by Henry, Sue
“You were very close, John,” the pipe smoker acknowledged with a grin. “But then, you usually are.”
“Exactly who was the dead man?” Doug Tabor, Danny’s father, asked Timmons. “I never found out anything but his name.”
“We ran prints and found him on file as Curtis Belmont, a smalltime thief and hoodlum who had served a couple of years for appropriating a vehicle that didn’t belong to him and using it in a convenience store holdup. At that point we had no idea who had killed him, or why.”
“I recognized him,” Frank Monroe said, suddenly remembering.
“You’d seen him before?”
“The day before. He was the shorter of the two men I had observed in the plaza.”
“How did you happen to be in the lumberjack arena that morning?” Becker asked. “Weren’t you in the barn?”
“Well, you see, Danny and I had slipped from the barn early, when people started appearing to take care of their animals at seven that morning. Someone would eventually show up to answer questions and hand out printed information at those tables, so I thought it prudent to eradicate the evidence of our occupancy beneath. Putting their feet in a bed of straw might have startled that someone enough to make inquiries. I thought it just possible that we might require that refuge again, and it is never advisable to burn your bridges. We spent the time, until the fair opened at ten o’clock, in concealment next to Danny’s bicycle, behind the straw pile about which he has already informed you. When people began to come in through the southern gate, we joined them, inclined toward finding ourselves some breakfast.”
Monroe did not seem to notice that several of those listening to his account could not keep from smiling at his exaggerated choice of words. Young Danny seemed about to question the meaning of several of the largest ones, but shrugged and chimed in with “I was really hungry.”
“You’re always hungry,” his mother admonished him. “Hush now, and let Mr. Monroe tell this.”
“I was hungry, too.” Monroe smiled at the boy. “Danny recalled a vendor who sold a pastry confection he called ‘elephant ears.’ So I took charge of the two bags he was carrying and enjoined him to purchase these items for both of us while I kept a rather urgent appointment with the gentlemen’s facilities near The Sluice Box. After breakfast we intended to convey the red bag with the camera equipment to the lost and found at the security cabin in the middle of the grounds. When I completed my errand Danny had not yet returned and the crowd at the small arena caught my attention. I strolled over to see what was happening and recognized the deceased, but I had no concept of his villainous past, of course.”
“And you, Danny?” Timmons questioned. “Did you see the dead man?”
“I stopped to pet Tank after I got us breakfast,” Danny said and laid a hand on the dog’s head as Jessie nodded agreement. “So I didn’t see that man. But I saw the other one. And he saw me!”
W hile he stood in line to buy the elephant ears, Danny saw Jessie arrive with her dog and noticed that he was next door to the Iditarod booth. He had, without success, begged his parents for a dog of his own for months and, remembering the woman and her husky from their encounter the day before, decided to take another look at this dog before returning to find Monroe.
“Hi,” he said, finding Jessie folding sweatshirts into neat piles behind the counter, Tank sitting at her feet. “Can I pet your dog?”
“Sure.” She was impressed at his request for permission. Most kids either went straight to pet a dog or hung back in fear and refused to go near one. It always made her wonder about their past experiences with animals. The tendency people seemed to have lately to train aggressive guard dogs, then exhibit astonishment when they attacked children or adults, always dismayed her and others in the sled dog racing world.
“He likes kids,” she told the boy, who immediately went to his knees beside Tank and patted him gently on the head. “Scratch his back and ears,” she suggested. “He loves that.”
Tank gave Danny a sloppy wet lick on the cheek, making him giggle and hug the dog’s neck briefly before he returned to petting him.
“What’s his name?”
“Tank. He’s the lead dog in my racing team.”
“You’ve been all the way to Nome on your sled, haven’t you?” Danny asked, looking up with shining eyes and giggling when Tank gave him another affectionate lick. “That must’ve been really hard. Didn’t you get cold?”
Jessie stopped what she was doing and came across to sit down in a chair next to the boy.
“Yes, I’ve run the Iditarod several times. And sometimes I was cold. But if you have good equipment, wear the right clothes, and have a warm sleeping bag, you’re okay.”
“Wow! I’d like to do that someday.”
“Maybe you will, if you want to enough.”
“I wish I had a dog,” Danny said with longing in his voice.
“Ask your parents. Maybe they’ll get you one.”
“Naw.” He shook his head sadly. “I’ve asked and asked, but Mom always says I’ll forget to take care of it.”
“Will you?”
He shrugged, a little uncomfortable at the thought. “I don’t think so. But sometimes I get busy and forget my chores—like mowing the lawn.” He was frowning now and kept his gaze on Tank, refusing to look at Jessie.
“Maybe if you tried hard to be responsible and were careful to remember to do your chores for a long time, they’d see that you could be trusted to care for a dog.”
“Maybe,” he agreed and finally looked up to meet her eyes.
“Sometimes I forgot when I was your age,” Jessie told him, feeling he needed some encouragement. “All kids do. But you get over it, mostly. Once in a while even now I forget things, but never my dogs. They depend on me, as your dog would depend on you. They’re even more important than the lawn. How would you like it if your mom forgot to give you dinner?”
