I&#39ll Be There

by Holly Goldberg Sloan

  Emily wanted to go with them, but everyone felt that she’d had enough for one day. Plus the two kittens were at home.

  Debbie had taken them in to the vet, and Emily was persuaded that she should be with the cats, since they’d been given antibiotics and were supposed to be watched.

  Bobby told Emily he’d call her before he went to bed and give her an update from his side of things. They seemed to be in this together now.

  When Bobby got home, he took a long, hot shower and silently thanked Jessica Pope, who had asked him to go with her to get a double mocha after school and had changed his life.

  If Jessica hadn’t forced him into the lie about investigative work, he’d be watching the Cartoon Network right now, which was something he kept secret from even his closest friends. He still liked little kids’ shows. And he still had daydreams that he was the most popular and interesting guy in high school.

  And now those dreams seemed to be coming true.

  Detective Darius Sanderson knew the Ellis family. So when Derrick Ellis and Tim Bell arrived, a front-desk officer took them straight back to Detective Sanderson’s office.

  The detective had on bright sweatpants and a multicoloured parka. An unlit cigar was in the corner of his mouth, which he chewed at night instead of smoked. Once he got started, he couldn’t stop, so even though during the day he wouldn’t have had the nasty thing in the office, now it was wedged in between his back left molars, sticking out the side of his mouth like a wet stick.

  There weren’t many African Americans on the force in town, and Sanderson was conscious of the fact that he was often scrutinised in a different way than his white counterpart, Dave Wilson. And now, with a late-night call that he’d been told was important, Sanderson wished that he wasn’t wearing running shoes when the two men were ushered into his office.

  Sanderson got to his feet and shook their hands. He wanted to get this over with fast. With no need for small talk, he launched right in with, ‘So what do you have for me?’

  After he’d heard the story, told mostly by Tim Bell, the detective settled deep into his seat.

  Two minors. Neither in school. One showing signs of physical neglect. Single-parent father calling the shots. Kids seemed afraid of him. License plates that didn’t match a vehicle. Abandoned house out on Needle Lane, which was the area where stolen property had spiked in the last three months. Vandalism to Tim Bell’s car.

  Certainly there was a need to find these people and question them. And to help, there was a trail. A vehicle, a license plate, and a photo.

  It was a nice package. After he said goodnight, Sanderson could have waited until the morning to go to work, but instead he took off his shoes, got himself a cup of coffee, and went online to start the file.

  By the time Tim Bell and Derrick Ellis shook hands on the sidewalk and promised to stay in touch, the picture Bobby Ellis had taken had been uploaded into the state law enforcement system and an APB had been issued for the vehicle and the license plates.

  They’d been in the Liberty Motel for ten days when Mrs Dairy, the old lady who changed the towels and emptied the wastebaskets, insisted that she had to do the carpets. She claimed it was some kind of state law.

  Sam, half-asleep, wondered if after all the things his father had done, he’d be arrested for not allowing a woman, who looked like she was over a hundred years old, to vacuum their dirty motel room.

  But instead of arguing, Clarence told the boys to get up, and they all filed out into the truck and let the ancient lady push around a red Hoover upright vacuum originally purchased in 1972.

  Other people would have looked at Mrs Dairy’s life and seen sorrow and disappointment. But she refused to view it that way.

  While it was true that her husband had left her early in their marriage with a disabled child and a stack of unpaid bills, she’d managed to get by. Her little Eddie had suffocated when he was eight years old, after he’d climbed into an empty refrigerator that someone had left in a back alley. They had all kinds of warnings about doing that now. But Eddie had a heart problem that couldn’t be fixed, so maybe it was all a blessing.

  She liked to think so.

  That’s why she went to St Jude’s. They dealt with the positive and with the life hereafter, and Mrs Dairy was looking forward to that. Plus the church was on the better side of town, and they served cream and milk with their coffee after service, not dry non-dairy creamer. Her name was Mrs Dairy after all. She wasn’t going to shake a can of white powder into a hot beverage.

