Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  “Now, don’t do anything to embarrass me this time,” she said, pulling up in front of the pillared porch at the end of the circular drive. “And eat whatever Dolores gives you for lunch”—she looked hard at my sister—“whether you like it or not.”

  Bobby was sitting on the steps, waiting for us, and he pushed himself to his feet and walked ahead of us to the door. “Let’s go,” he said. “Mom didn’t want to start fixing lunch until you guys got here.” The front door was enormous and had a brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head. Bobby pushed the door open with his butt and bowed low to let us enter.

  We marched Meg down the hallway to the big, sunny kitchen where Bobby’s mom was standing at the counter, stirring something in a mixing bowl. She didn’t look like anybody’s mother; she looked like Princess Grace. She wore slacks and a silk shirt, open at the throat. She was cool and lean, and I had to look away to avoid staring at her.

  At last, I said, “Hi, Mrs. Teague. We’re here.”

  “Well, if it isn’t Bryan and Margaret.” She stopped stirring long enough to click off the little radio sitting on the kitchen counter. “I’m just starting a batch of cookies for us to enjoy after we have some lunch. Margaret, why don’t you come over here and give me a hand. We’ll let the boys go play their boy games.” She looked at Bobby. “Lunch in an hour, dear. I’ll call you when we’re ready.”

  I looked at Meg. She hated the name Margaret and usually barked at anyone who made the mistake of calling her that. She’d been sent home from school last year for punching a boy who called her Margaret. She’d broken his nose. I saw a scowl slide across her face and disappear. She walked over to Mrs. Teague, looking up at her reverently as she went.

  Bobby elbowed me in the ribs. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ve got stuff to show you.”

  We went upstairs to Bobby’s room. It was twice as big as the room Meg and I shared, and I wandered around, checking out his toys and looking at all the clothes in his walk-in closet. “Why do you have all these suit coats?” I asked. I turned and saw Bobby across the room, on his hands and knees, pulling something out from under the bed.

  “I dunno,” he said. “I never wear them. C’mere. Take a gander at this.”

  He pushed a red metal box toward me on the floor. There was a piece of window screen over the open top held in place with clamps. I went over and looked. Inside were half a dozen small lizards sitting on sticks and crawling through a bed of wood shavings.

  “These are chameleons,” he said. “I got them at the parade in Lombard last Memorial Day. The man said they’d change color to match whatever they’re sitting on, but it’s really just different greens.” He unscrewed the clamps and inched the screen back a little bit. I sat down to get a closer look. “You have to be careful when you take them out. If they get away, you’ll never find ’em again. They’re too fast.” He slid his hand into the cage, cupped it around a sleeping lizard, and picked it up.

  “Think fast!” he shouted and tossed the animal at my face.

  We were both surprised when I caught it. Based on past experience, I had expected something like that. Bobby was obviously disappointed. I hadn’t jumped or screamed or anything. I just sat there, holding the little creature in my lap. I grinned at Bobby, proud of my cool. He glared back.

  “Nice catch,” he said, “but check this out.” He took another chameleon from the box and held it up, his fingers gripping it under the front legs. “Their tails grow back,” he said. He glanced at the open bedroom door to make certain we were alone. Then he gripped the lizard’s tail with his other hand and jerked it off. The chameleon’s mouth snapped open in a soundless scream. Its tongue bulged out of its mouth, and it closed its eyes. Bobby tossed the writhing lizard back in the cage and handed me the tail. It twitched on my palm.

  “Doesn’t that hurt them?” I asked. “It looks like it hurt.”

  “I dunno,” he said. “You can keep the tail. I’ve got others.”

  I put the tail in my pocket.

  Lunch consisted of bologna sandwiches and potato chips, followed by the chocolate-chip cookies Mrs. Teague and Meg had baked. As she was walking around the table, refilling our empty milk glasses, Mrs. Teague paused behind Bobby’s chair and rested her hand on his head. Bobby closed his eyes and leaned back, pushing the back of his head into her palm. The corners of his mouth turned up in a little smile, and he let his arms hang down at his sides. They stayed like that for a moment, and then Mrs. Teague ruffled his hair. “Go and play,” she said.

