by Lisa Bullard
“He’s maybe not dead. That’s one thing we’re trying to figure out.”
“One thing?” said Iz. “What else is there—we find your father, we find the money, right? Mystery solved.”
“But he maybe is really dead,” I said. “So we also have to figure out who else might have the money. I even wondered—just for a while—if maybe Gram had found the money somewhere and now she has it.” I kind of mumbled that last part, pretending I was suddenly really interested in the beat-up kitchen floor. There was this big crack next to my foot. I wished it would open like one of those earthquake fault lines and swallow me right up.
“Your grandma?” asked Iz. She thought a moment. “Well, yeah, I guess she’s an obvious possibility, but she’s lived here the whole time. Why would she wait until now to start spending it?”
My breath heaved out in relief. Iz was smart. If she didn’t think Gram was guilty . . .
“I don’t really think Gram has it,” I said. “It’s just—maybe somehow she knows something without really knowing she knows it? Or maybe my father tried to contact her sometime—you know, sent her a post card or whatever—so she knows he’s still alive? And anyway, it’s like that game Clue—you know, where you eliminate the suspects and then whoever’s the only one still standing at the end must be the killer. If we’re going to do this right, we have to rule out Gram as a possibility.” I could tell I was making about as much sense as my past year’s geometry teacher.
“So about your dad,” said Kenny. I guess he was having a little trouble keeping up. “Did he have, like, plastic surgery or something? If it was him, how come nobody in town recognized him while he was spending the money?”
Iz and I both whipped our heads around to stare at him.
Iz sighed. “I must be tired. I hate when Kenny thinks of something I didn’t.” She looked over at me. “Did you think of that?”
Kenny smirked while I shook my head.
“I guess if he is alive, he must be hiding out somewhere and maybe he has an accomplice. You know, somebody he’s passing the loot along to,” I said slowly. “Somebody who seems perfectly innocent so nobody suspects him. Or her.”
“Like your grandma,” Kenny said. Were we back to Gram being a suspect? I sent Kenny a shut-your-trap look.
“Or maybe . . .” started Iz. “You know, the newspaper said the FBI thought your dad had an accomplice for the robbery itself. Maybe that person’s still around. Maybe when you turned up, they figured it was finally safe to start spending the cash because everyone would blame you for it.”
I was opening my mouth to tell her what a gen-ius idea this was when Kenny jumped in. “Like I said, maybe it’s your grandma. Maybe she’s the accomplice. Maybe she’s really Grandma Stick-’Em-Up!”
“All right, enough grandma-ing!” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was getting so ticked; after all, I’d been the one to bring up Gram in the first place. I’d spent half the night worrying about the same things Kenny was now saying. But it was like how you can trash-talk your best bud as much as you want, but as soon as somebody else starts in, you’re all over him for it.
“There’s this tiny outside chance that maybe Gram found the money somewhere after the robbery, but I won’t believe she helped hold up a bank. She’s not some granny-get-your-gun type!” I glared at Kenny. “Watch it.”
“Boys, boys, peace out, already,” said Iz. She turned to me. “I thought you said we had to work fast on this master plan of yours.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, giving Kenny one last don’t-go-there look. “I think we have to search Gram’s house. To see if there are any clues that my father might really be alive. Like an address or a phone number or a post card he sent from Rio or something.” For just a second I flashed back to that talk in Gram’s truck, where she’d told me about when my father had vanished. Had she said she’d never heard from him again? Or had never seen him again? I couldn’t remember exactly. And anyway, would it really be such a big deal if Gram had lied to me?
Iz nodded. “I’m still hoping there could be something like a treasure map.”
“Or just a big pile of bank cash,” said Kenny.
Iz looked at him really hard. “We have to use our brains while we search ’cause the clues might not be obvious. And we better make sure to put everything back like we found it.” She turned to me. “We don’t want your grandma to suspect we searched her house. When’s she coming home, anyway?”
“I’m supposed to meet her at the church at five o’clock,” I said.
