The Odds of Getting Even, page 7
My heart dove to my sneakers.
Mr. Macon wears a size nine—I knew it from our first case. Starr pulled a frame from his bag and placed it around the print. “Perfect,” he said, tipping a bottle of green goo over the print. I stepped back, pulled out my camera, and lined up a long shot. Click. Then the footprint. Click.
Dale frowned. “But that’s just one print. And it’s in the only clear space back here, and it’s totally flat—no shoe-bend to it. Who would leave a print like that?”
“Somebody standing still, like you are. What size shoe does Macon wear?” Starr asked.
Dale studied the graveyard, the river. The quiver of his chin put him a heartbeat from crying. He knows his daddy’s shoe size good as I do.
It’s hard being a good son to a bad man.
I stepped up beside him. “Dale and me don’t track shoe sizes. We enjoy a reverse-flair for trivia. We’re below average at best.”
“Way below average,” Harm said. “It’s sad, really.”
“Well, Rose will remember,” Starr said.
A slime-ball move.
“Daddy wears a nine,” Dale blurted. “But that’s circumstantial.”
Starr made a note in his clue pad.
“Come on, Desperados,” I said. “Let’s ride.”
Dale went quiet as the bottom of a well as we pedaled back to the café. Queen Elizabeth, who waited by the café jukebox, brought him back to life.
“She showed up at the door,” Capers said, rearranging her papers. “I assumed she was looking for you,” she said as Dale gave Liz a hug.
“Liz is psychic,” I explained. “She always knows where Dale is.”
Dale rubbed Liz’s head. “She’s been craving odd foods lately,” he said. “Mama says it’s normal when you’re expecting. She may need ice cream.”
Capers laughed. “A psychic pregnant hound. Great detail for my article.”
As Dale trotted behind the counter and opened the ice cream case, I snuck a peek at Capers’s notebook. She closed it. “Congratulations on your great right hook,” I said.
A blush crept up her neck. “You saw that? Flick’s a foul-mouthed worm. He had it coming.” She gave Harm a smile. “I’m surprised he’s your brother.”
“Me too,” Harm said. “I’m also surprised you’re still in town with no trial to cover. I know Lavender’s still got your motorcycle, but . . .”
Smooth. Good way to not ask a question when you do want an answer. Harm will be a great detective one day.
“I’ll file updates until we see what Macon does,” she said. “Speaking of updates, you promised me a report.”
I hesitated. Mr. Macon robbed the church, but how could I say it and still be a good friend to Dale?
“I got a quote,” Dale said, setting a bowl of vanilla ice cream by Queen Elizabeth.
Dale, who hates to speak up in class, will talk to a reporter?
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“A rookie thief robbed Creekside Baptist last night,” Dale said. “The Desperados take this personal. We will track this no-talent to the ends of the earth if we can get a ride that far, but hopefully the thief will stay local so we can ride our bikes. Thank you.”
I relaxed. That could have gone worse. Way worse.
“Hey,” Dale said, his face lighting up. “I just thought of something else.”
“No you didn’t,” I said, very fast. “This concludes our press conference,” I added as the Colonel came in from the kitchen and heaved a bin of silverware onto the counter.
He dealt Capers a look that could freeze lava. “Leave these kids alone. Fork Duty,” he said to us, whipping a stack of napkins out of the cabinet.
Harm followed us to the sink to wash up. “Good job,” he told Dale.
I grabbed a knife-spoon-fork trio and quick-rolled it café-style. “Wow,” Harm said, nudging in beside me. “You’re blazing fast.”
“It’s in my blood,” I told him.
Beside me, Dale folded his napkin into his customary Diamond Fold Pouch and tucked the silverware inside. Dale watches PBS, the only station Miss Rose allows. He can also turn hand towels into animal shapes. “Nice,” Harm said, watching him. “But your way’s easier, Mo. Teach me?”
I snagged another handful of silver as Miss Lana flew in with vinegar cruets. “Dale? Invite Rose for supper, honey,” she said. She opened a jar of red pepper flakes and added a pinch to each cruet. I read the specials board:
AMERICANS-IN-PARIS SPECIAL:
Baked ham avec cloves, macaroni au fromage,
collards a la zing. $7.95
“‘A la zing,’” I told Harm. “Tupelo French for red pepper.”
