Under Cover

by Caroline Crane

  “What were you doing at the park? I thought you were out to find killers.”

  “Maddie, I don’t even know what they look like. How can I possibly find them?”

  “Yearbook. Do you know their names?”

  “I know Austen Storm. Liam told me the other two, but I don’t remember them. If I could hypnotize myself, which I don’t know how to do, it might help.”

  “Then start with Austen Storm. Library. Yearbook. He might even show up there while you’re looking.”

  “In the library? Not a chance. He’s an illiterate goon.”

  * * * *

  I took the next afternoon off from school. Maddie drove me to Carney’s Candy at noon.

  “I wish I could go with you,” she said. “It’d be a lot more fun than all that legal claptrap. I just don’t want to let Daddy down.”

  “I understand.” At least I tried to.

  Besides candy, the shop sold maps and atlases. I had to buy a whole regional atlas to get any details on Hudson Hills. Maybe in Hudson Hills they would have some dedicated maps.

  I studied it on the way over. I found the park and I found Salt Street. That was quite a hike Liam took that night, having just seen his friend murdered by other friends. I really couldn’t blame him for still being shook up. Especially when the police were laying it all on him. Nor could I blame the police when all they had to go on was the car registration.

  Then who was to blame?

  No question about that. And I was going to get him. Somehow.

  I got off a block from the high school. Right across the street was Taco Bell. I thought of taking Ben there once this whole thing was over. That is, if the outcome was favorable and if Ben was still mine to take anywhere. That was a worrisome thought. It almost made me lose track of what I was doing.

  School hadn’t let out yet. When I tried to go in, a guard stopped me. He had a neck as wide as his face and wore a blue shirt with a badge. I gave him the story I’d concocted. “I live in Southbridge and my family is planning to move here over the summer, so I’ll be going to this school. I’m not enrolled yet but I wanted to see what it’s like and look up something in the library.”

  “Do you have some identification?” he asked.

  I pulled out my driver’s license and realized I was in the process of cooking my goose. I’d invented a name to go with the story—actually my mom’s name—but my license still said Lucretia Juliette Penny. Luckily I hadn’t told him anything, and hoped none of this would get back to the goons. But what was this guy going to think of Penny? Hudson Hills’s own jailbird.

  I hoped he wouldn’t notice, but how could he not? He brought it up close to his face and asked, “You any relation?”

  I gave him my innocent look. More than innocent, I looked as stupid as I could. “Relation of what?”

  “Just asking.” He waved me on in.

  I took a step and turned back. “Can you tell me where the library is?”

  “Down those stairs, first door on your right.”

  His station, along with the front door, was on a landing with stairs going both up and down. I prayed he would keep his mouth shut and not talk about me, especially give my name. I would have to get a phony driver’s license. There must be some way to do that.

  The librarian took a minute from stamping things to show me where the yearbooks were. She said I could look at them but not remove any from the premises. She actually said premises.

  I figured Liam must be a senior. He had to be older than I was. The others were probably also seniors, or near it, so I tried those first.

  And there was John Kinsser. He had a mop of dark hair and was looking off to one side, kind of smiling. Nice-looking in a pleasant sort of way. I thought of all the things Liam said about him: making a pest of himself, always goofing around, too thick-skinned to understand that he didn’t belong. Too bad he wanted to. Somebody should have warned him. The caption under his picture called him Johnny the Joker. He belonged to the Photography Club and the Men’s Cooking Club. My heart squeezed and I paged on.

  I found Liam Penny next. He wasn’t smiling, but looked calmer than I’d seen him. If Johnny wouldn’t be graduating with that class, I wondered if Liam would, shut up at home with an ankle monitor. One life destroyed, another in shambles. It made me more determined than ever to make shambles out of Austen.

  A couple of pages later, I found him

  Hard, dark eyes were the first thing I noticed. They looked slightly downward, not at the camera. His hair, too, was dark, and on the longish side. He wore a white shirt, open at the neck, and no tie. The other males wore ties. All about him I sensed an air of dissatisfaction. It wasn’t apparent, but I felt it, I don’t know how. After all I’d been thinking about him, it was odd to see him actually there. Those eyes. The rest of his face wasn’t bad, but not good, either. It was thin and bony, making his features stand out. A sharp chin and high-bridged nose. Not too much of anything, but it was a face you’d know if you saw it.

  “Psychopath,” I whispered. You can’t tell a psychopath by looking at him. It’s what they do that sets them apart. I memorized that face as best I could.

  The librarian stopped by to ask if I’d found what I was looking for.

  “Sort of.” I didn’t want to say too much. “The thing is, I don’t remember all their names, but I’m pretty sure I’d know them if I saw them.”

  “Good luck.” She went back to her desk.

  My head split from trying to remember. I went through all the seniors, but nothing else clicked. Maybe the other two weren’t seniors. The lower grades didn’t have individual pictures, only each class together and all their names in the captions.

  I tried the juniors. There were three classes of them and a lot of extracurricular activities. I skimmed through the captions.

  And stopped.

