Nobody's There

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  Mrs. Merkel scowled. “Not on your life. No little two-bit perp is going to drive me out of my own house!”

  “It would be only for a short while. Just until those men are tried and convicted.”

  “Who says they will be? If the police can’t even hang on to them …” A strange, almost wistful look came over her face, and she said, “Maybe they should get together—all the stupid people who’d like me out of the way.”

  “All what people? Who are they?”

  Mrs. Merkel gripped the back of a chair, snarling, “Don’t ask personal questions. I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to myself. I’m not about to bare my private life to a silly twit like you.”

  Abbie forced back the answer she’d like to give Mrs. Merkel. This was no time for hurt feelings. She had to get back to the subject of Mrs. Merkel’s safety. “Don’t blame the police for the crooks being out on bail,” she said. “If the judge sets a low enough bail and the crooks can make it, the police can’t do a thing about it. Their job was only to catch the crooks, and—”

  “You’re wrong. My job was to catch them.”

  Abbie sighed and sat in the nearest chair. “Regardless, I don’t want them to come here looking for you,” she said.

  “After what I did to them, they wouldn’t dare tangle with me,” Mrs. Merkel bragged. But she suddenly sat down and sagged in the lumpy plush chair. She looked very old and very tired.

  “Would you like a glass of water?” Abbie asked.

  “No,” Mrs. Merkel said. “Be quiet. I’m trying to think.”

  Abbie sat very still, feeling the silence of the old house creep around her. From overhead came a creaking sound. Was someone on the roof? Abbie wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.

  All at once the faint tinkle of the music from an ice cream truck down the street broke the spell. Somewhere outside a child laughed, and the brakes of a heavy truck down on Main Street squealed and whined to a stop. With the sounds of the world back to normal, Abbie began to relax. Why had she let herself worry so much? Mrs. Merkel certainly was able to take care of herself, and with the police alerted, she wouldn’t be in danger.

  The intrusion from outside seemed to help Mrs. Merkel pull herself together too. She sat up and snapped open her handbag. Slowly she removed her green notebook. Without a word she stood and went to her desk. After rummaging through two of the drawers, she pulled out a small manila envelope, dropped the notebook inside, and sealed the flap.

  Next she walked to Abbie and handed the envelope to her. “Just in case anybody comes poking around here while I’m gone, I’d better put this in a safe place,” she said. “They won’t think of looking in your house, so you find a good hiding place and keep this away from prying eyes.”

  “Don’t you want to keep it in your handbag so it’s there when you need to make notes?”

  Mrs. Merkel rolled her eyes. “Use your brains, girl. Why would I carry around a notebook that’s all used up with no more pages to write on? I’ve got to get me a new one, but this one has important notes in it, so I need to keep it safe.”

  As she stood, Abbie took the envelope. “I’ll keep it safe,” she said.

  Mrs. Merkel smirked. “Don’t bother snooping, trying to read it. You saw that I sealed the envelope. I’ll know if you tried to open it.”

  “I won’t read it. Trust me,” Abbie began. She shook her head. “Never mind. I remember what you said. You don’t trust anybody.”

  “Why should I?” Mrs. Merkel said. It wasn’t a real question, so Abbie didn’t try to answer.

  “I should get home and start dinner,” she told Mrs. Merkel. “Are you sure you’ll be all right without me?”

  “Better than I am with you. Be here on time tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? You don’t expect me to come every day, I hope. Mrs. Wilhite told us only two or three days a week.”

  Mrs. Merkel leaned close. Her eyes were slits, glittering with malice. “That rule’s for the other girls,” she said. “You’re a special case. You wouldn’t want me to report to Mrs. Wilhite that you were uncooperative and I’d had to fire you, would you?”

  “No,” Abbie answered slowly as she fought to control her feelings. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”

  She walked out to her car flushed with anger. I don’t want to see her tomorrow. Or the next day. Or ever!

  As she turned the key in the ignition, Abbie groaned aloud. One whole year of Mrs. Merkel, she thought with dread. How in the world will I be able to stand it?

