Trash Course

by Penny Drake

  I swallowed the salad and realized with a jolt of nervousness that I had left my pistol in the Jeep. It’s generally a bad idea to carry a gun in a public place. People call the cops. I wondered if this time leaving it behind had been a mistake.

  Oh, calm down, I thought. Zack isn’t going to attack you. And you could break him in half if he did.

  “Go on,” I told him.

  “Dad was a black sheep,” Zack said. Was that a note of pride in his voice? “Or maybe you could say he was the only white one. Grandpa Peale—who I’ve never met, by the way—ran the family with an iron fist and everyone had to help out in the family smuggling business. Dad finally couldn’t stand it and ran away. He hid in the commune, and that’s where he hooked up with Mom. They never legally married, so I ended up with her last name instead of Dad’s. The rest you know.”

  “How often do you talk to your relatives in Chicago?”

  “Never,” Zack said emphatically. “I don’t even know if they’re aware of my existence. Dad told me stories. Scary ones. They’re ruthless and cruel, and all they care about is their criminal empire. They don’t deserve the Peale family papers.”

  “So you did know about the treasure,” Terry said.

  He grimaced. “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?” I snarled. “Because you were hoping to find and keep it for yourself?”

  “Well, duh. I mean, I didn’t know who the hell you were, did I? I’d tracked down Uncle Lawrence, told him who I was, and made friends with him. He thought the way my dad ran away to join the hippies was hilarious, and he was going to show me something important. I was pretty sure it was the treasure, but he only showed me that stupid leaf collection. Then I got the assignment in Alaska and had to take it. When I got back, I found you and Ms. Hawk in his house and then we found that dead guy and I didn’t know what to think. For all I knew, Belinda had hired you to kill Uncle Lawrence and find the papers for her. Hawk Enterprises isn’t listed with the Better Business Bureau, it’s not in the phonebook, and it’s not listed with the state as an outfit of private investigators. I thought you were some kind of mafia hit squad, and no way in hell was I going to let you search that house without me being there.”

  “Touché,” I said, raising my wine glass.

  “Yeah. Maybe being suspicious runs in my family.” He picked up his plate and began to fill it.

  “By the time I realized you were on the up-and-up, it was too late. Be honest, Terry. If I had told you all this yesterday, would you have trusted me?”

  “Probably not,” I had to admit.

  He nodded. “So I kept my mouth shut and hoped.”

  “What about your police record?”

  “Oh God.” He closed his eyes. “You found out about that, too?”

  I realized I was tearing my roll into tiny pieces and made myself stop. “The birdies sing to me. Let’s hear it.”

  “Christ. All right.” He slugged down some more wine, then took a bite of chicken. “After my parents split up, I didn’t do so well. They’d taught me to distrust everything to do with the government, including public schools. ‘Conformity factories,’ they called them. I rebelled against my teachers and didn’t relate so good to the other kids.”

  “When you grow up naked in a tomato patch, there isn’t much to talk about with the mall and chili fries crowd,” I supplied.

  “Something like that. Anyway, Mom was always gone, either at work or at the night classes she took. We barely scraped along and I got tired of not having the stuff I saw the other kids had. So I took to shoplifting. What better way to stick it to big business, right?”

  “And you got caught.”

  “Couple times,” he admitted. “But by then I’d learned a thing or three. I know I’m not bad-looking, and that always makes it easier to talk your way out of trouble.” He made a puppy-dog face that I had to admit was adorable. “‘Please, mister, don’t arrest me. I did it on a dare. I promise I’ll leave and never come back. Please?’ It always worked, which didn’t exactly discourage me.”

  “So then what?” I said.

  “Mom eventually got a job working for one of those house-cleaning companies, and during the summers she got me hired in, too. I saw all these gorgeous houses while Mom struggled to pay the rent on our crappy-ass apartment. I wasn’t stupid enough to steal while we were cleaning, but I was able to learn where spare keys were kept and what the burglar alarm codes were and who had a dog. It was so easy to sneak back in later and take what I wanted.”

