Cree thought about Stacie and Troy. They both knew where she lived. They knew how the family doted on Jasper.
Grandma had packed some brownies for the Canfields. Cree hoped Ben would come downstairs so she could thank him. It hurt just a little that he didn’t want to see her, but why should he? Yesterday was yesterday.
Jasper shivered all the way home. Cree hugged him tightly. She nearly forgot him when they came in sight of the house.
All she saw was her bike, what was left of it, in the middle of the lawn.
Chapter Eighteen
“My bike! It’s ruined!”
That time it was more than tires.
“Son of a gun,” said Grandma. “Looks like somebody ran a truck over it.”
Troy had a truck. And Stacie had her submarine, if she still had it.
But why? And how? Cree knew she had left it against the steps. That was nowhere near where a truck could get at it. And there were tire tracks on the lawn.
Was that why someone took Jasper? To lure Cree and Grandma out of the house?
While Grandma asked the neighbors if they had seen anything, Cree carried the remains of her bike inside. It was totaled, the frame bent and torn. The two new tires were shredded.
She thought of calling the police. They would be no more interested than they were in her tires. Needing to tell someone, she called Maddie.
“It’s just gone,” she said. “It’s not even fixable. Who has it in for my bike?”
“Why would anybody have it in for your bike? I’ll come by and pick you up in the morning.”
“But your car. I can walk. I’ve done it before.” She thought of those winter months ahead.
“My car got me home,” Maddie said. “If it gives any trouble in the morning, I can ride with Ben and we’ll both pick you up.”
Were Stacie and Troy aiming to crush her completely? Whatever for? The only reason she could think of was to keep her from taking revenge for being dumped. If she were going to take revenge, she’d have done it already, if she could think of a way to do it.
The attack on her bike was relatively mild, but what about that rock? It might so easily have killed her. She couldn’t see Stacie going that far. Or Troy. Or even Emerson. Then who?
She was back to Ben’s conspiracy theory. Whoever took Kip might have wanted to keep her out of it. And she was definitely in it, not only for Kip and Davy, but herself.
The next morning’s Chronicle ran a story about the break-in at Maddie’s house. It didn’t give Evan’s name, but identified him as a member of Lakeside’s football team. It did give credit to a “young man of the household” who “subdued the intruder” until the police arrived.
Maddie saw it, too, and was in good spirits when she picked up Cree.
“I hope everybody at Lakeside reads that, and their stupid little heads can figure out who did what.”
“I think he made that clear,” said Cree.
“Clear enough for their stupid heads? Anyhow, my car’s doing great. Is it okay with you if we go and see Velda this afternoon?”
Cree still didn’t trust the car, but Maddie was happy with it. At three o’clock, they set out for Velda’s house.
Cree asked, “How come you don’t ride with Ben every day? It would save gas.”
“I know.” Maddie wended her way through school traffic on Grand Street. “He brought that up, too, along with pollution. He’s always on my case about pollution. The thing is, I have my own life. I don’t want to be tied down to his schedule.”
Cree could understand that. They couldn’t do what they were doing right now if they were stuck with Ben.
Maddie said, “Last time, you told Velda you were taking a course in psychology. We need a place where you’re taking it.”
“I sort of thought—well, Southbridge wouldn’t have anything like that and she could check it anyway. How about online?”
“Brilliant! But we still need a name.”
“What about Mellin College?” It was Grandma’s name and Mom’s maiden name.
“I think there’s one already, in Pennsylvania. After Andrew Mellon, I think.”
Cree ran through a list of melons. “Cantaloupe—no. And not honeydew. Or watermelon. Casaba College?”
“That could work. Let’s make it Casaba University. She might not ask, but we have to be prepared.”
When they reached the bridge, Cree looked down at the grillwork. “Jasper couldn’t have walked across that. Somebody took him, that’s for sure.”
“But why?” asked Maddie.
“If I knew that, I could maybe figure out who did it. Or vice versa.”
Stacie hadn’t been in school since the news broke about her father. She was probably ashamed. Troy was there, but he kept himself scarce. They might have broken up anyway, after he smashed her car being such a smarty-pants. Or because of her father.
When they reached Fremont, stage fright attacked. Butterflies in the stomach, people called it. That was exactly how it felt. Maddie counted on her to pry more information out of Velda. How would she do that and what if she couldn’t pull it off?
“Are we just going to barge in on her? Don’t we need a reason?”
“The reason is you,” Maddie said. “It’s that course you’re taking and what she said about her sister. You need to know more so you can get credit for the course.”
Cree slid down as far as her seatbelt would let her.
“Don’t worry,” Maddie said. “You were great last time. You’re a natural.”
“Don’t I wish.” In spite of her fear. Cree thought she hadn’t been too bad. All that ad libbing.
“I hope she’s home,” Maddie said as they passed Velda’s mailbox. Cree hoped she wasn’t. The garage door was closed, most likely with a green Volkswagen behind it.
She reached for her knapsack in the back seat. “I’ll need my notebook so I can look studious.”
Maddie handed her a three-ring binder and a pen to go with it. “There’s blank paper in the back. What about names? Did we give any names last time?”
