“How fast? Let me show you,” I said, and put my foot on the accelerator.
“Slow down, Brooke! Watch out for that truck!”
“Isn’t this fun?” I inquired, slowing down as we pulled into the Styleses’ neighborhood.
“Holy— Do Aunt Antonia and Uncle Karl know how fast you drive?” Janelle was panting and holding on to her bucket seat, her eyes wild. Weirdly, I found that I resented Janelle calling them “Aunt” and “Uncle.” By now I felt that they were my aunt and uncle.
“No,” I said, “they think I’m a totally safe driver. Which I am, of course. I just like to let it all out sometimes. It’s good for the engine—it cleans the carbon out of the piston valves, or something.” Uncle Karl had said that to me once, and I’d noted the explanation down for the future.
“I doubt there’s even one flake of carbon left in this car’s engine, in that case,” Janelle said. “Are you sure that cop wasn’t signaling to you? Because it looked to me like he was.”
“That cop already had somebody pulled over. He was much too busy to bother with me,” I replied, swooping up the driveway to the Luttrells’ house, which was around the corner from the Styleses’ place. “Here we are.”
Janelle looked around. “That’s funny,” she said. “Somehow I remember your house kind of differently. Wasn’t there a little garden over there? Remember, we had a dolls’ tea party there. And wasn’t the front door over on the other side? And wasn’t the garage in the back?”
“We had it remodeled,” I said, jumping out and opening the trunk for Janelle’s stuff.
“Yeah? You changed the position of the door? How come?”
I rolled my eyes. Who knows why suburban homeowners do anything? Who cares? “Actually, you’re remembering it wrong. We did have it remodeled, but the door and the garage are where they always were.” I pulled the bunch of keys out of my jeans pocket and, taking a wild guess, stabbed at the lock with one of them.
Oops. Wrong one. I tried another.
Janelle looked at my hands, busy with the keys. The tag saying “Luttrell” on it slid into view as, finally, the key turned in the lock. I grabbed the whole bunch, covering the tag with my hand, and pushed the door open.
“Welcome to our home,” I said, gripping her by the elbow and maneuvering her inside.
The Luttrells evidently really, really liked fake flowers. The place looked like a funeral home all ready for a viewing, minus the corpse. There were massive arrangements of lilies and orchids in chest-high vases stationed around here and there, and smaller bouquets of silk roses and baby’s breath dotted the occasional tables. The fireplace was filled with fake autumn leaves and New England asters, and the mantelpiece and chandeliers dripped with woven chains of curly chrysanthemums and red plastic berries. I expected to hear a blast of organ music and see some guy in black sidle out in front of the hearth and intone, “My friends, we are gathered here today to pay tribute—”
“Wow,” said Janelle, looking around herself.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s my mom: flower-mad. Only, she doesn’t have a green thumb, so . . .” I waved vaguely at the massed greenery. Since Aunt Antonia was supposed to come over and water the plants on Wednesday, some of them must have been real, but the place smelled of Scotchgard and lemon furniture polish and not at all of dirt or growing things. I walked forward cautiously, feeling like I needed a machete to hack through the jungle. I was trying to figure out the layout of the house so I wouldn’t show Janelle into a broom closet or something.
Here was the dining room. More banks of fake flowers, gladioli this time, standing sentinel around the room, and a huge arrangement on the table of severed sunflower heads surrounding a faux pumpkin. Next was the kitchen, with hanging baskets of ivy and plastic gourds everywhere. Ah. That door—the one with the lock on it—probably led to the cellar. Unlike lots of LA houses, these northeastern homes usually have a cellar.
I turned to Janelle, who had followed me, and plastered a huge smile across my face.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I think the best place for you to stay is in the guest bedroom off the rec room downstairs in the basement. You’ll see, it’s perfectly nice, but kind of underground. It’s only that my mother’s sister and her family are coming to stay, and they’ll fill up the bedrooms upstairs.”
“Really? I thought your mother was an only child.”