  “How did you learn lock picking, then?”

  “Luck. I was burgling a house and ran into another guy who had already gotten in. I persuaded him to teach me what he knew. Norm—that was his name—taught me lock picking, how to case a house, where the good fences were, and even a little photography.”

  “Photography?”

  “A valuable aid to casing a place,” he said. “Carrying a camera around your neck also gives you a good excuse to be in any number of places. Norm taught me that.” His face took on a strange cast, as if reliving both pleasant and unpleasant memories. “He taught me a lot. In some ways, he was more of a dad than my real dad. By the time I hit twenty, I was making a decent living on burglary, con games, and theft. I got into houses, museums, galleries. You name it, I’ve probably stolen it. I got arrested twice but the charges never stuck. The third time, I was sentenced to two years. I was a model prisoner and served only ten months before they paroled me.” He shuddered and put his plate down. “Prison was horrible. The idea of going back—” He shuddered again and for a moment I wondered if he was going cry. “Anyway, I went straight after that. Or I tried to.”

  “Tried?”

  “You ever hunt for work with a felony conviction hanging over your head?” he countered. “You beg to clean toilets at minimum wage. So I pulled one more job. I broke into a store and stole some equipment to set myself up as a freelance photographer. I’m pretty good at it. Always was. I sent the store an anonymous money order for the stuff I stole, once I was able. That was three years ago. Now I’m here, sitting in a park with a mistrustful woman I’m completely falling for, wondering if she’s ever going to trust me or even speak with me again.”

  “Why do you want the papers?” I said, ignoring his last sentence. “So you can sell them? Make a tidy profit?”

  “Believe it or not, I want to donate them to a museum as a gesture.”

  “What kind of gesture?” I asked, the image of a middle finger rising in my mind.

  “The kind that makes up for all the stuff I’d stolen over the years.”

  “So what are they, anyway?”

  He leaned closer, and I could smell his skin. His lips almost touched my ear. I could feel their heat, and I shivered. “If I tell you what I know,” he whispered, “will you kiss me?”

  No. “Maybe,” I murmured back. My nipples were tingling at his almost-touch.

  “How about if I sweeten the deal?” He reached into the picnic basket behind him. I expected him to produce a cake or something for dessert, but instead of a pastry box, Zack pulled out a small brown sack. He opened it, and the rich scent instantly told me what lay inside.

  “Cocoa-covered espresso beans,” I breathed. “You play dirty.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” he said, and gave me a warm, slow smile that stopped the entire world. He held up a single bean and leaned toward me. I did some leaning of my own and took it delicately from him with my lips. My tongue flicked the tips of his fingers and a tiny shudder went through him. He was breathing a little hard. I crunched the bean, and the combination flavors of cocoa and coffee exploded in my mouth.

  Zack leaned yet closer. Kissing him would be the most natural thing in the world. My heart was jumping around in my chest like a frantic baby bird. I was aware of every sensation—of the warm August air, of the birds singing overhead, of the blanket beneath me, of the smells of leaves and grass and chicken and chocolate. Our faces came closer. He was so beautif
ul, a golden-haired God of thieves. I pulled back.

  “What’s the treasure, then?” I asked.

  “Treasure?” Zack swallowed hard, clearly trying to regain his composure. “Uh…right. It’s…it’s a bunch of old papers.”

  “Not exactly news,” I said, plucking another bean from the sack. Caffeine in its raw, natural form. Can’t go wrong with that. It was also the perfect distraction. Zack was right next to me, and I wanted to pull his arms around me, feel his solidness and warmth.

  “You need some background to understand,” he said. “Look, the Peale family got started in Philadelphia back in the seventeen hundreds. Roger Peale, my great-something-grandfather, was working in a print shop as an apprentice.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Victor Peale was in publishing before the Detroit house burned down. A generational family business, then.”

