Alice continued in a quiet but stern voice, a voice with experience in drawing information from unhelpful young sources. “How were you hurt, Olivia?”
Olivia shook her head.
Alice kept at her. “You have to tell us everything that happened, even if it’s hard.”
Olivia heaved a big sigh. We watched her. In a shaky voice, her eyes beginning to water, she said, “They jumped me. Three guys—boys. One was really big. I fought and ran, but they caught me.”
Alice and I waited.
“They caught me. I couldn’t see their faces; they wore ski masks.” She wouldn’t look at me. “I fought. But they punched me in the face,” Olivia said in a little girl voice. “In the face!”
You never forget the first punch to the face. The unexpectedness of it. The pain.
“They hit me,” Olivia said, “and stole my book bag.”
Alice touched Olivia’s arm, then stared into her eyes. This was the look of a mother who had threatened to march wayward children to the confessional in the Catholic Church down the street unless they revealed all. “You were mugged?” She paused. “And nothing else?
Finally, signs of the old Olivia appeared. The spine straightened. The leg had begun tapping again. She rolled her eyes. “I was robbed. That’s all. Isn’t that bad enough?”
“We just want to make sure of all the details, dear.”
“You’re positive it was boys?” I asked.
“Yeah. One had a pierced tongue. Please. Like that’s bad.”
Alice said, “We should report this to the police.”
“No!” Olivia turned to me and grabbed my hand.
“Why?” I asked.
Suddenly, Olivia couldn’t meet my eyes. She swerved toward Alice. “We don’t have to tell the police. Or my parents. Do we?”
I knew then there was more to the story. Alice said, “We have to do the right thing, Olivia.”
“But you can’t!” Olivia wailed.
I shifted. “Olivia. This is serious. You were attacked. Your stuff was stolen.”
“But they’ll put me in jail,” Olivia cried.
“You?” Alice was puzzled. “Dear, you were the victim. This was not your fault.”
Olivia’s fingers had begun their invisible typing again. The energy in the room had changed. I placed my hand over Olivia’s and tried to imitate Alice’s stern countenance. “What was in the book bag, Olivia?”
Olivia looked from me to Alice and back again. Her shoulders sank. She bit her lip and whispered, “Books, my phone, my computer.” There was a long pause. “And your diary.”
If a runaway car had crashed through the front windows of Alice’s pretty living room and stopped within an inch of killing us all, I couldn’t have been more surprised. I never even considered our teenage kleptomaniac. My head had been filled with thoughts of far more nefarious thieves, probably someone who hadn’t grown up with a room full of Hello Kitty stuff.
“YOU took my diary?”
Olivia wouldn’t look at me.
Now that the shock was settling out of my system, I wanted to be angry with Olivia. But it was hard to do. The energy from Olivia’s guilt was thick in the room, and my heart went out to her. “Olivia, why?”
Olivia took a shaky breath. “You remember when you had the break-in? I saw the diary and your hiding place. And then, you never put that book down. Not even when you were talking to the police. Not the whole time we were cleaning up. I thought it must be really special. Like magic.”
“You don’t know what you’re messing with, Olivia.”
“I’m sorry, so sorry. But, well, when my prayer didn’t come true, I thought . . .”
“What?”
“I thought there might be something in the book to help.” Olivia looked down at her hands then back at me. “Maya, I really needed that wish.”
Alice sighed. “Oh, Olivia, there is no such thing as magic. No book can grant you a wish. What we did in yoga class was just a silly game.”
“Did your wish come true, Alice?” Olivia asked.
Alice the good Catholic would never admit to that.
Olivia persisted. “What did you wish, Alice?”
“If you must know, I wrote ‘Bless my children.’ Does that make you feel better?”
“Pretty lame wish,” Olivia muttered.
“Why was your wish so important?” I asked Olivia.
She threw up her hands in disgust. “Because he is like the most beautiful thing ever and I can’t even talk to him!”
Boy trouble. I should have guessed.
“I get all tangled up when he’s around. And I just wanted to be really cool.”
“So you wished for courage,” I said.
“Dumb, I know,” Olivia whispered.
“Not dumb,” I said.
“But I couldn’t understand anything in that book.” Olivia was a brilliant kid who would someday probably discover something incredible. But no matter how advanced intellectually, she still had all the insecurities of a fifteen-year-old girl. She changed the streaks in her hair on a whim, considered her eyes too boring, and thought ninety pounds was grossly overweight. “There were all these languages and weird stuff. Like who cares about some guy’s grocery list? And then there were parts that were just plain gross. Was that stuff real?”
I was beginning to wonder that myself. “Olivia,” I said, “when you opened the diary, what did you smell?”
Olivia wrinkled her nose. “Smell? Nothing. It didn’t even smell like a book.”
Alice cleared her throat. “Why is this book important?”
“A friend died and left it to me,” I said.
Olivia shifted. “That’s a dead guy’s book? Eww.”
Over Olivia’s bent head, Alice and I shared grins. Then Alice said, “What are you going to tell your mother and father, Olivia?”
There was a warning in Alice’s tone. I watched Olivia pick at the rip in her jeans, making it bigger. Finally, she sighed. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell them everything.”