“I think we did, but I don’t remember. Maybe she won’t either. How about Culpepper? Lucretia Culpepper. And you’re, um—Mary Santiago.”
Velda came to the door wearing a yellow smock daubed with clay. “Well, hello! How’s that poor little cousin of yours?” She stepped aside to let them in.
“Deirdre’s bearing up.” That was one name Cree remembered.
“Do bring her over and we can talk about Lakeside.”
“I will as soon as she gets here. It would be nice if she could meet your sister. Are we interrupting something?”
“Not at all, as long as you don’t mind if I keep working. I don’t want my clay to dry.” Velda led them to a room set up as a studio. It had a long work table and two skylights. A row of shelves held work that was finished or nearly finished. Some of it was pottery, some were human figures in twisted poses. Several of the figures had been cast in bronze, others were glazed and baked. Still others were raw clay.
Velda wet her fingers and began working on a shapeless lump. “What’s up?”
Cree sat on the floor with the binder on her lap. “We don’t mean to bother you, but something you said last time got me interested. I mentioned that I’m taking a course in child psychology. You said you had a sister—”
“Yes. Kelsey.”
“We hate to be nosy.” Cree wished Maddie would say something. Help her out a little. “You told us your sister had some sort of trauma when she was very young that might still be giving her problems.”
Velda hadn’t said anything about problems but that was obviously the case. Cree opened the notebook. Keeping busy helped to quell the butterflies.
For all the attention Velda paid her, she could have said almost anything. “You’re a psychologist?” Velda asked as she shaped her clay.
“It’s a project on childhood trauma. We have a case right now in my neighborhood, a baby that disappeared.”
“
Yes, I read about that.” The clay must have been drying fast. Velda kept dipping her hand and splashing water.
Cree was now on familiar ground. “There are people who think the baby’s brother had something to do with it. Five years old. How could he make a little kid disappear like that? They were grilling him for days. That’s got to be traumatic, first losing his brother and then knowing they suspect him and won’t believe what he says. I’ve written it up extensively.”
Maddie nodded her approval.
“We’ll have to wait years,” Cree said, “to know the long-term effect. And just one case doesn’t prove anything.”
“What is it you’re trying to prove?” Velda asked.
“Uh—we’re trying to find out if trauma ever really goes away. People think a little kid won’t remember. Maybe they don’t, on a conscious level. It gets buried but it’s still there.”
That was pretty good, she thought, with the “conscious level” psychobabble.
“The case I’m talking about is still going on. I’m pretty sure it’s not something that kid is going to grow out of without a lot of help.”
“I’m with you there.” Velda destroyed a section of the lump and began reshaping it.
With a nod from Maddie, Cree waded out deeper. “So I can’t help wondering, if I’m not being nosy, which I probably am, just what happened to your sister. I had the impression you weren’t too eager to talk about it.”
Maddie glared.
“But,” Cree added, “You can be assured of strict confidentiality.”
Velda thought it over. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, since you don’t know her.”
Maddie brightened, but looked guilty.
“Anyway,” Velda said, “it was only a dream. What else could it be? We never told our parents. It was just a dream. I was surprised she remembered it all those years.”
She smiled uncertainly. “There’s not much I can tell you. It was more like a static picture. She said she woke up—and here’s the crazy part, her bedroom’s on the second floor. She said she woke up—I’m sure she was still asleep—and there was a skeleton next to her bed, and a man without any pants. It’s kind of a jumble, so of course it was a dream.” She gave an embarrassed laugh.
Maddie looked rapt and very eager.
“A skeleton?” said Cree. “And a man with no pants?”
Velda laughed again. “I said it was confused. That part was never clear to me. She wasn’t making much sense when she told me. She did mention a skeleton and a man’s bare ass, only she didn’t use that term. I’m not clear just what the relationship was, but it couldn’t have been a skeleton’s ass because they don’t have one.”
Cree wrote it down, mostly to look serious. She wasn’t likely to forget. “How old was she at the time?”
“About four, I think.”
Just the age when kids started taking an interest in “those things,” as Mom would call it. “Did she ever see a naked man before?”
“I doubt it. We’re a modest family. We don’t even have brothers.”
“Where do you think she got the idea? Most dreams have some sort of origin.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Velda said. “Sigmund Freud would probably call it wishful thinking. With all due respect to the old guy, I don’t think he understood the female psyche all that well. Kelsey was really upset. That’s why she told me about it, as if it really happened. She didn’t want our parents to know. I didn’t either, of course. They’d have hassled her with a lot of questions and opinions.”
This was getting interesting. Cree thought maybe she really would take a psych course, except that she wasn’t going to college.
“You said he had no pants on. Was he wearing anything?” she asked. “The man, not the skeleton. It would be interesting to know what the connection was.”
“That’s all she said. No pants.” Velda splashed more water from a muddy-looking dish on the table. “She said he was a robber. I don’t know where that came from. Maybe to explain why he was in the house. According to her, he was standing by her bed.”
“In the house?”
