Down the Rabbit Hole

by Peter Abrahams

  “I said no,” Ingrid said.

  “Lay a burger on me, then,” said Sean.

  “I’ll sell you a burger,” said Ingrid. “Fifty cents.”

  He turned to Stacy. “Got fifty cents?”

  Stacy fished two quarters from her pocket. She wasn’t the same around her brother. Ingrid stuck a patty in a bun and was handing it over to Sean when she saw a police cruiser pull into the parking lot, park on the far side. Not unusual; two or three cops came to every football game, but—

  But when the door opened, Chief Strade got out. Ingrid didn’t remember him at any games.

  “You gonna let go of that?” Sean said.

  Ingrid let go of the burger. A taxi parked beside the cruiser. The driver got out. An unshaven guy chewing on a toothpick? Too far away for Ingrid to tell, but how many taxi drivers could there be in Echo Falls?

  “Stacy,” she said, “I changed my mind.”

  “About what?”

  “Paint my face,” Ingrid said.

  “Yeah?” said Stacy. “Maybe I’ll have a burger too. That one in the bottom—”

  “Now,” said Ingrid.

  “Huh?”

  Ingrid grabbed Sean’s paint stick, smeared red paint all over her face.

  “You’re doing a terrible job,” Stacy said.

  Ingrid smeared more—forehead, nose, cheeks, upper lip, chin, neck, ears. Sean started laughing.

  “Shut your stupid mouth,” Ingrid said.

  “What did you say?” said Sean. Then he saw Chief Strade approaching and backed away a little.

  The chief came over with the taxi driver trailing along. Yes, unshaven and chewing on a toothpick, although Ingrid, busily flipping burgers, took that in from the corner of her eye.

  “Ingrid,” said the chief. “That you under the war paint?”

  Ingrid looked up. “Oh, hi, Mr. Strade. Ready for some football?”

  The taxi driver was looking at her closely. Chief Strade glanced at him. The taxi driver shrugged.

  The chief’s eyes went to her, Stacy, Sean. “Do you always—” he said, gesturing at their faces, all painted. And just at that moment, proving there was a God and he could be kind and just, a whole bunch of kids went by, every one with a painted face. Kids united!

  “It’s a big game,” Ingrid said.

  The chief nodded. “Keeping your nose clean, Sean Rubino?” he said, not looking at him.

  Sean jerked a little, like a startled baby. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Squeaky clean?” said the chief. “I’ve been to too many funerals.”

  “Squeaky clean,” said Sean, recovering his poise fast, fast enough to add the slightest edge of mimicry to his answer. He drifted over toward the condiments, squirted ketchup on what was left of his burger, kept drifting.

  “Murad?” said Chief Strade. “Mind stepping forward so Ingrid can get a good look at you?”

  The taxi driver stepped forward.

  “Have you ever seen this gentleman before, Ingrid?” the chief said.

  “Never,” said Ingrid.

  “You’ve never ridden in his taxi?” said the chief.

  “Ridden in a taxi?” Ingrid said, as though that was just about the most outlandish thing an Echo Falls girl could do. All those years with Jill Monteiro paying off. She remembered Watson saying somewhere that the stage lost a fine actor when Holmes went into detection. He was also—oh my God—a master of disguise.

  The chief’s penetrating eyes met hers for a moment, but their penetrating power was weakened by all that diabolical red. “Okay,” he said. “Just checking.”

  “Care for a burger?” Ingrid said.

  “No, thanks,” said the chief.

  “How about you, sir?” Ingrid said, then thought, uh-oh, maybe Murad had dietary laws and she’d just screwed up.

  “Burger,” said Murad. “Two.”

  Ingrid selected two of the juiciest. Murad reached for his wallet. “Compliments of the Boosters,” Ingrid said, stopping herself, with some difficulty, from adding “Welcome to America.”

  “Just checking?” said Stacy after they’d gone. “Checking what? He’s such a jerk.”

  Over on the field the band was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  “Game time,” said Ingrid, shutting off the gas. Chief Strade scared her, but she didn’t think he was a jerk. More like the opposite, in fact. She realized she didn’t want to disappoint him, and not just because he was Joey’s dad. Somehow this had to come out right.

