“Besieged?”
“The goons. Austen and company.”
“They were here?” Apparently I didn’t need to tell him who they were.
“Outside,” I said. “But they wanted to come in.”
Dad and Liam exchanged looks.
I said, “I brought your camera. I didn’t know if you meant to leave it.”
Mrs. Mulvaney greeted me with a nod, Mei with a hug. Dad mumbled some thanks for the camera and said he’d planned to stop by in a few days. No hugs, no kisses. And he was my dad. So sweet and loving. Not.
Liam had disappeared. The rest of them began to scatter. I stepped outside, looked both ways, didn’t see any goons, so I sprinted to the car and locked myself in.
My brother? It still seemed incredible. I should have known, if I ever got one, he wouldn’t be the brother of my dreams.
It was sickening, the whole thing about Johnny Kinsser. I couldn’t believe that either. My brother involved in a murder. Even if Aus did the actual killing, Liam must have had some sort of inkling. Aus must have told him something, like where to park. And then sat in back, which probably wasn’t typical. With Aus’s personality, I couldn’t see him taking a back seat to anyone unless he had a reason.
Did Liam try to stop him? Or give Johnny some warning? Or report it after it happened? Instead he let all the blame fall on himself, just the way Aus planned it.
I’d heard Aus’s voice, but had no idea what he looked like. I couldn’t help being a little afraid of him. And a little curious.
My watch said I had a half hour before Grandma’s bingo game. It would take me a while to get home and Grandma a few minutes to get to the game, but I just had to see Ben. Too much had happened. It couldn’t wait.
When I reached Frosty Dan, Ben was leaning across the counter, talking to a customer. She wore shorts and a tight-fitting black tee, and sat idly swinging her stool back and forth. It was her hair that gave her away—short, blond, and fluffy, like a dandelion gone to seed. Stacie Marr.
Neither of them noticed me. They were too busy with each other. And he’d given me his ring. I let the door close slowly behind me and just stood there.
I waited for one or both to catch sight of me. They couldn’t be bothered. So I opened the door and slipped out.
Forget telling Ben anything. He wouldn’t care. Not even about my new-found brother.
Forget calling Maddie, too, and interrupting her pesky project. She wouldn’t want to spend the time listening to an account of my day.
What was I going to do about Liam? He couldn’t go on this way. He was in danger and so was his mom. And my dad. And Mei. What was Dad doing about it? What could he do, unless he knew some legal beagles? Had he tried the police? It would have to be the Hudson Hills police. I could do that myself. But even if I told them everything I got from Liam, why should they take my word for it? They’d have to check it all with him and he would kill me, if Aus didn’t.
I turned off my engine and looked around. There was our house and I was in the driveway. Holy cow, I’d driven all the way from Frosty Dan and didn’t even notice. Almost as bad as being asleep at the wheel.
Grandma came out, dressed for bingo in a hot pink pantsuit and humongous pearl earrings. “Nice to see you again.” Grandma could be sarcastic, too.
I apologized. “I didn’t mean to cut it so close. All sorts of things happened.”
“Like Frosty Dan?”
“No, that only took a second. I was hiding from some Mafia goons. With my brother.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean it.” I tried to hand her the keys. “Hey Buddy is my brother.”
“Say what?”
“Hey Buddy. He’s my half-brother. I’ll forgive you for not telling me if you really didn’t know.”
“Honest to God.” Belatedly she took the keys from my hand. “Are you sure?”
“That’s what he said. When you get back from bingo I’ll tell you all about it.”
“You tell me now! I can be late for bingo.” With her hand on the back of my neck she pushed me into the house and onto the sofa. “Now, then.”
I scarcely knew where to begin. “It’s going to take awhile,” I warned her.
“It’s going to take as long as it takes from whenever you get started.”
I started with the camera. And then Liam. And the goons, and the basement.
“Son of a gun,” she said. “That’s your brother we’re talking about?”
“He wasn’t one of the goons,” I told her. “He’s a victim, too. And you don’t need to say anything. I already bawled him out for being an accessory after the fact.”
I went to the kitchen and took a long drink of water. My mouth still had the taste of that basement.
She followed me. And then back to the living room. “Jules had a kid and he never told us? Son of a gun.”
“You must have had some idea,” I said. “When we were talking about it, you said there was a possible relationship I hadn’t thought of.”
“It did flit across my mind.” Grandma sat down on the coffee table, facing me. “But I thought he would have mentioned it.”
“Don’t count on him mentioning anything,” I said. “He’s big on secrets.”
“Yeah, especially like having a kid out of wedlock. He didn’t want to get your mother put off.”
“If Liam was out of wedlock, then he’d have his mother’s name. The goons called him Penny.”
“Anybody can call anybody Penny,” Grandma replied. “Who knows what’s what, the way they do things? Anyway, if the kid’s having cop trouble, your dad might not want people to know, namely us.”
Cop trouble was putting it mildly. “He not only might not, he didn’t want.”
“He underestimated you,” Grandma said with a grin.
“That’s because he never bothered getting to know me.”