“Don’t mention the diary,” I said. Alice and Olivia turned to me in surprise. “I’ll get the book back.”
This time I won the stare down with Mother Alice. Finally, she nodded, and Olivia breathed a sigh of relief.
While Alice drove Olivia home, I returned to the lake. I searched the woods until darkness began to creep up on me. Just as I was turning away to head home, I saw something purple stuffed in a hollowed out tree stump. I tugged it free. Olivia’s book bag.
It was empty.
Chapter 16
Playing and Being Played
UNTIL LARRY CAME UP with information on who paid off the coroner, my only clue was the boys. I stood in the high school parking lot on a Monday afternoon, watching teenagers pour out the doors, energy released, hormones uncapped. Earbuds and cigarettes were tugged from pockets and book bags. Engines began to rev. I ignored the girls, who were dressed in either shorts or jean skirts. Kids in Minnesota. Fifty degrees in mid-April was reason to start on your tan. Instead, I studied the boys, especially the groups of three. I had a feeling that Olivia’s assailants with their pierced tongues and penchants for ski masks were the same ones who tortured Bella. I listened to such feelings.
When I saw them, I stayed perfectly still, leaning against my Subaru, arms crossed over my chest. When they saw me, there was a momentary hitch in their steps and then they were slouching toward me. They didn’t stop, but they maintained eye contact and laughed as they passed. The one with the long blond curls and pale face was the leader. Wearing a leather jacket and a sneer, he walked slightly ahead of the other two. Snowboard Boy had on a knitted cap just like the day on the lake when he offered me the wet sack. His followers were the guy with the piercings and a lanky black kid shivering in a boy band T-shirt. Without his puffy parka, Pierced Boy
was still massive, a white whale in a hoodie. What I could see of his unwashed hair was disgusting.
I knew in my heart that they had preyed on Olivia, just as they had preyed on Bella. The more I thought of Olivia’s swollen and bruised face, the angrier I became. It was my fault she got hurt. I was responsible for the diary. I was the keeper. Heart had warned me. No good could come from having the diary in Gabriel’s Garden.
Each day that week I stood in the parking lot. Maybe I couldn’t touch them, but I could stalk them. On the second day, Snowboard Boy whispered, “How’s the cat?” and his friends snickered as they passed. I stared at them in silence. On the third day, they made meowing sounds, and Snowboard Boy tapped his knitted cap in salute. Still I stared. By Friday, they weren’t so talkative; they took another route off school property, looking over their shoulders at me. I watched until they were out of sight. I was wearing them down.
The following Monday I was back in front of the high school, which was still buttoned up before the last bell. Today I planned to confront the boys. I was hoping one of them would break, fall to his knees, and confess. Who knew? I might have Tum’s diary back by nightfall. An expectant quiet hovered over the school parking lot. Soon the afternoon would explode with self-absorbed teens, lovers who couldn’t keep their hands or their tongues to themselves, and car engines growling to escape.
Into this silence glided Sebastian Winter in a silver bmw. He pulled up beside me, rolled down the window, and smiled at me. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” I tilted my head at him, trying to get a better look at his eyes. He had on sunglasses. He had become a regular at Monday yoga classes. Why was he still in Gabriel’s Garden? David’s crazy blooming tree was old news. Didn’t he have another story to chase, an empire to run? Maybe this was my chance to learn more about the man Jorn hated. I decided the boys could wait.
“Sure,” I said.
Sebastian leaned over and pushed open the passenger door of the bmw. I hesitated a moment, then got in, just as a bell sounded and life flooded the parking lot.
He drove to the Northern Lights coffee shop downtown. A bell tinkled when we entered the shop, and Hallie, the proprietor, looked up. “Hey, babe.” She waved.
I nodded. “Hallie.” I didn’t need to study the chalkboard hung behind the counter. “Mint tea, please.”
“You got it.” She turned to Sebastian. “The usual, Mr. Winter?”
“As dark and strong as you can make it, Hallie.” He gave her a charming smile then winked at me. “Espresso. My addiction.”
Although she talked like a New York cabbie, Hallie reminded me of many of the women I had known growing up: quick to smile and hug, adamant about serving only free-trade products, and a soft touch for every kid raising money for a school trip or new band uniforms.
Sebastian paid, and we took our drinks to a table by the window. He pulled the chair out for me, and I nodded my thanks. I took a sip of my tea and glanced up at the ceiling, which always filled me with a sense of rightness. A mural of the aurora borealis or northern lights stretched across the café’s domed ceiling, curtains of green particles sweeping and swirling through a dark sky over a pine landscape outlined in pink and orange. Magnetic storms can lure auroras far from their polar homes during the equinoxes. According to Larry, the night I was conceived an aurora of amazing beauty danced above Tulum.
Sebastian pushed his black hair behind his ears and studied me. “You’re a hard one to figure out, Maya Skye.”
He’d flung his change on the table. I watched him select a quarter from the pile and begin rolling it over his knuckles and under his fingers, back and forth, weaving like a snake. It was a well-practiced move. The coin never slipped.
I pointed to the coin. “Are you a magician?”