  She was now eighty-four and a half years old, which seemed like the time most people would have long ago retired. Still, she appreciated that she had a job at the Liberty. But her vision was no longer that great, and the vacuum seemed to slam into the sides of things more with each passing day.

  And on this morning, while Clarence and the two boys tried to fall back asleep in the truck, Mrs Dairy drove the vacuum straight into the corner floor lamp. It tipped over and crashed onto the bedside table. There were pieces of cheap white milk glass now speckling the carpet, and Mrs Dairy got down on her knees to try to find the bigger shards.

  That’s when she saw the green velvet box taped to the underside of the bed.

  What the hell was that?

  Thick duct tape was holding a small container to the wooden slat, and that just wasn’t right. Maybe there was some kind of explosive in that little box. And maybe terrorists were out there who were going to blow up the Liberty Motel because of its name.

  But she doubted it.

  Mrs Dairy was a God-fearing woman, but she was also a realist. So she got back up to her feet, which took considerable effort, and she went to the fake-wood-panelled door, locked it, and slid on the corroded privacy chain. She then returned to the worn carpet and pulled the thick tape off the green box and took it down. When she opened it, she saw Gertrude Wetterling’s jewellery.

  There was no mistaking it.

  Gertrude also went to St Jude’s on Ratsch Street, and her father had been the town’s only real jeweller. Gertrude had the family’s diamond brooch and two rings and a pearl necklace and the little platinum Christmas tree that Mrs Dairy secretly coveted because it had little glittering ornaments that were precious stones. Gertrude Wetterling wore it every Sunday morning in December, like clockwork.

  So hadn’t the town been buzzing with the talk of the robbery at Mrs Wetterling’s only three days ago? And now, she, Edith Luanne Dairy, had captured the criminals.

  Okay, so she hadn’t captured them, but she’d found them. And maybe there would be a reward.

  It was never too late in life to have your luck turn around.

  Mrs Dairy returned the green box to its hiding place under the bed, but she kept the Christmas tree pin. Not for herself but for evidence. She had the feeling people wouldn’t believe her. She was old. Her hearing was marginal. Her vision was worse. She had macular degeneration but was keeping it from everyone.

  She could put two and two together and still get four, but she needed to get the rest of the world to spring into action, and that was going to mean producing some proof of her accusations.

  And that’s why she kept the Christmas tree pin. Plus she loved it. So for right now it was hers, tucked into her right peach-coloured smock pocket, hitting the top of her lumpy thighs as she walked out the motel room door.

  Clarence took one look at the old broad wheeling the vacuum out of the motel room and he knew. Something had energised her step, and it sure as hell wasn’t cleaning his rat hole. Now she wouldn’t even look at him. Before she was one big coffee-stained, toothy grin.

  You just never could tell when people were going to ruin things. He had his eye on a carton of cell phones he’d seen at the audio/video store that was unopened near the unattended and unlocked back door. And just like that, Grandma Gum Disease had taken them from him.

  Once Mrs Dairy had cleared the doorway, Riddle moved to get out of the truck and Clarence snapped at him, ‘Shut the door. Now!’


  The tone of his voice left no room for argument. Clarence turned over the engine and the truck fired up. Sam, who had said less than a dozen words to his father in as many days, leaned forward. ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘What’s it look like I’m doing?’

  Clarence threw the truck into reverse and backed up into the parking lot. Sam looked at Mrs Dairy. She was moving faster now. As fast as her eighty-four-year-old frame would carry her, which was a crooked, wobbly trot.

  As the truck swung out of the parking lot and onto the highway, Mrs Dairy abandoned her cleaning cart and took off for the front office in what was, for her, a full-on sprint.

  Sam watched, staring out the side window, with no visible emotion. And then Riddle, gasping for air and realising that they were not just going but gone, took hold of Sam’s arm. Tears filled his eyes as he murmured, ‘My inhaler . . .’