  A row of them sat on a bench with the end guy holding a soccer ball. I had heard those names only once, but it was enough. Especially as they sat together and their names were next to each other. Sam McCallum and Fred Gravitz.

  Liam had called him Freddie and he looked like a Freddie, small and dark, sort of elfin, with a sassy face. I thought he must be a fun person. What was he doing with a psychopath like Austen? How could he be mixed up in a murder?

  Sam McCallum was bigger, with a squarish face and lighter hair. He looked as if he’d have blond eyebrows and probably freckles. Did either of them seem like the sort of person who would hang out with a person like me? That was the only way I could get anywhere.

  Maybe Grandma was right and I should let Dad handle it. Dad and the police. But the police had already pinned it on Liam with no other suspects because Liam wouldn’t talk.

  I felt another wave of fear. How could I manage it all by myself? I had come this far and I didn’t see any future for it.

  Curses on Maddie’s project. She should be doing this. She had a lot more nerve than I did. She went up against the headmaster of her former school for not understanding about Ben’s Asperger’s. A headmaster was Authority. I could never have done what she did. Maddie had self-confidence. Why couldn’t I have some?

  I took another look at Austen Storm, then the two juniors, and left the yearbook out because the librarian told me to. Both the wall clock and my watch said it was almost three.

  I reached the front entrance and went down about six steps, just as a bell rang and kids began to trickle out. I was glad the security guard had gone. The trickle became a flood.

  This was stupid. I was looking for three faces out of more than a thousand. What if I missed them? That was more than likely, and it would mean coming all the way back to try again. If I cut too many afternoons, my school would send a note home and Grandma would ask what I was doing. She would want to come with me and that would ruin everything. Who hangs around school with their grandmother?

  What if Liam saw me here? He had that ankle monitor. Maybe he couldn’t get to school.

  His senior year.

&nbs
p; Hey, people, he didn’t do it. Let him graduate.

  I was so busy fuming, it took me a moment to register the shout I heard in back of me. Somebody calling. “Hey! Dude!”

  That voice. I didn’t know whose it was, but I remembered it. “Hey, dude! Got any beer?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  He looked like his picture in the yearbook. It was the same dark, bright eyes. The impish mouth and ready smile. I couldn’t tell, of course, from one black and white photo, how ready his smile really was, but he had a general, overall twinkle.

  I stared at him. Deliberately. He looked at me, then away, then quickly back again.

  I asked, “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  “Me?” He doubted it.

  “I’m sure I’ve seen you before.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I go to school here. What’s your name?”

  “Uh—Peggy Mellin.” It was Mom’s maiden name.

  He grinned. “Like a watermelon?”

  I spelled it for him. He shook his head. “Don’t know you.”

  “I was so sure,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Fred Gravitz.”

  I pretended to think it over. “Fred Gravitz. The name’s not familiar, but the face is.”

  “Yeah? Do you go here? I never saw you before.”

  “That’s because I don’t. Go to school here, but I will. My folks are moving to Hudson Hills as soon as they find a house.”

  He studied me from head to toe. “Where from?”

  “Southbridge. We’re renting a house and it got sold. But not to us.”

  “How come?”

  “The other people offered more money. Anyway, my mom says the schools here are better.”

  Actually, Mom never said that, but it sounded good.

  He moved me out of the way as more kids poured down the steps.

  “What year are you?” he asked.

  “Junior, going on senior. What about you?” I took a tip from Grandma and fluttered my eyelashes. It made me feel like an idiot.

  “The same.” He cocked his head and gave me a fraction of a smile. If I read him correctly, he was starting to get interested.

  I took a big leap—for me—and said, “Sometime, if you have a minute, could you show me around? It’s all new and it’s so big and confusing.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth. “I could do that.”

  Someone whistled. It was loud, the kind where you put your fingers in your mouth. Fred looked around, then rested a hand on my elbow. “I’ll be back. Don’t go away.”

  He went to join two others. I recognized them both from the yearbook—blond, heavy-faced Sam McCallum and, yes, Austen Storm. Where Sam was solid and stolid, Austen looked restless and dissatisfied. Unlike his yearbook picture, he wore a pair of dark-rimmed glasses.

  The three of them went into a huddle. I tried to keep my profile low, especially when I saw someone walking toward me. A man with no neck and a blue uniform.

  Was he really coming for me? Was I busted already? And right in front of the goons. I turned away, trying to look inconspicuous. Tried to blend in with a group of chattering girls.

  They gave me funny looks and moved back as if I had leprosy. I muttered, “Excuse me,” while doing my best to blend in.

  The guard went on past, aiming at someone who wasn’t me. I could breathe again, but it left me jittery. I felt awkward barging in on the girls.

  Fred must have thought I was leaving. He hurried back to me.

  “Who was that?” I asked before he could say anything. “I mean, he whistles and you go running.”

  “Yeah.” Fred chuckled. “That’s, like, how we communicate.”

  “Oh. I thought he must be some kind of boss.”

  Take it slow and easy. I refrained from asking the boss’s name.

  The scent of pot drifted past us. Fred sniffed. “Hey, I know where we can get some good stuff.”

