“So the insurance company might think that Nick only took some coins? That Mr. Schuster said he took them all when he really didn’t?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” my father said. “There have also been plenty of cases where people pay someone to stage a robbery so that they can collect the insurance money. Hard to imagine that Mr. Schuster would do anything like that, though, especially since he was in the hospital at the time.”
“But the coins wouldn’t have been insured in the first place if Mr. Schuster’s son hadn’t talked him into it,” I said.
“Schuster’s son took the initiative to have the coins insured? And while the son was staying at the house, the coins were stolen?” My father pondered this. “No wonder the insurance company wants to investigate before they pay up. But, Robbie, even if they find out that Mr. Schuster’s son lied about what happened to the coins, Nick still has a lot of explaining to do. Not only did he have some coins in his possession—and a large amount of cash that he refuses to account for and that crowbar—he’s also being less than cooperative. Add an assault charge to that, and he’s still in big trouble.”
Ben called the next morning, just as I was dashing to school. I’d given Orion a longer-than-usual morning walk—I felt so sorry for him, cooped up in that basement all day—and was a couple of minutes away from being late for homeroom. I let the call ring through to my voice mail and promised myself that I would call him back at lunchtime.
Morgan was waiting for me at my locker at noon. She said something that Morgan hardly ever says: “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I said. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Except harass you to go out with Ben.”
“Don’t give yourself too much credit,” I said. “If I didn’t like him, nothing you could have said would have made me go out with him. But I do like him, Morgan. He’s really sweet and so considerate. Maybe I don’t feel the same way about him as I do about Nick—did about Nick. But—I don’t feel exactly the same way about you and Billy, but you’re both my best friends. Feeling differently isn’t necessarily bad, right?”
Morgan said nothing.
“Right, Morgan?”
“I have no opinion,” she said firmly, as if trying to convince herself that it was true. “I promised myself that I wouldn’t give you any more advice—unless you ask for it.”
I laughed. If there was one thing that Morgan lived for—besides shopping—it was dispensing unasked-for advice.
I went directly to Mr. Schuster’s house again after school. My phone rang just as I started up the porch steps. I checked the display. Ben again. I sighed. I really did like him. But . . .Another ring. I pressed the button to answer—and my phone died. I’d forgotten to recharge it. I slipped it back into my pocket and rang the doorbell.
Elliot answered. He had a sheaf of papers in one hand and seemed distracted as he stepped aside to let me enter.
“I’ll leave the door unlocked so you can let yourself in after you walk the dog,” he said. “You can take him up to see my father when you get back.”
There was a telephone on the desk in Mr. Schuster’s den and another one sitting on a table in the front hall.
“Would it be okay if I made a quick call?” I said.
“Any time,” Elliot said. “You don’t even have to ask.” He paused as he turned to go back into the den. “Local, right?”
I nodded.
I tried Ben’s number and was surprised at my relief when I ended up with his voice mail. I left a message telling him that I wasn’t home and that my cell phone battery had died. I promised to call him later.
Orion started barking as soon as I opened the basement door and had his front paws up on the plywood barrier by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs. He couldn’t wait to get out of there. I gave him a dog biscuit and attached his leash while he ate it. I couldn’t quite believe it, but I was starting to think of him as a canine friend instead of a scary chore. My dad would have been astonished if he’d seen the way I led Orion upstairs and put on his booties.
We walked for an hour. When I let myself back into the house, I saw Mr. Schuster gripping his walker and making his way slowly up the stairs to his room. A big man in a tracksuit was helping him. When they reached the top, the man said, “Congratulations, Mort. You’re doing really well. You can go downstairs and have dinner with your family later. But you have to take it slow, okay? And you have to promise you won’t go on the stairs alone. You have to have someone to help you.”
Mr. Schuster nodded. Isobel beamed at the top of the stairs.
Orion and I followed him into his room. As soon as Mr. Schuster had settled into his armchair, Orion dropped his head onto the old man’s lap. Mr. Schuster looked tired but pleased with himself.
“Way to go, Mr. Schuster,” I said.
“Tomorrow we’re going to celebrate,” Isobel said. “My dad is going to the mall to get his hair cut. Grandpa and I are going with him. While my dad’s at the barber, we’re going to find a nice place to sit and people watch. Right, Grandpa?”
Mr. Schuster smiled lopsidedly at his granddaughter.
When I started back down the stairs with Orion, I saw Connor sprawled on a bed across the hall. When he saw Orion, he shrank back against the wall. I thought about trying to introduce him to the dog the way I had introduced Isobel but decided against it. I understood how he felt. I had felt that way myself—and my experience hadn’t been anywhere near as terrifying as his.
I settled Orion back into the basement. As I buttoned my coat afterward in the front hall, I glanced at the phone on the hall table.
Ben.
He had been trying to reach me for hours, and I still hadn’t spoken to him. He had to be wondering what was going on. I picked up the phone in the hall to make a quick call—and had the shock of a lifetime.
