Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  “That's got to be it!” I whispered. “Coralee Lyon owns property on Hopper Street!”

  He shook his head. “But that would be a conflict of interest. Probably even illegal.”

  I jumped up. “I bet she owns that lawyer's office! I bet Leland Hawking is renting from her.”

  Hudson pointed to the newspaper. “But it says that he owns that property. That he's made a lot of improvements to it.”

  “Well, what if they went in on it together? Or what if she owns one of those other houses on Hopper? There are two vacant lots and two run-down houses with wrecked cars all over the yards—we don't know anything about who owns those!”

  Hudson nodded. “If she has any financial stake in them, she should have recused herself from the proceedings instead of pushing them along.” He stood up, too, and said, “The truth does have an interesting habit of finding its way to the surface, but in this case I think it could use a little help. And since property ownership is a matter of public record, why don't you go do your dog-walking job and let me see what I can find out.”

  “Really?” I tugged on the leash, waking the Captain, who was snoring under my chair. “You know how to look it up?”

  “I'm going to start by making some phone calls.”

  “Well, when you find something out, call me!” I said, heading down the walkway.

  “Will do!”

  On my way back to Hopper Street it hit me that I wasn't ticked off anymore. I just wanted to get back and tell Mrs. Willawago what we'd figured out. So I ran the whole way, and when I got to the Train House and spotted a white pickup truck in the driveway, I remembered that Mrs. Willawago was talking to a reporter.

  So much the better! I'd tell them both what we suspected.

  I went right in, taking Captain Patch with me. And when I found Mrs. Willawago and the reporter in the living room, I blurted out, “Guess what!”

  But just as their heads are turning to face me, there's a mind-jolting crash, and shards of glass shoot through the room.

  Mrs. Willawago screams and drops to the floor while the reporter dives for cover behind a chair. I yank Patch back and hide behind the hallway wall. My eyes are cranked wide, my heart is whacking against my chest, and when I peek out around the corner, I see that the French door now looks like the mouth of a glass shark.

  And then I see a big rock sitting on the carpet right in front of it.

  I jet down the hall, shove Captain Patch in a bedroom, then hurry over to Mrs. Willawago, who's holding her heart and breathing like she's just run a mile. “Are you all right?” I ask her.

  “Did somebody shoot?” she asks back, her voice all shaky.

  The reporter is half standing behind the chair, and his eyes are like little planets doing a half orbit of his head, back and forth, back and forth.

  “No,” I tell her. “It was just a rock.”

  But even from across the room I can see that this is not just some wayward rock.

  It's a message.

  EIGHT

  The rock that's crashed through the French door is smooth and shaped like a large, flat egg. And on it, written in black marker, is SELL OR SUFER.

  For a minute it's like I'm trying to make out a license plate again, because the words are kind of crammed together. And either it's a puzzle I'm not getting or a word's misspelled.

  And what kind of moron busts your window with a misspelled threat?

  But just as I'm deciding that, yeah, this was definitely a misspelled threat, the doorbell rings. And before anyone can react to that, Mrs. Stone comes busting through the front door in her Birkenstocks and socks, shouting, “Annie! Annie!” She spots her and cries, “Look what somebody threw!”

  She's flushed. Out of breath. Shaking.

  And she's holding a smooth, egg-shaped rock.

  “It says sell or suffer!” she cries. Then she sees all the broken glass. “Did you get one, too?”

  So I nod and show Mrs. Willawago the rock that had crashed through her French door. “You got the same message.”

  “Why… it's misspelled!” Mrs. Willawago says, blinking at me. Then she looks at Mrs. Stone's. “So is yours!”

  “Let me see,” the reporter says.

  So there they all are, in a huddle around these rocks, and I don't know—something about it seems funny: (a) someone's just busted their windows with a menacing threat and they're worried about the spelling? And (b) how embarrassing would that be? To toss a rock through someone's window and misspell the message? I mean, what if they'd written CELL OR SUFFER! OR MOVE OR DYE!

