Phineas poured himself a glass of juice, put two pieces of bread into the toaster, and sat down at the table.
Althea continued to ignore him. She was writing chicken scratches on a piece of paper, her india ink eyebrows gathered together in concentration. “How come you’re working down here?” he asked.
She answered without looking up. “In case the phone rings. Dad didn’t get back until almost dawn. Not everybody can sleep like the dead.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if you turned off the light you’d sleep better,” he said, before he thought to stop himself. He was sorry he’d said it even before he saw the combination of anger, and fear, cross her face to settle in her eyes. His parents had at first told him, and then when he was older explained to him, that you had to be considerate of someone’s genuine fear. Althea was afraid of the dark, not crazy afraid but seriously afraid. Phineas knew it was as much of a pain for her as the rest of them, maybe even more of a pain. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
Althea settled into anger, and stayed there. She ignored him and glowered at him, both at the same time.
“So, were there any phone calls?” he asked.
Althea shook her head.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
She looked up at him, sarcastic under a raised eyebrow, and didn’t bother answering. Of course he knew it was Greek. He was just trying to be friendly. He buttered his slices of toast and didn’t say anything else.
There was a knock at the front door, rap rap rap. Before Phineas could even start to get up, it came again, louder. Althea took off to answer it. Phineas spread peanut butter on his second slice of toast, and wished he’d thought of it sooner so the peanut butter would have been melted by the heat. He put another slice of bread into the toaster so he could have a perfect piece of peanut butter toast.
Two voices at the door, one loud and inquiring—he recognized it, and as it came toward the kitchen he identified it: O’Meara. Althea’s voice was low, sort of a murmur, but O’Meara didn’t take the hint. “If you don’t have coffee, then I’ll take a cup of tea, if you have it,” she was saying. She came in and plumped herself down on a chair. “When do you think he’ll wake up?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at Althea. Then she bent down to pull a notebook and pen out of her bag. That morning she wore a black T-shirt over her jeans, and a jean jacket over the T-shirt.
Althea caught Phineas’s eye, and they shrugged at one another. “Do you want regular or herbal tea?” Althea asked.
“Regular. You never know what’s in that herbal stuff. Morning, Phineas,” O’Meara said.
“Hi.” Phineas finished spreading peanut butter over the hot buttered toast. O’Meara looked at it, as if she wished he’d offer her some, and he didn’t.
“Dad might sleep until afternoon,” Althea said.
“The thing is, I need to talk with him,” O’Meara said.
Phineas didn’t say anything, and neither did Althea.
“Because of the robbery last night,” she said.
Nobody answered her.
“Do you kids know about it?”
“Lemon? Sugar?” Althea asked.
“Milk,” O’Meara said, “and sugar. Come on, kids, do you know anything or not? What was taken? Anybody injured? Will the college lose the collection? All I saw was the paragraph this morning in the paper—This is my story.”
Althea put a mug down in front of her, and a spoon, and the milk carton, and the sugar bowl.
“You must know something,” O’Meara said.
After a long wait, Althea said, “Nothing was taken, nothing was damaged.”
“Is that the truth? What did happen? Did somebody catch him in the act? Or her, we shouldn’t be sexist.”
“He was frightened off,” Althea said.
O’Meara put down the mug and picked up her pen. “How?”
Althea hesitated.
Phineas chewed slowly. In the first place, he planned to let Althea make the decisions. She was older and she was smarter. In the second place, he was enjoying the melty peanut taste that was coating the inside of his mouth.
“Listen, O’Meara,” Althea began, and it sounded as if she was about to apologize. “It could be that your article is the reason there was a break-in. You didn’t exactly tell the precise truth.”
It might sound apologetic but it was actually an accusation. O’Meara didn’t see it that way. “Pretty good writing, wasn’t it?”
“So I don’t want to say anything to you now,” Althea said.
“I bet you don’t know anything.” O’Meara drank some tea. “When’s your father going to be up do you think?”
Althea shrugged.
O’Meara drank.
Phineas licked peanut butter off his fingers.
“The police report won’t be available until this afternoon,” O’Meara said. “Dr. Simard told me he’s packing, going abroad for a month—and he wasn’t on the spot, anyway, nobody called him. He sounded sort of miffed about that. I could go to his house, I suppose.” She looked at them. “But it’s outside of town.”
Phineas got up to pour himself a glass of milk.
“What’re you reading?” O’Meara asked. “What is that?” She closed the book to look at the cover. “Greek? What’re you doing studying Greek? And during the summer? Killing time,” she answered herself. “You ought to look into computer sciences, if studying is your thing. You ought to think about earning a living.” She looked down at her notebook and read the little she’d written there. “Althea?”
“Yes?” Warily.
“What frightened him off?” O’Meara was perking up again. “What happened to scare him off?”
Althea shrugged, to say she had no idea and couldn’t care less.
Phineas could have warned her. He had a pretty good idea what was going on in O’Meara’s mind.
“Then how do you know he was scared? There must be some reason to think so. Do you two kids know anything about the curse of Tutankhamen? For instance,” she leaned forward, “when they flew that exhibit around, a few years ago, remember?”
