The Gypsy Game

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Behind the mural, where Toby must be too! Where Toby had to be! There was absolutely nothing else in the shed or yard big enough to hide something the size of a kid. April hoped she hadn’t been staring at the caravan, but maybe she had been, because suddenly Crooked Nose was, too.

  “What’s with the work of art?” he said, pointing at the mural.

  “It’s a picture of a Gypsy caravan.” April gulped. Her heart was still pounding, but her breath was a little more under control now. “It’s—it’s for a project on Gypsies we’re doing.” The hit men looked faintly interested, particularly the tall one.

  “A project?” he asked.

  “Yes,” April went on desperately, “a school project. We’ve been getting it ready out here in the shed because we don’t want anybody to see it until—until …” She was running out of ideas—looking around frantically at the other kids, asking them to help. To come to her rescue and think up more things to keep the policemen or hired guns or whatever talking instead of looking around. Instead of looking behind the mural, where a terror-stricken Toby must be crouching on Bear’s bed, waiting to be caught. Nobody picked up the ball, so she struggled on. “See, there’s going to be this big contest to see who can make the best …” But Crooked Nose had stopped listening and was moving toward the shed. “The best project,” April limped on. Crooked Nose walked to the back of the shed and looked behind the mural. Looked—stared—and then came back to where his partner was waiting.

  “Nobody there,” he said. “Except for the dog.”

  The two men turned to look from one kid to the other. Long, hard, accusing looks.

  Ken made a swallowing noise before he said, “Yeah. That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. Nobody—except for the dog.”

  Silence. For a long moment no one said anything while the two men checked out the storage yard again. The almost-empty yard with its tall, sturdy board fence topped by two strands of barbed wire. Then the tall guy said, “Okay, kids. The Alvillar boy isn’t here—at the moment. But I think we all know that you kids know a lot more about his disappearance than you’re saying. And if you do, you’d better come clean. For your own sakes as well as for Alvillar’s.” He looked at all their faces, one at a time, and stopped at—tiny little fourth-grade Elizabeth. Going over to her, he bent down to her level, and making his voice soft and gentle, he said, “You look like a nice little girl. Not the kind of kid who would want a friend of yours to be in a lot of danger. And a lot of danger is just what Tobias Alvillar is going to be in if he doesn’t give himself up and get back home where he belongs. So why don’t you just tell me …”

  Elizabeth began to cry. “I don’t know where he is.” She sobbed wildly. “I don’t know how …”

  “Leave her alone!” Melanie didn’t get angry often, but when she did, look out! Pushing in front of the tall man, she put her arms around Elizabeth and pulled her away. Then while Elizabeth sobbed on her shoulder, she turned back to glare fiercely at both of the men. “Now look what you’ve done,” she said. “You—you big goons!”

  The two men stared at Melanie, whispered together for a minute or two, and headed for the gate. Just before they went out the tall one stopped long enough to say, “Okay. Okay. But if you kids—if any one of you kids—change your mind about talking, just call this number.” Taking a card out of his pocket, he came back and shoved it into the pocket of Ken’s jacket. Then he went on out and closed the gate behind him.

  Inside the Gypsy Camp no one said anything until they heard a car motor starting up and then the fading sound of tires on gravel. Ken whacked Melanie on the back.

  “Hey, you were great,” he said. “You really cooled those bums.”

  “Who were those guys, anyway?” April asked.

  “They’re the detectives I told you about. You know, the ones who were in the principal’s office. The ones who asked me about a kids’ hangout behind a store on Orchard Avenue. Like somebody had ratted or something.” He looked around accusingly, but everyone quickly shook their heads. “That’s why I told you we had to get Toby out before they showed up here.”

  “How do you know they’re really police detectives?” April asked suspiciously.

  “Well, that’s what Mr. Adams said they were. And they had badges. At least the tall one did. When they first drove up, he showed it to me.”

  “Hummph.” April made a noise that meant “If you want to believe that.” Out loud she said, “It’s easy to get a phony badge. I got one once in a box of cereal. So, how do we know they weren’t really hit men, like Toby said?”

