by Susan Lubner
… deny everything.
I waited for the sound of a third plink.
That was it. Just the two.
“It wasn’t me,” I said.
Then, plink.
“Okay, I did go inside. But just to look for Smoky.” Plink. Plink. Plink. Uh-oh. What did six cubes dropping mean?
“Who’s Smoky?” Blumstein asked. He looked excited, like I had uncovered a new clue.
“A cat,” Mom, Dad, and I all answered together.
“Interesting name, considering the circumstances,” Blumstein said.
“I snuck in through the window because I wanted to feed him and see if he had kittens. Well, I didn’t know he was a he at the time; I thought he was a she. But she turned out to be a he, and there were no kittens, because, you know…” I felt myself blush.
“Why didn’t you just say that right off the bat?” he asked me.
“I was scared I’d get in trouble for going inside the house.”
“Was Joss with you?” he asked.
“Yes. We both went inside.” If I was reading the sign right, six plinks meant six truths. He had two more questions, according to the ice cubes.
“Did you notice anything unusual when you were inside?”
“Not really. Except that the front room was really sunny, but the rest of the house was pretty dark. That was a little weird.”
“Did you see lots of leaves around?”
“Yes. Tons of them.”
Blumstein rubbed his chin. I knew that rub from all his trips to the diner. His thinking rub. It usually followed the question Doughnut or danish?
“And you are sure you didn’t see anything unusual in the house?”
“I’m sure. Positive.” Technically that was the truth because the house itself seemed totally and completely usual. Except for the sunny room with the big windows, the rest of the place looked like what an old, rundown apartment should look like. A little creepy. A dirty tub, a worn-out chair, a few broken windows. Now, if he had asked me if I had seen anyone unusual in the house, well, that was a different story. Because it wasn’t very usual at all to find a person living inside a closet of a house no one was supposed to be living in.
“Lizzy, did the two of you play with matches inside that house?”
“NO! I swear!” And that was two answers more than the ice cubes told me I had to answer.
“I thought you didn’t think Lizzy had anything to do with the fire,” my father said.
“The question needed to be asked, Henry.”
“We only fed the cat and then went straight to the Thumbs-Up to eat and work,” I said. “Remember? We saw you there.”
Blumstein nodded. He stared at me for a few seconds. Did he believe me? Did he know about Charlotte hiding out in the apartment, but wasn’t saying?
“They were at the diner all day, the both of them, bussing tables up until the fire started,” my father added.
“All right then,” Sergeant Blumstein said. “I think we’re good.” He looked at my mother. “What do you got for danish tomorrow?”
“Apricot,” she said. “Dan, the house burned after three in the afternoon, and she was there much, much earlier in the morning.”
“Yes. And I believe Lizzy.”
“Really?” I said out loud. I had meant to say it only to myself.
“Of course. After I heard Lizzy was spotted inside, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t come here and ask some questions… cross the Ts and dot the Is, you know?” Sergeant Blumstein smiled at me. “First of all, it doesn’t make one bit of sense to me that two young girls would get up early on a Saturday morning to light matches in an old house before they had to get to work. But the stray cat story makes a whole lot of sense.”
The color in my mom’s cheeks came back.
“As a matter of fact, though, we did find some moldy matches… in the fireplace. We thought maybe someone had gone in that empty house and tried to light a fire to keep warm.”
I sat up straighter.
“But the inspectors found the matches had never been lit,” he continued. “And the fireplace and chimney were virtually unscathed. There hadn’t been a fire burned there in years. Besides, the fire started nowhere near the fireplace.”
I felt myself relax to the point I thought I might slide off my chair.
“So how do you think it started?” my mother asked. “Arson?”
“Nope. No trace of accelerant,” Blumstein said.
That meant Charlotte’s mom’s client didn’t do it.
“I wondered about someone burning leaves outside,” my father said. “A couple of good sparks from a pile of dried leaves and poof!”
