by Regina Doman
“You’re from the yearbook staff or something?” the youth said.
“Uh—” Rose floundered. “Sort of—”
“C’mon in if you want. It’s roasting out here.” The youth that they assumed was Steven opened the door for them and they walked inside.
The front room was in a haphazard state. There were no pictures on the walls, and a slipcover in an African print covered the sagging couch. A heavy-set woman with tightly curled hair still looked at them suspiciously, leaning in the doorway to the kitchen. Behind her, Rose could see boxes with newspaper coming out of their tops. It looked as though the Fosters were moving.
The young man sat down heavily in a torn leather recliner. The girls sat down on the couch, and Blanche sat as close to Rose as she could. “Are you Steven Foster?” Rose asked.
“I am,” the young man affirmed. He spun the basketball between his two hands. “Lucky you found me here. I just got back from college.”
“What are you studying?” Rose asked, almost automatically.
“Engineering. So, what do you want?”
Rose glanced at Blanche, who nodded slightly, and began, “Well, actually, we’re not with the yearbook. We were wondering if you might be able to help us find a friend of ours, Arthur Denniston.”
Instantly, the faces of both man and woman took on a completely different expression.
“I’m not sure I want to answer that,” Steven said slowly. The woman’s face had gone from blank surprise to deeper suspicion, and, Rose noted, fear.
“But I know you know him,” Rose said earnestly. “He knows you. He was worried about you and your mom, so I know he’s your friend. And we’ve got to find him, somehow. Don’t you have any idea where he is?”
“How do you know this Arthur Denniston?” the woman spoke up after a sharp silence.
“He’s our friend. He helped my mom on the street one night, and he visited our house a lot all this past winter. But then he took off, and we’re really worried about him. All we want to do is send him a message somehow.”
“Honey, you’d be better off not messing with guys you don’t know too much about, and that’s a fact,” the woman said brusquely.
“But we do know a lot about him,” Blanche spoke up, then lowered her voice. “We know he calls himself Bear, and that he’s trying to find out who murdered Fr. Michael Raymond.”
Again, both faces before them registered change, but this time it was slight. Apparently, both mother and son had decided not to reveal anything to these strangers.
“Sounds like a real kettle of fish to me,” Mrs. Foster said at last. “You’d be better off not getting involved with folks like that.”
“So you do know Bear?” Rose said eagerly.
“I didn’t say I did.” Mrs. Foster clammed up. There was an uncomfortable silence.
Blanche felt as though she had to say something. “Look, I know you must be terribly suspicious of us coming around, asking questions like this. We’re just his friends. I mean, didn’t he ever mention us to you, especially if he stayed here? My mom’s Jean. I’m Blanche and she’s Rose. He took us out to the opera once. He took me to my prom—maybe he borrowed your tuxedo,” she turned again to Steven, who flicked his eyelashes suddenly. “Didn’t he ever mention us to you? I can provide you with any details you want. You don’t have to tell us anything that would get you in trouble.”
“Let me ask you: just why do you want to know?” Mrs. Foster broke in. “Being nosy won’t do anybody any good. Never does.”
“Well, our school principal said he was involved in drugs. But that just doesn’t seem like Bear. I know he hangs out in the drug areas and—well, he looks pretty scruffy—but I just can’t believe he was selling drugs. You’re his friends. Can’t you tell us the truth?” Blanche pressed.
The son and the mother looked at each other uncertainly. Then Mrs. Foster said staunchly, “That boy and his brother never did any drugs. Never. Neither did my son, either. They were the cleanest kids in that whole stinking high school. Don’t you believe that man, girlie. It’s trash.”
Steven was tossing the basketball from one hand to another thoughtfully. “That was a set-up if I ever saw one. Everyone at school knew it. It was ludicrous. But Dr. Freet believed they were guilty, and he’s the important one.” He looked hard at them. “You girls have any idea what Bear’s doing?”
“Not much,” Blanche admitted.