  Ken reached into his pocket and pulled out the tall guy’s card. “See, it says right here, ‘Detective James Arnold. Precinct 7.’ ”

  April snatched the card, read it, and handed it back. “Well, okay, if you want to believe everything you read. I’ll bet a lot of people carry phony ID cards. You don’t really think hit men go around handing out real business cards, do you? You know, like ‘Enemies bumped off. While you wait.’ ”

  Melanie was still patting Elizabeth’s back and whispering in her ear. Elizabeth’s sobs had quieted, and now she caught her breath, gulped, and said, “Maybe what that man said is true. Maybe Toby is in danger.” Wiping her eyes, she looked around the yard. “Where is he?” She looked at Ken. “Where did he go?”

  Ken looked around, too. Then he ran to the back of the shed and disappeared behind the mural. A second later he came out shaking his head.

  “Good move, Kamata,” April said sarcastically. “I mean, just in case that guy overlooked him or something? Like, he might have been hiding under a blanket or behind the dog dish?”

  Ken gave her a blank stare. “Yeah,” he said. “Or he might have left a clue. Like a note or at least some of his stuff. Like his flashlight or backpack. But he didn’t. All his stuff is gone, except for a couple of torn-up bags.”

  They all went to look then, but Ken was right. Except for the bags, there was no sign of Toby’s ever having been there.

  “That probably means he must have left earlier,” Melanie said. “Before any of us got here, because he wouldn’t have had time to gather everything up if he had to leave in a hurry.”

  Ken stared at her for a moment before he slowly shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. When I first got here, the dead bolt was locked, so I knocked on the gate, and I’m sure, well, almost sure, I heard Toby say, ‘Who is it?’ And I said, ‘It’s Ken.’ But just then those guys drove up, and after that I didn’t hear anything more.”

  “Maybe what you heard was Bear,” April said. Every one glared at her as if they thought she was trying to make a joke when it was obviously no time to be funny. “No,” she explained impatiently, “I didn’t mean Bear said, ‘Who is it?’ I just meant maybe he made a whining noise that sounded like someone talking. Dogs can do that sometimes.”

  Ken was still shaking his head. “No. It didn’t sound like that. I guess I must have imagined it. I think Toby must have split a long time ago. Like while we were still at school, maybe.”

  They were all agreeing, until suddenly a small weepy voice said, “But what about the bolt?”

  They all turned to stare at Elizabeth and then at the dead bolt, which had definitely been closed when the two men arrived only a few minutes before.

  “How …?” someone said, and they all nodded.

  “Hey,” April said, “I’ll bet he went out earlier through the gate, and then he got a box or something to stand on and reached back over the top to shut it. Like that other guy did.”

  “No. No way,” Ken said. “It would have to have been a really humongous box for him to reach that far. I mean, too big for him to carry all by himself.”

  So that was out. Melanie suggested a ladder, but no one could think of a place where Toby might have found a ladder without being seen by someone who would probably have recognized him. And besides, why would he want to do that? Why would he want to go out and then go to all the trouble to leave the gate locked from the inside?<
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  “But he could have climbed out over the gate and left it locked,” Melanie suggested. “If he carried something over to the gate to climb up on, it would …” She stopped to stare at the objects in the shed that might have served that purpose, the birdbath and the old box that had been Set’s altar, and April finished the sentence for her, “… it would still be sitting there by the gate.”

  Melanie sighed and said, “Well, I guess it’s just another mystery.” Which was exactly what April was thinking too. Just one more mystery to add to the main one about why Toby ran away in the first place. April was about to ask Ken and Elizabeth if they were thinking the same thing when Bear barked, ran to the gate, and cocked his head as if he was listening.

  And then they heard it too. Footsteps. Gravel-crunching footsteps coming down the driveway and approaching the gate.

  “Oh no!” Elizabeth’s voice quavered. “They’re coming back.”

  “Or else maybe …,” April said, “maybe it’s Toby?”

