“We don’t go to church,” Tom told him.
“Well, neither do I.” He laughed. “But I expect your reason is not because you get up a poker game every Sunday morning like I do.”
Despite herself, Hallie smiled.
Sheriff Eagles started for the door. Just as he got there, he turned around as if he’d forgotten something. “There’s one other thing, Tom,” he said.
Tom stiffened. “What’s that?”
“What was you doing outside the Morton house Monday evening this week? That’s the day the car was stole.”
“I—”
The sheriff raised his hand. “Before you say anything, I best tell you, you was seen there. It wasn’t any of the Mortons told me. Somebody else.”
Tom looked away. He didn’t speak for a long time. “It’s nobody’s business.”
“You was there, then?”
Hallie went over and stood beside Tom.
“Yes, sir.”
“For what reason?”
“Like I say, that’s my business.”
The sheriff frowned. “Might be we could clear this up if you’d tell me.”
“I won’t. I was there, but I didn’t steal any car.”
The sheriff stared at Tom for a long time. Then he stepped through the doorway. “I advise you not to leave the county, not till this is settled. You understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Tom and Hallie stood in the doorway, Hallie holding on to Benny. They watched as the sheriff backed onto the road and took off. Then Tom walked down into the yard and sat on a log in the dark. Hallie came and sat next to him and pulled Benny into her lap. “I don’t like him,” Benny said.
“It’s all right, Benny. He’s a good man. He just has a job to do,” Hallie told him.
“Okay,” Benny said.
“Don’t ask why I was over by the Morton house,” Tom told his sister.
“I won’t.”
Tom thought for a long time. “Maybe we just ought to take out and go to California like you wanted to. Looks like we’re not welcome in Kansas anymore.”
Hallie took her older brother’s hand. “If we leave, people will believe you’re guilty. Running away from trouble is not our way. We’ll work this out—together.”
chapter thirteen
Hallie’s Discovery
Everyone knew that Harold’s car was gone. And they knew that Harold had accused Tom of stealing it. In fact, that was all anybody talked about the next day at school.
“They’re not but squatters. My dad says we should drive them out,” one of Wilma’s friends said. The other girls stared at Hallie as they nodded in agreement. Wilma didn’t nod, but she didn’t look at Hallie, either. At recess, when the students chose sides for games, Hallie was the last one picked. After Mrs. Powell announced that Hallie had gotten the top grade with her essay, a girl whispered, “That’s because she cheats. She’s dishonest, like her brother.” Mildred, who sat beside Hallie in class, moved to another desk. She’ll be sorry, Hallie thought, smiling to herself. Mildred was about as smart as a doughnut. Whose test answers could she copy now?
Cathy was loyal, however. She stayed by Hallie’s side during the dinner break. “Who do you think stole Harold’s car?” she asked.
“Probably some tramp. He’s all the way to Colorado by now. They’ll never find the car. As long as we live here, people will believe Tom’s guilty.” Hallie remembered her brash talk about not running away from trouble and wondered if she had been right.
Cathy seemed to know what Hallie was thinking. “Why don’t you go to California? My mother wanted to go there when we lost our place, but Dad said we had to come to Kansas to help my grandparents on the farm.”
“If we left, we’d never be able to hold up our heads again,” Hallie replied.
“But in California, nobody would know who you are.”
“We would. We’d know we were cowards.”
“It doesn’t even make sense that your brother would steal it.”
“Yeah, what would he do with it, park it behind our cabin?” Hallie asked sarcastically. “And if he drove it into town, don’t you think somebody might notice?”
“Maybe whoever took it drove it to Topeka and sold it.”
“That would be dumb. How many cars like that are there in Kansas?”
“Especially one as beat-up as Harold’s.” Cathy laughed.
Things weren’t much different around town. A woman at the mercantile clutched her pocketbook when she saw Hallie standing next to her. Did she think that because she believed Tom had stolen the car, Hallie was not to be trusted around the woman’s purse? A man who had promised Tom work in the spring sent his son to say Tom wouldn’t be needed after all.