Sebastian’s lips curved, but he didn’t stop. “You’re the one with the tricks.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“You have no footprint in the land of the interwebs, Maya.” So Sebastian had been hitting some of Larry’s digital walls.
“Surely, with all the investigative power at your disposal you could find something,” I said with a tsk.
“Not what I wanted.”
“And that was?”
We stared at each other for a moment. We were the only customers in Northern Lights. From a distance, we could have appeared to be lovers. But there at the table, the air was thick. Some would have found it uncomfortable; I didn’t mind it. Then suddenly Sebastian smiled, and the air began to move again. “Just to find out more about my yoga teacher. I always make sure I know with whom I’m dealing.”
“I bet you do.”
“It never hurts to check credentials.”
I shrugged. “Credentials are meaningless. Any kid with half-way decent hacker genes can manufacture them.”
He studied me. “So true. Makes you wonder who you can trust in this world.”
I leaned forward, plucked the quarter from Sebastian’s busy fingers, blew on it, and made it disappear. He froze for a moment then looked at me more intently. I knocked on the table and opened my other hand. In it was the quarter. I presented it to him with a wink. He hesitated then took it carefully from my fingers.
“Personally,” I said, “I judge people by their actions, not by the words on a computer screen.” I picked up my cup and sipped. “Tell me why you and Jorn are enemies.”
For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer. He’d placed the quarter on the table in front him, apart from the pile of change. “Peter believes there is only one truth,” he said, “while I see a world of many truths.”
“A world of many truths.” I mulled that over.
Sebastian leaned forward, warming to his subject. “Today anyone with a smartphone can be a reporter. My resources are legion.”
“Once again, any kid . . .” I waved my hand. “That’s not really reporting. Just spewing information. And you don’t even know if it’s true.”
“Peter is a dinosaur in today’s news world.”
“Because he believes in research and fairness and checking facts instead of reporting by stopwatch.”
“No one can control the news today so why try?”
I shook my head in sadness. “Still taking shortcuts, just like your college days.”
“So, you’ve been talking to Peter.”
“In yoga, the practice of satya or truth means choosing our words so they do the least harm. Your ‘reporters’ give little thought to that. You don’t care what harm your broadcasts and websites do.”
Sebastian dipped his head. “I give people what they want, Maya. Something to take them away from their dreary little lives, as my dear mother says.”
I’d come across Madelyn Winter in my research of Winter Media. She married a hopeless and poor newspaperman who died early, leaving her to raise a young son and build a publishing dynasty alone. She was shrewd and ruthless, and many were shocked when, three years ago, she agreed to turn the reins of Winter Media over to her son.
I could imagine a young Sebastian playing sleight of hand tricks on his mother—“Pick one, Mother, pick one”—and she revealing his secret every time. She would have been tough on him. She would have wanted to make him into something more than his father was.
“Diversion,” I said, nodding to the quarter he’d been finger rolling. “That’s not news; that’s entertainment.”
Sebastian sat back with a laugh. “They’re one and the same in today’s world.”
“I hear Edward R. Murrow rolling over in his grave.”
“Peter is a newshound. He gets on a scent, and he won’t let go of the story until it nearly kills him. Like it did in Afghanistan.”
“What do you know about that?”
In expensive trousers, a soft open-collar shirt, and a brown tweed jacket, Sebastian looked the successful businessman on vacation. He flicked a
piece of lint from his lapel. “I know he was betrayed, and he left his friend and photographer, Gasquet, behind.” He paused. “You think you know Peter Jorn, but you don’t.”
I frowned. I didn’t believe him. When it came to people, I relied on instincts, and I knew Jorn wouldn’t abandon his photographer.
Sebastian continued, “Gasquet has yet to turn up.”
“How do you know this?”
Sebastian watched me. “I make it my business to know these things.”
“Sebastian, what are you really doing here?”
“Enjoying coffee with a beautiful woman.”
“No, in Gabriel’s Garden.”
Sebastian picked up the quarter, flipped the coin in the air, caught it, and shoved it in his pocket. “I still have business here.”
“Gabriel’s Garden is a small fish,” I said.
“But such a lovely one, all shiny and colorful. It has mysteries. I like a good mystery.”
“Some puzzles can never be solved.”
“Oh, I’ll solve this one. I’m good at puzzles.”
I thought of David’s tree, which was still blooming—and had been for months—even though all the other trees had just started to leaf out. “I wouldn’t bet on that.”
Sebastian stiffened. I was looking at a man who didn’t like to lose. I could imagine him stealing a story from a young reporter, a former roommate, supposedly his friend. Jorn said Sebastian played dirty but made it appear aboveboard. A sleight of hand. A knife in the back.
“You know,” he said, “I’m beginning to like it here. Maybe I’ll start my own newspaper. Compete with The Independent.”
“Good luck with that. Gabriel’s Garden doesn’t need two papers.”
“But I don’t have to make money. The Independent does. Peter would go under in six months.”
“That paper has been in his family for three generations,” I lowered my voice, a hint of threat.
“I’d be doing him a favor. Peter doesn’t really want to be saddled to this small backwater,” Sebastian said.
Down Dog Diary Page 9
