger streets, the ones with more traffic? Then I’d have a better chance of spotting one of their cars as they enter or leave the neighborhood, right?”

  “Right,” Matilda said. “That’s good, Frankie. I could set up a mapping algorithm to give us different search routes to optimize both traffic flow and street visibility.”

  “Sure,” Frankie said with an amiable shrug.

  “Sorry,” Matilda said. “I mean I could run a program—”

  “It’s cool,” Frankie said. “I got most of it.”

  Billy Fargus fidgeted in his chair. So did Bad Becky. Billy was so nervous he had to keep reminding himself he wasn’t in trouble.

  Of course, it would be a whole lot easier to remind himself if Mrs. Gonzales wasn’t looking at him like that.

  “A band,” she said, her tone somewhere between a question and a statement.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Billy Fargus said.

  “With you two and Mr. Lindo?”

  “Uh-huh,” Billy said.

  “You are aware that Mr. Lindo has advanced dementia?”

  “Yeah, but it gets better when he plays,” Billy said. This was, in fact, true.

  “Plays?” Mrs. Gonzales asked. “Drums?”

  “Well, now he just taps his sticks on the table,” Billy said. “We’d have to get his set out of storage.”

  Billy realized that this last sentence might be where he officially pushed his luck.

  Mrs. Gonzales had been really cool so far. She let him off work half an hour early so that he could practice guitar with Bad Becky in the rec room. And she gave them the room on his off days as well. Billy was now at Shady Glades almost every day after school.

  “I might come to regret this, but all right,” Mrs. Gonzales said. “On one condition: You have to invite Mr. Abernale to join the band as well.”

  “What?” Bad Becky practically jumped out of her seat, which, considering her knees, was no small gesture. “No! No! No”—she steamed, scrunching up her face as if it took all the muscles in her skull to keep from swearing—“way!”

  “What’s the big deal?” Billy said. “Mr. Abernale’s a pretty nice guy.”

  “And a very accomplished pianist,” Mrs. Gonzales added reasonably.

  “He’s a jazz musician!” Bad Becky exclaimed.

  Mrs. Gonzales was unmoved by the passion of Bad Becky’s argument.

  “Besides, he won’t do it anyway,” Bad Becky said. “He hates me.”

  “So what? Most of the residents hate you,” Billy said matter-of-factly.

  Bad Becky gave him a look, but she was self-aware enough to know that when you’ve got a tell-it-like-it-is personality, you have to be able to hear it like it is, too.

  “And you don’t have to like somebody to make great music with them,” Billy plowed forward. “You and Mongo Jenkins hated each other, but you wrote all the best songs on Brain Batter Bingo together,” he said. “Just saying.”

  “Uh-huh,” Bad Becky said. “Remind me to tell you about the time I broke ole Mongo’s nose with a mic stand.”

  “Those are my terms. Take it or leave it,” Mrs. Gonzales said not unkindly.

  Bad Becky glared for a moment. She looked over at Billy. Then she glared at Mrs. Gonzales again, just for good measure. “Fine,” Bad Becky said, storming for the door in a huff.

  “So,” Mrs. Gonzales said as Billy followed Bad Becky to the door. “What are you calling yourselves?”

  Billy smiled. The name had been his idea. “The Dangerous Jams.”

  While Frankie and Matilda were on their scouting mission, Oliver went home and tried to act normal. He’d been more or less avoiding his mom since last Friday, when he’d learned the truth (or at least a fraction of truth) about George Kaplan. But Oliver knew she was starting to notice and hoped she would chalk it up to middle school moodiness. A couple of times she’d even asked him if anything was wrong. Kids hate it when parents do that. And parents hate it when kids answer “nothing.”

  Especially when they know their kids are lying about it. Oliver’s “nothing” really was something. Something he desperately wanted to tell his mom. Something he felt rotten not telling her.

  Something that was currently in their living room, sitting next to her on the couch.

  “Oh yes,” Mr. Kaplan said, laughing. “I do love that hair.”

  Oliver’s mom swatted him playfully on the arm. “Hey! Bangs were very in that year.”

  Oliver had seen Mr. Kaplan’s car in the driveway—the driveway, not on the street anymore—and had come in through the kitchen door.

  They were looking through an old yearbook and laughing. It was the kind of moment that should have been sweet, but knowing it really wasn’t was
almost too much for Oliver to bear. The urge to rush into the living room and expose Mr. Kaplan as a liar and fraud was so strong, Oliver felt like his heart was going to beat right out of his chest.

