by K. C. Dyer
She showed Kate the dog’s collar. Kate nodded and got to her feet. “I’m sorry I invaded your private place with Delaney,” she said quietly. “I can talk to you about what I wanted another time. It’s pretty late, and I’m going back to get something to eat.”
Darrell looked at her watch and made a decision. “I’m coming with you. I want to get some food to bring back for Delaney so he doesn’t have to forage anymore.” She looked pleadingly at Kate. “Please don’t tell anyone about this place. At least, not until I figure out what I’m going to do about this dog.”
Kate nodded and dropped to her knees to crawl out of the tunnel. Delaney thumped his tail, and Darrell gave him a last pat.
“I’ll be back later with some food for you, boy,” she promised. She held her hand above his head and said, “Stay!” He wriggled contentedly into the sand and dropped his head onto his front paws. Darrell scrambled out through the tunnel and hurried to catch up to Kate.
“Hey! Wait up.” Darrell ran up behind Kate. “You didn’t tell me what you wanted before.”
Kate looked thoughtfully at Darrell. “Well, I’m not so sure you will care, but it was something that I thought was interesting.”
“Try me.”
“Okay. Remember the lesson this afternoon with Professor Tooth?”
“Yeah. History of the Middle Ages.” Darrell looked a bit sheepish. “I hadn’t really intended to go, but it was pretty interesting.”
“I thought so, too. Anyway, remember how Professor Tooth said that people used to use art to record daily life? Then she talked about some of the paintings that showed how people lived from day to day.”
Darrell nodded. “I felt like she was looking at me the whole time. Trying to tie history to a topic like art that really interested me, or something.”
“I didn’t notice that,” Kate admitted. “But later this afternoon after my programming class with Mr. Neuron, I was walking down the hall. Professor Tooth saw me and gave me this. She mentioned how she thought you might like to see it.”
Kate paused to lean against a boulder at the base of the cliff path. She pulled a small envelope out of the binder she carried and passed it to Darrell. Darrell leaned against the boulder too, and the two of them looked carefully at the picture that Darrell pulled from the envelope. It was a small print of a detailed woodcut, depicting a number of very disturbing images.
“What do you make of that?” asked Kate. “It’s from a book called Medieval Art. She said the book showed how people lived during that period of time.”
Darrell looked for several minutes at the print in silence. It was quite primitive in style and depicted people working in fields and along the streets of an old village. A closer look showed several people on the ground, in various stages of decomposition, many in the form of skeletons. Other skeletons walked through the picture, some carrying scythes, others rosaries.
Darrell looked at Kate. “This must’ve been done around the time of the Black Plague that swept through Europe.” She thought for a moment. In the distance, they heard the bell chime for dinner.
“I think I know why she gave me this,” Darrell said finally, as they started up the winding path. “Remember how Professor Tooth said that art was often more reliable than written history during those times? She said only the elite were literate, and they didn’t ever look at life through the eyes of all the poor people. As we left the classroom, I mentioned to her that I never saw people who weren’t physically perfect depicted in portraits.” The line between her eyebrows deepened. “I guess she wanted to show me that I was wrong.”
They puffed their way up to the top of the cliff path, Darrell limping slightly.
When she had caught her breath at the top, Kate changed the subject. “The other reason that I came to find you was that Mr. Neuron said that the school was having a bit of trouble with people poaching crabs on school property. He told us to watch out for any suspicious activity. I thought you should know, since you seem to like walking on the beach by yourself a lot.”
Darrell laughed a little as she held open the front door. “I guess I’d better talk to Mr. Neuron, then.”
As they sat down to dinner, she told Kate about the incident with the crab trappers the day before. Kate was appalled. “You need to tell Professor Tooth, Darrell. Throwing a rock like that is common assault!”
Darrell shook her head. “He would just say that I threw a rock at him first.”
A boy sitting across the table from them was listening closely. He cleared his throat.
“Excuse me for interrupting,” he said quietly. “But I think I’ve seen those guys on the beach as well. Except when I saw them, they weren’t catching crabs. They were cutting up a big fish, further down the beach, past the rocky spit.”
“They might have been cutting bait for their traps,” said Kate, triumphantly.
Darrell looked with interest at the boy who had spoken. “I’m Darrell Connor,” she said.
“Brodie Sun.” He stuck out his hand, and Darrell shook it.
Kate smiled. “And now you know who ‘this Brodie guy’ is!”
CHAPTER FOUR
Darrell was given her first real challenge of the summer the following week when Mr. Gill assigned a self-portrait in painting class. Though she actually enjoyed portraiture as a rule, Darrell scowled into the mirror Mr. Gill had set up beside her easel. Glaring back at her was a girl with medium brown hair caught up in a ponytail, deep brown eyes, and olive skin. Looking to see that the teacher’s attention was on another student, she turned the mirror aside. Who wants to see a painting of some kid with one leg? She spent the rest of the class in a black temper, sketching Picasso-like images made up of disjointed body parts.
