“It’s not that high up,” Charlie said.
Francine stepped gingerly out onto the roof above the garage. The grade was shallow, sloping gently down to acorn-filled gutters at the edge, but she white-knuckled the windowsill and closed her eyes anyway.
“What’re you doing?” Charlie asked.
“I’m trying not to think about what it would be like to fall off the edge.”
“That’s called vis-ua-li-zation.” Charlie stumbled through the word. “Dad says basketball players do it to make free throws.”
“Terrific. I’m gonna visualize not falling off.”
When she hesitated a second longer, Charlie scrambled out the window. “Do it like this!”
“Charlie, get back inside!”
But he was already out on the roof, walking around the grayed shingles without a care in the world. “C’mon, I’ll help you.” He held out a tiny hand.
Francine let go of the windowsill and, with Charlie’s help, stood freely on the roof.
“Hey, this isn’t so bad.”
“It’s great!” he corrected.
They set up some plastic-weave chairs from the garage facing the backyard, put a huge mixing bowl of popcorn between them, and poured chocolate milk from a Thermos into two Dixie cups.
“Do clouds taste like cotton candy?” Charlie asked once they were settled and looking skyward.
“No. They’re mostly just rain waiting to happen.”
“I think they taste like cotton candy,” Charlie decided. He pointed at the grease splotch on her chest. “What happened to your shirt? Were you playing by the ponds without me?”
“I would never. I just got careless with some trash, nothing to worry about,” she said, envying the boy’s innocent world for the millionth time. Feeling partially in that world now, she allowed herself to relax, enjoying the fatty butter of the popcorn and the sweet finish of chocolate as stars came to life in the night sky.
“Can you tell me about the consternations?” Charlie asked, his nose underlined by a brown milk mustache.
“Constellations. And sure, that’s um…Orion, The Bear.”
Francine was pretty sure the stars she’d pointed at weren’t Orion, and that Orion wasn’t a bear at all, but that was the nice thing with kids. You could make stuff up and not get called on it.
“Do you want to make a few of your own?” she asked.
“Yeah, um, that one’s kind of like a tiger. Ooh, that looks like a tiger too.”
While Charlie rattled off made-up constellations, which were probably as accurate as Francine’s official ones, she mentally evaluated all of her suspects, starting with those accounted for at the time of Brownie’s slaying.
Magdalena Durham—Soviet Instigator.
Laura Jean Cunningham—Kindred Spirit.
Mark Cunningham—Jolly Giant.
Dennis Asperski—Personality TBD.
Then came the more odds-on picks: individuals whose whereabouts after the party were unknown.
Del Merlin—Retired Marine. A confessed dislike of the goat’s owner and a boob-grabbing prick.
Roland Gerber—Swiss Expat. A longshot, but didn’t cops say it was always the person you suspected least? Or was it the most?
Hollis Durham—Police Chief. Significant physical prowess, victim found practically on his property.
Lori Asperski—Busybody Supreme. Her grief and anger had seemed real, but maybe she just liked the attention.
Eric Banderwalt—Teenage Troublemaker. Had the reputation for mischief, but as of yet, no direct connection.
Michael Bruno—Transient Fibber. Hadn’t seemed like the animal killing type, but how could he be trusted?
“What are your neighbors like?” Francine asked, suddenly realizing she had a pint-sized bank of information in the lawn chair next to her.
Charlie finished a handful of popcorn. “Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham are nice. Mr. Merlin’s got a cool car. Mr. Gerber’s okay, and Ajax is nice. Eric Banderwalt’s scary. I don’t really see his mom or sister much. Chief Durham has a cool walkie-talkie. Mrs. Durham talks funny. Mr. Asperski’s boring and Mrs. Asperski’s super mean.”
“Good stuff,” Francine mused, loving the cut and dry perspective of a seven-year-old that classified people as nice or cool or super mean. Sometimes that told you everything about a person, with any further detail only muddling the picture. “Keep going.”
“I said everybody already.”