  The black-and-silvers tried the flea-flicker on their second play. Ty started to come forward, started to take the bait like everyone else, and then—yes!—saw what was really happening. Blessed miracle. He backpedaled, found the receiver, matched him stride for stride. Ball in the air. They both leaped, hands outstretched, a frozen moment under the lights. And—19 came down with it! Ty! He turned upfield, dodged a tackler—

  “Run! Run!” Dad was jumping up and down, beside himself. They all were.

  And dodged another tackler and shifted into a gear Ingrid hadn’t known he had. Maybe Ty hadn’t known either. He just blazed, right down the sideline, maybe not graceful like Assistant Coach Trimble but even faster. Crowd on their feet. Touchdown. He raised the ball high but didn’t do any embarrassing dancing or stuff like that. The best moment of his life, Ingrid just knew it. She almost cried, which was so weird.

  Back at home alone—Mom and Dad at a fund-raising party for the Heritage Committee, Ty out celebrating with the team—Ingrid had another look at the engagement announcement from The Echo. She found that line about Katie’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kovac of East Harrow.

  Bzzz. Did the Echo Falls phone book include East Harrow? Ingrid checked. It did not. She tried information.

  “No Charles Kovac,” said the information woman. “The only Kovac’s an Eleanor on Moodus Road. Do you want that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Up to you.”

  “Okay.”

  The information woman transferred her over to some electronic voice that gave the number and dialed it automatically for fifty cents. It rang a bunch of times and Ingrid was just about to hang up when a woman answered.

  “Hello?” she said. An old woman, kind of shaky. “Hello? Hello? Who is it?”

  Ingrid hung up.

  twenty-three

  INGRID AWOKE ON Saturday morning and remembered that she still hadn’t handed in her topic for the science fair. Being in the science fair wasn’t compulsory, but anyone who entered got thirty automatic bonus points in science on the next report card, points that could come in very handy. Last year Ingrid had done planaria worms, a gross and disgusting project about cutting off their heads and seeing how fast they grew back in different environments. Jammed against her bedroom wall, Ingrid decided that this year’s experiment would involve Nigel.

  Still lying in bed, she called Joey.

  “Hello?” he answered, sounding sleepy, his voice all clogged and deep.

  Ingrid got a funny physical feeling, sort of all over her body, her voice clogging up a little too. “Hi Joey. Did I wake you?”

  “No.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Not much,” he said. He cleared his throat and his voice returned to normal, more like a boy than a man. “How about you?”

  “Gotta come up with a science project,” Ingrid said. “I was thinking of something with Nigel.”

  “Nigel?”

  “My dog.”

  “I know,” said Joey. “But like what?”

  “That’s why I called you,” Ingrid said.

  Silence. It went on for a long time. Was Joey planning some knockout Nigel experiment, a real prizewinner? She waited patiently, letting him think. At last he said, “You were at the game last night.” Kind of weird the way there was no question mark at the end.

  “Yeah,” said Ingrid. “Were you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I
didn’t see you.”

  “Your brother played good.”

  “Where were you sitting?”

  Another silence. What was taking him so long? Where had he sat? It wasn’t a tough one.

  “Ingrid?” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Your soccer shoes are black, right?”

  Oh my God. It wouldn’t go away. “You saw them,” Ingrid said. “Why?”

  “No reason.”

  “No reason? C’mon, Joey.”

  “They’re black, that’s the main point,” Joey said.

  An innocent person would now say “What’s this all about?” Ingrid said it.

  “It’s kind of crazy,” Joey said. “About the murder. My dad thinks there might have been a witness, or even…”

  “Even what?”

  “An accomplice,” said Joey. “Some girl soccer player with red cleats.”

  “Really.”

  “But say it’s a witness,” Joey said. “That would be important, because the D.A.’s going to have trouble making the case against those two guys without one.”

