by Nancy Martin
Nooch spoke up. “Roxy’s always helpful. Most of the time, she’s a very positive person, except for some cussing. But she helps lots of people—especially people who can’t go to the police.”
“Right,” Sugar said with sarcasm, still busy on her phone. “And we’re supposed to trust your judgment? I don’t think so, rhino man.”
Shock might be to blame for Sugar’s bizarre bad temper, but I was having a hard time not giving her a smackdown.
I turned to Richie. “I don’t know what you think I can do,” I said to him. “I’m supposed to temporarily adopt you or something? Is that even legal?”
“Do we have to explain every detail? Look.” She thrust her phone at me. “All the information’s right here on the screen. You can read, right?”
Before I could verify her Internet research, a big vehicle pulled up outside the office window. The driver tooted the horn cheerfully.
“Wait here,” I told the kids, and I went outside.
Mostly, I needed fresh air to cool my temper. Two minutes in the presence of Sugar Mitchell, and I felt like spanking her.
Out in the parking lot, I did a double take. A big black Escalade had arrived, exactly like the one Sage’s new boyfriend drove.
Except slipping out of the driver’s side was none other than Zack Cleary. He walked around the back of the truck with a wide, if uncertain, grin on his face. “Morning, Mrs. A. How do you like my new wheels?”
I pointed at the SQUISHY license plate. “This is Mr. Squishy’s Escalade. What did you do? Steal it?”
“Yep,” Zack said proudly. “Isn’t she a beaut?”
“I thought you were clear about the difference between an annoying prank and a real crime that might get you arrested, Zack, not to mention get you tossed off the police force before you even get hired.”
“I know, but I was in the moment.” His eyes were bright, and he was bouncing with energy. “Crazy, right? I saw this baby sitting outside your house, and I couldn’t stop myself. I knew Brian was inside with Sage and—well, it was an irresistible urge. Besides, Brian left the keys in the ignition, and anybody that much of an idiot deserves to get his truck moved, right?”
“You didn’t move his truck. You stole it.”
“What’s your point?”
“You stole it, and then you brought it here!”
At last, Zack’s good cheer began to waver. “I thought you could help me plan my next move.”
21
My day had shaped up into a full-blown shitstorm. I could see the faces of Nooch, Richie, and Sugar staring out through my office window. Sugar’s mouth was moving a mile a minute. They disappeared when they saw my glare.
“Give me the keys, tiger.” I put out my hand to Zack. “Then get inside before somebody arrests you.”
When we entered the office, Sugar was sitting at my computer. She broke off a diatribe she had been addressing to Richie. “This machine is totally outdated,” she said to me. “How am I supposed to function with a computer this old? I’m trying to find a lawyer, and this thing takes forever.”
Then she took one look at Zack and immediately assumed an angelic expression with shades of seduction.
“Hi,” she said, catching Zack off guard with some batting of eyelashes.
He stepped back as if she’d brandished a Taser.
“Okay, listen up,” I said to the group assembled around my space heater. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m leaving for an hour.” Over a chorus of objections, I raised my voice and continued. “All of you are going to stay here and behave yourselves while I take care of business. Zack, you can babysit.”
“I do not need a babysitter!” Sugar said hotly.
“Neither do I,” Richie said.
“I don’t mind,” Nooch said. “But what about lunch?”
Zack grabbed my sleeve as I headed for the door. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you? That’s not fair!”
“I’ve got to get rid of Mr. Squishy’s truck before the police figure out it’s missing. So you’re elected for child care, tiger.”
“But—”
I got a handful of his shirt and dragged him out the door. Outside, I turned on him. “Listen, Zack, I’m not leaving you here to spoon-feed the applesauce and supervise the afternoon nap. Those kids have lost their mother, and that girl’s father was almost murdered last night. Now, I haven’t figured out why yet, but there’s a fifty-fifty chance that one or both of them are in danger, too.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve got some police skills, right?”