Dale hung up. “Mama can’t come, but I can,” he told Miss Lana. “Her new boyfriend’s keeping her company. I’d feel like a spare tire around them anyway.”
“You mean a fifth wheel, honey,” she said. “And it’s not so. What do you think of him? I haven’t met him yet—which is starting to hurt my feelings.”
“He’s nice on the phone,” Dale said. “But he makes her different.”
Miss Lana swept him into a hug. “We’ll like him. If we don’t, we’ll drive him mad and he’ll go away.” She rumpled his hair as Starr stalked in, his collar turned up against the cold. “What’ll it be, Joe?” Miss Lana asked, smiling.
“Two burgers and coffee. To go,” he said, sliding his thermos across the counter to Harm. Normally Starr doesn’t drink coffee after three p.m. due to chronic jitters. His ordering coffee now can mean only two things: love or law.
“You got a date with Miss Retzyl?” I asked. “May I recommend the house fries with extra ketchup? You don’t want to look cheap around a schoolteacher.”
He smiled. He’s not bad when he smiles. “No date, but the fries sound good. Pickles on the burgers.” Queen Elizabeth’s ears perked up.
“No date? You’re on stakeout, then,” I said, very smooth.
“Stakeout?” Capers echoed from across the room. “Where?”
“Sorry—classified information,” he said as Miss Lana speed-wrapped his burgers and popped them in a bag.
“Seven dollars even.”
Starr put a ten down and turned for the door. Queen Elizabeth shot from the shadows like a heat-seeking missile and grabbed his cuff.
“Liz!” Dale cried as she tugged his pants leg. “No!”
Dale grabbed the pickle jar, fished out a pickle, and waved it near her nose. She rolled her eyes sideways to stare at it. “Let Starr go,” he coaxed. “Good girl.” She released Starr’s cuff and delicately plucked the pickle from Dale’s fingers.
“Cravings,” Dale explained, smiling up at Starr. “She’ll be embarrassed when she has time to think this through.”
Harm opened the door for Starr. “Our associate Anna Celeste Simpson will handle your dry cleaning bill.”
Harm’s going to fit in good.
We watched Starr’s Impala ease into the night as a pack of strangers filed in, discussing Capers’s story and the jailbreak.
“Starr’s not headed for the church,” Dale said as his taillights disappeared. “He’s staking out Daddy.”
“I doubt it, Dale,” the Colonel said. “If Starr knew where Macon was, he’d arrest him. Finish that silverware. The supper crowd’s on its way.”
As we worked, Dale whispered: “Mo, something’s wrong at church.”
True, I thought. Your daddy robbed it and you can’t say it.
He wrapped a set of silverware wrong, unwrapped it, wrapped it again. It scared me. Dale and me been wrapping silverware since second grade. Stress, Skeeter had said. First the jailbreak. Now Mr. Macon robbing his church, Thes turning on him, people white-trash-talking his family.
He looks like a candle burning out, I thought.
“Things are . . . wrong,” he said. “I can’t think it yet but I can feel it. Right here,” he said, laying his hand just below his ribs. “In that place that folds up like a lawn chair when you’re scared.”
“I know that place,” Harm said, his voice soft.
I didn’t say it, but I knew it too. The place that folds in on itself when I think Upstream Mother’s never coming, or that the Colonel and Miss Lana will get so wrapped up in each other, they won’t need me anymore.
“Don’t tell Mama about the footprint,” Dale said. “She’s upset enough.”
“Deal,” I said, watching the Azalea Women’s van wheel across the parking lot. She knows by now anyway, I thought, as they surged for the door.
Dear Upstream Mother,
Dale’s daddy robbed Creekside Baptist. The talk’s all over town.
School takes in late tomorrow thanks to a so-called Teacher’s Work Day. Word on the street is Line Dancing is involved.
I’m getting scared for Dale. Me and him been outsiders all our lives but I never seen it as bad as this.
I grabbed my phone. Harm picked up. “Hello?” he said, his voice sleepy.