Iz checked her watch and then walked into the living room and looked from one end of Gram’s small house to the other. “We only have a couple hours. I’ll do her bedroom and the bathroom. There’s probably girlie stuff in those places.”
I nodded.
“Kenny, you start with the kitchen,” she went on. “You spend all your time eating—that should be an easy room for you. Just call us if you find anything that doesn’t belong. And look everywhere!” She turned to me. “What about you?”
“I’m going to start with Gram’s desk,” I said. “It’s got all those little cubbies and drawers and stuff.”
There was silence as we each started off on our own personal spy missions. But after just a few minutes, Kenny spoke up from the kitchen. “Bro, can I take a food break? I’m getting hungry.”
“Yeah. If you can find anything I’ve missed, you’re welcome to it,” I said.
“Kenny? Pay attention to what you’re doing instead of to your stomach,” Iz called out from Gram’s bedroom.
“No wonder I always wanted to be the robber when we used to play cops and robbers. This searching-the-house thing is boring when you can’t rip apart pillows and stuff like they do on TV,” said Kenny. “At least let’s crank some tunes.”
“I don’t have my iPod speakers here,” I said. “But you can try Gram’s radio.”
“You’ll be sorry,” Iz yelled out. I suddenly had a horrifying thought: What if Kenny was into country music? We were sitting smack in the middle of cow county, after all. My nerves were strung out enough without somebody strumming across them like a banjo.
Fifteen minutes later Judas Priest was telling me “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” on some heavy-metal station Kenny had somehow scrounged up, and I had realized the kid was dead right about both the hungry and the boring parts of playing cop. Then Iz came out of the bedroom carrying a box. She set it down next to me and walked over to click off the radio. “How can you listen to that stuff?”
Kenny walked in from the kitchen.
“Where you’d find that?” I asked, zeroing in on the giant slab of pie he was eating out of his hand. “That wasn’t here at lunchtime.”
“Freezer,” said Kenny, showing off a huge bite of apple while he talked. “I searched the whole freezer real carefully just like you said, Iz.” He waved his half-eaten wedge toward the kitchen. “S’more where this came from,” he added to me.
“A little focus here, please?” said Iz, grabbing my arm as I turned toward the kitchen. “What happened to ‘we’ve got to move fast’? You can both think about your stomachs later.” She waved toward the box. “I found something a lot more important than pie. There’re newspaper articles and stuff about the bank robbery at the top of this. Maybe there’s other stuff about your father underneath.”
The pie suddenly didn’t look so good; I guess the truth was, I was counting on our not finding anything in Gram’s house to incriminate her.
“Finding the articles doesn’t mean anything,” said Iz. Maybe she’d noticed my turning green or something. “Your grandma was his mom—she’d keep those just because . . . you know?”
“My mom buys ten copies every time I make the sports section and sends them to all our relatives,” said Kenny. “Moms like to show off like that.”
Iz heaved this big sigh. It seemed as if she had to throw one of those at Kenny or me every hour just to keep herself from filling up with hot air and floating away. “Not helpfu
l, Kenny.”
“Where’d you find the box?” I asked while Kenny made a what’d-I-do expression with his hands and face. I squatted down and set the cover of the box aside.
“It was under her bed. There’s nothing else interesting in her bedroom.”
I started pulling stuff out, making little piles. The smell of old school-library books rose up from the box. There were yellowed newspaper clippings and a beat-up photo album and yearbooks and a bunch of random pieces of paper. I picked up the top newspaper article and stared at a photo of a guy in an army uniform. He looked a lot like me. My father.
I realized Kenny had said something, so I made myself look up and say, “Huh?”
“I’m done in the kitchen. You want me to take over the desk so you can start in on this stuff?” he asked.
The piles of papers were pulling me in like an alien magnetic beam. Another part of me felt like you do when it’s report-card day and you haven’t slit open the envelope yet; whatever’s inside could be waiting to bite you in the butt. I took another look at the piles of junk and then I checked out the box’s cover.