Running down to the beach after class felt like a huge relief. To take her mind off the unwanted challenge of the self-portrait, Darrell focused her energy on training Delaney to do a few tricks. She talked the soft-hearted school cook into buying a large bag of dog food, and every day for that week and the next she ran down to the beach after art to play with Delaney. She crawled into his special tunnel to feed him and fill his water bowl. She sat on the sand with treats in her pocket and taught him to sit and to stay, to roll over and to lie down on command. And every day she would think up a new art project that would allow her to delay working on the self-portrait for one more day.
Over the next several nights while Kate tapped away at her computer and Lily was blissfully unaware of her own snores, Darrell lay in her bed and wondered about the crab trappers. It was clear they were up to something, though she wasn’t yet sure what it could be. Her encounter with the bullies on the beach had left her feeling disturbed, but the mystery of the situation had a certain appeal. Mystery was one area, along with her art, where Darrell felt she had some expertise.
For many weeks after her accident, Darrell had lain in bed, feeling as though her heart had shattered and been removed along with her foot. Her beloved father was gone, her foot was gone, and she felt her life was too filled with sadness to look forward to another day. Darrell watched through half-open eyes as her mother, sick with worry, brought in a series of counsellors to try to support her devastated daughter.
None of the counsellors helped. Nothing helped. Until Darrell’s Uncle Frank remembered his own broken leg.
Her mother’s brother had been into the hospital many times over the weeks after the accident. Darrell was his only niece, and she knew how his heart bled every time he saw her small, white face on the pillow. After six long weeks of staring at the walls, Darrell looked up one afternoon to see Uncle Frank standing in the doorway with something under his arm.
He told her the story of his own broken leg, snapped through the femur when he took a header off his bike when he was twelve. He had spent three weeks in traction then, he said, and he fervently believed that a woman named Agatha Christie had saved his life.
The package under his arm was Murder on the Orient Express. Darrell picked it up after he left her
room and in an hour she was hooked. Something in the essence of a story that revolved around the death of a man on a famous train swept her away from her own misery. In the end, she read everything that Agatha Christie had ever written, from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to Curtain. She moved on to Dick Francis, Daphne Du Maurier, and PD James, and she never looked back. Something about the way mysteries were always solved in the books she read appealed to her sense of order.
Sometime after she turned eleven, Darrell discovered that when she concentrated on drawing, the real world would melt away and she could step into the pictures that poured out of her charcoal pencil as easily as she slipped into the lives of Jane Marple and Adam Dalgliesh. She journeyed into her creativity, preferring it to the real world. Her love of order and her ability to shape the worlds under her pencil pulled her into the stories and drawings that became a more desirable place to live than in the real world with a missing leg and a dead father.
As she rolled over to sleep, Darrell decided that it was high time she put her expertise toward solving the mystery of the crab trappers on the beach.
Darrell spent part of the following morning soaking up facts about disease and despair in the Middle Ages. Much of Professor Tooth’s history class reminded her of an Ellis Peters novel, and she relished every moment.
After lunch, there was half an hour of free time before afternoon classes commenced. Darrell decided to forget about her self-portrait and instead get to the bottom of the crab trappers mystery. She wanted to head straight down to the beach to see if she could spot any signs of suspicious activity, but she was worried about going alone: if she ran into the trappers again, she’d need witnesses to verify her story if they started any trouble. Spotting Brodie and Kate near the lunch-room, she asked if they might be interested in a walk by the water. Exchanging a surprised glance, they agreed, so Darrell grabbed a notebook and the three of them set off down the winding path to the beach.
They had walked just past the small rocky spit that protruded like a pointing finger into the fjord when they heard a taunting voice call out from behind Kate and Brodie. The voice belonged to one of a group of three boys lounging on the beach behind the rocks.
“Hey, Slant!”
Kate whirled around, her face burning. “What did you say?”
“I wasn’t talkin’ to you, Red. I was talkin’ to your boyfriend.”
It was impossible for Kate’s face to become any redder, so she turned purple, instead. “You ... you ... PIG,” she spluttered. “He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my friend! And ... what did you call him?” Brodie put a calm hand on her arm and smiled at her kindly. He turned to their sneering tormentor.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” he said quietly.
“It’s Conrad Kennedy, like that’s any of your business,” he snickered, and his friends drew closer. “But what’s it to you ... Slant?” Both of Conrad’s cronies laughed.
“Well ... Conrad,” Brodie continued so quietly that the group surrounding them all leaned in closer. “My name is Broderick Stewart Sun. My friends call me Brodie. My grandmother calls me Broderick.” Brodie’s eyes glittered dangerously, and he straightened to his full height. “But nobody calls me Slant.”
Darrell gazed with sick recognition at the boy called Conrad and cursed herself for not making a quick trip up the arbutus tree at the beginning of their walk.
Conrad got lazily to his feet and looked at the small group on the beach. He was easily three years older than any of Darrell’s group, but he was short and stocky, not any taller than Brodie.
Conrad caught sight of Darrell. He sneered. “Look who’s here, boys. It’s Gimpy! Caught any rocks, lately, Gimpster?”
“Not lately,” she snapped back. “Picked up a fishing license, yet?”
The other boys looked uncomfortable, but Conrad just smiled. He looked around.