Francine couldn’t help herself. “What about Mr. Bruno?”
“Mister Mystery? He’s just visiting. He’s not a real neighbor.”
“Neither am I, then,” said Francine, pretending to be offended.
Charlie groaned. “You’re different.” Then he looked at her curiously. “Are you instigating?”
Francine laughed. “Did someone call me an instigator? Was it Mrs. Durham? Wait—it was Mrs. Asperski, wasn’t it?”
“No. Mom called today and I said you were out on a walk, talking to neighbors.”
“You didn’t tell me she called.”
“Oh yeah, I was supposed to write it down. I told her you were out instigating. Like the guy with the funny hat.” He duck-billed one hand in front of his head, the other behind.
“Is that Sherlock Holmes? Oh, an investigator.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Yeah, I suppose I am an investigator,” Francine said, after a pause. “You live in an interesting neighborhood.”
They watched one of Chief Durham’s deputies drive slowly down the other side of the block, a precautionary patrol and gentle reminder of the curfew.
“He’s looking for who hurt Brownie,” Charlie whispered. “And you are too.”
“I…”
“You said it was an accident.”
Francine looked at the boy’s eager face and decided he had a right to know what was going on around him. “Nobody knows yet.”
“I can help.”
“No, Charlie.”
His face wrinkled into a pout, but Francine shook her head. “We’re eating popcorn for dinner on the roof. Good luck making me feel guilty.”
“Why would someone hurt Brownie?”
Francine sighed, wondering how best to answer. “My grandma always used to say, ‘This world just keeps gettin’ stranger and stranger.’”
“What’s that mean?”
“There are some things we just don’t understand. At least not right away.”
Charlie tried out the expression. “Stranger and stranger.”
“I know I let you go out that first night, but from now on you have to stay inside after dark. Daytime is okay if you’re careful, but it’s just too dangerous right now.”
“’Kay,” Charlie mumbled.
“Charlie. I really need your help, okay? How about a capeesh?” She held out a pinky.
Charlie sighed and hooked it. “Capeesh.”
His thumb bumped hers and she winced in pain.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just a stupid splinter I got from your kitchen.”
“Here, I’ll get it.”
“Charlie, no—”
But he had already dragged a finger firmly across the tip of her thumb.
Francine felt a short stab of pain, then relief.
“Got it,” he said proudly, blowing the sliver off his finger into the night breeze. “See, I can help.”
Francine looked at him in amazement. “You certainly can.”
Charlie brought his gaze skyward once again. “Can you tell me more consternations?”
“Behold.” Francine pointed to a random plot of sky. “Gemini, the Crab.”
Far below this unofficial constellation, she watched two people walk through the side yard on their way home. Eric Banderwalt was carrying his BB gun and holding the hand of a little girl with blond-white hair. That had to be Diana.
But Francine was more interested in the neon green backpack hanging from Eric’s shoulders. It was hard to say
for sure, but it looked like the bottom of the backpack was wet. And a familiar shade of red.
Chapter 15
I have had very peculiar and strange experiences.
[ x ] TRUE [ ] FALSE
Charlie waited for the light in the hallway to turn off and began to count to a hundred. He’d successfully argued his way into sleeping in the master bedroom every night, telling Aunt Francine it would help him miss his parents less, which was sort of true.
But it was also the only room with a window that opened out onto the roof. That was valuable because the carpet at the top of the stairs was loaded with so many hidden creak spots that even if you crossed it like a frozen pond in spring, it always got you in the end.
…Eighty-two Mississippi…eighty-three Mississippi…
Yes, he was going to have to break his pinky promise and whatever the heck capeesh was, but if Aunt Francine was trying to find out what was wrong in the neighborhood, he was just the person to help.
…Ninety-eight Mississippi…ninety-nine Mississippi…one hundred.
He leapt out of bed and packed pillows under the blanket so it would look like he was still asleep. The prison movie he’d watched that morning had been entertaining and educational.