“Uh—”
“You just finished the damn academy, didn’t you? So today your job is to protect those two kids until I get back. Nooch can help. Give him a direct order, and he’ll do what you say. Just make sure those kids are safe.”
“Okay.” Zack gulped. “Okay, I can do that.”
“If something happens to the little monsters, I’m going to blame you.”
I took Rooney with me. He dragged his bone into the Escalade and left a greasy swath on the white leather upholstery.
As I pulled out of the yard, my cell phone rang again.
I groaned and checked the ID, expecting more bad news.
But the display read CARNEGIE LIBRARY.
I answered the call and heard Sister Bob’s voice crying, “Roxy! Roxy! Come quick!”
I cursed and floored the Escalade.
We arrived in the parking lot of the library in a spray of gravel. I bailed out of the truck with Rooney hot on my heels. We ran through the employee entrance. Inside, I nearly stepped on the broken remains of a glass coffeepot and several cups.
In the stairwell, I ripped open the glass fire door and grabbed out the fire extinguisher. Rooney leaped up the steps ahead of me, his nose leading him straight for the trouble. Like a speeding bullet, he went through the double doors at the top of the stairs and disappeared.
I ran up the stairs behind him and reached the top in time to see through to the library’s big lobby. The skylight sent a glare of sunlight down on a pudgy kid in a baggy sweatshirt stained with orange dye. He held a shaky handgun on three terrified librarians cowering behind the circulation desk.
Rooney charged the kid, who swung the gun on the dog, but not in time. The librarians screamed. Rooney leaped into the air, and the kid shrieked at the sight of a green dog headed straight for his throat. The gun went off. A chunk of the ceiling exploded overhead. Everybody started screaming—maybe even me. I saw the gun go flying.
Rooney’s jaws closed around the kid’s forearm, and his momentum whirled the kid around so that I could see his face at last. He looked ludicrously terrified.
I kicked the gun soccer-style, and it skidded under a table.
Another gunshot—this time higher pitched. The kid yelped and clutched his butt. I swung around to see Sister Bob flat on her belly, pointing a BB gun at the library robber.
By that time, Rooney was shaking the kid by his arm. I knew the dog was so far gone into attack mode that he could no longer hear me shouting at him. So I pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher.
The extinguisher had more kick than I expected. Before I got control of it, I had sprayed the circulation desk and everybody around it with soapy white foam. Then I grabbed the nozzle hard and trained the stream on Rooney and the kid.
Rooney released the boy’s arm and backed off, his face full of foam.
“Get down on the floor,” I ordered the kid.
But he was scared, plastered with orange dye and foam, plus he was bleeding and probably in pain. He grabbed his own arm and bolted for the stairs.
“Let him go!” someone cried, and I recognized Sister Bob’s voice. She scrambled up from the floor.
The huddled group of librarians sorted themselves out into a cluster of middle-aged ladies who were frightened and outraged, but otherwise unharmed. One of them headed for the telephone and called 911.
“Tell the police to look for an orange kid,” Sister Bob suggested.
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p; “Who’s all soapy-looking,” added another librarian.
While the rest of the librarians advised the police, Sister Bob rushed over and hugged me. “Oh, Roxana, I can’t thank you enough for coming! He’s never brought a gun before. We were so frightened!”
“It’s okay. Everybody’s fine. Unless you shot someone with a BB.”
“I think I hit that kid in the tushie.”
“If it’s only a BB gun, he’ll just be walking funny for a while. It’s his arm I’m more worried about. Good thing he was wearing that thick shirt, or Rooney might be chewing on a wrist bone.”
Sister Bob hugged Rooney. “What a dear, sweet dog!”
“Uh, look, Sister Bob, I have to be going.”
“But why? You should stay and talk to the police. You can identify the boy.”
There was no way to explain that I didn’t want the cops to see the vehicle I’d driven over. By now, surely they were looking for a stolen Escalade with a SQUISHY plate.