To her surprise, however, Hallie discovered that not everybody was against them. A farmer stopped one morning at the cabin and asked Tom if he’d come by and take a look at a truck he had that wouldn’t start. A woman told Hallie she’d seen the apron Hallie had made for Mrs. Carlson at Christmas and asked if she would make two for her, for gifts. She’d provide the material and would pay Hallie fifty cents for each apron for her labor. Others said they knew Tom hadn’t stolen any car. They said they believed him.
One afternoon the minister came to the cabin with a batch of cookies his wife had baked. “She thought the little boy might like them,” he said, handing a sugar sack to Benny. “I should have called on you before this, but I’ve been laid up. You’ll excuse me for not being neighborly.”
Hallie wasn’t quite sure why he’d stopped. Did he expect Tom to confess and ask for forgiveness?
The minister didn’t say a word about the stolen car. He asked Benny how high he could count and whether he knew how to spell his name. Then he asked Benny to sing “Happy Days.” Benny’s voice was off-key. He scrambled the words, but he beamed when he was finished.
“I couldn’t have sung it better myself,” the minister said. He told Tom he wished he had work for him at the church. The collection was barely enough to pay his salary, however. Besides, the congregation expected him to keep the building in good repair. Then he said to Hallie, “My sister says you’re a bright girl.”
“Your sister?” Hallie asked.
“Mrs. Powell.” He’d taken off his hat when he approached the cabin. Now he put it back on. Hallie thought he’d want to pray over them before he left, but the minister didn’t say anything about that. “I sure am glad I had a chance to get to know you folks,” he told them.
Just as he was leaving, Sheriff Eagles pulled his big car up to the cabin.
“Sheriff,” the minister said.
“Reverend.”
They watched as the minister got into a car almost as old as the Turners’ Model T and drove off.
“If I went to church, I’d go to his,” the sheriff said. “If I went to church.”
“He’s nice,” Benny said. He’d eaten one cookie and held another in his hand.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Benny,” the sheriff said. Benny laughed.
Hallie laughed, too, but Tom only glared at the sheriff. “You still think I stole that car?”
“I don’t know who stole it. You got any idea?”
“Why ask me?”
“You might know of somebody who’d do mischief. You aren’t the only one those two boys were out to get.”
“Then ask them. I think somebody passing through stole it. Otherwise, we’d have seen it around town.”
“Who’d be fool enough to drive a stolen Terraplane around here?”
“Only one I know that foolish is Harold Morton,” Hallie said.
“You got that right, Miss Hallie.” The sheriff chuckled. “By the way, his daddy already ordered him another car. Should be here in a week.”
“Wonder how long before it’s beat-up,” Tom said. “That Terraplane was a swell car, but Harold didn’t treat it right.” Tom smiled a little. “He didn’t know you had to add oil. He almost burned out the engine.”
“Well, you let m
e know if you get any bright ideas. Thing is, we got the word out all over Kansas, and nobody’s seen a roughed-up Terraplane. That means it might be hid somewheres.”
Tom clenched his fists. “Are you saying I hid it? Well, you just look around. Look in the cabin, for all I care. Look in the Carlsons’ barn. You think Mr. Carlson would let me hide it there?”
Sheriff Eagles held up his hands. “Now don’t get all riled up, boy. Truth is, I don’t think you had anything to do with it. But you got to admit that you being over by the Mortons’ the night it was stole is awful suspicious. I sure wish you’d tell me what that was about.”
“It’s not your business,” Tom said.
“Tom—” Hallie said.
“Be still,” Tom told her, and he went inside the house, leaving Hallie and the sheriff watching him.
“Sis, if you know something . . .,” Sheriff Eagles said.
Hallie shook her head. “I don’t know anything.” But I can guess.
