Us and Uncle Fraud

by Lois Lowry

  We would have to search the shed.

  "Anyway," Marcus said, "it might not mean 'table.' Ya tebya lyublyu. That last word could mean 'blue.' He could have hidden it in something blue."

  "A blue table," I suggested.

  "We don't have a blue table."

  I smoothed Claude's note and we looked at the words again. "Maybe," I said, "it's like those games in the children's page of the paper where you have to rearrange the letters?"

  "I hate those," Marcus groaned.

  "I do, too," I acknowledged. "But still: Look at the letters. Do you see any words?"

  Marcus looked. "Bubbly," he said, finally.

  "There aren't enough Vs," I decided.

  "Yeah, but he can't spell, remember? Maybe he didn't know there are supposed to be three Vs in 'bubbly.'"

  "Great," I said angrily. "It's bad enough to have to figure out a code. But when the guy who made the code can't spell? That's just great."

  "Anyway," Marcus mused, "what would 'bubbly' mean?"

  "Ginger ale," I suggested.

  Marcus made a face. "No," he said. "That's dumb. I bet 'bubbly' would mean the river. Remember yesterday, how foamy and bubbly the river was? And Claude saw it, when we were over on the bank, behind the Leboffs' house."

  "Well, now you're being dumb. How on earth could you hide something in the river? Anyway, he didn't want us to go back there. He said it was dangerous to prowl around the Leboffs' house, even outside."

  We stared glumly at the note and finally I folded it up again and put it in the drawer of my little table.

  "It has to be here at the house," Marcus said decisively. "You want to try the attic first or the shed?"

  "The attic, I guess."

  And so we went there.

  "You two are absolutely filthy," Mother said when we came to dinner that evening. "What have you been doing? Look at your hands. Run up to the bathroom and scrub."

  We did, and left the bathroom a disaster, with the towels streaked and the sink ringed with dirt.

  "We were in the attic," I explained to Mother. "We were looking for Claude's gift."

  "Oh?" She smiled. "And did you find it?"

  "No," Marcus said dejectedly.

  "I don't mind that he hid it," I told her. "But it's not fair that he hid it so we can't find it."

  "Well," Mother said mildly, "that's Claude. He likes to complicate things. And remember what he said in his note? All treasures are well hidden."

  She began to serve the food. Dinner on Easter was always the same: ham and deviled eggs, their whites stained with dye.

  Father helped himself to salad and passed it around. "That's Claude all right," he echoed Mother. "But has it occurred to you two pip-squeaks that perhaps there was never any gift at all?"

  Tom grinned, and popped half an egg into his mouth.

  "Of course it occurred to us," I said. "We're not dumb. But you weren't there yesterday when Claude told us about it. He was absolutely sincere; wasn't he, Marcus?"

  Marcus nodded, his mouth full.

  "He was absolutely sincere when he tried to peddle a thousand dollars worth of fraudulent oil stock to me, too," Father said, grinning.

  Tom swallowed his egg with a gulp and said, "He just makes stuff up. I think he's crazy."

  "He teases, Tom," Mother said. "Claude is a tease, that's all."

  I peeled a strip of fat carefully from a slice of ham and put it on the side of my plate. It fascinated me that some people—Marcus, for example— could eat fat. I couldn't even stand the feel of it in my mouth. "Was he teasing when he said he'd been at the edge of the Baltic Sea?"

  "It's hard to know, Louise," Mother said. "Claude drifts around so much—he's been to all sorts of places. I think it's quite likely that he's been to the edge of the Baltic Sea. Probably it was true."

  "Could he have been to Russia, even?"

  "It's possible. As he says, he's a traveling man. And once he did bring me an embroidered blouse—remember that, Matt? A beautiful blouse, made somewhere in Eastern Europe. Maybe Russia. It was before you were born, Louise."

  That seemed to confirm Claude's veracity. He had brought the jeweled eggs out of Russia years ago, when it was still a Technicolor land, and had saved them, waiting for just the right people to give them to. He'd been waiting for us to be born.

