I checked the closet next. A few shirts hung on hangers, and a large blue duffel bag sat on the floor. I stared at it, my hands ice cold. It was obviously brand new, clean and bright with the designer label prominently displayed. Pete could never afford luggage like this. If he’d received it as a gift, he’d probably have sold it to pay off some debts. What in the world was it doing in the bottom of his closet?
I held my breath and picked up the duffel bag. It was heavy. My mind raced—how many kilos were we talking here? This couldn’t be for personal use—he must be selling drugs. I closed my eyes and slid back the zipper. It glided effortlessly. I opened my eyes for a quick peek and screamed. There were no drugs in the duffel bag. Far worse. I screwed my eyes shut, willing it to go away. But when I opened them again, nothing had changed. My horrified eyes stared into the faded blue eyes of the doll, Angeline.
Chapter Eleven
I covered my mouth and stared at the doll, crumpled up in a duffel bag in my brother’s bedroom. How could this happen? She stared up at me, unblinking.
“How did you get here?” I whispered. I reached for the doll and eased her out of the bag. I smoothed her rumpled dress with trembling fingers and stroked her stiff brown hair as if in a trance. Then my brain seemed to click back on. She looked different. I squinted at the back of her head. The large, clumsy stitches were missing. Her hair lay smoothly down her neck, secured by tiny, perfect, bright brown stitches. I bent closer. Those stitches were new.
“What are you doing?”
I looked over my shoulder. Pete stood wide-eyed in the doorway. He clutched a brown paper bag.
“What are you doing in my room?” he repeated in a voice just above a whisper.
I stared into his eyes and turned slowly on my knees, until he could see what I held in my lap.
“How did she get in your closet?” I barely recognized my cold voice. Until that moment, I didn’t realize how furious I was.
Dropping the paper bag, Pete reeled back as if I’d struck him in the face.
“That’s the stolen doll,” he cried. “Where did you get it?”
“She was in your closet,” I shouted. “Whatever happened to your fresh start? Am I supposed to cover this up too?”
Pete stared at me like he’d never seen me before. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “You think I stole it. You—” He bit off his words and strode down the hall, his hands raking his wild brown hair.
I followed him into the hall, the doll dangling from my fingers. “Pete!”
He whirled around at the head of the stairs. “You think I stole it,” he shouted. “You think I’m some frigging drug addict criminal stealing Civil War treasures to fund my stinking habit!” He kicked the wall savagely. “You think I’ll be the death of you with my drug debts bringing hit men down on you.” He collapsed on the top step and looked up at me. “You were searching my room for drugs, weren’t you?”
I bit my lip and met his eyes. “Yes.”
“I knew it!” He fixed me with his hollow eyes, dark smudges in his ashen face. “I spent seven months in jail coming off those damn drugs. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’ll die before I do that to myself again!” He buried his head in his arms. In a voice so low I could barely hear him, he said, “There’s no drugs in my room, Daria. I’m clean. I swear.”
Jim’s voice echoed in my head: “I know he’s your brother, but you can’t trust Pete right now.” I’d said I would trust him with my life. Maybe it was time for me to show it.
I sat down next to my brother. “I’m sorry, Pete,” I whispered.
He looked me in the eye. “I didn’t steal the doll, Daria. God only knows how it ended up in my bedroom.”
I stood up, surprised to find tears trickling down my face. I wiped them away before he could see them. “Someone must have hidden her there, to get you in trouble.”
Pete heaved himself to his feet. He walked with me back to his room and sat down on his desk chair to frown at Angeline. “Who?”
“Emmett McDowell leaps immediately to mind,” I said. I found myself suddenly weak from this intense conversation. I sat down on Pete’s mattress, cradling Angeline in my lap. “He could have stolen her from the museum.”
“But why would he steal his own doll? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“To get you in trouble. You should have heard how eager he was to press charges against you when the cops were questioning people at the museum. He knows you were in jail and wants to see you back there. He hates you.”