“You can identify him just as well as I can. Besides, nobody’s going to miss seeing a kid who’s orange and butt-shot. I don’t want Rooney to get unfairly impounded. He’s had all his shots, but—”
“I understand,” said Sister Bob.
I edged for the stairs. “Sister Bob, did Sage go to school today?”
“Yes,” said Bob. “Her boyfriend came to take her.”
“Did you see her leave the house?”
“Well, no, but she said she was going. She promised to lock all the doors.”
If I had any motherly instincts at all, they were telling me that Sage was home alone with her new boyfriend. “Okay, Sister Bob, I’ll see you later, right?”
“Thank you, Roxana. Thank you, thank you.”
All the librarians had to hug me after that, but I finally tore myself away.
Rooney and I pulled out of the parking lot just as two police cruisers showed up. One officer craned his neck around to see who was driving the Escalade, but I think I managed to escape before he saw my face. The license plate, though, was clear.
I drove up to Loretta’s house to see if Sage was skipping school again. I parked the Escalade in the back alley and used my key to get into the house.
But nobody was home.
Next I drove over to Sage’s school.
It had been my school, too, years ago, but now it was very different.
For one thing, the place had as many security systems in place as the airport. I had to pass through a metal detector manned by a mouth-breather who packed a Taser, a nightstick, and breath so bad he could have killed a terrorist with it.
Eventually, I made my way to the school’s administrative office, where a former friend of mine was typing at warp speed on a computer. An open bag of M&M’s sat beside her coffee cup. She saw me and waddled over to the counter to chat. Sometime during the last decade, she’d added about a hundred pounds to the body she’d so easily squeezed through a locker room window to steal Girl Scout cookies from a coach’s desk drawer.
“Roxy Abruzzo,” Megan Schnorr said with a smile, planting both dimpled elbows on the counter. “What brings you here? Back to finish your detention at last?”
“Very funny, Megan. Seems to me we spent a few hours in detention together. No, I’m just making sure my daughter made it to school today.”
Megan made no effort to deny her own high school hijinks. “Sage? Just so happens I saw her in the hallway this morning. I noticed because she looked upset.”
“How upset?”
“Not crying, which is all part of an ordinary day around here. But she had a group of girlfriends around her, and they were all chattering like a flock of birds. My radar told me something was up, but not big enough for me to interfere. Want me to check to see if she’s in class like she’s supposed to be?”
I hesitated.
Megan must have seen something in my face, because her smile broadened. “It’s a stupid mother who trusts any teenager these days, Roxy. Why don’t I rustle up Sage, and you can see for yourself?”
I caved in. “Okay, thanks.”
“No problem. Wait here. School security rules.”
I hung around, keeping an eye on the school principal’s closed office door while Megan went looking for my daughter. I’d spent a lot of hours in that same office, sitting on the same wooden bench, waiting for the principal to come out and decree my latest punishment. In fact, I’d had time to carve my name into the bench. But somebody had sanded down the wood and refinished it. Either that, or so many girls had carved the bench that it had finally collapsed into a pile of toothpicks, and now a new one stood in its place.
At last, Sage showed up in her school uniform, carrying her backpack. She looked surprised to see me, but didn’t exactly throw herself into my waiting arms. “Mom! What are you doing here?”
“C’mon.” I pulled out the keys. “Let’s got for a ride.”
Sage held back. “I have class. An English quiz next period. It’s Emily Dickinson.”
“I bet you know enough about Emily Dickinson already. Let’s go. Megan, we’re going to go look at colleges this afternoon. That okay with you?”
Megan’s phone was ringing, so she waved us off and went to answer it.
I put my arm around my daughter’s shoulders and pulled her out to the parking lot.
Outside, Sage stopped dead on the sidewalk and gaped at the Escalade. In the passenger seat, Rooney sat looking green and smiley with his tongue hanging out. He spotted Sage and barked, happy to see her.
Sage saw the SQUISHY plate and cried, “That’s Brian’s truck! Where did you find it? He’s going to be so—oh, God, Mom, you didn’t steal it, did you?”