Danny stopped petting Tank and looked up at her, astonished at her admission that she forgot things, too. He grinned a happier lopsided sort of grin and sat up straight.
“I’ll try,” he told her. “Try really hard.”
“You do that.” She smiled back.
Tank, catching the appealing smell of warm pastry in the plastic bag Danny had laid on the floor, nosed at it curiously.
“Can I give him some?” Danny asked, once again pleasing Jessie by asking. She usually didn’t feed her dogs sweets, but decided to make an exception considering the boy’s polite request.
“Maybe just one bite,” she agreed. “What’s your name?”
“Danny,” he told her, breaking off a rather large bite, which Tank accepted with his usual dignity and swallowed in a gulp.
“I saw you yesterday, didn’t I?” Jessie asked, remembering her collision with the pirate in the plaza. “We ran into each other.”
Danny grinned. “Yeah, we did.”
“But your face paint is gone.”
He nodded. “I washed it off.”
“So you’re back again today?”
“No—well, yes,” he stammered and ducked his head, then gave Tank a last pat and got to his feet. “I’ve gotta go,” he said. “My friend is waiting for breakfast.”
“That’s breakfast?”
His confusing behavior startled Jessie, and she began to ask him another question. But he was already headed for the front of the booth, where the folding doors were spread wide to allow visitors easy access. Just before he disappeared, he turned and asked a quick question.
“Can I come back and see Tank later? He’s a really great dog. I’d like one just like him.”
She nodded and smiled. “Of course. We’ll be here until late this afternoon at least.”
He was gone in a flash, leaving Jessie to wonder a little about his odd response to her question. But a Canadian musher she had met during the Yukon Quest, a distance race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, stepped into the booth, and she forgot about the boy for the moment in greeting him.<
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Danny, on the other hand, stepped quickly out of the booth on his way to find Frank Monroe. Knowing that by now his new friend was probably wondering what was taking so long, he was inclined to jog through the growing crowd that was now flooding onto the grounds. Disoriented for a moment, he made a left instead of a right turn, realized his mistake, and was about to reverse direction when he all but crashed into someone standing solidly in his way.
Looking up, he was shocked and horrified to see that he had dashed head-on into the owner of the red bag, the man who had chased him the night before. Startled speechless at the boy’s sudden appearance, the man loomed over him, a tall and scowling threat in a black T-shirt and baseball cap, his eyes invisible behind reflective sunglasses. For a moment they stared at each other, before the man lunged at Danny, who dodged, spun around, and ran from him.
“Hey! Come back here, kid.”
Danny could hear feet pounding behind him, but he had the advantage of his smaller size in disappearing into the crowd that almost an hour after opening thronged the walkway. Panicked, hearing the man yelling behind him, he tore through narrow spaces between people, bumped a few, knocked one woman down, and leaped over a stroller parked in his way. He made an abrupt left turn between two booths, hopped over lines attached to pegs that held up a tent, and crawled frantically into the empty space below a portable cabin that had been hauled in and set on cement blocks for a leather vendor. There he lay hugging the ground, panting and terrified, looking back the way he had come. He expected to see his pursuer appear at any second but hoped he would not.
His heart sank when the man came into sight between the two booths and paused, clearly not sure which way the boy had gone. He looked quickly around, then grabbed a passing woman by the arm with a clear demand for information. Shaking him off in irritation, she waved a hand in Danny’s direction and disappeared from sight as she resumed her stroll along the walkway. Seeing the man come hurrying toward him between the two booths he had passed moments earlier, Danny scuttled farther back into the shadows beneath the cabin and held his breath.
Jumping easily over the tent lines and pegs, the man approached until only his feet were visible as he passed the boy’s hiding place and went out into a walkway parallel to the one he had just left. There he stopped and stood for a moment, taking the time to look around in all directions. Hoping he would go away, Danny lay very still and quiet. Then he heard footsteps on the stairs that led up into the cabin over his head and voices from above, though he couldn’t tell what was being said. In a few seconds, there were more footsteps on the stairs, and looking in that direction, Danny watched the feet of two people go down them and onto the walkway. They stood for a minute before slowly walking away together in the direction of the plaza—Danny’s pursuer and a man Danny had noticed before because his hair and beard were dyed a rainbow of colors and stood out from his head in spikes.
When they were gone, Danny laid his forehead on his hands and sighed in relief, still gulping air from exertion and fear. He wished he had not left the red bag and camera with Frank Monroe, for if he had been carrying it, he could have dropped it as he ran, giving the man what he wanted and himself a chance to escape. Now the guy would continue to search the fairground for it. And me! Danny thought in discouragement. Now he knows I’m still here, and so does that other guy with the rainbow hair.
Slowly, carefully, he crawled from the shelter of the cabin that advertised rocks and fossils for sale. Peering cautiously up and down the walkway before stepping out in the opposite direction from the man who had chased him, he hurried toward the men’s rest room, where he expected to find Frank Monroe.
From the door of a booth selling leather items, the thin man with a wild spiked hairdo, each spike dyed a different color, gave him a smile and a wave as he trotted away.