“No. There must be more to it than that. This is some kind of elaborate plot. There’s all kinds of ways Emmett could get me in trouble—why this doll?”
I smoothed Angeline’s hair and ran my fingers over the new stitches. “You know, something’s different about her hair. When I saw her in the museum, there were big stitches right here, but now they’re gone and new ones are in their place.” I held her out to Pete. “It’s like someone cut open her head and then sewed it back up again.”
“Cut open her head?” Pete inspected the stitches I showed him. “They could have taken something out,” he mused. “Or put something in. Something intended to incriminate me, somehow.” He shook his head, bewildered.
“Should we look?” I whispered. “I could sew it back up real quick.”
A siren wailed down the street. Pete jumped like he’d been shot.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but whoever planted this doll in my closet has called the cops to get me.” He glared at Angeline as if she’d made the call herself. “We’ve got to get it out of here,” he cried. “Get that thing out of here!”
I scrambled to my feet, clutching Angeline to my chest. “We have to give her back—she’s a priceless historical doll.”
“Daria, what if they arrest me? I can’t go back to jail! I gotta pay off Kinney—he’s expecting to get paid tonight. If I miss that pick up . . .” He grabbed me by the shoulders. “They might come here looking for me.”
My hands went cold as Pete’s panic washed over me.
Someone started banging on the front door. “Open up!”
Like a superhero come to save the day, Aileen appeared in Pete’s doorway, dressed head-to-toe in full black leather. She took in Angeline and the blue duffel bag in a glance. Her gaze flicked to Pete’s face, then to mine. “Cops are here for you, Moron,” she said unnecessarily. “Are you home?”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Anyplace else I might be?”
Aileen grinned at me. “He might be at work, don’t you think, Daria? They work him so hard at that movie set.” She turned to Pete. “The back stairs go all the way to the basement, and the basement’s got this cool trapdoor that shoots you down to a hidden room below ground.”
Pete groaned. “That’s no good! I don’t need to hide. I need to get out of here to make a pay off before somebody comes around to whack us.”
“Shut up, Pete!” I yelled. “This house was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Off the hidden room is a tunnel that comes out on the edge of the woods at Cramer’s Pond. The door’s nailed shut, but I’m sure you can bust your way out.”
Aileen slapped Pete on the back. “By the time the cops get done checking out your room, you could be halfway to your rendezvous.” She disappeared into the hall and yelled down the stairs. “I’m coming, already! Geez—quit your pounding!” She popped back into the room. “Come on, Moron!”
Pete scooped up the brown paper bag he’d dropped. He took a quick peek inside, and I got a glimpse of cash, piles of it. He shot me a defiant glance. “I didn’t steal this either. I borrowed it—with permission.” He grabbed a jacket off the back of the chair. “Sorry to leave you holding the bag—literally. Tell them you found the doll in my closet and you think someone’s setting me up. I’m gonna pay off Kinney, and I’ll call you after that. Get out of the house till you talk to me. Stay at a hotel or something tonight. If Kinney’s thugs come around here . . .
don’t let them find you.”
Downstairs, the banging began anew.
“Come on, Moron,” Aileen urged. She grabbed Pete’s hand and dragged him to the head of the back stairs. “The trapdoor’s under the drum kit. If you drop my gear into that rat-infested hidey-hole, you’re dead meat—you won’t have to worry about Kinney ’cause I’ll finish you first.” She shoved him through the door. “We’ll cover for you—just don’t make a racket. Good luck, Moron.”
And he was gone.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Aileen shouted. She stomped down the stairs with me close behind.
She grabbed the doorknob and flung open the door. Two policemen stood on the step. One held a baton, tapping it slowly against his palm. The rhythmic tapping couldn’t have been more menacing.
It didn’t faze Aileen. “What is it now?” she demanded.
“We’re here to search for stolen property.” Tap, tap, tap.