  The three of us kids went out back. Meg sat in a little chair on the porch and watched while Bobby and I set up a battlefield under a massive willow tree. I asked her if she wanted to come down and play with us, but she just waved. When Meg was in one of her quiet moods, she could go a whole day without speaking.

  Bobby had dozens of soldiers, but he had the wars all mixed together. His army was mostly little green army men and a few medieval knights. My army was composed of Civil War soldiers, cowboys, and a few spacemen. We each had one model tank. Bobby went back inside, and when he came out again, he pulled a can of lighter fluid and a book of matches from underneath his shirt.

  “Your mom’s here,” he said. “We’d better get crackin’ if we’re going to napalm these soldiers.”

  Fortunately our battlefield was mostly dirt; hardly any grass grew in the shade of the ancient willow. Bobby squirted lighter fluid on all the soldiers and connected the puddles at their feet with streams of the pink liquid. He took a couple of Black Cat firecrackers out of his pocket and stuck them under the tanks, then shot a thin stream of lighter fluid around their fuses. “You can’t soak ’em,” he said, “or they won’t light.”

  He pulled a match out of the book and scraped it across the striker, cupping his hand to shield the flame from the wind. When he touched it to the lighter fluid, there was a gentle whoosh and blue flame spread from soldier to soldier, weaving across the ground until all were enveloped, and lastly, the firecracker fuses lit. The tanks blew apart spectacularly, hurling plastic shrapnel across the yard. I got hit in the neck with a piece of a turret. The soldiers didn’t burn long, and when the flames had gone out, we surveyed the damage; legs sagged, facial features were smoothed to shiny nothingness, rifles and hands had melted to dripping blobs.

  We got the devastated armies back in their shoebox just as my mother and Mrs. Teague stepped out onto the porch. They were holding half-empty bottles of beer, but I could tell my mother was ready to leave. She kept passing her drink from hand to hand, looking for a place to put it down. Finally, she set it on a table that held some potted plants and called to us.

  “Meg, Bryan, let’s go.” She put her hands behind her back and turned to face Mrs. Teague. “Thank you so much for letting the kids come over. I managed to get all my little chores accomplished.”

  “Happy to help,” Mrs. Teague said. “And Margaret and I had a nice time baking cookies. Didn’t we, Margaret?”

  Meg smiled up at Mrs. Teague, and my mother’s mouth fell open. She must have thought Meg had been hypnotized. I clambered up the steps to the porch and fell in behind my mother, and as I did, I noticed her hands. They were covered with brown dots, some smudged and some perfect little circles.

  THE NEXT TIME we saw the Teagues was on a visit to their vacation home on Lake Geneva. Mr. Teague picked us up in the big Greyhound bus he had bought and turned into a motor home. There was another family on the bus, a man who had been in the army with my father and Mr. Teague and his wife and daughter, who sat at the dining table in the middle of the bus with Mrs. Teague. The man sat up front with my parents so they could talk with Mr. Teague while he drove. The man was in a wheelchair, and even though he had the brakes on, he kept a grip on one of the fixed seats to keep the chair from moving around. My father rested one of his hands on the arm of the wheelchair, just in case. All the adults were wearing shorts, and you could see that the man in the wheelchair was missing his right leg from the knee down. I had never seen an amput
ated limb before. The skin looked taut and shiny, more like plastic than flesh. I must have been staring, because suddenly my mother smacked me on the back of the head. “Be polite,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” the man said. “I lost my leg in Africa when I was over there with your dad. We looked all over for it, too, but we just couldn’t find it.” He laughed a little, with a high-pitched, nervous sort of laugh.

  I stumbled to the back of the bus and sat down next to Meg on a bench that could be turned into a bed.

  “I thought you’d be sitting with Mrs. Teague,” I said. We both looked over at the dining table. The wheelchair man’s wife and daughter were giggling at something Mrs. Teague had said.

  “She’s got her fan club,” Meg said and turned to look out the window.

  I spent the rest of the trip trying not to stare at Mrs. Teague, then trying not to get caught staring at her. I memorized the bounce of her hair, and the way she tilted her head when she was saying something serious, and the bend of her thin wrist when she was gesturing with her cigarette, and especially, her openmouthed laugh when she found something funny. I was so entranced that we were halfway to Lake Geneva before I realized Bobby wasn’t on the bus.