“Doesn’t look like there’s any money here,” I said. “And this is covered with six years of dust. I’m guessing it’s been a long time since Gram crawled around on the floor to stick things under her bed, so she won’t miss it. I’ll hide it in my room before I leave and look at it tonight. That way we can keep working on the rest of the rooms while she’s still gone. I’ll keep going on the desk.”
“I’ll move on to the bathroom,” said Iz. “Kenny, why don’t you look in the coat closet and in that cedar chest there.”
I had just gone back to flipping through phone bills and church bulletins when I thought I heard gravel crunching outside. Had Deputy Dude come back to try some water torture on me? I got up and went to look out the kitchen window.
Gram was getting out of her truck.
CHAPTER 12
My heart slammed against my ribs like a pinball bouncing off the flipper. I ran into the living room.
“Gram’s home!” I worked to dial down my volume. “We’ve got about ten seconds to get this stuff put away.”
Iz stuck her head out of the bathroom, gave me a panicked look, and then went back in, slamming the door behind her. Kenny started throwing blankets back into the cedar chest. I scrabbled around on the floor, stuffing newspapers and other junk back into the box. The lid wouldn’t fit, so I grabbed it and the box and ran toward my room just as I heard the back door opening. I whipped the box under my bed and then took two deep breaths, trying to put on my Mr. Cool mask before heading back out to face Gram.
“Kenny,” I heard Gram say from the living room, “what are you children doing in the house? Why on earth aren’t you outside on such a beautiful day?”
“Well, I got to confess, Mrs. Stoiska.” I froze on the other side of my bedroom door. Was that all it took? She hadn’t even gotten out the thumbscrews, and Kenny was already acting like a narc?
“We got real hungry, so we came in and ended up eating most of your pie from the freezer. I’m sorry if you were saving it for something special.” You gotta hand it to him—turned out he could lay it on as thick as a Minnesota accent when he needed to. I came out of the bedroom.
“Sorry, Gram,” I said, hoping the pie theft would account for the redness I could feel on my cheeks. “We were starving.”
Gram gave me this long look, making it pretty clear that she still had that mom skill. The one where she could sniff out a lie in two seconds flat. And between snooping through her house and turning her into a bank-robbery suspect, I guess it was no surprise I was sending out guilt waves.
Finally she turned and walked into the kitchen. I looked at Kenny and we followed her. She peered at the one little slice Kenny had left in the pie dish. “I didn’t even remember it was there,” she said. “You boys were welcome to it, as long as it hadn’t gone bad.”
“Best pie I’ve had in ages, Mrs. Stoiska,” Kenny said. “Better than Grandma Gudrun’s, even. Maybe if you don’t mind, I’ll just finish off this last little bit so that you can wash the pan.”
I glared at him while he scarfed up the rest of the pie without leaving me even one little bite, but Gram’s face relaxed at the compliment to her cooking. Then she looked around. “Isabella isn’t with you?”
“Uh, she’s in the bathroom,” I said, waving vaguely in that direction.
“You know girls—takes them forever,” said Kenny. “I pretty much never get a chance in there now that we’ve got even more of ’em living at my house.”
Iz walked into the kitchen. “Oh, like you don’t spend an hour in front of the mirror every morning searching for whiskers. Hello, Mrs. Stoiska.” A dust bunny big enough to be a dust elephant was hanging off the back of Iz’s shorts, but I figured it was probably better if I didn’t reach over to brush it off.
“Hello, dear,” said Gram. “Kenny’s mother asked me to send the two of you home to get ready for the church fundraiser. We’ll see you there later on. I forgot the hotdish, so I had to come home too.” She looked me up and down, and her eyes stayed stuck on my shirt. I looked down and realized it was covered with dust from the box. When I lifted my head again, that x-ray look was back.
“You might want to put on a clean shirt, Travis.” Gram’s voice sounded cold. She finally broke eye contact, picked up the pie dish, and headed for the sink. I’d been spying on her. Now she didn’t trust me. We were just one big happy family.
