Behind the Curtain

by Peter Abrahams

  “A noose?”

  “He was good with ropes. Noose around my neck, strung over the rafters, standing on a box. He’d threaten to kick the box out from under me ’less I spilled the beans.”

  “About what?”

  “Where the gold was hidden, whatever it was, the game we were playing. Didn’t matter what I said, he wouldn’t believe it. After an hour or so, he’d get bored and untie me.”

  “Oh my God, Grampy. Did you tell your parents?”

  Grampy shook his head. “No one can protect you,” he said. “Got to protect yourself. So one time, when he untied me, it finally dawned—here I am up on the box at eye level. And I popped him a good one on the nose.”

  “And he ran away?”

  “Ever had your nose broken?”

  “God, no,” said Ingrid.

  “Stings,” said Grampy. “Plus there was lots of blood. Naturally he put his hand right up to his face, feeling around. That’s when I kicked him in the…in the place where sometimes you got to kick a guy. Ol’ Carl never came near me after that.”

  “Carl?” said Ingrid.

  “Still alive,” said Grampy. “I keep checking the obituaries.”

  Ingrid took a guess. “Does he work for the Ferrands?”

  Just the mention of the name changed the expression on Grampy’s face. “The Krakens went over to them after the Prescotts died,” he said. “Vultures of a feather.”

  Ingrid laughed. Then she remembered how Carl Kraken Senior had said “Nuh” when Chloe asked if he knew Grampy, and felt his bent old nose, and she stopped laughing.

  “Here,” he said, offering her the last marshmallow. She roasted it to perfection and gave it to him.

  “My lucky day,” he said. He polished off the marshmallow, tossed his stick in the fire.

  “So what’s the plan?” Ingrid said.

  “Plan?”

  “Won’t we need a lawyer?”

  “Lawyer?”

  “To handle the appeal.”

  “Lawyers’ll screw you six ways from Sunday.”

  “But—”

  “No lawyers,” said Grampy. “Real pigs will do the trick.”

  Chloe called that night. “I talked to my parents about that Rome trip. Looks good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Not definite yet. But possible. Depending.”

  Depending. There was a silence. Then Ingrid said, “I talked to my grandfather about the farm.”

  “And?”

  “The answer’s no,” Ingrid said. “Never.”

  More silence.

  Workout sounds rose from the basement.

  “Three more, Ty,” said Dad. “Come on. Push. Push. One more. All you got. Push! Push! YES!”

  “Chloe?” Ingrid said. “Did you hear me?”

  But Chloe was gone.

  nine

  TUESDAY, A DAY OF the week Ingrid would just as soon have done without, but this particular Tuesday was teacher development day. Teacher development at Ferrand Middle meant that the kids got freed at noon while the teachers went to the Holiday Inn conference room near the interstate on-ramp in East Harrow to develop.

  “Wanna come over?” said Stacy on the bus ride home. “My dad reprogrammed the satellite card, picks up everything.”

  “Etchings over at my place,” said Brucie.

  Stacy turned in her seat, stared at him. “You wouldn’t know an etching if it punched you in the nose.”

  He shrank back. Stacy could break him in two. “Like Etch A Sketch?” he said.

  “Zip it, guy,” said Mr. Sidney from the front.

  “Maybe later,” Ingrid told Stacy. That punch-in-the-nose remark made her think of something.

  The Echo’s office was on Main Street, right across from Town Hall. Ingrid leaned her bike—Univega, bright red—against the window. Gold-leaf letters on the plate glass read THE CENTRAL VALLEY’S SECOND OLDEST NEWSPAPER, ESTABLISHED 1896—THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT. Mr. Samuels, owner, editor, and publisher, was watching from his desk. Ingrid knew him from the Cracked-Up Katie case. She went inside.

  The Echo office had its own smells—ink, wax, dust, mold. Stacks of yellowed newspapers lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Mr. Samuels sat behind a low railing, wearing his green eyeshade.

  “Speak of the devil,” he said in his high, scratchy voice.

  “Hi, Mr. Samuels.”

  “I’m working on an item about you at this very moment.”