“No,” I said. “But if I see you skipping school with him again, I might. Get in. We’ll take a ride.”
I shoved Rooney into the backseat and used a scrap of McDonald’s napkin to swipe up the worst of the mess his bone left on the passenger seat.
Sage started talking even before she slammed the door. Her words tumbled out in a rush. “Brian came over this morning, Mom, but I didn’t invite him. He just showed up. I swear we didn’t do anything.”
“Why the hell did he come over then? To check on you? What is he, your stalker?”
“We had a discussion about that,” Sage said firmly. “I laid it on the line. He has to trust me, or we’re done. We had a big fight, but he saw it my way, honest. He was going to drive me to school, but when we went outside, the truck was gone! He was so upset. He called the police and everything, but I had to go to school and— Where did you get this? Did you find it? Did the police bring it to the house?”
“None of the above.” I turned the key in the ignition. “Fasten your seatbelt. What else do I need to know about Brian?”
“I should have introduced you. I know that, and I’m sorry. Loretta told me weeks ago I should make sure you met him. He’s really nice and— Okay, okay, I was wrong not to make sure you got a look at him. But Mom, you’re so— You’re very scary sometimes. Especially to my friends who are guys. You intimidate them.”
“Zack isn’t intimidated.”
“Zack.” Sage sighed. She snapped her seatbelt into place and sank back against the seat as if the weight of the world suddenly landed on top of her.
“Yeah, Zack. What are you doing, stringing him along while you date Mr. Squishy, too?”
“I’m not dating Mr. Squi—Brian.” She looked at me sideways to see if I bought that fib. “Not exactly. I’m not sleeping with him either, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I put the truck into gear and concentrated on driving. It was easier not to look at her when I asked the next question. “Are you sleeping with Zack?”
“Not anymore. Honest, I’m not. I don’t want to get pregnant, Mom. I really don’t. I learned from my mistake.”
“Well, that’s progress.”
“Look, I know Brian’s a little nuts with the calling. He says it’s because he cares abut me, but it’s—”
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bsp; “It’s a way of controlling you.”
“He can’t control me, Mom. I’m an Abruzzo, for crying out loud!”
“I can’t help being worried.”
“Do you think I haven’t noticed all the abused women you bring around? I’m not dumb, Mom. I can see how they got into bad situations. I know how to say no, and I know how to kick Brian’s butt if he keeps up the annoying phone calls. I’m your daughter!”
“Are you serious about him?”
“Serious?” she asked on another sigh. “I don’t know. He’s—he’s not Zack.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s not a yinzer, y’know?”
I knew, all right. A yinzer is a born and bred Pittsburgher with blue-collar values, maybe a few bad habits, and certainly a way of talking that sounds uneducated. A yinzer uses the word “yinz”—a word that might be “y’all” in the South—the plural of “you” with a Burgh accent. A yinzer drinks beer, rarely reads a newspaper, and throws his sofa into the back of his pickup once a year and drives it down to sit outside the hockey arena because he can’t afford a ticket to the game. But he wants to be where the action is.
Yeah, Zack was a yinzer in the making.
I drove, not caring where we went. What mattered was inside the truck.
“I just can’t see myself spending my life with Zack,” Sage said. “Mom, the last book he read was a biography of some football player. And that was back in high school for a book report.”
“Okay, so he’s not exactly sophisticated. Brian is?”
“No,” Sage said, sounding miserable. “He isn’t. But at least he can buy me lunch. Take me to a movie. Zack just wants to stay home and watch TV while we…”
Her voice trailed off, so I said, “I know what he wants. Look, why are you bothering with these two losers, anyway? You’ve got your own life to live.”
“Yes, but…”
“But what?”
“The Christmas dance is coming up. It’s just nice to have a real date, you know?”
“So? Ask somebody else. Ask anyone. Nobody’s going to turn you down. I’m thinking ahead, Sage. What about college?”
Miserably, she said, “I don’t know.”