  Anyway, the good thing about it is that Mrs. Willawago and the reporter don't seem scared anymore—they're actually laughing about how the person who'd thrown the rock must be an uneducated oaf.

  Mrs. Stone finally stops them, saying, “Look at all this glass!”

  The reporter nods. “That must've been a very old window — definitely not safety glass.”

  “It could have killed you!” Mrs. Stone says, her eyes all wide. She wags her rock and says, “And this one could've killed Marty! He was just going out the slider—it missed him by inches!”

  The reporter nods. “You ladies should call the police.”

  So Mrs. Willawago goes to the phone, saying, “I can't imagine that whoever did this thinks it'll make us move. Good Lord, do they really believe they can get away with this?”

  Now, while Mrs. Willawago's on the phone, the reporter produces a small notebook and says, “You must be Teri Stone, Annie's neighbor?”

  “That's right.”

  “She told me a little about you. I'm Cal Torres, ma'am. From the Times. Did you say your husband's name is Marty?”

  Mrs. Stone nods.

  “The two of you have lived next door how long?”

  “Twelve years.”

  The reporter glances over at Mrs. Willawago talking on the phone in the kitchen, then turns to face Mrs. Stone. “I'm going to do everything I can to help you. What's going on here is just wrong.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Mrs. Stone says, her face smoothing back. “You don't know what that means to us.”

  Mrs. Willawago's back a minute later, saying, “The police are on their way.” She turns to the reporter. “Will you stay?”

  “Yes, ma'am! And I'm going to ask my editor to give this story some front-page coverage.”

  Now, something about knowing that the police are coming always makes me want to get going. Maybe it's just in Santa Martina, I don't know, but around here if you see someone rob a bank or something, the cops won't let you say, He went thataway! First they've got to know who you are and where you live and what you had for breakfast.

  Well, okay. The breakfast part has only come up once, but the other questions come up every time, and in my case they're questions that make me very nervous.

  And since I didn't feel like trying to figure out how to avoid their questions, and since the police station is about ten seconds by squad car from Hopper Street and I didn't have enough time before they arrived to explain my theory about Coralee Lyon possibly owning property on Hopper Street, I just told Mrs. Willawago, “I, uh, I've got to get going.” Then I added, “Oh—I put Captain Patch in your bedroom.”

  “In my bedroom?” she asks all kind of hyper, then takes off down the hall. So I grab my skateboard and backpack and hurry east on Hopper Street—the way I think the police won't be coming.

  There's no blue car lurking behind Leland Hawking, Esquire's, so I just keep on trucking, heading north on Miller Street with one eye on the lookout for cop cars while my brain tries to make sense of things.

  The trouble, though, is that the more I think about it, the more things don't make sense. The rock-through-the-window business was messing everything up. I mean, if Coralee Lyon wanted people to resist selling their property because she owned something on Hopper and resisting would mean she'd get more money for it, well, that didn't go along with ‘sell or suffer.’ The rocks had been a real threat. Done by someone who was worried t
hat Mrs. Willawago and Mrs. Stone wouldn't sell. But from what I'd overheard in Leland Hawking's kitchen, Coralee wasn't worried about that.

  Leland Hawking, on the other hand, had been.

  Hmmm.

  But he had to know how to spell suffer. He was a lawyer! Weren't they always trying to get money for “pain and suffering”?

  'Course maybe he'd misspelled it on purpose to make people think it was an uneducated person.

  But who delivers a threat through a window these days? It seemed like something out of an old mob movie.

  Besides, if this eminent insane law was strong enough to get Goldie the Golf Cart Lady kicked out of her house, what were they so worried about? Why threaten?

  Unless … unless there was some loophole. Some way that Mrs. Willawago and the Stones wouldn't have to give up their houses.

  I sure didn't know anything about that. But still. I couldn't help wondering: Who would that hurt the most?