  "Well," I said with satisfaction, "then I'm quite sure he wasn't lying about the gift. I just wish he hadn't hidden it so well. Did he hide your blouse when he brought it to you?"

  Mother laughed. "No. He had it in his suitcase, wrapped in newspaper, and he whipped it out with a big flourish. He was so delighted with it. I was, too, of course."

  The telephone rang. Father pushed his chair back and went to the hall to answer it; we could hear his voice as he talked, and then he came back with his coat on.

  "I have to go down to the office, Hallie," he said. "Save me some of that ham."

  "Matt! It's almost seven o'clock on a Sunday night! Won't it wait till morning?"

  Tom was up, out of his chair. "Can I go with you?"

  "Do you have homework, Thomas?" Mother asked.

  Tom shook his head. "It's all done. Can I go, Father?"

  "Come on. Hurry. We have a big story breaking. There was a robbery last night; they've just discovered it. The police are still there."

  He and Tom were at the front door. I was filled with excitement; there had never been robberies in our town. Our big news always consisted of flood damage, failed crops, rabid dogs, or an author or politician making a speech at the college.

  I ran to the hall, opened the door, and called after them as they headed to the car.

  "Where was it, Father? Did someone rob the bank?"

  He turned, hesitated, and then shrugged. No harm in telling me, I could sense him thinking, since it would be in the morning paper anyway. He called out hurriedly where the robbery had been.

  "Tell your mother not to wait up for me," he added. "I'll be late."

  I gulped, waved half-heartedly to Father, went back to the table, and poked at the slick, glistening rims of fat on the edge of my plate. Mother and Marcus stared at me. Even Stephanie, in her high chair, looked at me curiously.

  "Well?" Mother said after a moment. "What did Father say? We could hear you call to him from the front door."

  Studiously I avoided looking at Marcus. Instead, I stared straight at Mother, my eyes as innocent as Stephie's. "Nothing much," I told her. "Someone robbed the Leboffs' house last night.

  "What's for dessert?" I asked loudly. "I'm going to throw up if I eat any more Easter eggs."

  8

  Marcus and I cornered Kenny Stratton on the playground at recess. Kenny was an awkward, unpopular fifth-grader with a nervous twitch in one eyebrow, so that he lowered and raised it constantly, as if he were emphasizing the inane things he had to say. Marcus liked him, for some reason; he felt sorry for Kenny, whose mother had died years ago. The two Stratton children—Kenny and his older sister—kept house for their father in a shabby, two-family house at the edge of town. They both bragged about their father's association with the wealthy Leboff family; their bragging was undermined by the fact their clothes, hair, and hands were often in need of a good scrubbing.

  Kenny had been boasting all morning, Marcus said, about his father's role in the discovery of the robbery at the Leboff's house. Mr. Stratton had made his usual six o'clock check of the mansion; he had entered through the back door, using the key that hung in its hiding place. He had walked through the house, as he always did, checking the window locks. It was only when he got to the huge dining room that he felt something was wrong.

  Kenny made a drama out of it again, telling it to Marcus and me one more time at the corner of the playground. He had told it so often this morning that he could build it now into a rehearsed tale, pausing for effect with his eyebrow jerking up and down like an undisciplined dancer.

  "My father stood there in the dining room," Kenny said, "and he knew something was wro
ng." Pause. Twitch.

  Kenny's eyes widened and he lowered his voice. "First he noticed that the big table—they call it the sideboard—was bare."

  "It used to have all that silver stuff on it," Marcus said to me. "Remember?"

  Kenny glared at him, irritated at the interruption. "The silver coffee service was gone," he went on. "So my dad started to open the drawers one by one." Pause.

  "He messed up all the fingerprints, I bet," Marcus said, and Kenny glared at him again.

  "And every bit of the silverware was gone. Two dozen knives, and two dozen forks, and two dozen spoons, and—"

  Impatiently I interrupted him. "What did he do then? Did he call the police?"