The mirrored closet door rolled easily open, unleashing the great smell of Mom and Dad’s clothes. Charlie pulled a bed sheet with a frog pattern from the linen shelf and twirled it until it turned into a long rope. The prison movie had taught him a lot of great things.
He sat on the windowsill, enjoying the nighttime breeze as he looked around the roof for a place to tie the sheet. The gutters were made of thin metal that would bend in a second. The chimney was strong, but too close to the middle of the roof. The TV aerial was too skinny and too close to the middle of the roof, so a double loser.
What about the rooster weather vane?
The bird’s iron base was big and solid and bolted pretty close to the edge of the roof.
Bingo.
Charlie crept across the shingles and tied one end of the frog sheet rope around the weather vane using his dad’s advice of, “If you don’t know a knot, tie a lot.” Then he let the rest of the sheet fall and bravely looked over the edge.
The sheet only reached the top of the yew bushes on the side of the garage. That might be okay, though, because yew bushes were some of the softest you could fall into, even though their squishy red berries got juice all over your clothes.
Legs wrapped around the sheet, eyes tightly shut, Charlie took a few breaths for courage and started to slide slowly downward. After what felt like forever, his toes grazed the top of the bushes. He let go and the yews did their job, cushioning his short fall and getting berry juice all over his shorts. Crawling quickly out of the bush, he listened.
No siren. No yelling guards. No barking dogs. The escape had been a success.
Charlie skipped to the front of the garage and found the driveway still warm with memory of the day’s heat.
Next door, Mr. Merlin was standing in his front yard, repeatedly throwing a tennis ball up into the sky. Bats, thinking the yellow orb was a bug, continually chased it up and back down again, zooming away in smooth curves like tiny black hang gliders. Charlie thought this was pretty cool, but Mr. Merlin didn’t seem too impressed with his own trick. He just kept throwing the ball higher and higher. Charlie wondered if he’d been doing it so much he hurt his own hand, because a few of his fingers were wrapped in a bandage.
The triumphant aluminum crunch from a game of Kick the Can echoed from two blocks over, where the older kids liked to play. Apparently they didn’t feel like following the curfew either. They’d never play with someone as young as Charlie, but that was okay. He wasn’t out for fun. His job was to help Aunt Francine get rid of the trouble in the neighborhood, so he ran in the direction Trouble lived.
✶ ✶ ✶ ✶
Every yard in Hawthorn Woods was an infinity of little surprises—some good, like peacock-tail sprinklers and never-found Easter eggs, and some bad, like landmines of dog poop and chipmunk holes that loved to twist an ankle. The yard Charlie ran through now had plenty of bad surprises, all hidden by tall grass that never got mowed. He tried to avoid the anthills, patches of gravel, and crushed aluminum cans with sharp corners, and eventually made it to a window that glowed red, almost like the bedroom inside was on fire.
Peering inside, he saw that the red light came from a lava lamp on top of a dresser crowded with empty Pepsi cans. A boombox playing Guns N’ Roses sat atop a fish tank of cloudy water where a Grow-a-Frog swam in tireless circles. Grunts sounded from the floor, and a second later Eric Banderwalt stood up, swinging his skinny arms.
Charlie dropped to the grass just in time.
Eric was doing push-ups. The scariest kid in the neighborhood was getting even stronger. Just great.
Charlie decided to keep moving and snuck along the house’s dirty yellow siding, crawling around a broken rocking horse, its mane thick with the cobwebs of things best left alone.
The next bedroom window glowed faintly yellow-orange. Peeking over the sill, Charlie saw Eric’s little sister, Diana, curled up on a mattress with an illuminated Glo Worm. The pajama-clad toy was feared by kids everywhere because it had a hard rubber head, so if someone swung the thing at you, it was basically a nunchuck. You had to squeeze a Glo Worm to make it glow, so Diana must’ve been squeezing it now, even though she was asleep.
The girl’s skin was almost see-through, kind of like the animals that lived at the very bottom of the ocean. Instead of sheets and a blanket, her mattress was covered with a plaid sleeping bag that looked like it could use a good wash. Charlie had camped out in his family room before, but this didn’t seem like the same thing.