  “About me?”

  “Not you specifically,” said Mr. Samuels. He was a little guy with a long nose, lively eyes, and ink stains on his shirt even though he wore a pocket protector. “About this outrage at Ferrand Middle.”

  Oh my God—steroids: Was it true?

  “What’s so strange?” said Mr. Samuels. “You’re the one gave me the tip.”

  “Never,” said Ingrid.

  Mr. Samuels peered at her from under the eyeshade. She could almost feel his mind probing around. “Are we failing to communicate here, Ingrid? I’m talking about the budget cuts that wiped out the student newspaper.”

  “Oh, that,” said Ingrid.

  “What other outrage could there be?”

  “None,” said Ingrid.

  Mr. Samuels made a curt nod, the kind that said they were on the same page, kindred spirits. She and Mr. Samuels? At that moment, Ingrid had a very weird thought: I’ll have to leave this town one day.

  Mr. Samuels turned to his screen, stuck reading glasses on the end of his nose. “How’s this for an opening graf?” he said. “‘Question: What kind of town is too cheap even to put up the measly funding for a middle school student newspaper? Answer: Echo Falls. Yes, readers, this picture-perfect little town of ours, or so those good folks over at the Chamber of Commerce would have us believe. Very quietly—some might even say on the sly’”—Mr. Samuels glanced up at Ingrid, gave her a significant look—“‘the School Committee cut The Clarion, voice of Ferrand Middle School, out of the budget three years ago. My question to you, school committee: What the heck were you thinking?’” He swiveled around in her direction, an aggressive look on his face, like he’d just challenged someone to a fistfight. “Well?” he said.

  “Um,” said Ingrid. The truth was she couldn’t have cared less about The Clarion. Teachers always supervised student newspapers, meaning the fun got squeezed out. But Mr. Samuels didn’t want to hear that, so Ingrid said, “Pretty hard-hitting, Mr. Samuels.”

  “They’ll have to lump it,” said Mr. Samuels. “I’m not changing a syllable. Some of the powers that be in this town could use a good smack upside the head.”

  “Does that include the board of assessors?” Ingrid said.

  He took off his glasses, peered at her. “Don’t tell me you’ve got something on them?”

  “Oh, no,” said Ingrid, “it’s nothing like that.”

  “Too much to hope for,” said Mr. Samuels. “Let me guess—this is about your grandfather.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now he’s locking horns with the board of assessors.”

  “Not exactly,” said Ingrid. She told him the whole story.

  “So he plans to get some pigs and file an appeal?” said Mr. Samuels.

  “Yes,” said Ingrid. “Without a lawyer.”

  “Goes without saying,” said Mr. Samuels. He put his hands together like a church steeple, poked his nose over the top. Ingrid assumed he was considering the lawyer question, but she was wrong. “I wonder how this got started,” he said.

  “How what got started?” said Ingrid.

  “The whole reassessment,” said Mr. Samuels.

  “It’s true,” Ingrid said. “Grampy hasn’t done any farming for years.”

  “Exactly,” said Mr. Samuels. “Then, after all that time—boom, reassessment.”

  “Maybe one of the assessors happened to drive by,” Ingrid said, “saw how bare everything was.”

  Mr. Samuels shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way,” he said. “Not in Echo Falls.” He
picked up the phone, dialed a number, covered the mouthpiece, whispered to Ingrid, “Polly Porterhouse. Just the clerk, but she runs the show.”

  “Porterhouse?” said Ingrid. “Any relation to the gym teacher?”

  “Wife,” said Mr. Samuels. He uncovered the mouthpiece. “Polly,” he said, “Red Samuels, over at The Echo.”

  Red? Ingrid looked at him closely. What he had for hair were a few wisps on his head and eyebrows, all white. Polly Porterhouse said something that made him laugh. He said something about mill rates that made her laugh. Then he started talking about farms in general and soon Grampy in particular. All of a sudden he straightened up.

  “Really, Polly?” he said. “And who would that be?” He wrote something on a pad and said good-bye. Turning to Ingrid, he said, “Always a neighbor in cases like this.”