  But then what? Oliver knew he couldn’t physically make the man leave, and once exposed, Mr. Kaplan might turn dangerous. Oliver had never felt so helpless in his entire life.

  “And who’s that boy next to you?” Mr. Kaplan said, leaning over to get a closer look at the book in Floss’s lap. “Preston—Oh my word. Is that Preston Oglethorpe? The physicist?”

  Floss nodded. “Yes, it is. He used to live down the block from me.”

  “Amazing,” Mr. Kaplan said, regarding the picture again. “You two sure look awfully chummy.”

  Oliver watched as his mom turned away just a little, both from the book and the man. “We were, actually,” she said. She was quiet for a minute. “But then, well, you know. I went to eighth grade and he went to—MIT, I think it was.”

  Mr. Kaplan started to say something else, but then Oliver’s mom finally spotted him in the kitchen.

  “Oh, Oliver,” she said, dumping the yearbook onto Mr. Kaplan’s lap and straightening her skirt as she stood up to greet her son. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “Hey, Mom,” Oliver said, forcing a lighthearted smile onto a face that clearly didn’t want it there.

  “Oliver, hello,” Mr. Kaplan said, rising and offering his hand. After much internal debate, Oliver took it.

  “I’m surprised you aren’t over at Frankie’s,” said his mom.

  “I know,” Oliver said. “I have a lot of homework tonight, so I just came home.”

  “Very responsible,” Mr. Kaplan chimed in.

  “Okay,” his mom said. “Want a snack or anything?”

  “No, thank you,” Oliver said. “I’m just going up to my room. If that’s okay?”

  “Sure, honey,” his mom said.

  Oliver tried not to run up the stairs, but it wasn’t easy.

  An hour later there was a light knock on Oliver’s door.

  “Got a minute?”

  Oliver looked up from the homework he wasn’t really doing. “Um, sure, Mom.”

  She came into the room and sat on Oliver’s bed. He turned in his chair to face her.

  “This afternoon, with Mr. Kaplan,” she began. “It bothered you, didn’t it?”

  “Mom …”

  “It’s okay, I get it,” his mom said. “I mean, I know this must be weird for you. Me … dating, I guess you could call it. I know it’s weird for me.”

  Oliver nodded but didn’t say anything. He was supposed to say that he wanted her to be happy. He wanted to say that he wanted her to be happy because, well, he really did want her to be happy. More than anything. But if he said that to her now, she’d think he was saying that he wanted her to keep seeing Mr. Kaplan.

  “Okay,” his mom said, a patient, understanding smile on her face as she stood up. “I’m going to start dinner.”

  She left him there, alone in his room, feeling rotten. She would probably break it off with Mr. Kaplan if he asked her to. But again, that might back the man into a corner, and he might react badly.

  If only they could figure out what he was after.

  I know this must be weird for you.

  “Weird.” The word hung there in his mind. Something was weird this afternoon. It wasn’t just seeing Mr. Kaplan and his mom cuddling next to each other on the couch—though that was definitely weird. It was something else.

  Something about Mr. Kaplan was different today. Oliver felt like he’d spotted a crack, however small, in the man’s smooth, effortless veneer.

  They had been looking at old pictures, an old yearbook of his mom’s. That was kinda odd. Oliver didn’t even know his mom had kept her old school yearbooks. They had a stack of photo albums in the bottom row of the bookcase, but his mom wasn’t really one of those stroll-down-memory-lane types. Especially not since Grandpa died. Or since she and his dad got divorced.

  Had it been Mr. Kaplan’s idea to dig up her old yearbooks? The more Oliver thought about it, the more he remembered how Mr. Kaplan had seemed way more interested in them than his mom was. In fact, she kind of seemed to be humoring him.

  Why would this guy want to look through some old yearbooks?

  After dinner, Oliver went into the living room. The yearbook was still on the coffee table, opened to the last page his mom and George Kaplan had been looking at. There was the picture of his mom. She was around Oliver’s age, maybe a little older, her arms around two boys on either side of her. And all three of the kids had big smiles on their faces.

  Oliver read the caption:

  Best pals Jimmy, Floss, and Preston

  Preston Oglethorpe. The famous scientist, the guy they named Oliver’s school after.

  Mr. Kaplan had made the connection pretty quickly.

  Maybe because he’d already known about it.

  “Okay. So I’m standing in line at the dessert buffet and trying not to eavesdrop on these two women,” Frankie’s aunt Josie was saying. Frankie was cleaning up from dinner while his aunt and his mom had coffee at the kitchen table.