  The telephone was ringing as Abbie entered the kitchen. She sprinted to answer the ring, grabbed the receiver, and said, “Hello?”

  “Hi,” Gigi answered. “I met my Friend today—Mrs. Gertrude Armistead. She’s darling. She’s typecast right out of a movie. She’s just what a great-grandmother ought to be.” Gigi laughed with delight. “And guess what—she’s not a hundred. She’s only eighty-nine. But she wears a perfume that smells like marshmallows and she loves to eat chocolate.”

  Abbie laughed too. “Lucky you,” she said, surprised to hear a twinge of envy in her own voice. Trying to make up for it before Gigi noticed, she quickly said, “What did you do? Did you drive her somewhere?”

  “No. Mrs. Armistead loves to play Chinese checkers and usually has no one to play with, so we drank iced tea with mint and played Chinese checkers.”

  Abbie smiled. “You and I played Chinese checkers for years when we were kids. Remember? Dad used to join us sometimes and …” She broke off. “So who won? You or Mrs. Armistead?”

  “She did,” Gigi said. “I thought maybe I’d have to let her win, like you do when you’re playing with little kids, but she’s a lot better player than I am. She told me I needed practice to keep up with her.”

  “I’m glad you got somebody nice,” Abbie said.

  “I could count on it that whomever I got would be better than your Mrs. Merkel,” Gigi said. “How did it go today? Is she still hunting for criminals?”

  “She still thinks she’s a private eye,” Abbie said. “We went to a coffee shop where she could spy on someone out the window.”

  Gigi laughed. “Who did she spy on?” she asked.

  Abbie searched her mind for an answer, surprised that she could come up with nothing. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You were with her, weren’t you?”

  Abbie sighed. “Yes, but I was kind of distracted. Dad’s … uh … that … Jamie Lane was our waitress.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I know. I asked Mrs. Merkel if we could leave and go somewhere else, but she said no. She didn’t care that being so close to that woman was really bothering me.”

  “I’m sorry you had a rough time,” Gigi said.

  Abbie thought about telling Gigi the rest of it—the car that almost ran them down, the crooks out of jail on bail, and the notebook filled with Mrs. Merkel’s secret notes. But at the moment she couldn’t talk about all that. Her only hope was to change the subject. “Want to go to a movie Sunday afternoon?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Gigi said, and she began telling Abbie in detail about an Internet review of a new film they both wanted to see.

  Abbie could hear Davy clumping down the stairs. In a moment he appeared in the kitchen doorway. He waved the thin, three-hole notebook over his head. “Come on,” he said in an exaggerated stage whisper. “You’ve got to tell me everything that happened before Mom gets home and it’s too late.”

  Whatever Gigi was talking about at that moment was drowned out. Or maybe Abbie hadn’t been paying attention in the first place. She couldn’t seem to get her mind off Mrs. Merkel. She nodded at Davy and said to Gigi, “Davy’s home. I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay,” Gigi said cheerfully. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Right. Tomorrow.” Abbie hung up and followed Davy to the kitchen table, where he opened his notebook and took out a ballpoint pen.

  “Start talking,” he said importantly. “Tell me everythi
ng that happened.”

  Abbie wanted to run upstairs, fling herself on the bed, and never come out of her room again. But she reminded herself she was doing this to help Davy. Involving him had already made a difference. He was talking to her. And he had stopped acting so angry.

  “Mrs. Merkel told me to drive her to that coffee shop across the street from the entrance to the college,” she said. For an instant she expected him to react, but he just concentrated on what he was writing, seemingly unconcerned. There’s no reason he should know that Jamie Lane is a waitress or where she works, Abbie thought, so she continued, leaving Jamie out of it.

  “We had to sit at a window table so that Mrs. Merkel could spy on someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I—I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  At this Davy sat up and stared at Abbie. “You were with her. You were sitting right there, weren’t you? How could you not be paying attention?”

  “I guess I was distracted.”

  “Abbie, this isn’t going to work if you don’t notice what’s going on. Now, think about it. What did she say? What did you see? I’ve got to write down everything I can about what happened.”