  We spent the afternoon on the private beach behind the Teagues’ A-frame vacation home. My father helped wheelchair man hop across the sand to one of the beach chairs where the adults were sitting, sipping whiskey sours, and talking. I curled up on a lounge chair near my mother, who was putting on suntan lotion. Her face was already turning red, but it wasn’t half as red as her hands. She had scrubbed them raw trying to get the carpet dye off.

  Like most of my mother’s projects, she had dyed the carpet without consulting my father first. She liked to surprise him. He was surprised all right. He came home from work to find the light gray living-room carpet covered with black polka dots. My mother had filled a shaker bottle with dye and walked back and forth across the room, camouflaging her cigarette burns. When he came home that evening, my father just stood in the doorway, staring at the carpet. He didn’t say anything for several minutes. Meg and I watched from the kitchen and waited for the fireworks. Finally, my father looked at my mother, smiled, and said, “Hi, honey. What’s new?”

  Mr. Teague went inside for a minute and came out with a scuba mask and snorkel. He tossed them to me.

  “Here you go, Bryan, old man. These are Bobby’s, but he won’t mind if you use them. See what you can see at the bottom of the sea.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Teague,” I said. “Where is Bobby? I thought he’d be here today.”

  Mr. Teague didn’t say a word. His lips got tight, and he turned and walked back to the house. Mrs. Teague waggled her fingers at me, and I went to sit in the sand at her feet.

  “Don’t mind him,” she said. “He’s just worried about Bobby.” She took a sip of her cocktail and looked out across the lake. “Bobby’s trying out another military academy this weekend.” She chuckled. “Or should I say, they’re trying him out. Anyway, Bobby may not be going to your school next year.” She reached out and tousled my hair. “I’m sorry there’s no one your age to play with today, but I’m sure a boy with your imagination can find something fun to do.”

  I sat there for a minute, aware of my skin. A tremor had started on my scalp, where her fingers touched it, and flowed down my spine and out along my limbs. Then she shooed me away with a gesture. “Go play now,” she said. “Scoot.”

  Meg and the other little girl built sand castles. Meg’s was on one side of the beach, and the girl’s was on the other. Occasionally the girl would walk over, look at Meg for a minute, then go back to the other side of the beach. Meg never said a word to her. The only time she acknowledged her presence was when a big speedboat tore past. It was closer to shore than it should have been and its wake roiled up onto the beach. Meg looked up from her work and pointed to the girl’s sand castle, which was crumbling in the surf. The girl squealed and ran back to survey the damage.

  I hid underwater, floating facedown at the edge of a tangle of weeds and cattails, breathing through the snorkel. There were some frogs and a few sunfish hanging out in the little submerged forest. I did my best to catch one, but they were too fast for me. By the time my mother called me for dinner, my back and the backs of my legs were aching and scarlet.

  Two weeks after the trip to Lake Geneva, the Teagues threw Bobby a birthday party. Most parents would have made a pizza and a birthday cake and invited a few friends over. Bobby’s parents rented Kiddieland.

  Kiddieland was an amusement park filled with games and rides and vendors selling hot dogs and popcorn and cotton candy. It gave kids an opportunity to eat too much; ride some spinning, zipping, whirling machine; vomit; and start the cycle again. Even with the potential for that kind of fun, Bobby was only able to get about a dozen kids to show up. Most of them were like me, kids whose parents were friends with Bobby’s parents. Mr. Teague paid the owners to close the park for the day, so we could have the place to ourselves.

  Some of the kids brought their parents with them. My mother dropped me off with instructions to be out in the parking lot at 3 p.m. sharp, when she would return to pick me up. My father had to work, and my mother had had enough of the Teagues’ “profligate exhibitionism.” My parents had discussed this over dinner the night before.

  “I will not subject myself to another afternoon of watching people fawn over those two. And I don’t know why you insist Bryan go. He doesn’t even like Bobby, he just tolerates him for your sake.”

  “Whatever happened to showing people a little kindness?” my father asked. “They’re having a difficult time. Rob was really upset when Bobby was expelled from this latest military academy.”

  “He tried to burn the place down, for heaven sakes. What do they expect?”