Althea nodded cautiously.
“It went from Egypt to England, first, for a special exhibit, fifty years after it was first found. Do you know that of the crew on that plane, the one that took it from Egypt to London, within a few years, two of the four of the crew members had unexpected disasters happen? One man kicked the mummy’s coffin, and later he broke that exact same leg. Another of them was divorced, when he’d been happily married before. And they all said, all the crew, they made jokes about the curse, during the flight. That’s why he kicked the coffin. Two more of them had heart attacks. Every one of them, and their families agree, have no doubt about there being something supernatural at work. The pharaoh’s curse.” She let those words sink in. “What do you think of that?”
“Our mummy’s not a pharaoh,” Phineas pointed out.
“Then, what scared the burglar off?”
The blatt of the telephone broke their uncomfortable silence. Althea went to answer it. Phineas decided to have his say. “You ought to stop hinting at things you don’t know anything about. Just to get a story out of them.”
O’Meara smiled, and put her notebook back in her bag. “A free press is the backbone of a free nation,” she announced. Phineas was trying to think of a question that would tell him if O’Meara was about to be fired. O’Meara kept talking, which interfered with his thinking. “I’ve got a career investment in a free press. A good reporter follows the story. I’ll be back,” she said and was gone before he could stop her to ask “How’s your job?”
Phineas got to work washing his dishes and setting them on the rack to dry. Althea interrupted to call him to the phone. “That was Mr. Vandemark. He’s pretty upset, and he’s coming up to talk to Dad. Casey wants to talk to you.” She looked worried. “I guess I better make a pot of coffee, and wake Dad up. Do you think?”
“Sure.” Phineas didn’t know why she was so worried. It wasn’t a
s if their father was the criminal. He went to get the phone. Unless Althea thought he was?
“Phineas?” Phineas waited. “It’s me, Casey. Vandemark. Are you free this afternoon?”
“I’m free every afternoon.”
“Because my father’s coming up, and I was thinking, I could come with him? And we might do something? You wanna? Play tennis, or Monopoly? Unless, do you play chess?”
“No. Althea does.”
There was a silence. Phineas waited.
“I was going to ask if you could come down, but now . . .” His voice drifted off. “Anyway, should I?”
“Sure, why not?” Phineas asked. He had hung up before he thought of some reasons why not: If Casey was there, he couldn’t hear whatever it was Mr. Vandemark wanted to say to his father, and he wouldn’t go with them to see the collection and see the police in action. On the other hand, it would make a change to hang around with someone his own age. He wondered what kind of tennis player Casey was. The kind who always wore whites was his guess.
* * *
Whites it was, and whites so white they looked brand new, as if they had never been sweated in. The sneakers that completed the outfit shone white, like snow under sunlight. Phineas was wearing an old pair of baggy outback shorts—so called because they had pockets into which you could stuff everything you might need for survival: dried food, your camping knife, a compass, or, in Phineas’s case, tennis balls. He preferred not to wear socks, so he didn’t. He had chosen his Billy and the Boingers T-shirt.
Casey stood staring up at Phineas. Phineas could about tell what Casey was thinking. Phineas looked like a hot-dogger. He knew it, and he knew Casey was due for a surprise. “Let’s go,” Phineas said, and jumped down over all three steps.
Two hours and three sets later, both of them were lying under the shade of a tree, both of them sweaty and red-faced. They were resting up before walking back to the college, halfheartedly watching other games being played. “You’re pretty good,” Casey said.
“I’m okay. You’re not so bad yourself,” Phineas answered. He’d taken each set, but none of them easily, and each one with more difficulty than the one before. Casey kept getting there, getting shots back, plunk, plunk, plunk.
“I’ve taken lessons,” Casey said.
“So’ve I.”
Casey sat up. “I’d better be getting back,” he said, stuffy, or maybe shy. Phineas didn’t know.
As they stood up and bent over to get their rackets, Phineas thought to himself how good it felt to really use his muscles, to have sweat drying on him. He’d forgotten how good it felt to be played out. To be a kid, with another kid. The only other times he’d felt like a kid recently were when he was having a good fight with Althea. He didn’t want the feeling to end.
“Let’s go make some lemonade. We’ve got lots in the freezer. Unless, do you think your father is waiting for you?”
“No, he was going back, he wasn’t planning to stay long. He said he was just going to burn a few ears off. He’s going to send George back to pick me up.
“George?” They were walking side by side, both swinging rackets. People coming toward them gave them a wide berth, as if two boys walking back from a tennis game might be dangerous.
“George drives.”
Phineas stopped dead. “You mean you’ve got a chauffeur?”
“A driver,” Casey said, the same way he plunked back a forehand.
Phineas let the subject drop. He guessed being rich was something Casey didn’t talk about. They got moving again. “Your father isn’t going to give my father grief, is he? Because it wasn’t my father’s fault.”
“My father’s thinking of hiring a private detective.”
“What for?”
“To find out who did it. Or, precisely, who tried to do it.”