  Abbie nodded. “Mrs. Merkel said she was working on the biggest case Buckler’s Bloodhounds would ever handle.”

  “Good. Good. What’s the case about?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. She keeps saying if she tells me things I’ll probably blab them.”

  “You wouldn’t do that. She’s weird,” Davy said, but he kept writing.

  Abbie felt a comforting warmth sweep through her. Davy was a good kid. No matter how much of a pest he could sometimes be, he was her brother and she loved him. “Okay, let’s see,” she said, searching her brain for every scrap of information she could remember. “The person she was spying on was a woman who went into that expensive dress shop next to the coffee shop.”

  Davy looked up, blank for a moment.

  “It’s a women’s dress shop, and everything there costs too much money. But this woman did buy something.”

  “How do you know?”

  Surprised that Mrs. Merkel’s words had popped into her mind, Abbie answered, “Mrs. Merkel said something about the woman picking up an order.”

  “Was the woman already in the dress shop when you got to the coffee shop?” Davy asked.

  “No … no. She arrived after we were seated at the table.”

  “How did she get there?”

  A sudden memory made Abbie jump. “I think she was driving a white Lincoln.”

  “Town Car?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Big?”

  “Yes.”

  “Town Car,” Davy said as he wrote. “Tell me more.”

  Abbie found herself telling Davy about following Mrs. Merkel to the bank.

  “Was the woman there?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see her.”

  “Didn’t you ask Mrs. Merkel why you were in the bank?”

  “Yes, but she told me to mind my own business.”

  “She is really, truly weird,” Davy said. “If I ever need to hire a private eye, it won’t be her.”

  They continued until Davy had all his questions answered and Abbie couldn’t remember another thing about the mystery woman. Davy stood, clutching the closed notebook to his chest. “Mom should be home pretty soon,” he said. “I’ll put this back in its hiding place.”

  Abbie thought about the notebook Mrs. Merkel had given to her to hide. She hadn’t mentioned the notebook to Davy, and she wasn’t about to. She knew where she’d hide it—between her mattress and box spring. As hiding places go, it wouldn’t be an imaginative place, but that didn’t matter. Hiding the notebook was just something to do to please Mrs. Merkel. No one would come looking for it. No one would care.

  Taking the envelope from her backpack, Abbie hid it just where she had planned.

  “Now what?” she asked her reflection in the mirror over her chest of drawers, but the reflection stared back with a blank, almost questioning look. If there were any answers, Abbie certainly didn’t have them.

  Mrs. Thompson arrived home late for dinner. Abbie had made a baked chicken dish, and around the edges of the Pyrex pan the Italian sauce had dried in ragged black curls. “I’m sorry,” Abbie said, but her mother took a bite and tried to look blissful as she chewed it.

  “I like it crispy,” she said. “It’s delicious.”

  Davy ate quietly, but when Mrs. Thompson asked him what he’d done in school he opened up and told her about the science project he was working on with P.J.

  Abbie could see the surprise in her mother’s eyes and her eagerness to soak up every one of Davy’s words.

  After he’d asked to be excused and had bolted from the kitchen, Mrs. Thompson turned to Abbie. “Davy’s coming around,” she murmured in delight. “I’ve been pricing therapists, trying to find the right one—one who’d understand, one I could afford. But maybe things will work out without therapy. Tonight he was so much like he used to be.” She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “He didn’t seem angry with me.”

  “Mom, Davy’s not angry at you,” Abbie said. She reached over to place a hand over her mother’s. “He’s angry at what he doesn’t understand. His whole world has changed, and he doesn’t know why.”

  Mrs. Thompson’s hand turned so that her fingers could curl around Abbie’s. She gave Abbie’s hand a squeeze and looked into her eyes. “Is it that way with you, too? Are you angry because you can’t understand what has happened?”

  “No,” Abbie said. “I do understand what happened. It’s simple. Dad doesn’t care about us. He only cares about himself. He wants to believe that he’s still young and good-looking, and he found a woman who’ll help with his make-believe.”

  “A very young woman.”