  “Bobby tried to burn down a school?” I asked.

  My father turned and looked at me like he just realized I was in the room. “You can’t repeat any of this to anyone. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” I said. “How did he do it? Burn down the school, I mean.”

  “He didn’t burn it down. He piled up a couple of mattresses in his dormitory and set them on fire. Someone smelled the smoke, and the fire was put out before it did much damage.”

  “And the dean or the general or whoever kicked Bobby out,” my mother said. “His father tried to buy them off by donating a new gymnasium, but they figured if Bobby was going to end up burning it down, there wasn’t much point.”

  “The point for us,” my father said, “is that they are all very upset and could use our support.” He kept looking at me; I think he was afraid that if he looked at my mother, he’d start yelling.

  “I’ll go,” I said. “I don’t mind.”

  “Really?” my mother asked.

  “Really,” I said. “It might be fun.”

  The whole group was waiting for me just inside the entrance. I was the last one to arrive. Mrs. Teague was all in white—blouse, skirt, and tennis shoes. She smiled at me, but when she turned around, Bobby punched me in the arm. “You’re late, man,” he said. “I didn’t think you were coming.”

  We were really too old for most of the rides—they were designed for kids about Meg’s age—but we made the most of it. There were games with prizes like ring toss and pitch out, and there was plenty of food. The best part was that Bobby’s father had paid for it all in advance. There were no lines, either. If you wanted to go on a ride, you just walked up and rode it. Bobby spent most of his time throwing darts at balloons. The man who ran the game must have been paid off, because no matter how many balloons Bobby popped, he always won a big stuffed animal. I divided most of my time between the Tilt-A-Whirl and the roller coaster. These were the only two rides for older kids in the park, and they were good ones. The Tilt-A-Whirl could easily make you lose your lunch, and the roller coaster had a sharp turn followed by a sixty-foot drop. It was called the Big Dipper, and I had been afraid to ride it up until I was ten years old.

/>   I took a break for lunch and got a hot dog and a root beer. I saw Mrs. Teague sitting alone on a bench, watching Bobby play the ring toss game. I sat next to her, but she was watching so intently, she didn’t notice me at first. I followed her gaze to see Bobby hurling rings at the pegs. He never got a ringer. The wooden rings hit the table with a whack and bounced up in the air or caromed off and landed in the midway. The man running the game just stood and watched. He looked confused. Bobby hurled ring after ring, as hard as he could. I turned to say something to Mrs. Teague, but she was crying. She didn’t make any noise, but her cheeks were wet and she clenched her purse while she rocked back and forth on the bench.

  When Bobby ran out of rings, he looked around and saw us watching him. He left his pile of stuffed animals in front of the ring toss and came to sit with us. He was breathing hard, and his cheeks were flushed.

  “Scoot on over,” he said, sliding in between his mother and me. “Man, did you see that? I swear, that game is fixed.”

  Mrs. Teague took a handkerchief out of her purse and blotted her eyes. “Well, dear,” she started, “perhaps an underhand toss might have been more—”

  Her mild scolding was drowned out by the arrival of the rest of the group. Mr. Teague and the other parents and kids were having a popcorn battle. They were laughing and tossing handfuls of popcorn at one another. When they saw us sitting on the bench, they attacked, hurling fistfuls of the fluffy stuff in the air over our heads. It was a salty, imitation-buttery blizzard. I started eating popcorn off my lap, which cracked everyone up.

  “Hey,” Mr. Teague shouted, “who’s up for one last ride on the Big Dipper?”

  I looked at my watch. It was almost three o’clock, but I couldn’t pass up one more ride. Only a few of us wanted to go. We hurried over to the loading ramp and paired up. Mr. Teague sat in the front car with one of the girls. She was frightened and wanted to ride with an adult. I looked for Mrs. Teague, but she was leading Bobby toward the last car in the line. I wound up sitting with a kid I had never met before. The attendant went from car to car, lowering the lap bar and telling us to stay seated. The lap bar was hinged on one end, and after he pulled it across our laps, the attendant secured the other end with a big metal pin. When he was finished, he stepped back, released the brake, and we were off, clattering up the track, past the crisscross of wooden beams and braces.