  “Yeah. Roger lived in Philly right when everything was moving and shaking in the colonies. According to family legend, Roger didn’t actually want to be a printer. He wanted to study history. But his family wasn’t rich enough for that to work out for him. He did realize that the events going on around him would be important. Roger attended speeches and meetings whenever he could and kept a very detailed diary of everything. The diary would be immensely valuable to an historian.”

  “But it wouldn’t be worth a gazillion dollars,” I said.

  Zack shook his head. “Probably not. But Dad said that Roger had kept other papers, ones far more valuable. He wasn’t all that interested in talking about it. In retrospect, I think he was trying to forget about his family altogether.”

  I leveled him a hard look. “So you don’t know exactly what the treasure is. And for that you wanted a kiss.”

  “Still do.”

  “Right.” I popped another espresso bean into my mouth and put my dishes back into the basket.

  “You can earn that kiss by helping me track down Uncle Lawrence.”

  “You know where he is?” Zack asked, perking up.

  “In a way.” I picked up the dusty black notebook. “While you were gathering picnic paraphernalia, I went back to the house and checked the leaf collection. Uncle Lawrence may have been a packrat gone haywire, but he was anal-level organized, and my suspicions were correct—the final notebook was an index.”

  I opened the book and showed Zack a series of lists—leaves, Latin names, volume numbers and page numbers—all in neat columns.

  “Okay, so what?” Zack asked.

  “Patience, young grasshopper. Earlier today I confirmed that Uncle Lawrence owns a truck, though it’s not at the house. That means he took it somewhere else. I also found some waterproofing goop for tents and some camouflage netting in the garage.”

  “So he’s camping somewhere,” Zack said. “And he’s camouflaged his tent. Good to know, Terry, but not helpful in tracking him down. We can check the local campgrounds, sure, but he could be hiding on any unused bit of land.”

  “Now, now,” I said. “You’re forgetting about the leaf collection he showed you. I took the notebook down to the botany department at the University, did a little asking around, and came up with this.” From the notebook I slid a folded sheet of paper and handed it to Zack, who unfolded it. “It’s a map of the Arboretum, with all the species of all the big trees marked on it. This place is more than an arboretum—it’s a research center for the University, and they have it all mapped out. The map confirms what I suspected.”

  Zack furrowed his brow. “That all the leaves in Uncle Lawrence’s collection came from the Arboretum.”

  “Ten points,” I said, and impulsively kissed him. On the cheek. While he was recovering from that, I added, “I’m willing to bet Uncle Lawrence is camping in the Arb. It’s a familiar place, and he obviously likes it here. Camping in the Arb is against the law, but if he’s hidden his tent carefully enough, no one would notice. So let’s go find him.”

  We finished putting supper away (except for the espresso beans), stashed the basket and notebook in a clump of bushes so we wouldn’t have to carry them, and headed deeper into the Arboretum. The wood chip trail we chose wound steadily downward, and the ridge rose steadily higher beside us. I was in a good mood. All my instincts hummed, telling me I was right, that Uncle Lawrence was here somewhere. The only problem was that the Arboretum is almost a hundred and twenty-five acres plus various pieces of surrounding land that most people think are the Arboretum but aren’t. The place is chock-full of steep hills, hidden groves, and unexpected depressions. A decent search could take a whole team several days, and we had only the two of us.

  I said as much to Zack, who tapped his chin with one finger as we walked downhill. “There has to be a way to narrow it down,” he said. “Where would he not be?”

  “The open areas, of course,” I said, pulling out the map. “And any place with lots of foot traffic.”

  We finally settled on half a dozen places to check, all of them in the valley, and spent a fairly pleasant hour hiking around to check them out. At first it seemed a beautiful day for it. The green trees kept the sun off us, and our feet tossed up the pleasant smell of earth and wood chips from the trails. But every so often, we had to leave the trail and push through undergrowth to check out groves and thickets, and the hiking turned into hot, sweaty work. I was glad for the water bottle in my belt. Sweat darkened Zack’s red polo shirt, and he often removed his cap to swipe at his forehead, revealing blond hair gone dark and curly.