  "Of course he called the police," Kenny said. "For all he knew, the burglars might still have been there, hiding or something. He waited out by the back door—the police told him not to touch anything else—and they were there in seven minutes. My dad timed it."

  We stood there silently, the three of us, under the maple tree at the corner of the playground. Nearby, our classmates were playing dodgeball, a cluster of them shrieking in the center of a circle while the ball thumped back and forth in pursuit. "You cheated, Charlie!" one of the girls shouted angrily, when she was hit on the leg.

  "Poor sport, poor sport, poor sport," Charlie Clancy chanted as the outraged girl left the circle, rubbing her leg.

  "What did the police do?" Marcus asked.

  "They took inventory," Kenny said importantly, as if he knew what 'inventory' meant. "There was probably five thousand dollars worth of stuff taken."

  "How did the burglars get in? Did they break a window or something?"

  Kenny shook his head. "They found the key, where it was hidden. The police told my dad that the key should never have been left like that. But it wasn't my dad's fault. The Leboffs always left the key there. They told him to leave the key there." Kenny looked defensive on his father's behalf. "It wasn't my dad's fault," he said again.

  I pictured Kenny's father, bald, skinny Mr. Stratton, sitting miserably in the police station, saying, "It wasn't my fault" again and again.

  "Come around behind the tree," Marcus commanded ; and we moved into the shadow, where the kids playing dodgeball couldn't see or hear us.

  "Did your father know that we knew about the key? Did you tell him that we'd gone into the house?" Marcus asked.

  Kenny's pinched, thin face looked more nervous than ever. He shook his head. "No," he whispered. "My dad doesn't even know that I've gone in there without him."

  "Do you think our fingerprints are on the key?" Marcus asked tensely.

  Kenny shook his head. "They said that my dad would have wrecked any fingerprints, because he was the last one to use the key when he went in to check the house. It wasn't his fault," he added again, absolving his father of yet one more mistake. "How was he supposed to know? The key was hanging right there the way it always did."

  The bell rang, calling us back to class at the end of recess. We stood there for a moment, watching the other kids trudge reluctantly across the playground toward the school steps.

  "They wanted a list from my father," Kenny added in a low voice as we began walking back. "The police wanted a list of everybody who knew about the key. But my father said he was the only one, except for Mrs. Shaw, and she's in Kansas City. They even called Kansas City long distance, and talked to Mrs. Shaw, and she said that nobody else knew about the key."

  I kicked a stone across the muddy ruts of the playground. "Your father knew that you knew about it, Kenny," I pointed out.

  "Yeah," Kenny acknowledged. "Because sometimes he takes me with him when he checks the house. But he didn't tell the police that. He said it wasn't important. He told me that he would have noticed if I'd come home with five thousand dollars worth of silver." He laughed morosely. "You better not tell, either," he added, "because then I'd tell on you."

  Marcus and I shook our heads solemnly as a promise, and the three of us climbed the cement steps back into the school. "It wasn't my father's fault," Kenny said again in the empty hall as he and Marcus headed toward the fifth-grade room.

  "Oh, shut up," I muttered, as I turned the corner to the door of the sixth grade. "Who cares?"

  Usually I walked home from school with my friend Nancy Brinkerhoff, who lived a few houses away from mine. Marcus always dashed down the street with his friends, throwing their caps back and forth, calling insults to each other, making plans for ball games in the vacant lot.

  But today Marcus and I walked home together. At first we were silent. Then, suddenly, we both began talking almost at once.

  "I don't care if Claude did know where the key was," I announced. "What does that prove? Probably lots of people knew where that key was. Kenny might have told other people."

  "And Mrs. Shaw probably told her stupid daughter in Kansas City," Marcus said, "and her stupid daughter could have told anybody."

  "And Claude doesn't need silverware, for heaven's sake," I said righteously. "He's a traveling man. A traveling man doesn't need silverware."

  "Anyway," Marcus scoffed, "where would he have put it? All he had was that one dumb suitcase."