  Good, Ingrid thought. What if she now said “If your dad wants to solve the case, he should take a look at Mr. Ferrand’s squash shoes.” Then everything would come flooding down like after a dam bursts, and there’d be action, big-time. But what kind? She couldn’t see into that future. It was chaos. This, so messed up in many ways but in her hands, was still better. Besides, she could feel patterns forming deep in her mind. Out of sight, yes, but she sensed the beginning of understanding. “Really,” she said again.

  “Nothing to do with you,” Joey said, “since yours are black.” Silence. “But,” he said, “do you know anybody who wears red ones?”

  “Are you asking me to rat people out?” Ingrid said.

  “No. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Because I don’t do that,” Ingrid said. That was true, part of her code: Kids didn’t rat out kids, and those who did were just that, rats. “And half the soccer players in town, maybe more, wear red cleats. Red Raiders rule, in case you hadn’t heard.”

  “Hey,” said Joey. “Sorry.”

  Another silence, real long. Ingrid was about to say good-bye and hang up when he said, “Maybe something with a maze.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nigel,” said Joey. “We could test his smelling skills by putting him in a maze.”

  “Mazes aren’t going to be his thing,” Ingrid said.

  “We could use different foods,” Joey said. “As variables.”

  “Hey,” Ingrid said. Variables—that was pure science. The idea grew on her fast; also the way he’d said we—that grew on her too. Nigel, still sleeping, opened his mouth very wide, the way dogs sometimes do—yawning even as he slept, not a care in the world, no idea that science was about to fall on him like a ton of bricks. Dream on.

  That afternoon at rehearsal—finishing up the tea-party scene—Vincent didn’t seem like his usual self. He stumbled over his lines a few times, and even when he didn’t, they were flat. Ingrid knew what that was all about: Jill must have told him that Mr. Ferrand had said no to the duplicate key idea. There’d be no sleeping in Prescott Hall, no getting comfortable with the place. Vincent’s stage fright was waiting in the wings.

  “Let’s take a break,” Jill said, after fifteen or twenty minutes. She came over to the tea-party table—an ornate heavy thing, the first prop to arrive—and smiled, but her big dark eyes were thoughtful. “I know you’ve all had a long week,” she said. “Here’s where we can shake it off.”

  Mr. Santos, sitting front row center and sewing his caterpillar costume, did that shaking thing of his, for when he slid into character.

  “Yes,” said Jill. “Like that. Everybody now.”

  They all shook themselves, except for Vincent and Chloe. A button popped off Meredith O’Malley’s blouse and flew off the stage.

  “Five minutes,” Jill said.

  Ingrid went to the backstage vending machine. Hey! Fresca. That was new. Jill’s doing, had to be, must have noticed that Fresca was her drink. Jill was amazing—an artist and a leader too.

  Ingrid got Fresca from the machine. Chloe appeared; she stuck in a dollar and bottled water tumbled out.

  “How’s it going?” Ingrid said.

  Chloe shrugged.

  “Playing much squash these days?” Ingrid said.

  “Excuse me?” said Chloe.

  “Like tennis,” Ingrid said, “only more so.”

  Chloe’s face got all suspicious, like she was being made fun of. Who could make a face like that without looking at least a little ugly? Chloe, for one. “I don’t play squash,” she said.

  “But your dad does,” said Ingrid.

  “So?”

  “I hear he’s pretty good.”

  Chloe shrugged again. Ingrid understood why police were sometimes tempted to take suspects out back.

  “What kind of shoes do you wear for that?” Ingrid said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “For playing squash.”

  “Squash shoes.”

  “Are they like tennis?” Ingrid said.

  “Only more so,” said Chloe.

  Zing. That one hurt.

  “What kind of squash shoes does your dad like?” Ingrid said.

  “You want to know what squash shoes he likes?”

  “Adidas, Puma, Nike, New Balance—you know,” said Ingrid, guiding her along.

  “Why?” said Chloe.

  Ingrid shrugged, as close to Chloe’s shrug as she could get, like Marie Antoinette hearing about the starving peasants. Being Chloe would be fun, no doubt about that. “Just curious,” she said. “I’m into shoes.”