“Well, then that’s how he wants it. If you keep snooping around, you could get into a lot of danger.” He emphasized the last word. “Danger. I’m not fooling with you.”
“Your house got broken into while he was staying here, didn’t it?” Blanche said softly.
Steven looked angry. “That’s right. Whoever it was totally trashed the place and almost killed my mother. She locked herself in the bathroom and he told her to stay there and be quiet or he’d set the place on fire. Bear and his brother had been staying here ever since they got out of prison. But after that happened, they took off.”
“Do you know where?” Rose asked.
“Lady, I just told you I can’t tell you that. I’m not even going to tell you if I know. He’s gone.” Again, he emphasized the words.
“If you girls are Christians, you can pray for him. If you ain’t, then I can’t help you,” Mrs. Foster chuckled harshly to herself.
“How long was he in juvenile detention?” Blanche asked.
“Ten months. His brother was in for six months. It was real hard on both of them. Especially Arthur. That boy has got the most gentle spirit you’ve ever seen, and he was miserable.” Mrs. Foster’s eyes grew soft. “You never met a sweeter kid. That’s why I didn’t mind them two staying here. They were always over here with Steven when they were in high school, and when they got put in prison, their big-shot father didn’t want anything to do with them. Threw them out on the streets. They’re rich, you know, but they don’t have a penny to their names now. Well, the surest way to send a kid back to prison is to wash your hands of him when he’s down.”
Blanche murmured an assent, and Mrs. Foster went on, “I raised my Steven right—that’s why he’s the way he is now. But I got friends who have kids in prison, and I know what a difference it can make to a kid to have an adult stand by him. Not that you say he’s right when he’s wrong—no ma’am! But that kid Arthur, he and Ben didn’t do anything wrong. Somebody set them up, that’s for sure.”
“But who would set them up?” Blanche asked.
“If any of us knew that, we wouldn’t be sitting here with this room like it is, that’s for sure,” Mrs. Foster said.
Rose had remembered something. “Does any of this have anything to do with chalices?”
Mrs. Foster shook her head. “I wish I knew. Those boys were always trying to find someone who sold Catholic chalices and whatnot—” she caught her son’s warning eyes and shut her mouth.
“You’d be better off not asking questions about that,” Steven said briefly, in a manner remarkably similar to Bear’s.
But Rose would not be deterred. “Was he trying to sell some of Father Raymond’s old vessels? We know he collected vessels.”
“I said, no questions!” Steven said flatly. “That’s final!” At Rose’s hurt look, he said curtly, “Arthur is one of my best friends. I can’t afford to be giving out information right and left when I know he’s in trouble. How do I know who’ll you’ll be talking to—accidentally or on purpose?” He caught Rose’s protest and nipped it in the bud. “Oh, I know you girls don’t mean any harm, but this situation is a bit more than you can handle. So just keep everything I said to yourselves, okay?” His look was adamant and harsh.
“Okay,” Rose and Blanche faltered. He stood up to show them to the door.
“Thank you for all your help,” Blanche said timidly.
He nodded and the girls filed past. As they reached the bottom of the stoop, Steven spoke again. “Hey look—it was my tuxedo he borrowed. He trashed it, too—the rat— but I know
he had a really good time with the girl he was out with.” He flashed a smile at Blanche and raised his eyebrows significantly.
Blanche blushed. “If you hear from him, please tell him to contact us as soon as he can. It’s very important to us.”
Steven and his mother looked at each other again. “I’m making no promises, but we’ll do what we can,” he said at last.
Chapter 16
THE LAST DAY of regular classes they didn’t have to wear uniforms, so Rose was going through her usual ritual of fashion indecision. Blanche noted in surprise that she appeared to have only tried on five outfits. At last, sighing, Rose decided on her royal blue tee shirt.
“Should I wear a skirt or pants with it?” she asked Blanche, who had dressed half an hour ago without ceremony.