“I don’t see anyone fishing here, Gimpy. Just a group of friends enjoying the beach in the summertime.” The two boys with him nodded and blatantly flexed their muscles.
“Well this happens to be a private beach, and you’re trespassing.” She looked at Brodie and Kate. “Let’s just go back to the school, guys. We can register a complaint.”
The three started to walk away. Conrad leaned in front of Darrell. “After you,” he said with a sneer. As she stepped by him he stuck out his foot to trip her. She stumbled but managed to stay upright.
Kate, walking behind Darrell, deftly turned and, using Conrad’s weight against him, slipped his protruding foot out from under him and flipped him to the ground. Conrad lay on the rocky surface, a stunned look on his face. His mouth worked as though he was going to say something, but no words came out.
“Watch your step, Connie,” Kate said to him sweetly. “It’s slippery on these rocks, and you wouldn’t want to fall and hurt yourself.”
Conrad’s friends quickly scooped him to his feet and hustled him over onto their boat. Conrad, sand all over the back of his jacket, hissed, “I won’t forget this. You three stay away from this beach. Consider yourselves warned.” He turned to his friends. “Start the boat, Lastman,” he snarled. The other two scrambled over to the outboard, and the engine roared into life.
As the boat pulled away, Brodie turned to look at Kate.
“How did you do that?” he asked, admiringly.
Kate smiled. “Tae kwon do. Third degree black belt.”
Darrell and Brodie stared. “I thought you always had your nose glued to a computer screen,” marvelled Darrell.
“A girl’s got to do something when she’s away from school,” grinned Kate.
“Wow.” Brodie shook his head and looked admiringly at Kate and Darrell. “One thing about this place; it’s never boring!”
That night, Darrell was back in her bed, and Lily and Kate were in their accustomed positions, snoring and computing, respectively. She pulled out her notebook and began writing down questions about Conrad and his friends.
Who is Conrad Kennedy?
Why does he feel that he can get away with poaching?
How come he acts like he owns the beach?
Why do he and his friends react so violently when someone steps on the beach?
What are they hiding?
She thought back to earlier in the day when she had made her report to a frowning Arthur Gill. When Darrell had mentioned that Brodie had asked Conrad’s name, a light went on behind Mr. Gill’s eyes. “Did you say Conrad Kennedy?” he asked, slowly. “I know that boy.” He dropped his chin to his chest and thought for a moment, and then looked back up at Darrell. “His father owns some land on the small island you can see out in the fjord to the south of the school’s property. I believe his family are fishers.”
Darrell snorted. “That may be so, but does he have the right to be running crab traps just off the beach line here? I asked him if he had a license, and he didn’t. And yet he didn’t seem worried about it at all. He acted like he owned the place.”
Arthur Gill looked serious. “Well if he is crabbing along this stretch of coast without a license, he’s going to have a bit of a problem.” He made a few notes and promised to inform Professor Tooth of both incidents. Darrell left the office feeling somewhat relieved to have finally been able to tell the story to an adult who took her seriously.
Tapping her pencil against her notebook in bed, Darrell realized that she had nothing really solid to go on with Conrad Kennedy. She decided that she needed to come up with a plan to catch him poaching crabs red-handed. It was time for a little more observation in her trusty arbutus tree.
For the next few days, Darrell spent much of her free time sitting in the arbutus and watching the beach, occasionally making notes or sketching in her book. Invariably, Delaney was curled up nearby.
She noticed that Kate and Brodie seemed to have decided to keep their distance for a while. One sunny afternoon while perched in her tree, Darrell saw them sitting together on a log in the garden, watching Lily training in the water while t
hey ate their lunch. Their voices carried on the salty air, and Darrell pretended she couldn’t hear their conversation.
“That girl is quite a swimmer,” remarked Brodie admiringly as Lily stroked by, her brown arms glistening in the sun.
Kate rolled her eyes. “You should hear her talk! If that were an Olympic event, she’d win gold for sure.” She took a bite of her sandwich. “Come to think of it, she’d do pretty well in the snoring Olympics as well.”
“She probably needs her sleep, after all these hard workouts,” Brodie said, sensibly. He shaded his eyes and looked up toward the arbutus tree. Darrell bent her head to her notebook.
“Why is she still in that tree?” asked Kate.
“I don’t know.” He looked back down at Lily, not meeting Kate’s eyes. “I feel kind of sorry for her,” he admitted.
Kate looked quizzical. “For Lily?”
Brodie laughed. “Not Lily. Darrell.”
Kate shrugged. “I do too, sometimes. But every time I try to talk to her, she’s either rude or nasty.” She glanced up at the tree to see Darrell scribbling away in her book. “I’ve known her for a long time, you know.”
“Have you?” Brodie looked embarrassed. “Ah ... how did it happen?”
“Her leg, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
Kate sighed. “It was a really sad story. She was in a motorcycle accident with her dad. He died and she lost her foot.”
Brodie winced. “She probably needs to talk about it to get the bitterness out of her system.”
Kate laughed, and looked with interest at Brodie. “That doesn’t sound like something most boys would say.”
Brodie looked a bit defensive. “Let’s just say I’ve had a few of my own problems. I think talking them out helps a bit, that’s all.”