  By the time the sun touched the top of the hills cupping the valley, we had found nothing encouraging. I began to feel discouraged. I was probably wrong about Uncle Lawrence’s hiding place, which meant looking like an idiot in front of Zack. He never made a smart remark, however, even after he had pushed through something thorny to check a hidden clearing. Purple shadows were slipping out from under the trees and birds sang bedtime songs. We would have to leave soon—the Arb closes at dusk. My disappointment grew. I had been so sure.

  “I think we need to give it up for now,” I said reluctantly. We were skirting the edge of a hilly area that becomes a popular sled hill in winter. “The bike patrol will be coming through here pretty soon to throw everyone out.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Zack said. “We can try again tomorr—” He paused and stared into the woods. “Wait a minute. What’s that?”

  I jerked my head around, heart pounding. “What? Where?”

  He grinned. “Psych.”

  “You shit!” I punched his shoulder and he fell back in mock pain. “You complete creep!”

  And then, without knowing quite why, I lunged for him. A surprised look flashed across his face as he tumbled backward into the bushes with me on top of him. I felt hard muscle move beneath warm skin.

  “Hey!” he protested. “Get off!”

  I sat on his chest, my knees on his outflung biceps. Zack outweighed me, but he didn’t have the leverage to move. I leaned down until my lips almost brushed his. Zack looked up at me, a question in his eyes.

  “Apologize,” I said.

  The question vanished. “Never!”

  Zack twisted like a cat and I lost my hold. He rolled over on top of me, but I managed to get my knees up. I gathered my strength and straightened my legs hard. Zack flew backward a good three feet. I shot upright and fled into the brush, laughing over my shoulder at him. Zack crashed after me. Leaves caught in my hair. I felt like Daphne fleeing Apollo, and I wondered if part of her had wanted the God to catch up, wondered what would happen if he did.

  The tent popped up in front of me like a forest spirit. I skidded to a halt, and Zack nearly plowed into me. It was a small cabin tent covered in rough camouflage netting with leaves and twigs stuck all over it. We both stared at it, then glanced at each other. There was no way anyone in there wouldn’t have heard us coming. The gloom in the thicket was deepening by the moment.

  I motioned for Zack to stay where he was and sidled up to the tent. “Hello?” I said. “Is anyone in there?” No respo
nse. I tapped the top of the tent, setting it to shaking. “Uncle Lawrence?”

  Still no response. Moving quickly, I grabbed the tabs and zipped the tent open. A breath of damp, moldy air puffed over me. The interior was dark, but I could make out a pile of blankets—unoccupied—and a few other non-Lawrence-shaped objects.

  “If this is his tent,” I said, straightening, “he’s not here.”

  “No kidding,” Zack said. “It might not be—”

  A twig snapped. I spun and looked straight at a gray-haired man. He wore dirty farmer jeans over an equally dirty t-shirt. His red baseball cap was almost exactly like Zack’s except for the dirt. The man’s eyes were wide. He stared at me like a startled deer, then turned and ran. The moment he turned his back, I recognized him as the man I had chased through the mansion.

  “Lawrence!” Zack shouted, confirming his identity. “Wait! It’s me!”

  We both gave chase but were at a disadvantage. It was almost dark and Uncle Lawrence knew the terrain. Branches and twigs whipped across my face and roots snagged at my feet. I heard Zack breathing hard behind me.

  “Wait!” I called. “I just want to talk!”

  The trees ended and we burst into an open area of mowed lawn. The light was better out here. I glanced left and right and saw Uncle Lawrence following the tree line. He was heading for the river.

  “Quick!” Zack said. “We can still catch him!”

  I saw the tiny flash of light in the trees a split-second before I heard the crack. Zack went down without a sound.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Zack!” I screamed. Another muzzle flash flickered near the trees, followed by another crack. I dove back into the bushes and something buzzed over my head. Was Uncle Lawrence the shooter? No—wrong direction.

  “Zack,” I said, then clamped my lips together so I wouldn’t give away my position. Don’t panic, girl, I growled to myself. Use your head.