Nick was on the line.
CHAPTER NINE
“T
he mall,” he said. “Noon tomorrow. Upper level, in front of the Gap. I’ll be there.” I heard a click. He had hung up. I waited until I heard another, slightly louder, click. That told me that whoever he had been talking to had also hung up. Then I gently put down the receiver.
It sounded as if Nick was planning to meet someone at the mall—someone who lived in the house. Isobel had told me that she and Mr. Schuster were going to the mall. Could Nick be planning to meet them? But that would be stupid. One of the conditions of Nick’s release was that he had to stay away from Mr. Schuster. Elliot was going to be at the mall too. Could Nick be planning to meet him? But why would he do that? Elliot had fired Nick, had refused to give him a second chance, and had accused him of stealing Mr. Schuster’s coins. Then I remembered what my father had told me about insurance claims. I thought about all the cash the police had found when they arrested Nick. I got a sick feeling in my stomach.
Elliot Schuster came out of the den and stopped short when he saw me.
“Robyn,” he said, startled. “You’re still here.”
“I was just on my way home.” I crossed quickly to the door, but it swung open before I could grab it. Claudia stepped into the front hall.
“Where have you been all afternoon?” Elliot demanded.
Claudia’s cheeks reddened. She glanced at me.
“Well?” Elliot demanded.
“I told you. I had some errands to run.”
“What errands? Where? If you—” He broke off when his wife looked at me again. “We’ll see you tomorrow then, Robyn,” he said.
I took the hint and let myself out. As the door closed behind me, I heard Claudia say, “How could I? You won’t let me touch the credit card. You took away my ATM card . . .”
I thought about what Edith and Esther had said about Elliot—and about everything else I had heard about him. I also thought about the insurance policy.
I decided to make a stop on the way home.
Nick’s aunt had her overcoat on when she answered the door.
; “Robyn,” she said, her voice warm and welcoming. “Glen said you came by the other day. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” I hesitated. “Is Nick here?”
“He should be,” she said, pulling off her coat. “I just got home.” She called Nick’s name. He answered with a muffled shout.
“Sounds like he’s in the basement,” she said.
“Would it be okay if I talked to him for a minute?”
She considered this for a moment before stepping back to let me in.
“I don’t know what’s going on between you and Nick,” she said. “But . . .he’s in a lot of trouble this time.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded.
I found Nick sitting in the recliner in the basement entertainment room, staring unblinkingly at the TV screen while he flicked through channel after channel.
“Hi, Nick,” I said.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me. I glanced around the room. There was a phone sitting on one end of the bar. I grabbed the remote from his hand and turned off the TV.
“Don’t you want to know how Orion is?” I said.
That got his attention. He turned his purple-blue eyes on me.
“I’ve seen him,” I said. “He’s okay.”
“They didn’t get rid of him?”
“No.”
He seemed to relax a little.
“Nick, what are your plans for tomorrow?”
He looked back at the blank TV screen.
“What’s it to you?” he said.
“Are you going out?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but, yeah. I have an appointment with my lawyer.”
“Is your aunt going with you?”
He straightened up in the recliner and looked at me with irritation.
“She can’t. She’s working.”
“So Glen is going with you?”
“No. I’m going alone.”
“Your aunt trusts you to do that?”
“Yeah.” He sounded indignant. “Believe it or not, she does. I just have to call her as soon as I get there and before I leave and again when I get home.”
That should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. If I was right about what Nick was planning, he would have figured out how to make it work.
“Where is your lawyer’s office?”
His eyes flashed with anger. “What’s with all the questions, Robyn?”
All the way to the house, I had thought about only three things: Nick’s voice on the phone, Elliot Schuster, and the $1,000 in cash. Did it all mean what I thought it might?
“Have you talked to Elliot Schuster since you were arrested?”
“What? Why are you asking me that?”
His eyes shifted for a second to the phone on the bar, and my heart sank. I wanted to believe what Beej did—that he hadn’t stolen those coins and that anything else he had done was because he felt he’d been treated unfairly. But it was all so confusing. And the cash that the police had found on Nick made it seem so much worse. Did Nick have something to do with the missing coins or not? If he did, what had made him take them?
From what I had heard, both from Isobel and from the neighbors, there was a lot of friction between Elliot and his father. And according to Esther and Edith, Elliot had a history of asking his parents for money. Add to that that he had found out only recently how valuable his father’s coin collection was and immediately took out an insurance policy to cover it. Then, shortly after he’d taken up residence in his father’s house, the collection had vanished. Maybe there was a good reason for the insurance company to be suspicious. Maybe Elliot had finally figured out a way to get his hands on some money.
What if, after checking Nick out, Elliot had thought a kid with a record would be glad to make some quick cash. Maybe he’d managed to convince Nick to go along with his scheme. Maybe Elliot had even paid him up front, which would explain the money the police had found when they caught up with Nick.