  By now I was almost at the mall, which in my life is pretty unavoidable. I pass it on my way to school, on my way home, on my way to Hudson's, on my way to Marissa's…. It's a big, blocky behemoth of parking, stores, and office buildings. And although I've never been big on the mall itself, I do like the winding walk-way that goes clear around it. It's fun to ride a skate-board on, and it's actually kinda scenic, too. There are trees and shrubs and flowers and grass … it's like a pathway through a really skinny park. It can almost make you forget that you're riding alongside the Mammoth Shrine of Merchandise.

  But anyway, as I crossed over Cook Street, I remembered what Hudson had said about Goldie Danali living on the corner straight ahead of me.

  A little house with a white picket fence? Here? I almost couldn't picture it. The stack of office buildings seemed to belong there because that's what I was used to seeing.

  But then I noticed the signs in the corner office windows. In big bold lettering, on all three levels, they all said the same thing.

  AVAILABLE.

  I smiled. Maybe Goldie Danali had found a way to fight city hall after all.

  When I got to the other side of the street, I put down my skateboard and started riding again. And actually, I was feeling pretty good, thinking about lawyers being spooked away from renting those offices.

  Seemed very poetic.

  But just as I'm starting to clickity-clack along the winding walkway at a decent speed, a jaybird dive-bombs me. I'm talking whoosh, he blasts right across my face, cawing at me like a big blue crow. And he startles me so bad that I jerk back, stumble off my board, and practically bite the dirt.

  “Stupid flying gizzard!” I shout after him. But as I stand up and collect my skateboard, I suddenly remember.

  Tango.

  I couldn't believe it—between eminent domain and flying rocks and people not believing me, I'd actually forgotten about Tango.

  But now I was remembering, all right, and my stomach was suddenly queasy.

  I looked around for the jay. He'd been like an agent from the God of Dead Birds, crying, Killer! Killer!

  I got back on my board and shook off the thought. I mean, how ridiculous is that? The God of Dead Birds. Please.

  Trouble is, once I was rolling down the walkway again, I started noticing tweeting. It was just birds-in-the-trees type of tweeting, which I'm sure is there all the time, but once I noticed it, it seemed to get louder and louder.

  Tweet-tweet-tweet. Warble-warble-warble. Tweet-tweettweet.

  Then I started seeing birds. They were everywhere. Flapping around, pecking at bugs, warbling in the trees, in the phone wires … everywhere! I'm not talking big ugly ones like in that Alfred Hitchcock movie. These were scarier than those.

  These were pretty little tweety birds.

  They sounded so cheerful. So carefree.

  So…alive.

  And I know this is going to sound crazy, but I swear on my high-tops—these birds were tweeting at me.

  Sammy, Sammy! they seemed to be singing. Pretty day! Pretty day to be alive!

  I zoomed along faster, trying to get away from the birds. But the trouble with birds is, they can fly. And the faster I rode, the faster they seemed to fly.

  Do you think we don't know? Do you think you can hide? Do you think what you're doing is right?

  “Leave me alone!” I shouted at a stupid little redbreasted finch.

  Tweet-tweet-tweet.

  “It was an accident! An ac-ci-dent!”

  Warble-warble-tweet.

  “No! I liked him! I would never have hurt him on purpose!”

  Tweet-tweet-tweet.

  “Stop it! Stop following me!”

  Warble-warble-tweet.

  I was never so glad to get home. But as I slipped through the door, I heard Grams say, “Oh, here she is now!” Then she held the phone out to me and whispered, “It's Marissa.”

  Grams kissed me on the cheek as I took the phone, then rubbed my arm in a real comforting way and left the kitchen.

  “Hey,” I said into the receiver.

  “Where'd you go after school?” she asked. Not mean or anything. Just more, you know, conversational.

  “Sorry. Mrs. Ambler hung me up.”

  “Mrs. Ambler did? I thought she was absent.”

  Was she saying she thought I was lying? Did she think I'd ditched her?

  Well, I had, kinda. I mean, I always meet Marissa at the bike racks. But after Mrs. Ambler had gone on and on about kids disappointing her and her admiring me, well, I hadn't wanted to see anyone.

  “Sammy?”

  “Huh?”

  “Sammy!”