  “She’s not so young,” Abbie blurted out. “She’s got crow’s-feet and wrinkles under her chin, and her neck’s beginning to sag.”

  As her mother instinctively touched her own chin with the tips of her fingers, Abbie added, “You should see her up close. She wears too much makeup, probably trying to cover a lot of flaws.”

  Mrs. Thompson studied Abbie closely. “How do you know all this?” she suddenly asked.

  “She works as a waitress in the coffee shop across the street from the entrance to the college,” Abbie said. “Mrs. Merkel and I … we stopped there for soft drinks.”

  “So that’s where he met her,” Mrs. Thompson said softly. She thought for a moment, then asked, “What were you doing out by the college?”

  Abbie shrugged. “Mom,” she said, “Mrs. Merkel calls me her driver. She says that’s all I’m good for. I just take her wherever she wants to go.”

  But Abbie could see the wheels still going around in her mother’s mind. “Why that particular coffee shop?” Mrs. Thompson asked.

  Abbie wasn’t sure if the question was meant for her or if her mother was asking herself, but she said, “Mrs. Merkel went to that big bank in the same shopping center. She wanted to stop for some iced tea first.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Thompson said. She seemed satisfied. “How are things working out with your Mrs. Merkel?”

  Why does everyone call her my Mrs. Merkel? Abbie wanted to shout. For just an instant she wondered if she should confide in her mother about Mrs. Merkel’s activities. But she knew the answer was a strong no. Her mother would be alarmed, she would complain to Mrs. Wilhite, Abbie would be pulled from the Friend to Friend program, and who knew what the judge would decide to do to her?

  “Why are you shaking your head?” Mrs. Thompson asked.

  “Was I?” Abbie asked, startled. “Oh, I was just thinking about Mrs. Merkel. She gets kind of crabby at times.” Abbie looked at her mother, desperate for an answer. “Does everybody get like that when they’re old? I don’t want you to get crabby, Mom, and I don’t want to be crabby either.”

  Mrs. Thompson laughed. “I once read that when you get old yo
u just become more of what you already are. If you’ve always had a sense of humor and liked people, you just become nicer. If you’ve always been a grouch, you probably get to be more of a grouch.”

  Abbie laughed. “I think Mrs. Merkel was born a grouch,” she said.

  Mrs. Thompson stood. Before she picked up her plate and utensils to take them to the sink, she bent to kiss Abbie’s forehead. “I’m doubly proud of you for being able to get along with her,” she said. “When will you go back to visit her? Thursday? Saturday?”

  “Tomorrow. Wednesday,” Abbie said, and sighed. “She told me it was very important.”

  Frowning, Mrs. Thompson said, “You don’t have to visit her every day. I read the material you were sent. It said two or three times a week.”

  “I know, Mom,” Abbie said. “But she insisted. So just tomorrow I’ll need the car again. Okay? I’ll try to work things out with her.”

  Mrs. Thompson nodded as she opened the dishwasher. “Okay, honey. After I get these dishes in here, I’m going upstairs to take a long bath. I’m tired, right down to my toes.”

  Abbie began to carry the rest of the dishes to the sink. “Take your bath now, Mom. I’ll do the dishes,” she said.

  Gratefully Abbie’s mother kissed her again and left the kitchen. Abbie could hear her in the den, cautioning Davy to do his homework before watching television. But the TV’s volume grew even higher after Mrs. Thompson’s footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Abbie had just finished loading the dishwasher and was drying her hands on the kitchen towel when someone knocked on the outside door to the kitchen. Startled, she looked out the window, into the shadows of the deepening twilight, and saw her father standing on the kitchen steps.

  She began to back away, but he had glimpsed her and called out, “It’s just me, Abbie. You don’t need to be alarmed.”

  A key turned in the lock, and the door opened. “I didn’t want to frighten you by just walking in,” he said. “That’s why I knocked.”

  Abbie leaned against the kitchen counter for support. Mom should have changed the locks, she thought. Did she think Dad would be sorry and come back? Did she hope everything would be the same again? “Mom’s not here,” she told her father. “She went upstairs.”