Phineas burst out laughing. “You’re kidding. Is he really? An actual detective?”
After a few steps, Casey laughed too. “It is pretty excessive, isn’t it?”
“Seriously excessive,” Phineas said.
They were still laughing as they entered the empty house. Phineas took frozen lemonade down, opened it, and put it in the blender with some water. They’d dilute it to taste after it had been, literally, whipped into drinkable shape. Or, precisely, cut, cut into drinkable shape.
Casey sat and watched, accustomed to not doing things himself. “My father thinks that if he can prove the collection is in jeopardy, they can say the terms of the will haven’t been met. You know, it’s not the money they care about. They care about the name. They want the Vandemark name on a label in the museum.”
“The Boston Museum,” Phineas said.
“Of course. What other museum is there?”
Phineas didn’t know if Casey was being sarcastic or not; he gave him the benefit of the doubt. “That’s pretty rotten for my father.”
“I know. Mine’s pretty selfish. They are. They don’t think anyone but them knows how to take care of things. They also don’t like letting things go.”
Phineas poured out glasses of lemonade, thought about what Casey thought of his family, and didn’t answer.
“And it’s not even very valuable, it’s not like there was anything special in the collection,” Casey said.
“There’s the mummy.”
“Lots of places have mummies. It’s not even really old, for a mummy.”
“She. Not it, she. I know she’s not a pharaoh, or a queen, but—if you saw her, you’d know what I mean.”
“I’d like to. Can I?”
Phineas didn’t know if he was allowed to show someone the collection, so he avoided Casey’s question. “Today? I doubt it. They’ll all be . . .”
“Yeah,” Casey said. “Doing their important stuff.”
He knew exactly what Casey meant. “It’s weird, when you see it. Her. It’s kind of creepy but mostly . . . old. Hundreds and hundreds of years old, but with the portrait you know what she looked like. Like she’s alive.”
“I don’t like to think about somebody digging up my body hundreds of years from now,” Casey said. “To put it in a museum.”
“Why would anyone do that? You’re not that important, are you?”
“I don’t think so, but they do. One of the things they fight about is whose family is more important. I think they’d get divorced, except they can’t.”
“Because Vandemarks don’t,” Phineas guessed.
“Yeah. But they don’t spend much time together, and when they’re having a big fight my mother doesn’t talk to anyone, then she fires a maid or two. Never Mrs. Willis, because good cooks are hard to find. Did your parents fight much?”
Phineas shrugged.
“Don’t you ever talk about them?”
“Why should I?”
“Something must be wrong, if she’s in Portland, Oregon, and you’re here.”
“That doesn’t mean I should talk about them. Complain.”
“How else can you learn how normal your experience is?” Casey asked. “How else can you learn—Phineas, you’re stuck with the parents you have, stuck with the life you have, stuck with yourself, stuck. If you don’t ever compare.”
“Talk to Althea then. She doesn’t mind blaming them.”
“She doesn’t like me.”
“That’s not true. Or at least, there’s nothing personal. She gets nervous around boys. They make her nervous.”
“It’s interesting—you don’t mind talking about Althea. It’s just your parents you don’t want to talk about.”
Phineas had never thought of that. “I guess,” he said, thinking of it, “they’re making me nervous. More than when they had a fight, because they’d always make up after an hour or so, and then go around for a week, kissing a lot, holding hands, as if they were Romeo and Juliet or something. You know.”
Casey shook his head. He didn’t know.
“But this wasn’t a fight. It was a decision. They talked it over. We all talked it over. It does make
me nervous. I guess, I don’t feel secure about what they’ll do.”
“Do you ever feel secure about what grown-ups are doing?” Casey asked.
“No,” Phineas said, the word exploding out of him. “They get so complicated, they make everything so complicated. Like, why doesn’t your father just let the will stand?”
“Or, why would anyone try to steal the collection?” Casey fell in with Phineas’s thinking. “Who would want to?”
“Not kids,” Phineas said.
Althea came in through the back door on that remark. “Not kids what?” she asked.
“Unless it was drugs,” Phineas said, looking at his sister, who looked just like usual, jeans and sweatshirt, hair in ponytails, dark eyebrows, “kids looking for drug money. The break-in,” he told her.
“You watch too much TV,” she squelched him. “There are lots of reasons besides drugs why bad things happen.”
“There sure are,” Casey said.
“Besides,” Phineas added, “anyone on drugs would get lost in the cellar. You’d never be able to find your way on drugs.”
“How do you know?” Althea asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Ease up,” he told her. “It was a joke. I wouldn’t—”
“You better not,” she said.
“I wish I had a sister close to my age,” Casey said.
“No you don’t” Phineas told him.
“Dad sent me to get you,” Althea said. “We’re supposed to meet him. Not you, Casey.”
CHAPTER 10
They left Casey waiting for George on the front steps. “Where are we going?” Phineas asked. Althea’s ponytails bobbed up and down as she hustled along.
“Library.”
“Why?”
“The police. Casey’s father stirred them up. Don’t ask me, Phineas, I’m just doing what I’m told, and Dad told me to get you.”
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