Honestly. Janelle was so annoying. “Oh, did I say sister? I meant sister-in-law. Would you like a soda, or would you rather go right downstairs and take a shower?”
“A soda would be nice, but”—her forehead knotted up with thought— “the only sister-in-law she’d have if she’s an only child would be my mother, and she’s in Brazil.”
“That’s right,” I said, nodding enthusiastically as I rooted around in the refrigerator. Oh good, a ginger ale. I inserted it into her fist and yanked open the door, revealing a set of descending stairs. Yes!
“She is in Brazil, but”—I flipped the light switch on to illuminate the steps—“she’s coming home. Now, why don’t you run downstairs and freshen up before everybody gets here?” I gave her a gentle push through the doorway onto the first stair. She stopped there, turning to look at me. Her shoulder and arm were still inside the kitchen, even though the rest of her was in the basement.
“You’re joking! My parents are coming here?”
“Of course!” Couldn’t she just move, for crying out loud? Was I going to have to shove her down the stairs?
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“It was a surprise, silly!” I said. “Now go on and be sure and lather up good, because frankly, Cousin, you’re a teeny bit fragrant, if you know what I mean.”
“Wow, that’s amazing! I can’t believe it!”
“Believe it, Janelle,” I said between gritted teeth.
“Okay, then, give me my bag so I have something to change into.”
I thought about this. Who knew what she had in that bag? Her phone, probably, with which she could call the police.
“I’ll bring it down when I come. You go ahead. I want to organize some snacks.”
“Fine. Which way is the bathroom?”
“Straight through the main room and then hang a left,” I said.
“Okay. But, Brooke?”
“Yes?”
“Can you bring, like, some fruit or something? I feel like I’ve been eating Cheetos for years.”
“I would be delighted. Fresh fruit compote coming right up.”
“Good. See you in a few minutes.” She turned and began to descend the steps.
Finally.
I eased the door shut and turned the lock. As I walked away, a tiny little voice floated up to me from below.
“Brooke? Hey, Brooke? You can’t take a left, ’cause it ends in a cement wall. Don’t you even know the rooms in your own house? Brooke? Brooke, this is a workshop. I don’t see a bathroom, or a bedroom either. Brooke?”
I smiled. Tiresome Janelle had been disposed of for a few days, anyway.
19
I WAS HUMMING A TUNE as I looked around to make sure I wasn’t leaving any incriminating evidence behind me. I still had the little blue dust cloth in my pocket, so I went through wiping my prints. No doubt I’d left some at the Styleses’ house, but not many. Darling Mrs. Barnes was so good at dusting and polishing, and I had done a pretty good job myself. Since my fingerprints weren’t on file and there were lots of people in and out of that house besides family members, it was unlikely they’d have any reason to fix on a stray pair of prints in a public room. I’d been meticulous in my own bedroom and bath.
Anyway, it wasn’t like I was going to be wanted in a homicide or anything. Aunt Antonia would be at the Luttrells’ to water the plants in a day or two. And I had left Janelle with a ginger ale. If she rationed it, she’d be fine. Even if she didn’t, there was probably a source of water down there somewhere. Isn’t that, like, where the pipes for the water come into the house in the f
irst place?
The only thing that would happen to her would be that she’d lose a pound or two from fasting, and that wouldn’t hurt her. She’d come out of this whole experience a sadder but wiser young woman, and with a trimmer waistline. Probably.
“Brooke? Brooke, open this door!” The basement door rattled as Janelle banged on it.
I rolled my eyes. I was beginning to feel a bit put-upon—all that yelling was giving me a headache.
I am a thief. It is my nature, and I am comfortable with it. What I am not is a kidnapper, or whatever I had become by shutting her up in the basement. Okay, the actual maneuvering of Janelle into the basement didn’t cause me a single twinge of guilt, but now I was beginning to think. Wasn’t kidnapping a federal crime? Like, with the FBI hot on your trail?