There was just one problem with that theory: I couldn’t make myself believe that Nick would ever go along with a scheme to steal from Mr. Schuster.
No, it was more likely he’d do whatever it took to stop Elliot. And what better way to do that than to take the coins himself and hide them somewhere where they would be safe until Mr. Schuster was back on his feet again? That would explain why he had no alibi for the night of the theft, why he tried to see Mr. Schuster as soon as he was released on bail the first time, and why he refused to tell the police where the coins were. There was no way he would want them handed over to Elliot.
Knowing Nick, there was also probably no way he would think the police would believe him if he told them the truth. It would also explain why Nick would go to the mall to meet with Elliot—to confront him or maybe to make some kind of deal with him. Maybe Nick knew what I had sensed so strongly—that Mr. Schuster was reluctant to think the worst of him, even if everyone else did. Maybe Nick thought there was some way he could get the coins back to Mr. Schuster now that he was out of the hospital. Or maybe he was planning to threaten Elliot—if Elliot didn’t help him out of the mess he was in, Nick would expose him in court. It was the theory I preferred to believe, even if it turned out I was kidding myself. It didn’t explain the coins and the crowbar the police had found, but then, Nick wasn’t a thief. Maybe he’d just slipped up. He had probably counted on the police not finding the crowbar at the warehouse. After all, he was living at Beej’s house when he was arrested. And it was possible that the coins the police had found had fallen out in his backpack and Nick hadn’t noticed.
“Nick, if there’s anything you haven’t told anybody about what happened and why it happened,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “you should tell it now. The police want to get to the truth. I know they do. You could talk to your lawyer. Or to my dad.” Or to me, I thought, even though I seemed to be the last person he wanted to confide in. “He likes you. If there’s anything he can do to help, I know he’ll do it.”
“What are you talking about, Robyn?” he said. Then realization—and disappointment—appeared in his eyes. “You really think I did it, don’t you?” He shook his head.
“I know how you feel about Mr. Schuster, Nick. I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. But it looks bad.” I hesitated, but I had to know. “The police said you had a thousand dollars on you when you were arrested and that you refused to say where it came from.”
He seemed surprised that I knew. “That was my money.”
“Where did you get it?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Right.”
He slumped back in the recliner. His eyes went to the ring on my finger. “You used to trust me. When did you stop? When you met that guy?”
“I want to help you, Nick. But I can’t do it alone. You have to help yourself.”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do, Robyn—help myself. I don’t need you.”
He switched on the TV and stared stubbornly at it. I couldn’t get another word out of him.
Beej was huddled in the doorway to my father’s building when I got home.
“Where have you been?” she said. “Didn’t school get out hours ago?”
“I have a life,” I said curtly. I couldn’t help it. Seeing her gave me pangs of jealousy. “What do you want?”
“I thought maybe you’d been trying to reach me—you know, to let me know if you’d talked to Nick. But our phone got trashed along with everything else. I checked our messages from another phone, but there was nothing from you. So then I thought maybe when our phone got messed up, it affected our voice mail.”
“What do you mean, your phone got trashed? What happened?”
“Someone broke into our place. They tossed all the drawers and closets, ripped open all the mattresses, and smashed up the phone. But it’s not like we have anything worth stealing. We think maybe it was some crack addict. So did you see Nick?”
I nodded.
“And?”
“And why didn’t you tell me he had a thousand dollars in cash when he was arrested?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Beej, he was living in an abandoned building, but he had all that cash? That didn’t seem strange to you?”
“No. Why would it?”
“When was the last time Nick had that much money on him?”
“He told me a girl gave it to him.”
“A girl?”
“Yeah. While he was hitching home, he found some girl’s purse. When he returned it, she gave him a reward.”
“A thousand dollars?”
“That’s what Nick told me.”
“Some girl gave him a thousand dollars. In cash.” I said.
She nodded.
“Come on. You actually believe that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she said, glowering at me. “He said that when he returned that purse, he was just doing what anyone would have done and he didn’t feel right about taking a reward. He said he was gonna give it back.”
“Oh. So this girl lives around here? What’s her name?”
“Sarah something. I don’t know. Nick didn’t tell me her last name. He said she was on her way to Europe.”
No wonder he didn’t want to tell the police that story. I was skeptical, and I wanted to believe him.
“So exactly how was he planning to return the money to this mystery girl?” I said.
“He gave her his aunt’s phone number. He said the girl was going to leave a message for him there when she got back to town.” She glared at me. “You think he’s lying, don’t you?”
“About the money? You have to admit, it sounds pretty far-fetched.”
She shook her head in disgust. “I thought you were his friend.”
“You’re a hard person to get hold of,” Ben said when I called him again from my father’s place.
“I’m sorry. I forgot to recharge my phone.”
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”
“It’s only been a couple of days. Morgan and I have been slaving over our project.” Well, Morgan had been slaving. I was starting to feel guilty about how little I had done.
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