The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney

by Suzanne Harper

  “It’s a Sadie Hawkins dance,” she said, pronouncing each word very distinctly. “Girls ask boys.”

  “Oh, right.” I looked at the floor, the ceiling, the door. “Well, that’s a long way away—”

  “Not that long. And Merri told me—”

  The late bell rang, a jarring clang that echoed through the halls like an air-raid signal.

  “Oh, no, I told you we were going to be late!” I started to open the door.

  Fiona tugged on my arm, pulling me back into the hall and completely ignoring Sergeant Grimes’s thunderous expression.

  “What?”

  “Merri told me that Clare told her that she heard Chad talking to Sam and that he thinks that Jack wouldn’t mind too much if you asked him.” She stopped to take a breath and beam triumphantly at me. “Isn’t that totally cool?”

  I hesitated, parsing that sentence in my mind. “So him is?”

  “Jack, of course!” Fiona patted me reassuringly on the shoulder as she opened the door and swept into the classroom. “Don’t worry, I’ll talk you through the whole thing. This is going to be so so so much fun!”

  I soon realized that it’s very hard to get through life when you’re too distracted to pay attention to what’s going on around you. By the end of the day I’d been yelled at twice for not paying attention in class. I had flunked a pop quiz in biology. And during a vicious game of volleyball, my lack of focus had resulted in the ball’s smashing into my face not once, not twice, but three times.

  I was sitting alone at the bus stop, wondering if my nose was broken and thinking for the hundredth— okay, the thousandth—time about what Fiona had said, when I felt a touch of dry ice brush my left arm.

  I sighed and turned my head to see a middle-aged man wearing a dark suit and narrow tie sitting inches away from me, smoking a cigar. His old-fashioned fedora was pushed jauntily onto the back of his head. His right elbow was hooked over the back of the bench, and his left ankle was propped on his right knee.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said. “I heard you’re finally open for business.”

  Oh, no. Go away, leave me alone, I don’t want to talk to—

  Oh, what the hell.

  “What business are you talking about?” I asked tersely.

  “The ghost talking business, of course.” He nodded in approval. “That’ll be a nice little moneymaker for you. I got a nose for these things.”

  He blew a smoke ring in my direction. “I was regional sales director of the year ten years in a row, you know. Had a whole wall full of plaques.” He waved his hand in a wide arc to illustrate. “’Course then I died. After that I have to say the plaques didn’t mean as much. But I still get to pass on business tips once in a while to folks down here on the earthly plane. Take you, for example—”

  “Forget it. I’m not going into the ghost talking business.”

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Sure about that? ’Cause a girl with your kind of talent could charge a bundle.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okey-dokey.” He blew two more smoke rings. One floated delicately inside the other. He watched it for a moment with quiet pride, then winked at me.

  “Don’t you know smoking will kill you?” I snapped.

  He laughed. “Black humor. I like that in a girl.”

  I started to say something nasty back when I heard a slight cough behind me. I turned to see Detective Calhoun eyeing me.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “er, whatever it is you were doing.”

  “Oh. Um. Just . . . practicing for a play.”

  “By the way, it wasn’t smoking that got me in the end,” the ghost said. As he faded away, he added, “Here’s another tip, kiddo. Never eat sushi at a diner called Mom’s.”

  “Ah,” Detective Calhoun said. “A play! It’s always a pleasure to meet a fellow thespian. You know, I did a little acting in high school, too. Harry the Horse in Guys and Dolls.” He sighed happily at the memory. “Great part. Great play. If you ever get a chance to see it—”

  “What do you want?” I interrupted.

  He blinked, as if he had been awakened from a particularly pleasant dream. “Right to the point, I see. Well. I don’t know if you remember me? Detective Calhoun? We met outside the Dawsons’ house yesterday?”

  “Uh-huh.” I waited, wary.

  “I thought we might have a little chat.”

  I glanced at my watch. “My bus will be here any minute.”