Diana stirred as muffled, angry shouting came from somewhere else in the house. She squeezed her Glo Worm tighter, but the weak light flickered, the toy’s batteries almost dead.
Charlie army-crawled toward the front yard.
Through the broad window, he saw Mrs. Banderwalt in her wheelchair, parked in front of a TV playing a static-fuzzed game show. Eric was standing next to the TV, and he looked pretty upset.
“Sorry, honey, what?” Mrs. Banderwalt said.
“I said I’m pretty sure he’s been coming around. I’ve seen tobacco stains in the street. He’s waiting for the right time.”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“He doesn’t come into the house. He sits in his truck and watches.”
“But…what do I do?”
Eric sighed. “Forget it, Mom.”
Charlie hugged close to the house as Eric came out the front door and crunched across the driveway. He used a key on a string around his neck to open the bike lock on the shed, then went inside.
Charlie peeked back at the window. Mrs. Banderwalt was still just looking at the TV, like she hadn’t even heard Eric. It didn’t seem like she was watching the game show at all. It was almost like she was staring right through it. Her face was empty, but somehow sad too.
Sounds of scraping metal inside the shed made Charlie crouch down again. Moving quickly across the front of the house, he took care to step over the plastic covers of the window wells as he snuck up to the shed.
Through the half-open door, he saw Eric standing at a piece of plywood laid across two construction horses, dragging the rectangular blade of a butcher’s knife across a flat stone. The light bulb blazing above his head was filthy and surrounded by a growing number of bugs, but Charlie could just make out a big pile of something white against the back wall. He squinted to try and see better, pushing closer to the open door.
Thwack.
Eric’s knife chopped into the plywood.
He wrenched the blade out and brought it down into the wood, again and again.
Thwack. Thwack. THWACK.
The table broke, spilling a bag of tools that knocked the door fully open, bathing Charlie in light.
Eric spotted him and froze. “What are you doing here?”
&nb
sp; Charlie wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t move.
“What are you doing here?” Eric demanded, and started toward him.
Charlie’s legs released at last and he flew across the yard, almost slipping on a grainy anthill mount. He couldn’t let Eric see him go home so he changed course at the willow tree, eventually diving into a crop of boxwood shrubs on the side of someone’s house.
Slowing his breathing while trying to keep it quiet, he counted to a hundred-Mississippi and finally relaxed, satisfied that Eric hadn’t followed him.
Peeking inside the window above his head, Charlie found a bedroom, or at least a poor attempt at one. An open suitcase and full ashtray lay on the floor next to a long, flowery couch made up with bedsheets and a pillow. Almost every available space was covered in papers and folders.
He heard the house’s front door open, and a moment later Mister Mystery walked into the bedroom wearing dark clothes that were way too hot for the night. He took a pair of binoculars—the expensive kind you had to order from a magazine—from around his neck and dropped them into the suitcase.
The only people Charlie knew who used binoculars were spies. So who had Mister Mystery been spying on? He tried to think back to the phone call he’d heard, and the name of someone Mister Mystery had seen at the party. Something with an ‘L.’ Lischka? There was nobody in the neighborhood named Lischka.
Mister Mystery switched off the light, lay down on the couch, and lit a cigarette. The tangerine coal glowed and faded in a slow pulse, like a tiny lighthouse at sea.
After a long while, a hand ended it in the crowded ashtray, and all was dark once more.
Chapter 16
Someone has it in for me.
[ x ] TRUE [ ] FALSE
Francine cracked one eye open. A dozen clock faces informed her it was nearly ten-thirty in the morning. So why did she feel so tired? It might have had something to do with the slew of Ben dreams that had roundhoused her psyche all night.
She hauled herself up to a sitting position and was rewarded with the sight of Lori Asperski powerwalking down the street outside with her loyal Hens in tow. Each wore matching athletic shorts and ankle weights.
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