I started to feel more and more irritated. It was entirely her fault that she was in this situation, and if you thought about it, the whole thing was super-unfair to me. If anything happened to that idiot, they would come after me like I was Genghis Khan or something, when all I asked was to be left alone. For one moment I debated letting her out and pretending it was a joke.
No, I couldn’t do that. She’d tip them off and they’d catch me, whether I fled by bus, train, or plane. What I needed was to make sure she didn’t die or injure herself seriously while she was shut up in here, because either one was bound to cause trouble for me down the line.
Ah. Her cell phone. That was it. I dumped out the contents of her bag, mentally reviewing everything I remembered about her means of communication. Her parents had taken her original phone away so she couldn’t talk to Ashton Whoever. Then she’d bought a disposable, but it had run out of juice because there was no electricity at the cabin.
I found it and turned it on.
Surprise! There was a charge on it, 100 percent full. Oh, well maybe you could charge it while you were riding on the bus or something and that’s why it was working. Since it was a cheap disposable, I was almost certain the authorities wouldn’t be able to trace it once I’d dumped it in a trash can.
I pocketed it, figuring that after I landed somewhere, I’d give the Styleses a call and warn them about the Luttrells’ unexpected guest. As a bonus, I’d also get a chance to say a fond farewell to Brooke and my happy life on the outskirts of Albany.
“Don’t worry,” I said, lifting my voice to be heard over the banging on the door. “Somebody will be here to let you out tomorrow morning. Now, don’t gulp that soda down all at once. You’ll want it later.”
I tossed the bag into a corner, took the keys labeled “Luttrell,” and headed for the door. After locking up, I would tuck the keys under the doormat on the front porch so there would be no delay in opening the house up tomorrow when they went to rescue Janelle.
See? I can be thoughtful when I try. But will I get any credit for it? Not likely.
I opened the front door.
“Morgan! What are you doing here? What’s Daddy’s car doing in the driveway?”
I reared back as though I’d discovered a rattlesnake on the doormat.
Worse than a rattlesnake, it was Brooke.
After a lo-o-ng millisecond, during which my brain processed this information, I said, “Oh, Brooke, good! I’m so glad you’re here!”
Lying comes as naturally to me as breathing. When I’m stumped for what to say, I automatically blurt out the exact reverse of what I actually feel. I pulled her inside, taking care to flip the lock on the door as I closed it. I had no idea what I was going to do next, but it only made sense to hinder her if she got any ideas about making a sudden exit, screaming.
“Morgan, what’s going on? Hey!” Her eyes narrowed and her voice deepened with suspicion. “Isn’t that my mom’s Hermès scarf you’re wearing?”
I ignored the last question, while filing the information away in my mind. (Hermès, eh? Might be worth some bucks.) I made my eyes go big and wide. I shushed her, my finger at my lips.
“There’s something in the basement,” I whispered.
“What?” she whispered back.
At that moment Janelle, bless her little heart, chose to let out an infuriated scream and hammer on the basement door. It was several rooms away from the front hall, where Brooke and I stood, but clearly audible.
Brooke jumped and brought one hand to her mouth.
“Who is it?” she breathed.
“I don’t know. I came over here to water the plants and . . . and . . .” My brain scrabbled frantically for some reason why I would come over here when I was supposedly down sick with a vicious cold. “And feed the cat,” I concluded triumphantly.
“What cat?” Brooke was looking skeptical. She crossed her arms across her chest. What was wrong with the girl? Whatever had happened to sweet, trusting Brooke? She continued, “The Luttrells don’t have a cat. Mrs. Luttrell says dogs and cats just—you know, pee all over everything. She’s really house-proud, and I’ve heard her say she couldn’t understand why anybody would keep an animal in their home.”
“It’s not theirs,” I explained, still in an urgent murmur. “That’s why she forgot it was there when they left in such a hurry. It’s their niece’s. She begged them to take care of it while she was in the hospital for an operation. Like you said, Mrs. L hates cats ’cause they pee all over everything, so she said she’d only keep it in the basement. Then she heard about her sister dying—not the niece’s mother, a different one—and she rushed off without remembering about the cat in the basement. So she called your mother to ask her to take care of the cat, but nobody was home except for me. I came over here, even though I’m sick”—I coughed illustratively—“to feed the poor kitty, and I heard somebody screaming and swearing and kind of growling in the cellar. It was awful!”