  He didn’t take the hint. “You seem to have become good friends with young Jack—”

  Young Jack? Where were we, in a Dickens novel? I looked at him in disbelief, but he rolled right along.

  “—so I’m sure he’s told you about the recent tragedy that his family suffered.”

  A long pause here as he looked at me meaningfully. I made my face as blank as possible and looked unhelpfully back. If he wanted to pump me for information, he’d have to do better than that.

  The silence stretched out for almost a minute, which is actually quite a long time to go without speaking. There was a sudden breeze, and a few leaves fell from the tree behind us. I squinted down the road, looking for the bus and concentrating on not speaking.

  Finally he sighed heavily and said, “Yes. Well. I’m sure you’d like to help them any way you could.”

  I stared at him without blinking. “If young Jack has said something to you, for example, that might shed some light on his brother’s disappearance—”

  “I’ve only known Jack for a few weeks,” I said. “He didn’t even tell me about his brother until last night.”

  He sighed even more heavily, as if that were exactly what he would expect me to say. “I see. And what did he tell you?”

  “I’m not sure I should say,” I said cautiously. “Wouldn’t that be betraying a confidence?”

  “Would it?” He somehow made me feel that just by asking the question, I had revealed something sinister about the Dawsons.

  “Yes. Yes, I think it would.” I tried to sound definite and assured.

  “All right.” He shrugged. “Of course you may be able to tell me something that would help Jack and his family,” he added thoughtfully. “It’s a funny thing, even people who are perfectly innocent don’t always trust the police—”

  “Why should they?” I demanded hotly. “When you show up at their school and their home and practically stalk them, how do you think they’re going to act?”

  “Jack said that I was stalking them?”

  Damn! Did that sound like he was overreacting, covering something up, hiding something suspicious? I clamped my mouth shut and looked away.

  “Nothing you say will get anyone into trouble, Miss Delaney. I promise.”

  I kept my eyes fixed on a distant line of trees, silhouetted against the sky. I wouldn’t say another word, I promised myself. Not another word . . .

  “Unless, well—” He paused in such a heavy-handed and obvious manner that I was glad I had missed his performance as Harry the Horse.

  I pressed my lips together more tightly. He crossed his arms and joined me in staring at the horizon.

  Fine. We can both sit here as silent as stones for the next week.

  Seconds ticked by.

  I noticed that my foot was tapping nervously, and forced myself to stop it.

  Finally I couldn’t help myself.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless the Dawsons do have something to hide,” he went on smoothly. “I’m sure they don’t. It’s just that if this case is never solved, well, there will always be that faint suspicion—”

  “Of what? Luke was fighting with his father, so he ran away. Out West someplace. Wyoming, maybe. He’s working out there as a white-water guide. . . .” My voice trailed off. I was so eager to defend Jack and his parents that I had almost forgotten that this story was a total fiction.

  “That’s what Jack told you?” A tone of mild surprise, underlaid by another, sharper note. Sudden, intense interest.<
br />
  “Well . . . yeah.”

  “I see.” He let that hang in the air for a few seconds while I wondered if I had just said something really stupid. When I didn’t respond, he said, “Well, if you do hear or see anything else that might help the investigation, perhaps you’ll give me a call?”

  He searched several pockets before finding a card, which he handed over with an apologetic air. I stared down at it. It was gray and wrinkled, rather like his suit. There was a light brown stain over the words Missing Persons Bureau. It looked as if someone had spilled coffee on the card, then thriftily dried it off instead of throwing it away.

  As he started to walk away, I called after him. “Detective Calhoun?”

  He turned wearily.

  “I just wanted to ask you—” I hesitated for a moment, then plunged on. “You search for missing people?”

  “Every single day,” he said.

  I hesitated. “How often do you find them?”

  “Not often enough. Why?”

  “Well . . .” I took a deep breath. “Say someone left on a trip about ten years ago and said they would come back. And they sent a few postcards that kept saying they were on their way, but they never showed up. And then, after a while, even postcards stopped coming. I was just wondering. . . .” My voice dwindled off as I saw him shaking his head with regret.