“That’s what I mean, it was crazy. On the second—no, wait. Why didn’t I think of that? We had relatives visiting and she was sleeping in the sun porch. That’s downstairs. After that dream, she wouldn’t sleep there again. I had to share my bed with her whenever we had guests.”
That big house didn’t have extra bedrooms? It must not have been as big as it looked. Cree said, “I suppose nobody could have gotten in?”
“No, I know what you’re thinking. It wasn’t the relatives, they were all female. And it couldn’t have been a real intruder. I looked all over for signs of a break-in. I knew enough to do that. Nothing in the house was disturbed. It could only have been a dream. I don’t know if dreams are what you’re looking for.”
Only for whatever inspired the dream. Cree wasn’t ready to say so and wondered how she could find out. “You said the dream never went away. How do you know that?”
“She brought it up again, oh, maybe ten years later. She’d gone to the movies with some friends and the man sitting next to her took out his thing and masturbated. She ran out of there crying. She’s always been fearful, ever since that dream.”
“Fearful of—” Cree asked with the utmost concern. “Of men?”
“Yes, that especially. She might be timid anyway, some people just are, but I’m sure it affected her deeply.”
“Did she ever get help for it?”
“Therapy, you mean?” Velda stopped working for a moment. “I was too young to think of it and we never told our parents. When she brought it up after that time at the movies, I did suggest she talk to someone. She wouldn’t consider it.”
They had gotten all they were going to get, and Maddie seemed eager to leave. As soon as they were in the car, she exploded.
“Wouldn’t consider it! And now look what she’s done, the selfish bitch. Just because of a stupid dream, she makes a shambles of Ben’s whole life. He never did anything to her. Why should he have to pay for some sicko at the movies? They should put Kelsey in a straitjacket and force her to get her head shrunk.”
“You know it can’t be done that way,” said Cree. “You can drag her to a shrink, but if she doesn’t want to talk, she won’t. I feel bad that we conned her. Velda, I mean. She trusted us.”
“That’s how you con people. It only works if they trust you. Why couldn’t Ben just take a hint and leave her alone, damn it?”
“You said he’s no good at that. He wanted to fix things and make it all nice again. Maybe he thought they were friends and they really weren’t. It can happen with Aspies.”
Maddie put her key in the ignition. “Yesterday you didn’t know a thing about Aspies, not even that term.”
“I looked it up on the Internet. It said Aspies can have a hard time distinguishing who’s really their friend and who’s out to get them. It said they can be so lonely—”
“They can.”
“—they think somebody’s a friend who isn’t. Ben kind of alluded to that. He was sort of talking about it and sort of not.”
“What was he talking about?” Maddie turned the key. It made a click and then was silent. She took a breath, ready to scream, and tried again.
It chugged into life. She let out her breath and patted the dashboard, then started out to Fremont.
“Betrayal,” said Cree. “And his ideal world. Do you think it really was a dream Kelsey had?”
“Are you kidding? A skeleton and a bare ass? I’m starting to go along with Freud. Maybe she really was curious, but I don’t see where the skeleton fits in.”
“It’s her horror of men. But what started it? That’s what I’d like to know.”
At Fremont, Maddie turned left instead of right.
“Looking for Kelsey?” Cree asked. “It might not be her house.”
“Gotta find out. Keep a lookout for horses, will you?” Maddie drove slowly, watching both sides of the road.
Kelsey could be anywhere.
“I think it was a palomino,” Cree said. “She should use that money to get over her hang-up. She’d have a happier life.”
“She might think the horse is therapy. Probably one of those people who’s embarrassed to see a shrink. I personally think it’s more embarrassing to go on being a fruitcake and making a fool of yourself.”
Cree pointed. “There’s the trailer!”
Maddie stopped with a jolt. “That thing? On Fremont? This is where you saw Kelsey?”
“That’s where I was, behind that stone wall. She was out here on Fremont. Coming from that direction. You see that house over there?”
Maddie took her foot off the brake. As she pressed the gas pedal, the car erupted in a deafening rattle.
“Oh, curses! Now what?” She coasted over, almost into a ditch, and turned off the engine. “What am I going to do?”
Cree had no idea what to do. Maddie ranted on. “I hate cars! Why can’t they have a garage here instead of a ratty old trailer?”
“Maybe if you let it rest for a while, like yesterday. Then you could get home.”
“Yesterday it didn’t make that noise. All it did was not start. This sounds like the whole thing falling to pieces.” Maddie got out and opened her hood.
Cree got out, too, cringing in shame. If she hadn’t yelped about the trailer and caused that sudden stop, the car might have made it home.
While Maddie poked at her engine, Cree walked along the road for a better look at the Victorian house with the turret. Its driveway was flanked by two stone pillars. She walked farther until she could see between them.
“Maddie, look!”
Maddie scowled. Cree went back so she wouldn’t have to shout.
“That house has a sun porch. Remember she said Kelsey was sleeping in the sun porch?”
Maddie went to see for herself. She was too upset to care very much. “I put them all back and I hope they stay. If it does that again I’m going to find a good high cliff and dump it over.”
Cree knew where there was a good high cliff. The car would have to be drivable to get it there.
Twenty Minutes Late Page 14