Blumstein shook his head no. “It did not start outside. But leaves were definitely a factor. The fire started from the inside on the floor, almost as you enter that front room. There are significant burn marks. We can see how the fire spread from there. The place was full of dried leaves, and that played a part in the building catching so quickly.”
“I wonder what sparked it,” my mother said.
“There was a large mirror over the fireplace, and glass knobs on the doors. Based on where we know the fire first started, the fire chief is certain that sunlight and glass refracting incinerated those leaves.”
I knew what he was talking about. Refraction. I was a Girl Scout for about a week, because that’s all it took for me to know I wasn’t scout material. But in that short time, I once used the sun and a magnifying glass to start a fire and fry an egg on a tin can.
Mom seemed so relieved that she was putting together a plate of cookies like it was time to celebrate.
“I guess burn marks tell a story,” my dad said.
“Indeed they do,” said Blumstein. “It’s certainly not the first time refraction has started a fire. And the evidence proves that being the cause here. Case closed,” he said, reaching for a cookie.
Which meant I was off the hook and so was Charlotte. She was free to go home. Right now. Before the baby came. Taking all the good luck she had brought with her away.
CHAPTER
18
I WOKE UP KNOWING TWO THINGS.
First, the name of a new sandwich special inspired by last night’s hairy meeting with Sergeant Blumstein: The Hot Seat. Hot pastrami, pepper jack cheese, and spicy mustard on a grilled bun.
And second, that I needed to convince Charlotte to let us contact her parents and let them know that she was okay.
I yawned and threw my covers off. We’d been up late again last night. Charlotte was worried about Blumstein’s visit, even though I had told her a million times she had nothing to worry about. I explained that he had only wanted to ask me why I had been in the apartment house. And that was the truth. The thing is, she would have believed she had nothing to worry about if I had told her about the refraction part. But I hadn’t. Because I needed her to stick around.
I grabbed the Heart the World posters that Charlotte had made. It must have taken her so long to draw all those tiny red hearts. There wasn’t a single one I could see that she hadn’t colored in perfectly. None of the hearts looked sad or angry like her own heart felt. Charlotte had been so worried last night that I decided to wait until this morning to tell her about my idea to send an e-mail to her parents. I slipped a rubber band around the poster and tucked it into an outside pocket of my bag.
“Hey!” I whispered, leaning over her. But she didn’t move. I lowered myself to the floor. “Charlotte! Charlotte! Wake up!” At that same moment, the door to the diner shut hard and the closet floor shimmied a bit. Charlotte’s eyes fluttered. Then they opened. She stared straight up at the ceiling for a few seconds. She looked like she was trying to remember where she was.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, springing upright. “Why did you wake me up? It’s so early.” She rubbed her eyes. “Now my boring day will be so much longer.”
“Sorry, but this is important.”
Charlotte’s red bangs stuck up in every direction, like she had bee
n electrocuted. It made me smile.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
“Your hair looks cute,” I told her.
“That’s not why you woke me up, is it? To tell me my hair looks cute?” She patted it down as best as she could. “What time is it?”
“My bus is coming soon, so listen,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I couldn’t stop thinking about Smoky.”
“He’s just scared. He’ll come back. It’s not like you don’t know where he is.”
“That’s my point exactly. The same can’t be said about you. You’re gone. Like the cat. Except your parents have no idea where you are. Think about it—if we both feel so upset about Smoky, and we know where he is, how do you think your parents feel?”
Charlotte blinked. Twice. Then finally said, “My father ditched us first.” Her mouth clamped shut into a straight line. She didn’t need to say any more. I knew what she was thinking. That was the whole point of her running away in the first place. To hurt them like they had hurt her. She wanted them to be worried.
“Yeah, but your mom and brother and sister didn’t run out on you. Now you and your dad have both ditched them.”