Harold’s car had been gone almost a week when Hallie decided to look for spring dandelion greens. The weather had suddenly turned warm, and dandelions were springing up all over. Tom had taken Benny to the Carlsons, so Hallie went alone. She thought Benny would love the leaves cooked with a little bacon grease.
She searched along the road north of the cabin, stepping off into grassy areas when she spotted clusters of bright yellow dandelion flowers. She was careful to collect only the young leaves. The big dark green ones were tough and bitter. There were plenty of dandelions, and her sugar sack was almost full. There was room for only a few more.
Hallie reached for a clump of pale green leaves, then stopped and said, “Ugh.” In the middle of the plant was a cigarette butt, a ready-made. Plenty of men smoked. Hallie had seen them throw the butts out of the car windows as they passed. Most men rolled their own cigarettes, of course. Who could afford ready-mades? The butt was a long way from the road, and she wondered who could throw a cigarette that far. Maybe a tramp had been walking through the woods, but tramps didn’t smoke ready-mades.
The dandelions had popped up in the middle of a tire track. Hallie could make out the treads of the tires in the dirt. That’s odd, she thought. There wasn’t a house nearby. So there was no reason for a car to turn off. Why would someone drive a car into the woods? Curious, she followed the tracks. She set down her sugar sack of greens and slowly walked along the treads into a dense collection of bushes and trees. The bushes were broken, as if a car had been driven over them.
Hallie walked past them until she saw a gleam of metal. Then she pushed the bushes aside and found herself looking at a car—a Terraplane. Harold’s Terraplane. She stood and stared. It was Harold’s car, all right, but it was in worse shape than ever. The driver’s door was bashed in. Hallie made her way through the underbrush to the front of the car. The grill was broken and the front window smashed. That couldn’t have happened when the car went off the road into the brush. The car must have been in an accident before that. Whoever had stolen it must have first crashed the car, then abandoned it.
Hallie went back for her sack of greens and started for home. She would tell Tom what she’d found. But as she walked back down the road, she changed her mind. Her brother would want to see that car. She worried if the sheriff saw their footprints around it, he might say Tom had stolen it. After all, how could you tell if footprints were made that day or a week before? She walked past the turnoff to the cabin and hurried on.
The sheriff’s office was on the near side of town. Hallie had been by it a dozen times, but she’d never been inside. There had been no reason to go in. With the iron bars on the windows, the place looked scary, and she always walked quickly past it on her way to school.
Now she pushed open the door and stood a moment, letting her eyes adjust. The office was dark, and it took her a moment to see the inside. There was a potbellied stove in the center with a long stovepipe going through the roof. The jail cells were visible through a back door. A wooden desk was in the center of the room. A stack of papers was piled so high on it that it almost blocked out the sheriff, who sat in a chair at the desk. He’d been reading, and now he looked up at Hallie, tilting his head so that he could see her through his spectacles.
“Well, hello there. What can I do for you?” he asked. Then he recognized her and smiled. “You’re Miss Hallie Turner. Am I right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You bring me a sack of greens, did you?”
She had forgotten she was holding the sugar sack and put it behind her back. “No, sir.”
He waited, but Hallie said nothing. She couldn’t think how to tell him what she’d found. Maybe coming there was a mistake. After all, she was Tom’s sister. If she told the sheriff about the car, he’d think for sure that Tom had stolen it. Maybe he’d even think she had helped Tom hide it and that the two of them had come up with the idea of her pretending to find it.
The sheriff removed some papers from a chair beside his desk and patted the seat. “Why don’t you sit right here and tell me why you come?”
“I . . .” Hallie wondered if she should just leave. She could say she’d gotten the wrong building, that she was looking for the post office. But the sheriff would know better. Everybody knew where the post office was.
“Is it about your brother?”
Hallie looked down at her feet. Slowly she walked to the chair and sat down.
The sheriff opened a desk drawer and took out a package of gum and handed it to her. Hallie took a stick, but instead of unwrapping it, she put it into the sugar sack. She would save it for Benny.