“I’m worried about Dale.”
He yawned. “Me too. Come over tomorrow. Breakfast is at eight. How’s Lavender? I didn’t get to ask you at the café.”
“Lavender?” I said, sitting up. “Has something happened to Lavender?”
“No. But Macon’s his daddy too.”
What kind of future wife am I? I hadn’t even thought about Lavender! “I was just going to check,” I said. “Fortunately I have his number seared into my brain.”
I prepared a few sensitive off-the-cuff remarks as I dialed. Sadly, he didn’t answer. “Lavender’s home, Crissy speaking. With whom are you?”
Crud. A twin.
“It’s Mo,” I said. “I hope Lavender’s hair loss problem isn’t as contagious as people say. You’re brave. Do you have a diagnosis yet?”
The phone clattered to Lavender’s end table and his front door slammed.
“Crissy?” Lavender called. He picked up. “Who the heck is this?”
“It’s Mo. I just called to check on you. Crissy sounded like she had a little hairball in her throat, which can happen in her line of work.”
I could hear his smile. “I’m sure she didn’t, but thanks for checking on me, Mo. I’m okay. Once the chin-wagging stops, life will go back to normal. It always does.”
I hesitated. “Dale actually thinks Mr. Macon didn’t rob the church.”
“I know,” he sighed. “Truth is, Macon probably hit it for cash on his way out of town. Listen: Dale and I are helping Mama break collards first thing in the morning, and then we’re trucking them to Ayden. Want to ride?”
Me? Spend the morning with Lavender, who I will one day walk with in the evenings, discussing our adopted children and our foster parrot, Cliff, whose behavior problems keep us awake at night?
I sighed. Miss Lana says canceling one date for another is tawdry, which if I ever look that up, I’m pretty sure it will be bad.
“I hate to break your heart, but I got a breakfast date.”
I heard his grin. “Say hey to Harm for me. ’Night Mo.”
Harm? How did he know it was Harm? I returned to my letter:
Just talking to Lavender settles my soul. Scaring off a twin scores double. Faking hard-to-get scores triple. When you meet Lavender, you’ll see why.
Breakfast with Harm tomorrow.
Mo
Chapter 10
Breakfast at Harm’s
I still had Dale on my mind as I knocked on Harm’s kitchen door.
“Just in time, LoBeau,” Harm said, swinging the door open. His dark hair still glistened from his shower. He wore a white T-shirt neatly tucked into dark jeans. “Help yourself to juice. We eat in five.”
Harm looks at home in a kitchen, spinning from sink to stove. Before Harm moved in, Mr. Red’s kitchen held towers of dirty dishes and watched the world through grimy panes. Now a potted begonia sat in the center of the polished oak table and curtains hung neat at the sparkling windows.
I grabbed an orange juice. “Where’d you learn to cook?”
“My mom.” He flipped a pancake and slid the black iron griddle to catch it. “She’ll be a big singer soon as she gets a break.”
“That’s where you get your good voice,” I said.
He grinned. “The point is somebody had to cook.”
His string-bean arms are filling out, I thought, watching him tip a pancake onto the spatula and flip it. “You been lifting Dale’s weights.”
“A little,” he said, grabbing his wrist and flexing his muscles.
“Show-off,” Mr. Red said, shuffling in to wash his paint-covered hands at the sink. Miss Lana says always compliment your host’s home. “Nice shade of . . . pink,” I said, watching the pink paint swirl down the drain.
He gave me a look from beneath white eyebrows. “Just sprucing up the place,” he said. “Pink is Lacy’s favorite color.”
Pink? Is he mad?
“Used to be, anyway,” Harm said. “Seventy or eighty years ago.”
Mr. Red smiled. “I’m making things nice for Harm and me. If Lacy likes it too, so much the better.” He dried his hands, leaving a faint pink smudge on the towel.
“Breakfast is served,” Harm said, placing his pancakes on the table. I sat and whisked my paper towel into my lap.
“Bless the food, bless the cook. Amen,” Mr. Red muttered, and shoved the pancakes my way. “Where’s Dale? He usually trails you like a shadow.”