  "And the box. You couldn't put five thousand dollars worth of silverware in that little bitty box." I shifted my schoolbooks to the other arm and tossed my head knowingly.

  "Yeah," Marcus agreed. "Even if he wanted to steal all that stuff, where was he going to put it? In a pillowcase? He's going to walk to the train station carrying a pillowcase full of clanking silverware?"

  We hooted with laugher at such a preposterous picture.

  "Ya tebya lyublyu," I pronounced defiantly.

  "YA TEBYA LYUBLYU!" Marcus shouted in response, with a grin.

  We raced each other the rest of the way, reaching our front steps together and out of breath.

  "Do you think maybe we ought to tell Mother?" I asked suddenly.

  Marcus whirled around and stared at me. "That's a great idea, Louise," he said sarcastically. "Claude's her brother. What's she going to do? Call the police and tell them that her brother knew where the key was? Would you do that to me— even if you thought I was the thief, and we know Claude wasn't?"

  "I never tell on you, Marcus. You know that."

  "Yeah. So just shut up about it. I wish we knew where Claude went, so we could call him up and tell him what happened. Boy, would he laugh."

  "He's probably a hundred miles away by now," I said.

  "Probably a thousand."

  "A million."

  "Three million," Marcus decided. "He may be back in Russia by now, for all we know."

  I walked backwards into the front yard, looking up, watching our house grow as I backed into a new perspective. The third story—the attic—seemed immensely high, and countless blank windows looked back at me. We had spent all of the previous afternoon in that attic, foraging in trunks and cubbyholes.

  "Somewhere in there, Marcus." I sighed. "I know they're somewhere in that house, or in the shed. But it may take us forever to find them."

  Marcus dropped his books on the porch and came to stand beside me. "You know something, Louise? A house looks different, once it has a treasure inside. Even if we never find them, the house will always look different."

  And he was right. I had always thought that our ordinary, shingled, unglamorous house was much like every other house on the block. It was no more interesting than Nancy Brinkerhoff's; we had a porch swing and the Brinkerhoffs didn't, but they had a chiming doorbell and ours was only a dull buzz. Even Mrs. Bostwick's house was ordinary, now that she had died and it had been sold to a young lawyer and his wife; they had painted and repaired it, planted flowers in the once unkempt yard, and today their baby's playpen stood on the porch, the way Stephie's had always stood on ours until she outgrew it. Ours had always been an ordinary street of ordinary houses filled with ordinary things and people.

  Until now. Now our house was special, because Claude had come and gone, and now, somewhere, we had a
treasure.

  9

  "Hey, Lulu," Tom called from his room. "Come in here a minute, will you?"

  "The name is Louise," I said automatically, and folded the piece of paper on which I had been rearranging the letters of Claude's mysterious message. I put it into the drawer of my bedside table and went to the hall. Tom was standing in the doorway of his bedroom.

  "What do you want?" I asked him.

  "I want to talk to you. Marcus, too. Where is he?"

  "He's in the attic. I'll call him." I went to the attic stairs and summoned Marcus, who shook his head at me as he came down, streaked once again with dirt. Nothing. He had found nothing.

  We went to Tom's room, and I marveled once again, as I always did, how someone fourteen years old could be so tidy and organized. Mother was not as good a housekeeper as Tom. His books were arranged alphabetically, and if you borrowed one without asking and put it back in the wrong spot, he knew; and you were dead. His clothes were always hung up; his bed was always made; and even his baseball cap was on a shelf and his sneakers were lined up neatly side by side below it.

  Marcus and I sat down on Tom's bed, and Tom sat at his desk, facing us, the way I imagined that a doctor would when he told you that you were going to die soon. And Tom had that same look on his face, the look that the doctor would have: grave, no-nonsense, and very concerned.

  "I have a stone in my shoe," I announced, "and it's been there all day. I bet anything I'm going to have foot gangrene." Changing the subject was the way I handled anything that made me feel apprehensive, and Tom's look was making me feel apprehensive.