“Skirt. That way I won’t feel odd about being the only one in school wearing a long skirt,” Blanche said. She was wearing the rose-colored calico jumper she had made for the white shirt she had bought at the thrift store.
“Do you want to wait for me to get out of detention?” Rose asked, taking out three or four skirts from the closet.
“I’d like to, but the seniors are dismissed at twelve o’clock and I was going to go home to work on my graduation dress,” Blanche confessed. She had been attempting to make a dress of pale pink cotton for that event, which was this Saturday.
“Oh.” Rose gazed sadly down at the paisley skirt she was holding to her waist and Blanche relented.
“I’ll come by at three to walk you home.”
“You don’t have to,” Rose argued unreasonably. “What about this peacock-patterned skirt?”
“Rose! You just asked me to meet you after detention!”
“Well, if you want. But you don’t have to …”
Blanche groaned and walked to the mirror and ran her fingers through her thick hair. She couldn’t decide whether to leave her hair up or down. She enjoyed wearing it down, but in this weather, it was more practical to wear it up.
Rose put on the peacock skirt and rummaged around in her accessories basket for the matching headband. “Blanche, you should try to wear stronger colors. That dark green skirt you had the other day really looked good on you.”
“I don’t want to find another outfit now,” Blanche said. She wasn’t a quick-change artist like Rose.
Rose fluffed up her bangs, checked her face, and moaned. “Oh, I’m glad I let Lisa have it, but boy, I hate detention!” She picked at a pimple with vengeance. “To do nothing but sit for a solid hour! Right now, it’s like spinning wheels. Remind me not to do this again, Blanche.”
Blanche sighed and gave her hair a last brush. “If you think before you act, Rose, it probably won’t happen again.”
As the girls walked into the crowded main hallway at school, which was buzzing with crowds of teenagers on the edge of summer liberation, they caught sight of Mr. Freet, walking swiftly down the hall towards them. He was scribbling something in a small appointment book while holding a brown paper package in one arm and a briefcase in the other. Just then, a shouting group of excited boys barreled down the hallway, jostling him. Mr. Freet started, lost his balance, and fell, dropping the package, which bounced on the floor with a heavy thud thud.
“Oh! Those boys!” Rose cried in anger and ran to help Mr. Freet up. Blanche bounded after the package and grabbed it. It was far heavier than she had expected.
Mr. Freet was red-faced as Rose helped him to his feet.
“Are you all right?” Rose said anxiously.
Mr. Freet said nothing, being speechless with wrath. “Leave that alone!” he managed to utter at last. He swiped the package from Blanche’s hands and as Rose cried a warning, aimed a blow at her head. Blanche dodged in the nick of time and fell back, astonished.
“You’re always looking for a chance to snatch things from me. I should report you to the principal for this—or the police! Don’t think I won’t do it!” he ranted.
“We were just helping.” Rose insisted.
“A likely story! I know your kind,” he tucked his package underneath his arm again. “Loathsome interfering females!”
Blanche and Rose backed away from him, exchanging bewildered glances. Mr. Freet glared at them as if they had been personally responsible for his mishap. Then he turned and hurried down towards the principal’s office.
“What kind of devil has gotten into him today?” Rose remarked, her face alternating between irritation and amusement.
“He had no right to treat us that way,” said Blanche sharply. “By all rights, we should report him.”
“Oh, I’m sure his brother would really listen to anything we delinquents said!” Rose tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Mr. Freet is definitely a troubled soul. It must be the unhappy dwarf in him.”
“The what?”
“My new theory. I think Mr. Freet is just a dwarf who’s obsessed with the love of treasure. And of course, anyone who lusts after money is bound to be unhappy.”
“I don’t think he cares about money so much as he cares about art,” Blanche reflected.
“Exactly. Gold and jewels and lovely things. He probably has a secret hoard in his basement.”
Blanche giggled. “Rose, you’re insufferable.”
Detention is horrendous, Rose thought miserably, watching the hands on the clock inch slowly towards three. The rest of the school had been dismissed at two o’clock, since it was the last day of school. But the kids in detention had to stay until three. Rose was the only girl there.