  “This person was an adult?”

  I didn’t even try to keep up the fiction that we weren’t talking about a real person. I nodded.

  “After that many years the odds are slim. You could try hiring a private detective, of course.”

  “I don’t think that’s an option.” I didn’t know anything about private detectives, except that they sounded expensive.

  Detective Calhoun ran a hand over the top of his balding head. “Well, even they might not have much luck. It’s a pretty big world. Still lots of room to get lost, if that’s what you want to do.”

  “Yeah,” I said stiffly. “Well, I just thought I’d ask.” He glanced over my shoulder. “I think your bus is coming. Have a good evening.”

  The bus wheezed to a stop, and I climbed on. I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes, and imagined the world and all the places where someone could still get lost.

  Chapter 21

  When I walked into the kitchen, Grandma Bee was hunched over the table, peering shortsightedly through a magnifying glass. “Good, you’re finally here,” she greeted me without looking up.

  “Finally?” I protested mildly. “I came straight home from school!” I opened the pantry and peered inside without much hope. “Why don’t we ever have any cookies? Or crackers even.”

  “Forget cookies, forget crackers, I need your help,” she snapped. “Take a look at this spider. Your mother thinks it’s harmless, but you know how softhearted she is. I think it could be a black widow myself. Maybe something even worse.”

  I approached cautiously. “Is it dead?”

  She took her gaze off the spider long enough to scowl up at me. “Of course it’s dead!” she snapped. She glanced down to see the spider scuttling behind the sugar bowl. “Oh, damn it!”

  She grabbed a dish towel and swatted at the sugar bowl, which of course meant that it crashed to the floor and broke, scattering the unpaid bills that had been stuffed inside. Wren, ever alert to any kind of domestic crisis, came running at the sound of smashing china.

  “Oh, no!” she said. “Not another broken dish!” She knelt to pick up the pieces.

  “Wren, for goodness’ sake, sweep that mess up and throw it away,” Grandma Bee snapped.

  “But I might be able to glue it back together.” “You’re fussing over a silly piece of china when my scientific investigation has been completely destroyed!”

  Wren looked at me fearfully. Grandma Bee’s last scientific investigation had resulted in a massive kitchen explosion and gallons of an unidentifiable green slime that smelled like rotting seaweed.

  “Maybe a poisonous black widow,” I said in answer to her unspoken question. “Maybe a harmless house spider. Now we’ll never know.”

  “Oh, is that all?” She tried to sound casual, but she looked a bit nervous as she reached for the broom. She began sweeping with the intense concentration that other people reserve for high-stakes poker games.

  “All?” Grandma Bee pushed herself to a standing position and began lurching around the kitchen, staring at the floor with a gimlet eye, lips pursed with serious scientific purpose. “What if that spider is a Sydney funnel-web? Its bite delivers the mostly deadly toxin in the animal kingdom!”

  At that moment Mordred padded into the kitchen, tail held high to show his complete disdain for all of us. He weaved between Grandma Bee’s legs, threatening to tip her over, and she swatted at him.

  “Get away from me, you disgraceful creature!” Mordred hissed and retreated to the far corner as Grandma Bee continued talking to Wren. “I would think that you’d be more concerned about potentially poisonous creatures living cheek by jowl—aha!”

  She spotted the spider near the stove at the same moment that Mordred did. Grandma Bee moved fast, but Mordred moved faster.

  One lightning-quick feline leap, one paw slashing down, and that spider was ingested by Mordred before any of us could blink.

  “Damn it!” Grandma Bee glared at Mordred. Mordred glared right back. “You old reprobate. That’s another investigation cut short.”

  Wren looked more closely at our cat. “He just ate a poisonous spider? Do you think he might die?” I knew she was trying not to sound too hopeful.