CHAPTER 10
I t must have been scary to be chased again. Did you find Mr. Monroe?” Jessie asked him, coming back from the kitchen, where she had gone to get him another can of soda. Handing it over, she resumed her seat on the sofa.
“Yeah,” Danny told her, squirming around so he could look up at her as he answered. “He was there waiting for me, and I told him about seeing the guy.”
“I knew something was amiss when he came rushing up out of breath and remarkably dusty from hiding on the ground under that cabin,” Monroe affirmed. “When he came back, I sent him off to clean up a bit, and then we found a bench on which to sit down and eat our breakfast. Danny caught his breath and related his encounter with the owner of the camera equipment. Upon hearing this, I decided that no time should be wasted in turning that bag in to the lost and found—and ourselves to whoever was looking. But with the angry owner of the bag lurking about, I had grave misgivings about Danny turning it in alone, as he had planned to do, so we started in that direction together.”
T he fair’s walkways were rapidly filling with people taking advantage of the warm sunny day as Danny and Frank Monroe walked the short distance from the exhibit hall to the security office. Coming around a bend to a point where they could see the building three booths ahead of them, Danny, who was now carrying the red bag, suddenly stopped short and stepped quickly behind Monroe.
“There he is,” the boy gasped.
“Where?” Monroe assessed the crowd, searching for a man of the description his young friend had given him.
“Right there in front of the office, talking to that other guy.”
When Monroe still couldn’t locate the person he meant, Danny pointed as he tugged urgently at the old man’s coat sleeve. “There. Right there. Let’s get outta here before he sees me.”
As he finally identified the man who had made the boy so frantic, Monroe frowned and shook his head. “That can’t be him, Danny. They are both security guards.”
They were. Both men wore the easily recognizable black Tshirts with SECURITY printed in large white letters across the front. As Monroe stared in their direction, startled and disbelieving, the taller of the two angrily pounded a fist into the palm of his other hand and turned and headed in their direction.
“Oh, shit. I think he saw me,” Danny breathed.
“Stay back,” Monroe instructed, though it was unnecessary, as the boy was standing so close behind him that he might have been a shadow.
As the guard came closer, Monroe recognized him as the second of the two he had seen in the plaza and recalled that this man’s companion had turned up dead in the pond. Instinctively he felt there was something not right about the equation, but had no time to puzzle it through.
Making a quick right turn, Monroe walked them both into the tent of the nearest vendor. It was full of hundreds of Tshirts hanging on racks so near each other that the aisle space between left very little room to move.
“Now,” he told the boy, “crawl under this rack, make yourself small, and be silent.”
Danny disappeared instantly as Monroe grabbed a green shirt with a colorful gecko printed on the front and turned toward the door through which they had entered. Pretending that he was examining it speculatively with an eye toward purchase, he actually kept a close watch on the walkway outside. He was rewarded when the man Danny had identified passed by and disappeared with only a quick glance at the interior of the booth.
“May I help you?” a female voice suddenly inquired.
Monroe flinched before turning to respond to the clerk, who had quietly come up from behind and startled him. Hanging the shirt carefully back on the rack, he smiled and demurred, tipping his hat as he refused her offer. Off she went to help another customer. Stepping to the front of the booth, he took a long look outside, then called to Danny in a low voice, “Come on out. He’s gone.”
“Are you sure!”
But when he looked again, he noticed that the guard the boy’s pursuer had been talking to was not gone. Standing in front of the security office, he was intently searching the crowd as it passed, clearly looking for someone.
What, wondered Mo
nroe, was the best thing to do now? Go ahead to the security office, or avoid it until later, when this man was not standing guard? Glancing down at Danny, who peered out, pale and frightened, ready to dive back into concealment, he made an uneasy decision he hoped would not be the basis for later regret.
“Come on,” he told the boy. “For the moment, we’ll let things settle down. Later I’ll take the bag to the lost and found. Okay?”
Danny nodded. “Thanks,” he said and glancing around fearfully, followed his protector out of the booth. “Where’ll we go?”
“To that space in the straw behind the big barn, I think,” Monroe said, cutting between booths to gain access to a walkway on which they would not be forced to pass the security office. “This is no time to search out another sanctuary.”
To save time, they cut straight through rather than going around the barn, which was now full of people wandering through to look at the animals. Many stood in a long line, awaiting a turn for their children in the petting zoo. As the two passed a group of colorful scarecrows leaning against a wall, Monroe hesitated. The contest to make the straw-stuffed figures was evidently over and had been judged, for first, second, and third place ribbons adorned three of them. Beside them on a bale of hay lay a few items of secondhand clothing, leftovers from their creation. Without stopping to examine these, he scooped them up, tucked them under one arm, and continued toward the rear door.
“Wadda ya want those for?” Danny asked.
“You’ll see.”
When they had made it to the relatively safe place and were out of sight behind the straw bales, Danny threw himself down beside his hidden bicycle and panted in relief.
“I think maybe I should go home,” he told Monroe.
The man shook his head.
“I think for the time being you’ll be better off right here. Wheeling that bicycle would make you an obvious target for recognition.”