Iz gave me the thumbs-up sign and left.
“Later, dude,” said Kenny.
I was now on bad terms with Gram and most of the rest of the town, but at least I’d have two allies tonight.
I couldn’t help thinking about that box under my bed while I changed my shirt. But there was no time to look through it right then; Gram was already convinced I had been up to no good, and hiding out in my room would only make her more suspicious. Fortunately, when I came out, she seemed like back-to-normal Gram—not saying a whole lot, but not giving me that x-ray look, either.
I hated to rock the boat, but finding the box had made me want to start fishing even harder for information about my dad. So when Gram handed me the dish holding the food for the fundraiser and reached out for her car keys, I nodded toward that lumpy fish key rack.
“So, Gram? I know about the bank-robber thing and the rough edges, but there has to be some good stuff about my father too, right?”
Gram froze. Then she took the dish from me, set it onto the counter, and put her hands onto my shoulders, just for a second, before her hands dropped. “There was so much ‘good stuff,’ Travis. I know that everybody—even me, I’m realizing—has been focusing on the mistakes he made. But your father had some marvelous qualities too.”
She leaned against the counter. “He loved his people the same way he did everything else: full tilt. It was hard sometimes to be on the other side of that love, because he didn’t think through how concerned we would be when he took all his risks. But he was always genuinely repentant afterward. And he stuck by his loved ones no matter what.”
“But he and Ma ended up . . . not together. Even though she was pregnant.”
There was a long pause. “I do believe he cared about your mother, Travis, but their relationship was new, and as you just pointed out, it got complicated very quickly. And John was struggling at that point. It’s something you should probably talk about with your mother. There are some things that only the two participants can truly understand about a . . . romantic relationship.”
I suddenly felt a strong need to make sure there wasn’t a single wrinkle on my T-shirt. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gram smoothing the corners of the aluminum foil covering the fundraiser food, making sure it was really tight. Really, really tight.
Finally Gram pushed off from the counter and straightened her shoulders. “I’m thinking about the loyalty he showed Carl. I told you that Carl stepped in as a father figure when your grandfather died. As John go
t older, Carl changed; he’d make plans with John and then not show up. But even in high school, John still made a point of stopping by Carl’s house every couple of weeks. He brought him groc-eries and cleaned up the place. Carl’s always been too proud to accept much help from most people, even as sick as he is now, but somehow he was willing to accept help from John. One of the things John was taking so hard that last summer was that Carl was finally losing his house, and John wasn’t sure how to help him.”
Gram glanced at the clock and grabbed up her keys. “Goodness, you’re turning me into a regular chatterbox, Travis. We’re late!”
Gram talked only once on the way into town, and that was to mutter, “They better have left us something other than that Jell-O concoction of Mimi Ingersoll’s to eat. Mayonnaise and Jell-O! I’d rather be tarred and feathered.”
Mayonnaise and Jell-O? I felt my gut tighten up. But I wasn’t sure if it was the thought of a food combination even Kenny would likely avoid or Gram’s mention of tarring and feathering. From what I remembered of middle-of-the-night Westerns on cable, that was what good old-fashioned townsfolk did when they wanted to hand out some vigilante justice.
And guess who was likely to be first in line the next time the local farmers cleaned the feathers out of their chicken coops?
CHAPTER 13
When we got to the fundraiser, first thing I saw, swear on a Bible (after all, it was a church), was a cage full of chickens sitting in the parking lot. The tar was not yet visible, but there were plenty of village elders to do the deed. The deputy and a bunch of other old dudes were milling around. I thought I recognized one of them as Apron Guy from the grocery store, even though he wasn’t wearing his work getup. The whole group of them turned and laid their eyes on me as I climbed out of the truck.
Gram raised her chin up into the air in their direction. “Good evening, boys. Travis, get the hotdish.” She marched toward the church. Deputy Dude scrambled to hold open the door for her. I trotted up right behind her with the big glass dish balanced in both hands so he had to hold the door for me, too.