Aileen tossed her head. “We don’t have any, thank you very much.” She started to close the door, but the second policeman pushed past her into the house. A hefty paunch lapped over his belt, and heavy jowls shivered when he spoke. “I’m Officer Kramer, and this is Dorsey. We’re here to search for stolen property.”
Aileen planted her hands on her hips. “Not without a search warrant, you’re not!”
Officer Kramer pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her.
Aileen made quite a business of reading the paper. “Stolen property, it says right here.” She shoved it in my face. “What do you know?”
Kramer jerked the paper out of her hand. “Do you mind?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed past her and headed inside. Panicked, I wondered if Pete had shut the stairway door behind him.
“What exactly are you looking for?” I said, in what I hoped was an innocent tone.
Aileen stomped on my foot. “They’re looking for stolen property. Let them look—they can take all the time they need,” she hissed.
I ignored her. “It’s just . . . if you were looking for the Civil War doll that was stolen, I just found it in my brother’s room. I think someone planted it in his closet, to get him to take the blame.”
Kramer’s head swiveled around to stare at me. “Show me.”
I led the two cops up to the third floor, where there would be no danger of hearing any racket from the basement. Angeline lay on Pete’s bed. I bent down to pick her up.
“Don’t touch it!” Kramer barked. He pulled on a latex glove and reached for the doll. “We’ll need to dust for fingerprints. Got a bag, Dorsey?”
Fingerprints. Of course—my fingerprints were all over Angeline. How could I have been so stupid? I should never have taken her out of the bag. I gulped. “I’m sorry, officer, I already touched the doll. I took her out of this duffel bag when I saw it in Pete’s closet. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“First rule in a crime scene—don’t touch anything,” Kramer said in a condescending tone of voice reserved for toddlers and idiots. “Don’t you watch TV?”
I was saved from answering by a loud knock echoing through the house.
“I’ll get it,” Aileen sang out, heaving herself up off the doorjamb. She clomped down the stairs, to return a moment later followed by McCarthy.
“It’s that photographer again,” she announced.
“Sean McCarthy, from the Laurel Springs Daily Chronicle.” McCarthy stuck out a hand to Officer Kramer. “I saw the police cars and came looking for a scoop.” He grinned at me. “I should have known you’d be in the middle of the excitement.”
I gave him a dirty look, which he characteristically ignored. His blue eyes took in the room’s contents. “You found Angeline!” He snapped a quick photo.
“None of that!” Kramer said. “This is a crime scene. You can take pictures later.” He turned his back on McCarthy.
Dorsey shoved Angeline into an evidence bag. “Please be careful,” I called out. “That doll’s a historical artifact.”
“It’s evidence of a crime,” Dorsey shot back, pulling a drawstring tight over Angeline’s face. I almost felt like crying.
Dorsey popped the blue duffel into another evidence bag and pulled out a fat notebook. “When did you discover the doll?” he asked.
Their interrogation took about an hour—plenty of time for Pete to get away. I made sure to stress the fact that Pete could never afford such an expensive duffel bag, so it couldn’t possibly be his. And if it wasn’t his, then it must belong to someone else, someone who intentionally placed it in Pete’s bedroom with Angeline inside. And if someone else placed Angeline in Pete’s bedroom, then that person, not Pete, was responsible for stealing her. Therefore, Pete was innocent.
Dorsey wrote everything down, but I feared my logic was lost on him. It didn’t help to have McCarthy grinning at me the entire time.
Finally Dorsey asked the question I was dreading. I was such a bad liar—anyone could catch me in a lie.
“Where is your brother, Ms. Dembrowski?”
“I don’t know,” I stammered. So far, the truth. “He’s usually at work this time of day. He’s a camera operator on the movie God and Glory.” I swallowed. “That’s all I can tell you.”
Aileen piped up from her vantage point on the doorjamb. “He’s supposed to film some dance scene tonight, in the Flats somewhere. He said he’d be home late.”
I had a distinct feeling of déjà vu as I reeled off Pete’s cell phone number for the cops to call. Unsurprisingly, there was no answer.