A few of the guys in the room had been attempting to get her attention. True to form, she had been ignoring them stolidly.
They probably wonder what I’ve done to be stuck in the room with them all week, she thought grimly. I certainly don’t look like their type. She stared at the skull and crossbones on the back of the shirt of the boy in front of her.
At the center of the room, the monitor sat correcting papers and casting occasional glances at her charges.
There was a soft snicker behind her. She couldn’t tell if one of the guys was trying to get her attention or his buddy’s. Either way, Rose was not going to respond. She studied her nails and tried to think about something usual and boring, like nail polish colors. Fifteen more minutes to go.
Blanche looked up at the grandfather clock from her vantage point on the living room floor, where pieces of her graduation dress were laid out around her. It was a quarter to three. She had better go and meet Rose. She sighed, looking down at her sewing project. A premonition passed over her that she was not going to finish this dress by Saturday.
“But if I work on it from the time I get home until dinner, maybe I’ll get everything done but the hem—” she argued with herself as she went out the door.
Three o’clock! Rose leapt to her feet, grabbed her near-empty backpack and was the first one out of the room. The guys all swarmed out after her and she decided to make a quick run to the lady’s room to avoid their company.
In the bathroom she pulled a brush through her hair idly. She had been trying unsuccessfully not to think about Bear and his mysterious mission for the last hour or so, because if she did, she would only get more frustrated. There seemed to be nothing left to do but wait. And pray, as everyone kept telling her.
She cocked an ear to make certain that all of her fellow detainees had left. There was no sound of feet in the hallways now. The building was practically empty. But somewhere, two men were talking. She could hear their voices through the heating vent. Unconsciously, she moved a little closer to catch what they were saying.
In the middle of rebuking herself for eavesdropping, she heard something that made her freeze.
“A sixteenth-century ciborium,” one of the men said. All thoughts flew from her mind and she strained her ears to keep listening.
Blanche always disliked walking alone in the City. Even now, in the broad bright light of a spring day, she still felt as though she might meet something sinister around the corner. Rose tr
eated every excursion outdoors as a chance for adventure, the way she was always seeing dwarves or gypsies in ordinary people. Blanche thought there was some truth in Rose’s insight. But the problem was, even dwarves could turn out to be nasty creatures, small but still potentially threatening to unarmed maidens alone in the woods. Or the City …
The problem I have with deeper meanings is that they make things more threatening, not less, Blanche decided as she kicked a small stone along the granite pavement. Suppose I were to entertain these deeper warnings, instead of ignoring them the way I try to? Then the shadows of reality might grow bigger and bigger and overwhelm me with their realness. Truth isn’t always safe.
Smiling at her metaphysical reflections, she ran a hand absently through her loose hair as she approached a cross street.
A car roared past her in a terrifying wind and she jumped back from the curb as someone shouted something at her—her name? Insides quaking, she walked a bit faster. That was just a freak thing, she told herself. The car just swerved too close to the curb. It’s ridiculous to think anyone is after me.
But her inner sensitivity was agitated. There were dragons in the area.
Why not run, just to look as if I’m in a hurry? But that’s silly, she told herself firmly. No one’s after me.
Straining her ears as she walked forward, she thought she heard car doors slamming behind her, and footsteps running.
Should I look? I might as well look.
Keep walking. Everything is fine. There’s no such thing as dragons.
“Blanche Brier!” someone shouted, and she turned to see Lisa and Eileen hurrying towards her as the car they had gotten out of sped away. Her stomach lurching suddenly, she kept walking.
“Hey there, Blanche, how are things?” Lisa said, coming up on her right side. Eileen came up on the other side of her.
They had surrounded her. Blanche froze and said nothing.
“Don’t be scared, Immaculate Complexion. We just want to talk to you. Now that school’s over, we’ll never get to see you,” Eileen said in a friendly voice that didn’t fool Blanche at all.