  “What cases?”

  “Where someone gets reassessed out of the blue,” said Mr. Samuels. “Some neighbor with a grudge makes a call to the board of assessors.” He rotated the notepad so she could read what he’d written.

  FRD Properties.

  “What’s that?” Ingrid said.

  “Name that whoever owns those cottages across 392 from your grandfather’s place hides behind,” said Mr. Samuels.

  “Are you talking about the old Prescott farm?” asked Ingrid. “Where the Krakens lived?”

  “How’d you know a thing like that?” Mr. Samuels said.

  “Grampy told me,” Ingrid said. She stared at the notepad, tried to make sense of things. “Can we find out who FRD Properties is?”

  “Just watch me,” said Mr. Samuels.

  He started tapping at the keyboard, nose inching closer and closer to the screen. “Hmm,” he said. “FRD seems to be owned by DRF Development…registered in Delaware.”

  “Someone in Delaware tried to get Grampy’s taxes raised?” Ingrid said.

  “Registered in Delaware,” said Mr. Samuels. “Red flag, far as I’m concerned. If they think that’s going to stop me, they don’t know who they’re dealing with.”

  “Why is it a red flag?” Ingrid said.

  But Mr. Samuels was typing fast now, his eyes shining with light from the screen, and didn’t hear. Ingrid let herself out.

  “Welcome, everybody,” said Jill Monteiro at the first rehearsal for The Xmas Revue. “We’re off to see the wizard.”

  Everyone laughed. They sat in a circle on folding chairs on the auditorium stage at Echo Falls High, five kids from Ferrand Middle and Jill. Jill was a genuine artist who’d actually performed off-Broadway and had had a brief speaking role—she’d said “Make that a double”—in Tongue and Groove, a home-renovation spoof with Will Smith and Eugene Levy that had gone straight to video.

  “Ingrid I know,” she said, her big dark eyes taking them all in, “but not the rest of you. Why don’t you introduce yourselves, tell us a bit about your acting experience. Let’s start with the Cowardly Lion.”

  “That’s me,” said Stacy. “Stacy Rubino. No experience. Ingrid dragged me into this.”

  Jill laughed, her black curls glistening under the light. “Exactly how I got my start,” she said. “Kicking and screaming. Scarecrow?”

  Mia raised her hand. “Mia McGreevy. Back at my old school I was in lots of plays.”

  “Where was this?” asked Jill.

  Mia bit her lip. “New York.” She and her mom had moved to Echo Falls after the divorce, but her parents still kept fighting, mostly by e-mail that sometimes got mistakenly copied to Mia.

  “And what do you think of Echo Falls?” Jill said.

  Ingrid knew the answer to that: Mia was bored to tears. But what Mia now said surprised her. “It’s so beautiful. And the kids are great.”

  Jill gave Mia a smile—a strange one, Ingrid thought, almost sad. “Tin Woodman?” she said.

  Joey mumbled his name, incomprehensibly.

  “Missed that,” said Jill.

  “Joey Strade,” said Joey. Jill’s gaze went to that stubborn cowlick at the back of his head. “No experience,” he added. Ingrid was still amazed that Joey had come out for this in the first place. All he’d told her was “Why not? It’s just one little scene.”

  “Can you supply an ax, Joey?” Jill said.

  “An ax?”

  “As a prop for the woodman.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Joey said. “We got axes.”

  “Ingrid’s Dorothy,” Jill said. “So that just leaves the wizard.”

  “C’est moi, amigos,” said Brucie Berman.

  “Our scene is the one where Dorothy and her friends meet the wizard,” said Jill, handing out the scripts. Everyone leafed through.

  “Hey,” said Brucie. “Where’s the singing?”

  “No singing,” said Jill. “I adapted this from the book.”

  “Book?” said Brucie.

  “It was a book first,” said Jill, “written by—”

  “But what about me singing ‘Over the Rainbow’?” Brucie asked.

  “The wizard doesn’t even sing ‘Over the Rainbow,’ you dweeb,” said Stacy.