  Aunt Josie had come over straight from some work mixer for Steve’s firm. It was the fourth date Aunt Josie had had with Steve, if you counted the welcome basket she and Frankie’s mom had brought to Steve’s house a few weeks back. Aunt Josie clearly did.

  Ordinarily, Frankie would have tuned this kind of conversation right out. But it was about Steve. Also, whenever someone tells a story about eavesdropping, it’s impossible not to start eavesdropping yourself. Like yawning.

  “The first woman is all worked up. I mean, really agitated. So she says, ‘Two weeks out! Can you believe it? He cancels two weeks out!’ ”

  Frankie’s mom refilled their cups and offered her sister the creamer.

  “And then the second woman—oh, thanks—the second woman, she says, ‘Unbelievable. Angela, whatsoever are you going to do?’ ”

  “Did she really say ‘whatsoever’?” Frankie’s mom asked doubtfully.

  “Nah, but it’s more fun that way. Anyway, so the frantic woman—”

  “Angela.”

  “Right, Angela. Angela says, and this is the important part, ‘I’ll never find a decent caterer in the city to step in this late. Not for one hundred people.’ ”

  Aunt Josie paused for dramatic effect. It worked. Frankie stopped in the middle of drying a sippy cup to give the story his full attention.

  “And?” Frankie’s mom said impatiently.

  “Well, of course I introduced myself and said I just happened to know the best caterer in the greater Chicagoland area.”

  “You didn’t?” Frankie’s mom gasped.

  “You know I did!” Aunt Josie squealed. “Now, when your husband gets home, you tell him to expect a call from a frantic woman named Angela sometime tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Josie. This is wonderful. Thank you so much!”

  “Are you kidding? I’m thrilled I could help. Talk about a coincidence though, right?” Aunt Josie laughed. “I mean, I just happen to be standing in line behind someone who desperately needs a caterer at the last minute? Seriously, imagine the odds.”

  Before Frankie’s mom could answer, the two sisters were startled by the sound of a plastic sippy cup bouncing off the kitchen tile.

  “Whoops, sorry,” Frankie said, picking the sippy cup off the ground while trying to shake off a downright dizzying case of déjà vu. “Guess I just got caught up in your story there.”

  It started with a simple Google search on Preston Oglethorpe. Two hours later, Oliver’s head was swimming. The more he read about Preston Oglethorpe, the more Oliver found himself bombarded with complex terms and theories. Chain reaction simulations. Probability mapping. Causality scenarios. Butterfly effect.

  He’d hit a dozen brainy scientific websites to help him understand it all, then another dozen less-brainy scientific websites to help him understand what the first websites were
trying to explain to him.

  He sort of followed what they were talking about. But then again, not really.

  At ten o’clock, he texted Matilda to see if she was still awake. Four and half seconds later, her face appeared on his computer screen. She didn’t FaceTime him or Skype him; she was just there.

  How did she do stuff like that?

  “Oliver, what is it?” Matilda asked bluntly. “Are you in danger? If you’re compromised and can’t talk, just type ‘daffodil’ on your keyboard and I’ll—”

  “I’m fine, Matilda,” Oliver cut in. “Really.”

  “Oh, okay,” Matilda said, sounding almost disappointed. “Um, what’s up?”

  “I have some links I want to send to you—”

  “Got ’em,” Matilda said over the furious clicking of her keyboard.

  But I haven’t even sent them to you yet, Oliver thought. When this was all over, they really needed to have a talk about personal boundaries.

  “Wow, this is pretty heavy stuff, Oliver.”

  “Yeah, I was hoping maybe you could look it over and, well, explain it to me?”

  “Sure. But why?”

  “I don’t know. Just a hunch—”

  “Right. Best not to say any more. To avoid any confirmation bias down the road.”

  “Sure.”

  “So, Frankie and I struck out reconnoitering this afternoon.”

  “Huh?” Oliver said, then put it together. “Oh, right. The walk. Well, it would have been surprising if you found anything the first time out.”

  “Unlikely, for sure,” Matilda agreed. “But it wasn’t a total loss. I think Frankie’s starting to mind me a lot less.”

  “Mind you?”

  “Well, I do tend to get on his nerves.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say—”

  “Oliver,” she said with a directness that ended further debate. “I know I can be a pushy know-it-all sometimes. It’s cool. I mean, you can’t be a better you until you’re truly honest with yourself about who you are. Am I right?”

  Man, she’s an odd one, Oliver thought. But she was also kind of amazing at the same time.