  Chloe glanced down at Ingrid’s feet. She was wearing beat-up Skechers, one of the laces broken and knotted in the middle. Chloe, on the other hand, was wearing—oh my God, really?—Manolo Blahniks.

  “He wears his own kind,” Chloe said.

  “What do you mean?” Ingrid said.

  “Of squash shoes,” said Chloe. “Isn’t that what you’re asking about? He wears his own kind, of all shoes, for that matter.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not complicated,” Chloe said. “My father’s shoes are custom made for him in London.”

  “Oh,” Ingrid said, could do no better than that, just a plain little off-the-shelf oh.

  She went back onto the set. Only Jill and Vincent were around, standing in the wings beside the upright piano. The stage was dark except for an orangey-red glow shining on the tea-party table. It grew more purple as Ingrid watched: Mr. Rubino, up in the booth, trying things out.

  So Mr. Ferrand turned out to be a red herring. He might have wanted Cracked-Up Katie out of 341 Packer Street, but did he own a pair of Adidas sneakers? Far, far beneath him. He was off the hook.

  Ingrid started to uncap her drink. So who was on the hook? Who else had a motive? Her mind spun around uselessly, getting nowhere. She barely heard the rumble of the rolling piano; then she turned and saw Jill and Vincent pushing it across the stage. At that moment, Mr. Rubino cranked up the strobe; he loved the strobe, but Jill never let him use it in actual productions. Vincent’s eyes, looking right at Ingrid, seemed to flash at her. His flashing eyes, she thought, remembering Mom’s poetry session in the kitchen. That one was the coolest of all: Beware! Beware! What other poems did Mom—

  Yikes. Fresca came spurting out of the bottle, a stop-action spill under the flashing strobe, making a little puddle on the stage floor.

  “Mind giving us a hand, Ingrid?” Jill said. “Vincent’s going to try the ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ song.”

  Good idea, Ingrid thought, that’ll get us going. She set her drink on a stool, went to the keyboard, took her place pushing between Vincent and Jill. Jill moved around to the other side, gave them directions.

  “A little more this way,” she said, appearing and disappearing under the strobe, leading them toward the Mad Hatter’s place at the tea-party table. />
  Vincent started pushing more to the left.

  “No,” said Jill, peering over the piano, “to your right.”

  “My right?” said Vincent, steering even more to the left, “or your right?”

  “Yours,” said Jill, but he never got a chance to change course, what happened next coming so fast. All of a sudden his legs flew out from under him—oh my God, the spilled Fresca—and he lunged forward, fully outstretched, losing his grip on the piano. Ingrid lost her grip on it too, the huge heavy thing shooting forward. Jill looked up, her eyes widening jerkily in the strobe flash. Then came a thud as the piano barreled into her. Jill, so light, flew through the air, straight at a corner of the tea-party table. Her head struck it with a sickening crack. She fell to the stage and lay still. The house lights came up.

  Mr. Rubino knew CPR, but it wasn’t necessary. Jill’s heart was beating and she was breathing fine. “A good sign,” said Mr. Rubino, kneeling beside her, his finger on the inside of her wrist. But she was still unconscious, her glossy black hair clotting with blood, when the EMTs arrived minutes later and took her to the hospital, sirens blaring.

  The Prescott Players stood around the spot where she’d lain, marked now by a bloodstain, bright red under the house lights. Vincent rubbed his forehead. His face was white; all their faces were.

  “I don’t know what happened,” he said, sounding close to tears; they trembled in his dark liquid eyes. “I must have slipped on something.”

  Ingrid, who was in tears, said, “The Fresca. It’s all my fault.”

  All heads swiveled toward her.

  “What do you mean?” said Vincent.

  Ingrid pointed to a glistening liquid patch on the stage floor, the skid marks of Vincent’s feet clearly visible. “I spilled my drink,” she said, coming close to a wail. “It’s my fault.” She forced herself not to wail, not to cry. Making herself the center of attention at a time like this, sucking up sympathy—disgusting.

  Mr. Santos found a mop and cleaned up the Fresca.

  Meredith O’Malley gave Ingrid a hug. “It was an accident, dear,” she said.