  “Sorry! Uh, Mrs. Ambler. Right. I think she only missed homeroom. She said she overslept.”

  Marissa tisked. “Poor thing. She was probably up all night about her bird.” Then quicker than you can flick off a tear, she said, “So? What are we going to wear?”

  “What are we going to wear?”

  “To the dance!”

  Now, I know I should've just said, Jeans and high-tops, what did you think? Or maybe, Casey said it was casual, so don't even start about dressing up. But I sort of freaked out. I mean, I'd just been chased clear around the mall by agents of the Dead Bird God, Marissa'd just said that bit about Mrs. Ambler being up all night because of Tango, and I was stuck in a tiny apartment with Grams hovering somewhere around the corner. I felt trapped. Suffocated. I didn't want to talk about what to wear to a stupid dance. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to sort things out.

  I needed some time to think.

  So instead of saying, High-tops, of course! I said, “I…I can't talk about this right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “I…I have to go … pour cement.”

  “You have to go pour cement?”

  Grams appeared from around the corner. “You have to go pour cement?”

  “Where?” Marissa asked.

  “Where?” Grams echoed.

  It felt like the tweety birds chirping at me again. “Never mind! Never mind!” I snapped at both of them, then slammed down the phone.

  “Samantha!” Grams said, her eyes all wide as she tracked me to the bathroom.

  I spun on her. “You're following me into the bathroom now?”

  The phone rang.

  Grams put her hands on her hips and wagged her head. “That's probably Marissa calling back to find out why you were so rude to her.”

  “Well, you go answer it! Tell her it's because you were both talking to me at once! Why can't I have a private conversation? Do you have to know every little thing that I do?”

  Grams' face fell, and without a word she left the bathroom doorway to answer the phone.

  Great. Just great. In one big spastic moment I'd hung up on my best friend and alienated my grandmother. And yeah, it had bought me some privacy, but now that I was alone, I felt worse than ever.

  Thirty seconds later Grams tapped on the bathroom door and said, “Hudson wants to talk to you.”

  I hesitated, then opened the door. �
��It's Hudson?”

  “Yes.” She turned to go, saying, “I'll be in my bedroom.” She eyed me over her shoulder. “With the door shut.”

  “Gra-ams,” I said, but she kept on walking. “Look, I'm sorry, I—”

  Slam.

  I heaved a sigh and went to the phone. “Hudson?”

  “Sammy! Say, I thought you'd like to hear what I unearthed.”

  Poof! Like magic, my problems with Grams and Marissa and Dead Bird Gods flew out of my head. “Does Coralee Lyon own that lawyer's office?”

  “No, Leland Hawking does.”

  It was like he'd slashed my tire of hope. “But …”

  “But there is something odd going on.”

  “Oh?”

  “I researched ownership of all the parcels on Hopper Street. Two houses and both of the vacant lots are owned by a company called Earl Clooney Management Systems.”

  “Wait—they're owned by them? Not just, you know, managed?”

  “That's correct. And here's what makes me think something odd's going on: All four properties were acquired within the last three years, and they were bought dirt cheap.”

  “Wow,” I said, and it came out all breathy.

  “You understand why I find that odd?”

  “Sure—why would someone buy up a string of slummy properties unless they thought they could turn around and sell them for a lot more.”

  “That's my girl.”

  I thought for a minute, then said, “So who's this Earl Clooney guy?”

  “I'm not sure. The records show the address of Earl Clooney Management as a PO box in Santa Luisa. I don't find that in and of itself suspicious, but that, coupled with the fact that there's no number listed in the phone directory, leads me to believe that it's not a real management company. Or at least not one that handles properties other than those on Hopper Street.”

  “So how can we find out?”

  “I called a friend who's doing some checking. It's too late for him to get anywhere today, but he'll look into it on Monday.”

  “Wow, Hudson. You're good!”

  He chuckled, then said, “Now. What's this about cement?”

  I couldn't believe it. “She told you about that?”

  He chuckled again. “She grumbled something about it. Do you need help?”