  Emily ate lunch with Bobby and Nora and Rory the next day, and when Bobby asked if she wanted him to drive her home after school, she easily agreed. So Bobby went and lifted weights while she did soccer conditioning.

  When he was done, Bobby came to the edge of the oval track, where he stood waiting for her to finish. Emily was surprised that she found herself having to look away from his pumped-up body in his sweat-soaked T-shirt.

  Was he always that ripped? His upper arms were kind of amazing. It was so unnerving.

  But everything now was unnerving. Because all of her senses seemed heightened and exaggerated. That’s what Sam and Riddle’s leaving had done. They had taken her world and given every corner, every shape, a sharp edge.

  And so now a very small thing could have a very big impact. Did the colour of the sky at night just after the sunset always look like the inside of a dirty seashell? And why did the sun disappearing behind the mountains now feel like such a loss? It would be back the next day. But now she couldn’t even trust that because she was raw and exposed.

  Instead of going straight home, Bobby asked if Emily wanted to stop by Kel Hoffs and get a milkshake. She didn’t, but he had been so good about things and he was helping her now. So she had to say yes.

  She knew that his favourite milkshake wasn’t banana and date, but when she said that was the one she liked, he claimed he felt the same way. Most people thought the banana-date combination was gross.

  While they were in Kel Hoffs having the milkshake, Moye Godchaux came in. She was friendly with Emily and was best friends with Jessica Pope. Emily and Bobby Ellis each had a straw in the single milkshake and they were leaning in when they spoke, not because they were some hot couple but because they were talking about the house on Needle Lane and they’d both agreed that it was off-limits to discuss with anyone else.

  But of course to Moye Godchaux it didn’t look that way. To Moye Godchaux it looked like Emily Bell and Bobby Ellis were now together.

  Mrs Dairy knew when someone was fleeing the Liberty.

  People left the motel all the time in a panic after they’d broken something in their room or tried to jack the room’s crummy TV set but then discovered that an ear-piercing alarm went off when you unplugged the thing.

  She burst into the front office completely out of breath but still able to shout for Rowdy, who was supposed to be behind the counter doing the accounting but instead was sitting on the floor on a dog bed in a meditative pose humming. ‘Call nine-one-one! The robbers are getting away!’

  Rowdy had never seen Mrs Dairy so full of life. It was inspiring. Rowdy had always wanted to report an actual emergency, and he was now thrilled to have the chance to press those magic three digits on the phone.

  It didn’t take long for a patrol car to pull up and for Mrs Dairy to show the officer the taped green velvet box under the bed in room seven.

  Things were suddenly crackling at the Liberty.

  More police arrived. One officer started taking fingerprints, another began putting the many items that had been left in the room into clear plastic bags as possible sources of evidence. Mrs Dairy watched him use what looked to her like salad tongs for the process.

  Three out-of-state phone books were being removed when an officer noticed drawings on the back of one. He then opened up the first phone book and stared at the precise mechanical renderings.

  If this wasn’t evidence of something, he didn’t know what was. Maybe these people were domestic terrorists. There was something that looked like a cruise missile, and it had been drawn many, many times.

  Two of the ten rooms at the Liberty never got maid service that day. Mrs Dairy answered dozens of questions on site, and then they asked her to come downtown for a more documented interview.

  She rode the blue bus everywhere since the state had unfairly taken away her license after she twice failed the eye test. But now they loaded her up into a police cruiser, in the front and not the back, and drove her straight down to the station. She was disappointed that they didn’t turn on the swirling lights, but she didn’t say anything.

  When she got downtown, she had two cups of coffee and a bowl of chicken soup with the officer who was now in charge of the whole thing. Towards the end of the lengthy process, they put her in front of a computer screen and showed her a picture of a man standing next to a black truck. They had to blow it up to ten times its normal size, but once they got the image to where she could see it, she knew.

  It was him.

  The officer wanted her to take her time. He wanted her to be sure. Mrs Dairy’s fist hit the desk and she shook her head. ‘Hell, I’m blind as a bat and I’d bet my life on it.’