She wanted more details, so I went over it again. My stuffy little office room. The capo with his gang of two. I thought it was two from the voices. And Liam had named two others besides Aus. I tried to remember those names, but I couldn’t. And then my long talk with Liam in the basement, and the goons banging and shouting.
“The whole time,” I said, “all I could think of was getting the car back to you.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I had thought about it now and then.
“Thanks for reminding me.” She jumped up from the coffee table and made for the door.
I said, “What am I going to do?”
She whirled around. “Why do you have to do anything? It’s not up to you. Let the cops handle it. That’s what they get paid for.”
“They can’t handle it if they don’t know anything and Liam won’t tell them. He’s more afraid of Aus than of going to prison. I’m the only one who knows, besides the goons.”
“Want to bet your pop knows something? What do you think he came for?”
“We don’t know how much Liam told him.”
“He told you a lot.”
“I beat it out of him. Well, sort of. He didn’t know how much I already knew from the Internet.”
“And that’s where you’re gonna leave it, kiddo.” She put her hand on the door.
I stopped her. “What would you do if you were me?”
“What would I do? I’d let the cops handle it.” With that, she took off.
Oh sure, let the cops handle it. What did they have to go on except the body in Liam’s car? I could bet they didn’t even know about the other guys.
So Liam would go to prison. It wasn’t fair. I hated when things weren’t fair. I hated what they did to Johnny, who I didn’t even know, and hated what they were doing to Liam.
That is, if Liam had told the truth, and I kind of thought he did. With my personal experience, I knew lying when I saw it. Or heard it, I guess is what you do with it. And I couldn’t forget those tears.
I—hated—Aus. I supposed a psychopath couldn’t help being one, but they really should try to con
trol it. The trouble is, they don’t see anything wrong with themselves. Maybe they don’t know what it is they’re supposed to control, or how to do it.
So, aside from being on the lookout, what choice do the rest of us have except to wait until they commit some horrendous crime and then lock them up?
Okay, Austen had done that. The only thing now was to prove that he did it.
Chapter Twelve
Austen wasn’t going to turn himself in—that was for sure. He had it all worked out, including a willing patsy. Maybe not so much willing as resigned.
I couldn’t leave it there. And I didn’t know what Dad was doing about it, if anything. The wise thing would have been to ask him, but I knew what he would say. Be a good little girl, butt out, and let the Big Boys handle it. I would be surprised if he didn’t pat me on the head.
Big boys, hmpf, as Grandma would say. In the past year I had done some sleuthing myself. I’d found what I was looking for, but not without putting myself in danger. Could be, that came with the territory. I would just have to be careful.
To begin with, I needed to get more familiar with Hudson Hills. I couldn’t pretend I belonged there, because I didn’t. They would see right through me. So I made up a story.
I also couldn’t keep borrowing Archie. Grandma would worry about me wearing him out, or even worse, she would want to go with me. To get around that, I would take the bus.
The more I thought about it, the more nervous I got. Those goons had already killed. They say killing gets easier the next time, especially when you need to protect yourself from people snooping around about the first time. It called for extreme subtlety on my part.
Maybe I didn’t have to do it alone. Back when I first met Maddie, we were each on a mission. Mine was to find what happened to the Hurlow baby. Maddie’s was to rescue Ben from the neurotic girl who accused him of stalking and from the school juggernaut that had no brains about dealing with Asperger’s syndrome. Maddie and I helped each other and thought of calling ourselves the Revengers. We wanted to be the Avengers, but that was already taken. I hoped she wasn’t too busy to help me again.
Monday on our way to school I told her about my weekend. And Liam.
“A brother? You have a brother? Oh, Cree! Oh! Oh! What’s he like?”
“He’s not as good-looking as yours,” I said.
“But what’s he like?”
I didn’t want to use the term wimp. I said, “He’s in big trouble and he’s feeling beaten down. Anybody would.”
Maybe Ben wouldn’t. I tried to imagine what he would do. What I couldn’t imagine was Ben getting into that sort of trouble to start with.
I outlined the situation in detail, adding, “It’s a job for the Revengers, don’t you think?”
“Oh, Cree.” She looked stricken and nearly missed our turnoff for the school. “Cree, I hate to let you down but I have a hundred fifty pages to type by yesterday.”
“I could help you,” I offered.
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to parcel it out.”
“Who’s going to know? I could put it on a flash drive and you can add it to yours so it would look the same.”
I thought it was a brilliant scheme, but she didn’t. “I don’t know. It might not come out in the right places. Could you wait a few days?”
“No. It’s an emergency.” And a lot more important than any old legal paper.
I sort of understood her point of view. But I didn’t think she was trying to understand mine. I wished I could be charitable and not think she just didn’t want to share the income. Tuesday afternoon, instead of going home, I had her drop me at the bus stop.
It was in front of Carney’s Candy Shop and you could buy your ticket inside. Grandma and I used to do that before she got her car. The reason was, Hudson Hills had a movie theater and Southbridge didn’t.
The buses ran every hour. I caught the 4:10. As it trundled along the highway, I thought how ridiculous this was. I didn’t know what the guys looked like and I couldn’t ask Liam. I would have to get there much earlier and hang around the high school. Even then, out of more than a thousand kids, how would I find those particular ones? And what would I do when I found them?