I loaded up on pancakes. “Helping Miss Rose and Lavender.”
Harm stacked his flapjacks neat as Tuesday. Mr. Red forked up a landslide.
“Miss Lana said invite you for Thanksgiving dinner at our house,” I said, and they smiled identical smiles.
“What else do you do around here to celebrate?” Harm asked.
“A school play, most years,” I told him.
“Hope not,” he muttered. “I get stage fright.”
We continued on, hitting the highlights: Macon’s escape, the scarcity of clues, Dale’s guineas. Mr. Red shocked me on the guineas. “Smart idea. Dale has brains, he just has a gear most of us can’t find.”
Harm looked at his grandfather. “Gramps, Dale doesn’t think Mr. Macon robbed the church.”
Mr. Red frowned. “It’s tough, hearing your father did something you can’t imagine,” he said. “Are people treating Dale right?”
Harm shook his head. “School’s a freaking nightmare. I don’t know how he walks in there. Mrs. Simpson called Dale’s family white trash and Mo tried to fight. Thes has turned against Dale—and against us too, if I read him right yesterday.”
Mr. Red’s fork froze in midair. “Thes? The preacher’s boy?”
“He’s even turned on Mo. And he really likes her,” Harm said, his voice teasing.
I flipped a speck of pancake at him.
“Eat it or leave it, but don’t throw it,” Mr. Red muttered, and drowned his pancakes in syrup. “Don’t let that church turn on Dale. He’s not tough enough.”
“Dale’s plenty tough,” I said. It’s a reflex, standing up for Dale.
Mr. Red grinned at me. “You remind me of somebody I used to know.”
“Miss Lacy Thornton,” Harm guessed. “You caught a bad break when you were a boy, Gramps. Just like Dale’s catching one now.”
Mr. Red has a moonshine past with some ugly stories hooked in. He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I’ve known Dale all his life. Macon used to bring Dale by when he was no bigger than a minute. Macon was a better man then,” he said. “But he can’t let things go. He’s never satisfied. Everything feels like a slight to him. It doesn’t matter how much he drinks or steals or makes Rose cry, nothing will ever fill Macon up.”
Dale never mentioned moonshine shopping with his daddy. But Dale never mentioned a lot of things.
“Keep standing up for Dale like Lacy did for me,” he said. “And square things with Thes if you can. Gossip’s like a ship—hard to turn and harder to stop. Dale needs that church sailing with him.”
Harm buttered his pancakes. “Make nice with Thes. We can do that,” he said, and then gave me his faux angel look. “Good thing we didn’t insult his cat.”
Crud. Spitz.
Mr. Red hopped up and ferried his plate to the sink. “Put in a word for me with Lacy, will you, Mo?” he asked, his old eyes twinkling.
Miss Lana says love’s like time travel. Could be. Just saying Grandmother Miss Lacy’s name put a spring in Mr. Red’s step as he headed for the door.
“There’s Thes,” Harm said a few hours later as we headed across the school grounds. “Let’s make nice, like Gramps said.”
“Thes,” I said as Dale slammed his bike into the rack. “How’s the weather?”
Normally Thes babbles weather. Today he studied the sky and wandered away. “Anna,” he shouted. “Wait up. I got a forecast for you.”
My blood ran ice. “He’s crossed over to the dark side,” I told Harm.
Dale sprinted up. “Hey,” he said. “Do you think anybody filled out a puppy application? Liz is a nervous wreck.”
Queen Elizabeth? Nervous?
Hannah opened her satchel. “Question answered, Dale. This is from Little Agnes,” she said, handing him a form. “If you give her a pup, I’ll help her.”
Dale smiled, very shy. “Thank you. I’ll keep her in mind,” he said, and slipped the application into his backpack.
Little Agnes was the first of many.
Dale glowed as the applications rained across his desk. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ll be in touch. Thank you. Thank you . . .” The kids filed by: Sal with two apps—one for her and one for Skeeter—Susana, Jimmy and Jake . . .
Jake placed a Snickers bar on his. Dale turned his head. Jake slipped the candy back in his pocket and Dale slid the application into the pile.