  “Never.” Grandma Bee was definite. “Not that spawn of Satan. I keep getting my hopes up, but he just keeps on living. It’s unnatural, is what it is.”

  It’s true that Mordred has an iron constitution; he’s eaten dead wasps, rancid socks, and a quart of Grandma Bee’s weed killer without showing the slightest ill effect.

  Still, I reached out to stroke his back. He hissed and raked his claws down my hand.

  “Ow!” I jumped back as tears came to my eyes.

  “That’s what you get for trying to be nice to the most evil creature on the planet,” Grandma Bee said unsympathetically. “And I’m including pigeons.”

  I finally set the table (after dousing my hand with the strongest antiseptic in the medicine cabinet). Wren finally finished making dinner (after fishing a refrigerator magnet out of the saucepan and complaining vociferously about people who did not put refrigerator magnets on the refrigerator). Lark and Linnet finally finished tossing the salad (after having their usual heated argument with Grandma Bee, who hates green peppers and considers their presence in her meal a personal affront).

  When we all sat down to eat, four people weren’t on speaking terms, two people claimed to be on the verge of starvation, and one person (me) was worrying about cat scratch infections.

  Grandma Bee’s glasses were even more askew than usual, and she kept smacking her lips to keep her dentures in place, a sure sign that she was trying to repress great inner excitement. Finally, after we had settled in to eating our meal, she cleared her throat portentously.

  “I heard something quite interesting at the post office today,” she said, trying (and utterly failing) to sound casual and offhand. “Maude Canterville stopped by while I was there. The Assembly just had a request for an additional message service. It seems that a local TV reporter is working on a story, and she wants to feature Lily Dale—”

  “Not again!” Raven groaned.

  “Please don’t tell me it’s going to air on Halloween,” Oriole said.

  “That would be so typical,” Wren said.

  This was not the reception that Grandma Bee was hoping for. “I should think that this family would show at least a little interest in getting positive media exposure for our profession,” she said coldly.

  “Well, dear, the town hasn’t come off very well in the past,” my mother said placatingly. “Reporters always make it look like the people who live in Lily Dale are such—�
�� She peered vaguely into the gravy boat she was holding in her hand, as if she might find the word she was searching for there.

  “Weirdos,” I said succinctly. “Con artists. Cheats. Delusional, mentally deranged, New Age flakes—”

  “To be fair,” Dove said, “there is a quirky element.”

  “Anyway,” Grandma Bee said quite loudly in order to refocus attention on her, “the story is about some boy who went missing.”

  I put down my fork and sat very still.

  “And the family has insisted that the message service be filmed.” She sat back in satisfaction at the stir this caused. Lily Dale never allows filming or recording during services; it’s as unthinkable as having a camera crew invade a regular church service.

  “I guess the family consulted some woman who said she was a medium a while ago, but no luck.” Grandma Bee sniffed disdainfully. “Sounds like they went to someone who was about as psychic as a poodle. But they’ve agreed to try again because, of course, there will be many very talented psychics in attendance at a Lily Dale message service. Someone”—and by “someone,” she clearly meant herself—“is bound to get a message of comfort and healing.”

  A small, hard, cold ball had formed in my stomach. I pushed my plate away as Grandma Bee went on.

  “What if this boy isn’t dead?” Dove asked. “You said missing.”

  Grandma dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “Then he might see the show and decide to call his mother! Or a person who knows where he is will see it and turn him in. Still a happy ending. Plus Maude said that one of the network producers in New York has been looking for a psychic to star in a new TV show. Someone with talent and, of course”—Grandma Bee picked up her napkin and delicately dabbed at her lips—“stage presence.”

  The long silence that followed this announcement was filled with the subtle vibration of nine minds thinking furiously.

  “So one of us could be on TV?” Lark asked. “And all we have to do is channel this lost boy?” Linnet added.

  “Do we get paid for this?” That was Wren, of course, focusing on the practical.

  Grandma Bee snapped her dentures in irritation. “Money is not the issue!”