  Ken was grinning eagerly. “Yeah, I’ll bet it is.” He raised his voice to a loud whisper. “Come on in, Alvillar. The gate’s unlatched.”

  When the gate opened, it was Alvillar, all right. But it wasn’t Toby.

  Sixteen

  WHEN KEN YELLED, “Come on in, Alvillar,” the guy who walked into the Gypsy Camp was a full-grown man. The weird-looking, bushy-haired full-grown man who happened to be Toby’s father. Closing the gate behind him, Andre Alvillar ignored Bear’s bouncing greeting and looked around the yard. His Toby-like eyes, dark but speckled with flecks of light, moved quickly from place to place and person to person.

  Watching the strange eyes shadowed by masses of hair and beard, April began to be aware of rumors drifting through her mind. Scary, stealthy thoughts, flitting here and there like the wings of tiny, vicious bats. Rumors about the kinds of things a person might do who looked and lived so differently from the way the parents of other kids did and who didn’t seem to care at all what other people thought of him. When the dark eyes touched hers, she shivered, but they moved on, and when they stopped, they were on Ken.

  “ ‘Come on in, Alvillar’?” he asked. “Isn’t that what I heard you say, Ken?”

  Ken nodded. “Yeah, but I meant … That is—I thought it might be Toby. I was hoping it would be, anyhow.”

  “Then you don’t know where he is?”

  Ken shook his head, and one by one the others did, too, as the fiery eyes moved from face to face.

  It wasn’t a lie. They didn’t know. Not at the moment. And if they really didn’t know where Toby was right now, it surely wasn’t a lie not to mention that they had known just last night. But then, as if he were reading their minds, Andre Alvillar said, “But you have seen him. Since the thirty-first, that is? Since the night he disappeared?”

  Toby had said not to tell anyone they’d seen him, especially his father, so no one said yes, but no one said no, either. Instead, they all looked at one another—hoping to let someone else decide how to deal with the question. At least that was what April was doing, and she was sure the others were, too. But as it turned out, they didn’t have to answer because Andre Alvillar seemed to have read their minds. Or perhaps their faces.

  “You have,” he said, nodding slowly. “Yes, yes! I see that you have.”

  April had been bracing herself for him to yell at them for not letting him know, or even to grill them about where and when they’d last seen Toby. But, instead, he did a very weird thing. Turning away, he walked across the yard, pounding his right fist into his open left hand. His face was turned away, but what he was doing looked like anger. When he turned, April caught a glimpse of white teeth, as if, behind all that curly black hair, he was almost smiling. Or maybe growling? A shiver crawled up April’s back, and when she glanced at Melanie, she guessed that Melanie was feeling the same kind of thing.

  When he was almost to the fence, Alvillar turned and came back, and then, as he reached the center of the yard, he did another strange thing. Putting his hand to his forehead, he took a deep breath and sat down on the ground. Just sat flat down without saying anything, and went on sitting there staring into space, as if sitting flat down on the dusty ground were a perfectly normal thing for a grown person to do.

  So Andre Alvillar sat on the ground staring at nothing, and the four kids stared at him, and after what seemed like an incredibly long time, he took another deep breath, sighed, and said, “Well, at least he wasn’t kidnapped. We do know that?”

  For several long seconds no one said anything. For just a moment April thought of saying, “Well, we did last night, anyway,” before she realized what a lot of other questions that would bring up. Congratulating herself on remembering to keep her mouth shut, she only clenched her teeth and shrugged. But this time Melanie seemed to have forgotten.

  “Did you think he might be kidnapped?” Melanie asked.

  The lean, bony face, like Sherlock Holmes’s, only a lot hairier, turned toward Melanie. “Yes,” he said. “I did think it was a possibility.”

  “Why?” This time Ken was asking a question.

  Alvillar thought for a moment before he said, “It’s rather complicated, Ken. I’m not sure I can go into it right now, but it has to do with his grandparents. With Toby’s maternal grandparents. They’ve been trying to get legal custody of Toby.”