Dorsey and Kramer finally took off, dangling Angeline in her evidence bag like a load of dirty laundry. To my relief, McCarthy followed them out the door. “Thanks for an entertaining afternoon!” He bounded down the steps with a cheery wave.
Aileen slammed the door behind him. “Your brother’s a damn cop magnet.”
I sank down on the window bench and filled in Aileen on the phone call. “We have to get out of the house until Pete calls and gives us the all clear.”
Aileen nodded, accepting the situation without question. She glanced at the clock in the hall. “What time did that phone message say the pickup was?”
“Seven o’clock. It’s six-twenty now. We’ve got to get out of here.”
We took a few minutes to lock the house up tight. Obviously we hadn’t done a very good job before, since someone had sneaked in to frame Pete. But when the band practiced, anybody could come in and drag all the furniture out the front door. The band would never hear a thing.
I went upstairs while Aileen took the basement. I started with the third floor and worked my way down. I paused in Pete’s room to tidy up the mess the cops had left, and even made his bed on the floor. Then I locked his windows and shut his door.
I stuffed a change of clothes and my toothbrush into my shoulder bag, and wrapped my turquoise silk scarf around my neck. It would look lovely with the turquoise ball gown, if Aster would let me wear it at the dance rehearsal tonight. I hurried downstairs to wait for Aileen in the kitchen.
Aileen stomped up the basement stairs. “If those jerks touch my gear, there’ll be hell to pay.” she muttered. She reached for the fluorescent orange skull that held her car keys as the house phone rang.
“It’s your brother.” Aileen reached for the phone.
I snatched her hand. “It could be the pick-up guy.”
We stood frozen in the kitchen, listening to the phone ring. After six rings, the answering machine picked up.
“Daria, do you need a ride to the dress rehearsal tonight?” It was Jim. “Or maybe I should have said, ‘Can I pick you up for the ball?’”
Aileen grabbed my hand as I reached for the receiver. “Just take his number and call him later,” she said, pointing at the clock. Luckily Jim did leave a number. I jotted it down, and we slipped out of the house at six-forty.
Aileen dropped me at a hotel in Westside, on the outskirts of town, and took off to stay with Corgi, a b
and mate. I hated to see her go. I didn’t realize how much I’d come to depend on her power to intimidate, as well as her irreverent sense of humor.
I lingered with my hand on the door handle. “Take care, Aileen.”
She revved her engine and grinned. “Your brother will come out on top,” she said. “He knows how to take care of himself. He’s a survivor.” She waved her long black fingernails and was gone.
I lugged my shoulder bag upstairs to the dingy room I was stuck in for the night. I sank down on the bed and pulled out my phone. It was seven o’clock—pick-up time. I said a silent prayer for Pete’s safety, then dialed the number Jim had left.
He answered on the second ring. “Daria, how are you?”
“Rotten,” I answered. I hadn’t meant to tell him, but it tumbled out. “Oh, Jim, the cops came looking for Pete—the stolen doll showed up in his closet.”
“What? You mean he did steal it, after all?”
“Of course not,” I said coldly. “He was set up.”
“That’s terrible,” Jim murmured. I could tell he didn’t believe it. I decided to let it go.
“So, do you need a ride to the dance?” Jim asked.
The last thing I wanted was to burden him with more worries about Pete or how I was faring at the hotel. I could take a cab. “No, that’s okay. I’ll just meet you at the warehouse. Be there in about an hour.”
“Great.” He hung up.
* * *
The movie warehouse was lit up so brightly, it glowed. Jim waited for me on the sidewalk outside. He wore khakis and a polo shirt, and held a garment bag slung over his shoulder. He reached for my hand. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a hard day, Daria.” His deep brown eyes were full of concern.
I laid my hand in his, like a Southern lady. “I’m sure my day is taking a turn for the better.”
He kissed my hand softly, light flashing into those dreamy eyes. He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm and escorted me inside.
“Go get changed—the rehearsal starts in half an hour.”
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