Charlotte didn’t seem to know what to say to that. I continued, “Your parents must be crazy out of their minds worrying. Why don’t you give me your mom’s e-mail address? I’ll do it. I can sneak and use one of the computers at school. It might be traceable to my school, but they can’t trace it to me.”
Charlotte nodded. “What will you say?”
“I’ll tell your family that you’re okay. That nothing bad has happened to you. That’s all. That’s what they want to know. Trust me. I know what it feels like to have something gone that you love.”
She probably thought I meant my cat. What else would she think?
I thought back to my mother after the car accident. After we lost the baby. When Bibi helped with the laundry or drove me places when Mom wouldn’t get out of bed. And all those silent dinners at the table when she finally did. The dumb jokes I used to tell to try to make her laugh. Sometimes I’d babble on about nothing just to suck up the silence.
“Are you crying about Smoky?” Charlotte asked me.
I hadn’t realized my face was streaked with tears. I quickly wiped them away. She looked at me like she suddenly realized that maybe I was hiding more than just a girl inside my closet.
“Give me your mom’s contact info,” I said, sniffing. I grabbed a pen off my desk and a scrap of paper and handed them to her.
“Only if you promise me something,” she said.
“What?”
“Promise first.”
“I promise. What is it?”
“You can send the e-mail to my mom. But write the e-mail to Molly and Ethan. Not to my parents. And tell the twins I miss them. A lot.”
Mrs. Potter took her lunch break in the teacher’s lounge every day at 11:45 a.m., and everyone who walked by the lounge knew it. It seemed she only liked food that smelled like fish or garlic. That meant two things: one, you were super unlucky if your computer class fell after her lunch; and two, the computer room was empty at 11:48 when I slipped inside and closed the door behind me.
I had to beg and fake cry to convince Ms. Santorelli to let me check on Smoky one more time.
“Don’t take advantage of my good nature,” she had warned me. “You’ve checked twice already. Make it quick.” But there was nothing quick about our dinosaur computers that took forever just to power on.
East Thumb isn’t a fancy town with fancy schools, and if anyone didn’t know it, all they had to do was pay a visit to our computer lab. The computers are fat and square and slower than sleepy turtles. That didn’t bother me on a regular day, but it was making me a nervous wreck right now. I waited for the logon screen to appear.
The door opened, and I jumped out of my seat.
“Bathroom break!” Joss said, closing the door quickly behind her.
“You scared me,” I said, sitting back down.
“No Smoky sighting still?” she asked, glancing at the hole.
“No.”
“What did you say in the e-mail?”
“Nothing yet,” I said. “This thing is so slow.”
Joss leaned in over my shoulder toward the screen. We both waited silently, watching the small white circle spinning to let us know the page was loading. Finally everything turned blue and icons popped up everywhere. I clicked on the one that said MAIL.
“I’m keeping the e-mail super short, like, Dear Molly and Ethan, Charlotte misses you a lot. Do you think that’s enough?”
“I know you promised her you wouldn’t say anything to her parents, but maybe you could tell the twins to tell their parents not to worry, too.”
“Her parents are the ones who will get the e-mail. They’ll know she’s okay,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Joss said. “An e-mail to just her brother and sister with only nine words sounds kind of cold. And weird since it sounds like someone else is writing it, not Charlotte. Her parents might think you’re like, a bad guy, or something. You should make it sound like she’s writing it.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes. Otherwise they will think she was kidnapped and not that she ran away.”
“No, they won’t. She left a note,” I said.
“She could have been kidnapped after she ran away.”
I typed in Charlotte’s mother’s e-mail address. “Okay. How about this instead? I am fine and not too hungry. I miss Molly and Ethan. Should I add that she’s safe and warm?”
Joss made her thinking face. “How about, I am inside a house?”
“No, I don’t want to say that. What if they start searching all the houses in East Thumb?”
“You think they’d do that?”
“They might. I mean, they probably would,” I said.
“I don’t know. They’d have to search every single house of every single student and teacher. And some of the teachers don’t even live in East Thumb.”