Okay, I could start with research. I could find River Edge Park and get my bearings. From there I could trace Liam’s route to his house. He’d said he walked all the way home after they ditched him. It was the middle of the night and he’d just been through an experience so insane he had a hard time believing it. Knowing the route and what was along it might help me picture the whole thing.
As I got off the bus I asked the driver, “Can you tell me how to get to River Edge Park?”
“Seems to me it’d be down by the river.” He grinned, showing tobacco-stained teeth.
I couldn’t see the river from where I was. There were buildings in the way, but I knew it would be west. And down. The driver was right about the down part. The bus wheezed on south, which meant west was that way, and there was the sun to prove it.
I walked to the nearest corner and then I could see the river. I started toward it, down a hill. Everything sloped toward the Hudson. I could see the Metro-North railroad tracks, but no park.
What was I doing? I felt like going to Liam’s house and shaking him until his teeth rattled. Didn’t he realize, if the whole family was behind him, there wasn’t much Aus could do?
Or maybe Aus could. Anybody who thought nothing of strangling someone with a coat hanger…
That got me even angrier. I thought of Johnny’s mother. I had never been a mother, but I imagined someone hurting Jasper, and I could put myself in her shoes. Aus, being a psychopath, didn’t know what it was like to love somebody. What was more, he didn’t care.
I would have to put a lid on my hatred if I was going to accomplish anything.
When I reached the tracks, I looked to my right and my left. Right was the station, not too far away. That gave me another option. I could take a train instead of the bus.
Left was an overpass leading to some greenery. A park? I hiked several blocks to reach it.
The overpass was for cars but it had a sidewalk, too. It crossed the tracks and ended up on a spit of land that I supposed was River Edge Park, jutting out into the Tappan Zee. That was the widest part of the Hudson. “Zee” is Dutch for “sea” or a wide expanse of water. It was several miles across. Southbridge was on it, too. I grew up thinking that was the way rivers were supposed to be. Anything smaller was only a brook.
A male voice startled me. My first reaction was goons, but it was an older man talking to his dog. When the dog finished watering a tree, they came in my direction. The man gave me a pleasant nod and a polite “Afternoon.”
“Can you tell me,” I said, “is this River Edge Park?”
“That’s right. You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Southbridge,” I told him. “Mostly my experience with Hudson Hills is the movie theater.”
The dog, an Irish setter, came over and sniffed my hand. I explained that I had a dog, too, and tried to figure out how to approach my subject. Why not directly?
“Is this where the murder took place?” I asked.
The man had a round face that was ruddy and cheerful. As soon as I said that, his cheerfulness disappeared.
“This is it.” He pointed to a spot where the road looped toward the water. “Right there.”
I remembered the newspaper article. A man walking his dog. “You wouldn’t be the one who found it, would you? The car?”
“A morning I’ll never forget.”
“That must have been horrible for you.”
“Well—it wasn’t fun, I’ll say that.”
I thought of Maddie, who wrote for our school paper. If she couldn’t come with me and be herself, I could be her.
“I’m writing a story for our school newspaper,” I said. “Can you tell me more about it? Did you know any of the people involved?”
“Not personally,” said the
man. I tried to remember his name. It had been in the paper.
“The victim,” he went on, “I knew by sight. He was a neighbor, more or less.”
“You knew him? And you found him dead? How horrible.”
“I can’t say I really knew him. Only by sight,” he repeated. “My son is more in that age group. You should talk to him, if you could, but he jumped the gun on graduation and went and joined the Navy.”
“Oh.”
“Yep. Shocked his mother and me. I think he was trying to impress a girl.”
I wondered what I would do if Ben joined the Navy. “Was the girl impressed?”
“I haven’t discussed it with her. I’m sorry I can’t tell you any more about the murder.”
“You’ve been very helpful.” Not exactly true, but it seemed a nice thing to say. “I don’t suppose you know Mrs. Kinsser, if she’s a neighbor?”
“I see her around now and then. Not since it happened.” He took a step backward. “I’d better get Gilly home and give him his dinner. Nice talking with you.”
I couldn’t let him go yet. “What about any of the others?”
“Others?”
Oops. I almost gave away my source. “I understand there may have been others in the car.”
“Not that I know of. The only one I saw was Kinsser. Somebody must have been there to do the deed, but they didn’t stick around.”
“I don’t know where I heard that,” I mumbled. “It was nice meeting you. Have a good dinner—Gilly?”
“Short for McGillicuddy.”
I was glad Gilly’s daddy didn’t ask any more. I just remembered that the article said his son knew the owner of the car. That was getting too close.
Still, I wished I could talk to his son. I needed him more than the Navy did.
* * * *
I hesitated to call Maddie and get an earful about how many pages she had left to type. Later that evening I was surprised when she called me.
“Did you get anything?” she asked.
“Not much. I found River Edge Park and the man who discovered the body.”
“What did he have to say about it?”
“He doesn’t know anything. He just happened to come along walking his dog the way he did that morning.”
Under Cover Page 9