  “That? If I go home smelling like that, my mom will kill me.”

  “You ever tried it?”

  “Sure, I tried it. It didn’t do a thing for me, so why bother?”

  “Couldn’t have been any good. The stuff I’m talking about is really good. How many times you tried?”

  He walked me slowly to the far end of the school, the end that faced the river. Away from his goon friends and everyone else. Down below and a little to the right, I could barely see River Edge Park. I thought of saying something to get his reaction, but that wouldn’t be taking it slow and easy.

  I answered the question instead. “A few. Forget it, I’m really not interested.” I tried to say it as Stacie would, with humor and a bit of flirting. Nothing that could be taken as prissy or judgmental.

  We reached the edge of the school lawn. They had flattened out a sort of plateau for the school to stand on but here it began its downward slope toward the river.

  Fred asked, “What do you do for kicks?”

  “Kicks?” Idly I drew an arc in the grass with my toe. “I don’t know. Hang out with my friends. Burger King. Pizza. We have a really neat pizza place in Southbridge. Perrino’s.”

  “Yeah? What’s neat about it? Special pizza?”

  He did have a hang-up. A pot-track mind. I wondered about the other two. I looked back, but didn’t see them. The guard, too, had disappeared.

  “What happened to your friends?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “The ones who whistled. I don’t know anybody here.”

  “You know me!” He gave me a twinkling grin.

  “What are your friends’ names?”

  “I got lots of friends.”

  “The two who were back there. Who whistled.” Was he deliberately evading me?

  “Sam,” he said with some reluctance. “Aus.”

  “Oss? What’s that?”

  “Austen. Okay?” The reluctance turned to annoyance.

  “Oh. Austen.” What was the annoyance for? Was he not supposed to be naming names? I had a horrible qualm that maybe he’d figured out who I was and what I was after. But how could he?

  To distract him, I looked up at the school. “It sure is big.” Four stories to Southbridge’s three, and a lot more sprawl.

  “Bigger than yours?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. I know every inch of mine, but I’ll never find my way around here.”

  “We’ll help you.”

  We? It sounded promising. “That would be great.” I almost forgot I wasn’t really transferring.

  “Where’re you moving to?” he asked.

  “You mean here? They’re still looking at places. It’s a big decision.” I took a peek at my watch.

  He noticed. “Somebody picking you up?”

  “Not today. I came on the bus. I wanted to see what the school was like.”

  “You came all the way on a bus? Just to look at the school? You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

  He had no idea. “I’m kind of nervous,” I said. “Starting a new school. And it being so big. I want to get my bearings first, as much as I can.”

  Was I making sense? Or did I come across as some sort of ditz? It might not matter. Some guys like ditzes. Usually it’s guys who aren’t too brilliant themselves, I’d noticed.

  I saw the guard again and this time the crowd was getting too thin to hide in. I turned back to the river and wished my hair weren’t such a showpiece. Waist-length and mahogany red.

  Fred must have sensed something. “What’s the matter?”

  “I, um—I just wanted to see if there are boats on the river.”

  How lame was that? I had thought this undercover stuff would be easy. Stupid me. It’s serious. What if you get caught? They shoot spies, don’t they? After torturing them. Or sometimes they hang them. I couldn’t help my hand going to my neck.

  He noticed that, too, and tilted his head. “Sore throat?”

  My mind lingered on coat hangers. I tried to forget them. “I think it’s an alle
rgy.”

  He tilted the other way, still concerned. “Would pizza help?”

  “Pizza? Um—sure. As long as it doesn’t have funny stuff.”

  “What’s your definition of funny?”

  “We talked about that. I’m not ready for my mom to kill me.”

  He started back toward the street. “What about your dad? Do you have one?”

  That was getting close. I brushed it off. “I don’t have to worry about him. He’s in California.”

  “Permanently?”

  “I guess so. He likes it there, dating starlets.”

  I did my best to change the subject. “Speaking of killing, did you know that kid who was killed a few weeks ago?”

  “Sure I knew him. He was in my shop class.”

  “I understand he was sort of a nuisance and that’s why they did it.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  Uh-oh. I wasn’t doing too well. I would have to forget everything and start clean.

  “Oh, you know. Whoever did it,” I said.

  “Lee Penny. He’s the one they’re lookin’ at.”

  “Is that whose car it was? Why’d he do it? Any ideas?”

  “What do you care?”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “It’s just so fascinating. I’m thinking I might write it up for our school paper.”

  “Why would you want to do that? It’s not your school.”

  “No, but we’re right next door and it’s people our age. Our readers will identify.”

  “Is that why you came here? To check it out?”

  “No, I came to check out the school. Does it bother you to talk about it?”

  “I’m not bothered. Who says I’m bothered?” We had almost reached the street. They had a big campus as well as a big building.

  “I thought—you seemed—kind of uneasy,” I said. “It doesn’t surprise me. I mean, a thing like that. Especially when it’s somebody you know.”

  He grunted and turned onto the sidewalk.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Pizza. That okay?”

  “Fine with me.”

  The day had clouded over. I thought it felt cooler. A sharp wind blew across the river.