“I guess.” I shrugged. I didn’t know what the police protocol was for a runaway. But her parents were lawyers. They could probably get the police to search if they asked them to.
“Okay. This is what I have,” I said. “Dear Molly and Ethan, I am fine. I am warm, fed, and safe. I miss you both a lot. That’s nineteen words. Better?”
“Much,” Joss said.
I was just about to hit SEND, but I stopped myself. “Whoa!” I said. A prickly feeling shot through both my hands as my nerves exploded. I shut the computer down fast.
“What are you doing?” Joss asked.
“The time is on the e-mail!” I looked up at the clock. “We’re the only ones in here at 12:01. The e-mail would be traced to me, for sure.”
Joss slapped her hand over her mouth. “So how are you going to send a message?” she asked me through her fingers.
“We have to send it from a computer that can’t be traced to us.”
The door swung open, and Ms. Santorelli stuck her head in. “Girls!” she said in a voice that tried to be angry. Even with her forehead all crunched up, she wasn’t very good at being mad. “I don’t like being taken advantage of.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“I was okay with you coming to check on your cat, but what are you doing fooling around on the computer?”
“I’m not. I’m just sitting here. While I wait.” If a white lie was considered harmless and a bold-faced lie was the opposite of harmless, I had just gray lied. A gray lie was in between. Bottom line, I hadn’t really accomplished anything on the computer, and anyway, right now I truly was just sitting in front of it.
“And you.” She pointed at Joss. “You’re not supposed to be in here at all.”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to help Lizzy.”
“Let’s go. Clearly the cat is not ready to come out. You’re better off coming back later in the evening when the school is empty. Mrs. Potter has a class in eight minutes.”
<
br /> I had enough experience with cats to know that was true. At least, that was usually the case. A lot of cats got spooked when there was noise or sensed a lot of commotion going on. Not Fudge so much. But definitely Reuben, and apparently Smoky.
But so far, even when the school was practically empty and we were super quiet, it hadn’t mattered.
I looked over my shoulder to check one more time before I closed the door. I saw a black hole and nothing else.
CHAPTER
19
IT WAS A QUICK TRIP TO THE PORTLAND PUBLIC Library. It took just ten minutes to send the e-mail to Molly and Ethan, even though it was technically sent to Charlotte’s mother. It would serve its purpose of letting her whole family know she was safe.
We sped down 95 on the 4:05 bus out of Portland, taking us back to East Thumb.
“Have you noticed that no one has come up with a Heart the World project since our cat sweater presentation bombed? Instead of inspiring the rest of the class like Ms. Santorelli had hoped we would, we probably did the opposite. I bet the Heart the World thing tanks and that board in the classroom stays empty. Don’t you think?” Joss was asking.
“It’s only been two days,” I said.
“Yeah… but jeez… it seems like the only one we inspired was Smoky… to hide out in fear for the rest of his life. Good thing he has nine of them. Well, seven now, if you count him surviving the streets and escaping the fire.”
I nodded. I watched the pine trees whip by. The sky was gray. Gloomy. A sign of what I was feeling.
“How come you’re so quiet?” Joss asked me.
“Just thinking about stuff,” I said.
“You don’t need to worry anymore about Charlotte’s parents. When they get the e-mail that she’s safe, they’ll feel so much better. And nobody we know saw us at the Portland library.”
Sending the e-mail from East Thumb was not an option. Our public library has only one large room, one computer, and one librarian, Mr. Keith, who knows everyone in town.
I was glad we had let Charlotte’s parents know that she was okay. It was the least I could do since I hadn’t told Charlotte everything I had learned about how the apartment house burned down. Maybe she wouldn’t want to go home yet, anyway, even if she did know she had nothing to do with the fire. She changed her mind a lot.… One minute she was mad… the next she was sad and homesick. Still, it was for her to decide when to leave, not me.