“Well, sis?”
“I found the car.” Her voice was so low that she could hardly hear herself.
“How’s that?” The sheriff leaned toward her. He used his right forefinger to push his ear forward.
“I found the car.”
“The car?”
“Harold’s car. The one that got stolen.”
“That so?”
Hallie wished he’d say something more to make it easier for her, but he didn’t.
“It’s off the road. In the bushes.”
“Near your place?”
“Up the road.” Hallie realized how bad that sounded. “Way up the road.”
“But not too far.”
“No.”
“Makes sense.”
Hallie had put the sack of greens on her lap. Now she gripped the edges of the bag in her fists. “I was collecting dandelion greens. I saw a cigarette butt on the ground. And then I saw tire marks. So I followed them. The car’s all smashed up. Whoever stole it wrecked it first.”
“I guess that’s no surprise,” Sheriff Eagles muttered. He stood up. “Well, sis, I guess you better show me where it’s at.”
Hallie slumped in the chair. “Do I have to? Can’t I just tell you?”
“No, you come along. We’ll take my car. I’ll drop you off at home when I’m done. I’ll want to talk to your brother.”
“He didn’t steal it!”
Sheriff Eagles smiled. “So he says. He’s got some questions to answer. I’d like to know what he was up to over at the Morton place that night.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You know?”
Hallie realized she shouldn’t have spoken. “I don’t know for sure.”
The sheriff didn’t push her. Instead, he yelled through the back door, “Don’t you make any trouble back there. I’ll be around in time for your supper. Won’t do you any harm to wait.”
Hallie shivered and tried to see through the door. “Do you have somebody bad locked up in there?”
“Just a hobo. He was drunk. He needed a place to sleep it off. I’ll send him on his way tomorrow.” He led Hallie outside and opened the front passenger door of his car for her.
The car had a big star on the side. Hallie slunk down in the seat for fear somebody would see her and think she’d been arrested. She waited until the car was out of town before she sat up straight. T
hey passed the turnoff to the cabin, and Sheriff Eagles slowed down.
“There,” Hallie said. “See those tracks. That’s where somebody drove off the road.”
“This the first time you seen ’em?”
“I don’t go up that way much. The Carlson place is between us and town. I just thought it was a good place to look for dandelions.”
Sheriff Eagles pulled over and turned off the engine. Hallie got out of the car and started through the brush. The sheriff told her to wait while he looked around. He searched the ground and spotted the cigarette butt Hallie pointed out to him. He picked it up and put it into his pocket.
Then he walked back and forth, studying the ground, occasionally leaning over to pick up something. He pulled threads off a bush and put them into his pocket. Finally he reached the wrecked car. “You didn’t touch anything, did you, sis?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Good.”
The driver’s-side door was unlocked, and the sheriff put his handkerchief over the car handle to pull it wide so that he could look inside. He reached for a jacket that was on the floor by the passenger seat. “You ever seen this?” he asked.
Hallie gasped. “It’s Tom’s,” she said, quickly covering her mouth with her hand. She shouldn’t have told the sheriff. She shouldn’t have told him about the car, either. She was getting Tom into more and more trouble. Hallie added quickly, “He lost it in the winter. Or somebody took it. I bought him a new one for Christmas. I wouldn’t have bought it if he still had the old one.”
“Looks like it’s been used as a rag.” The sheriff dropped it onto the car seat. He looked over the car, careful not to use his bare hand to touch the door handles or the steering wheel. Then he backed out of the vehicle.
“Do you still think Tom stole it?” Hallie asked. She knew she shouldn’t ask, but she wanted to warn Tom.
“Do you?”
“I never thought he did.”
“I’d feel a whole lot better about him if I knowed why he was hanging around the Morton house that night. You wouldn’t want to tell me about that, would you?”
Hallie looked away.
“You want to share that with me?”
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