Brooke opened her mouth to question me further—perhaps to inquire why I found it necessary to drive the five hundred feet between the two houses in her father’s red Corvette—but apparently I had raised my voice on the last few words of my explanation, and that’d attracted the attention of the beast in the basement. Janelle was using something or other to bang on the underside of the floor where we stood. Maybe a broom handle?
“I can hear you whispering up there, you horrible person! Is that you, Brooke Styles?” Janelle said, in a menacing voice that penetrated the floorboards. “ ’Cause if it is, I’m going to kill you!”
Brooke’s mouth dropped open. She turned to stare at me, wide-eyed.
“We’d better call the police,” she said, so faintly that I had to strain to hear her.
I couldn’t have her doing that. I looked around and saw a pad of paper and pencil on a table near the door. I darted over to it and wrote: Wait. Really, really worried about poor cat. I underlined the last “really” and held the note out to her.
She nodded slowly as she read. She took the pad from me and wrote: Yes, but police will find it.
Let me try something, I wrote back. Stay here & tap foot. I demonstrated by tapping my foot—two short, sharp taps.
“What are you doing?” snarled Janelle from below. “I can hear you, you know.”
Brooke looked at me questioningly. I wrote: She’s underneath us, away frm bsmnt dr. I’ll sneak over. I pointed toward the kitchen. & U keep her here. I’ll open door & call cat. Then call cops. Please? Don’t want cat 2 get shot.
Brooke looked horrified at the idea of the innocent kitty—already abandoned and starving—winding up as collateral damage in a SWAT team intervention. She hesitated, torn between a natural desire to get out of the house and the possibility of rescuing an animal in need, and then nodded. She gave two more taps with her heel on the floor. I flashed a thumbs-up sign and started toward the kitchen.
She and I were in each other’s line of sight all the way until I entered the kitchen. The cellar door was around the corner. I looked back at her and nodded again before disappearing into the far room. By way of variety, Brooke rapped repeatedly on the wall this time.
“Stop that!” snapped Janelle.
“You’re driving me crazy.” To my relief, her voice sounded small and far away from me—coming from below Brooke, in fact.
I opened the basement door without making a sound, but did not trouble myself with calling a nonexistent cat. I waited for one long beat and then stepped back into the dining room, staring at Brooke, my face slack with horror. I said nothing but pointed helplessly back into the kitchen.
After pausing only to give a few more distracting thumps on the wall, Brooke approached on tiptoe, her face one big question mark.
What? she mouthed at me.
Just trust me, I mouthed back. Go look. I pointed down the stairs. She crept closer to the basement door, as though to the edge of a flaming abyss.
She peered into the gloom, and then looked back at me. “What?” she whispered.
I gestured for her to step forward, one tiny little step down. Come on, Brooke, don’t you trust me?
She made a face, reluctant to place herself in greater proximity to the terror below but unable to overcome her better instincts about the welfare of the cat.
She stepped forward onto the first step.
This time I didn’t have the luxury of letting her go all the way down the stairs under her own steam. I gave her a good push. Unbalanced, she fell, grabbing at the railing as she slid down the steps. I slammed the door on her and turned the lock.
A few loud bumps, a shriek of terror, and then a groan relieved any apprehensions I might have felt about my former cousin. A thud followed by silence would have been far more ominous. Obviously she had slowed her fall by clutching the handrail. I’d guess that she would have nothing more to show for being pushed down a flight of stairs than a bruise or two.
Hardly any need to get the cops involved at all, I would think.
I could hear Janelle galumphing through the basement, ready to repel this intruder. “What are you doing? What happened?” she shouted. Then, after a moment observing the new resident of the cellar, “Who are you?”
“Don’t hit me!” Brooke shouted.
Don't You Trust Me? Page 14