  Now that she’d identified a suspect, a sworn statement was typed up and she had to sign it in front of two witnesses. She was pleased with her own stamina, but she was starting to come down from the biggest rush of adrenaline that she’d experienced in decades.

  She suddenly just wanted to lay her head on the metal desk in front of her and shut her eyes forever.

  Mrs Dairy assumed that she’d take a bus from there over to Hillside, but they wouldn’t hear of it. That was when one of the officers even went so far as to call her a hero. She just laughed and felt herself blushing. She hadn’t had that feeling in a lifetime.

  Late that afternoon, when she got home and sat in the one really comfortable chair in the tiny house that she’d rented for years and years from the Rouse family, she pretended to herself that finding the little jewelled Christmas tree in her smock pocket was a complete surprise.

  She actually said out loud as she held it in her slightly trembling hand, ‘Dear Lord, I forgot all about this adorable little Christmas tree pin . . .’

  Detective Sanderson got a call from Cedar City, Utah, two days after he’d put up the alert. His suspect had been identified fleeing a cheap motel on the outskirts of town. Stolen property had been recovered. Several phone books, all with intricate drawings, were among the possessions that had been left behind.

  It was a satisfying start.

  The suspect and the boys had travelled eight hundred miles. They were still at large, but the detective now believed that it was just a matter of time before the net of law enforcement would close in around them.

  Sanderson spent the rest of the afternoon reading through the report filed in Cedar City. One item caught his attention, a Proventil inhaler in a plastic bag was found stuffed under the cushion of a chair in the Liberty Motel room. It had been dispensed from Sacred Heart hospital to Debbie Bell.

  Sanderson leaned back in his desk chair and felt a kind of dread seep through his body. He’d had asthma when he was young, and he’d been one of the fortunate ones to have outgrown the condition.

  But that was only because, in his opinion, he had a devoted mother who spent every moment of his childhood fussing over his malady.

  He was now even more worried about the two boys.

  21

  Clarence was out of his mind.

  That was a simple fact, but now it was a different kind of wide-eyed madness as they sped down the open highway.

/>   He’d pulled off the road after they’d travelled thirty miles and switched license plates, but that wasn’t going to change things. The bad guys were now actively looking for him.

  He tried to calm himself. He’d hit a streak of rotten luck. That happened. What do you do when you’re really down? You pull back. You change things up. Suddenly it felt like his head was going to explode.

  It was the boys.

  This was their fault. All of it. Riddle, sitting in the back, was again breathing fast gulps of air. It would drive anyone mad. The wheezing and the coughing. The gurgling throat spasms. Listening to it made Clarence’s skin crawl. The kid had to be doing it on purpose. He had to be just trying to see if he’d get a reaction. Well, he would. Oh yeah.

  And Sam. He was the one who had set off this chain reaction of pain. He was the one who had met a girl. The oldest story ever told. Boy meets girl. And then everything goes bad.

  When a highway patrolman passed going the other direction, Clarence made a decision. Before the police car could swoop around and come back after them, he turned onto a road that led up into mountains.

  Riddle, panting like a nervous dog with his eyes closed, suddenly sat up when the truck left the asphalt road and hit the big-stone gravel.

  Sam was staring out the window. Riddle looked over at Sam and his brother’s eyes said what they always said, it would be okay. Because he would make it okay.

  But inside Sam knew this time it was different.

  When Clarence got out of the car and removed a pair of wire cutters from the back of the truck and sliced the lock off the U.S. Forest Service chain that was slung across the logging road, Sam knew that this time he wasn’t going along for the ride.

  As the truck climbed higher up into the remote mountains of the national park, Sam knew that there was another world out there, and he and Riddle had to get back to it.

  Or end it all by trying.

  Bobby Ellis’s new SUV pulled up in front of the Bell house. He wanted more than anything to just be invited inside. But Emily grabbed her bag and opened the car door before he could even think of anything to say other than that he’d be on the case, which made him sound like some kind of idiot in an old television show.