  April and Melanie exchanged amazed glances. Glances that said how surprised they were that Toby had been telling the truth, or at least a lot more of the truth than anyone had believed.

  “Legal custody?” Elizabeth whispered to Melanie.

  But it was Andre Alvillar who answered. “Adoption,” he said. “They wanted me to give up my right to Toby as my son, to make it possible for them to adopt him legally. But I refused, of course.”

  “But Toby didn’t want to be adopted,” Ken said. It was a statement but also a kind of question.

  Alvillar shook his head. “No. No, indeed. He made that quite clear.” A brief facial movement twitched the bushy beard. “As a matter of fact he told me that if he had to live with his grandparents, he’d run away and join the Gypsies.” He gestured toward the mural. “That’s why I thought of coming here to this—” He paused, looking around the yard. “To this Gypsy community. But obviously he isn’t here.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “At least not at the moment.”

  The nods were less confident.

  “But he has been here?”

  No nods, but no firm shakes either. Andre Alvillar stared at their faces for a long time before he sighed and got to his feet. “I think I understand,” he said. “And it’s obvious that I’ve created an ethical dilemma, so we’ll leave it at that for now.” He looked around again, holding their eyes with his strange magnetic stare. “However, I’m glad to know that he has been seen quite recently, alive and well?” It sounded like a question. A question that no one answered except for some confused head twitches, half nod and half shake. “But if you should see Toby again in the near future, will you please ask him to let me know that he is alive and well?” Suddenly stepping closer, Andre Alvillar grabbed Ken’s shoulder with one hand and April’s arm with the other. “You must promise me that much, Ken!” His burning eyes moved to April. “And you too. You must promise!”

  April found herself nodding helplessly, and then the gate creaked open and the weird bushy-haired man was gone.

  Ken was the first one to say anything. What he said was, “Sheesh! Ethical di—something or other. What does that mean?”

  Nobody knew. “I’ll look it up,” Melanie said. “As soon as we get home. Eth-i-cal di-lem-ma. Help me remember, April.”

  April said she would. But at the moment what she really wanted to know was just how much of the stuff Toby had told them was true. “Like, all that crazy stuff about his grandparents wanting to get him so they could be the power behind the throne.” She threw up her hands. “Nobody believed that for a minute. Right? And now it looks like maybe it’s the truth, o
r at least part of it is. So what about the rest? About him being the next king of the Gypsies, or whatever.”

  “Naw.” Ken shook his head. “That’s not the truth. I mean, if Tobe had known that he was going to be a king someday, he’d have told me a long time ago. Tobe and I always tell each other important stuff like that.”

  “But maybe he just found out about being king,” Melanie said. “Didn’t he say his grandparents just found out about it? That kind of makes sense. Because if people had known about it all along, why didn’t his grandparents try to get him a long time ago?” Everyone agreed that did make sense. Melanie was good at logical stuff like that.

  “So maybe he really did run away because he didn’t want to go live with—” Elizabeth started before Melanie interrupted her.

  “But that can’t be it,” Melanie said. “His dad said he refused to let them have him. They couldn’t make Toby go live with them if his father wouldn’t give his permission, could they?”

  Lots of head shakes. “There just isn’t any sensible explanation,” April said. “Like I said, it’s just all a big mystery.”

  “No.” Ken was frowning. Ken didn’t like mysteries any more than he liked ancient ceremonies and other off-the-wall kooky stuff. “No, not all of it,” he said. “We know some things for sure. Like that Toby wasn’t really kidnapped. That’s one thing we know for sure. And …”

  “And that’s about it,” April said. “We don’t know if he really ran away to keep from being kidnapped, like he said. And we don’t know how much of what he told us was a lie.” She thought for a moment. “And I guess we don’t really know if his father was lying about not letting him be adopted.” She rolled her eyes knowingly. “Maybe his father was lying and what he was really planning to do was to sell him off to his rich relatives, like he was a used car or something.”

  It was a new idea, and a shocking one. They were still considering the possibility when suddenly Elizabeth said, “Look. Look at Bear.”