  Brucie gave her what he must have considered a withering look. “I was going to rap it,” he said.

  “You know something?” said Stacy. “You’re totally—”

  “How would that go, Brucie?” said Jill. “Your ‘Over the Rainbow’ rap.”

  Brucie’s eyes lit up. A second later he was on his feet, grunting into his fist as though it were a mike.

  “Unh uhn where ha—

  ppy unnh unnh, blue blue blue

  birds fly unh unh

  unnh unnh

  beyon unnh da rai yayn

  bow wow wow why unnh

  can’t

  unnh

  yo.”

  “Wow,” said Jill.

  “So I can do it?” said Brucie.

  “It would fit beautifully,” said Jill, “in some future production.”

  “Huh?” said Brucie.

  “But unfortunately not this one,” Jill said. “First, let’s talk about what the scene is actually trying—”

  An alarm went off in the auditorium, loud and piercing. They glanced at one another, waited for it to stop or someone to come. No one came. It didn’t stop.

  Jill raised her voice. “Maybe the janitor’s around.”

  “I’ll look,” Joey said.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Ingrid. It just popped out, completely on its own. She felt eyes on her back as she and Joey left the auditorium. The alarm followed them down the hall, fainter and fainter.

  “How do you like it so far?” Ingrid said.

  “This play stuff?” said Joey.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know,” Joey said. “Do you think Dave Chappelle, Adam Sandler, all those guys were like Brucie when they were kids?”

  “That’s a scary thought,” Ingrid said. The backs of their hands brushed as they went down to the basement.

  Echo Falls High was old, much older than Ferrand Middle. The basement corridor, dimly lit, had a brick floor and damp stone walls.

  “Janitor’s office must be down here somewhere,” Joey said. “I’ll try this way.”

  Ingrid went the other, past a couple of locked doors and a bank of rusty lockers, the doors gone, all empty inside. Next came a half-open door, the sign on it reading CUSTODIAN: MR. KRAKEN.

  Mr. Kraken? Of course, Carl Kraken Junior. She got the Carls straight in her mind. Carls one and three worked for the Ferrands. Carl Senior had done that horrible thing to Grampy, long ago; Carl the third had climbed into Sean Rubino’s Firebird on the gravel road behind the Ferrands’ house.

  Ingrid glanced in. A man sat behind a desk. He looked a lot like Carl Senior, beaky nose (although his was straight) and pointy chin, but was younger and bigger, with thinning brown hair arranged in a comb-over. Carl Junior, for sure. The office was a mess, but a few details stood out: a cigarette burning in an ashtray, a glass of some light-brown liquid on the desk, the wad of bills Carl Junior was counting.r />
  Ingrid drew back out of sight, knocked on the door.

  “Huh?” said Carl Junior. “Who’s there?”

  Ingrid stepped into view. Cigarette, drink, money—all gone.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he said. “School’s closed.”

  “We—we’re rehearsing in the auditorium.”

  “For Chrissake,” he said, rising. He was very tall, with long arms and huge bony hands. “No one tells me nothin’.”

  From behind Ingrid, Joey said, “The alarm went on. We need it turned off.”

  Carl Junior gazed at him. “Do I know you?” he said.

  “Joey Strade,” said Joey.

  “Chief’s son?”

  “Yeah.”

  Carl Junior went over to a panel on the wall. “Goddamn building’s falling apart.” He flicked a circuit breaker. “Alarm off,” he said. “Happy now?”

  “Thanks,” said Joey.

  “Yeah,” said Ingrid, “thanks.” Hers was meant for Joey.

  ten

  INGRID LAY ON HER BED, reading from The Complete Sherlock Holmes. “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” one of her favorites. She was deep in the story, totally swallowed up as usual, when she came to Holmes saying this: “I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”

  It stopped her, threw her out of the story, like off a horse. She thought of Chloe and her parents, the Rubinos, the three Carls. And what about her own family? What would Holmes say if he—

  “Hey.” Ty stuck his head in the door.

  “What’s up?” Ingrid said.

  “Need a spotter.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Went back to the office.”

  “How about taking the day off?”