Crunch (13 page)

I TWITCHED WITH ADRENALINE—SO MUCH
that I’m confused about the exact order of events. I know we locked our doors for the first time in my entire life. Just symbolic, I guess, because we left our windows open to cool the house. I know that Lil called the Rocky Shores PD, and that Officer Runkle arrived quickly by bike. Two more officers followed after him in the one electric wheelie pod the town owned.

I swallowed rocks when I told Runks that I was almost positive that it was Officer Macey. The other two officers looked at each other. I somehow got the feeling that bells were going off for them and for Runks. Lil kept repeating that we did not know anything for certain.

“I sp-sprayed him with blue paint,” I said. I drummed my fingers nervously on the top of the table. “It—it would be obvious.”

“It’s permanent,” Lil added. She pushed a few blue stands of hair out of her face and rubbed at a mark on her wrist.

With that, the two cops left. They were in a hurry, as I recall, but I was so jittery everything seemed to move fast. Runks stayed. I spent the next forty minutes or so answering questions about what I thought was missing and how long ago it had begun. All the while Lil paced nearby. She just kept shaking her head at everything I was saying. Robert and Vince sat by and listened. Meanwhile, I heard a few bells of my own.

“It started right around the time the flags went up at the pumps.” I thought about it as I spoke. “Right after we found out Mom and Dad wouldn’t be back on time. And…right after we met Macey. Yeah. That’s it, I think. After the night we made clam chowder with Pop and Mattie. At first, I didn’t even understand that parts were being taken.”

“And that makes sense,” Vince blurted. “Because, Runks, I’m a space-shot. Dewey thought it was me losing the parts.”

I think that was the only time we laughed. Robert leaned up and patted Vince on the back. I told Runks about the dog biscuits at the door, the scaffold, and the busted latch on the hay door.

“It sounds so stupid now, but I just kept coming back to Mr. Spivey,” I said. “Because he just took a little at a time.”

When I told Runks about Mr. Gilmartin’s derailleur—that I was pretty sure now that Macey had swiped it and then sold it back to me—Runks made a low, disgusted sound in his throat. “Ignoble,” he said. I’d never heard that word, but I didn’t have to ask what he meant.

“One other thing, then,” Runks said. “What about your cash? Was there ever any money missing?”

I took a long breath in, avoided eye contact with Lil, and admitted it. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I wasn’t that…”

“Meticulous?” Robert helped me out.

“Right. B-but if he did take money, it was just like with everything else.” I knew I sounded defensive. “It wasn’t enough to make me flat-out suspicious. I-I just can’t believe I’m sitting here saying all of this.” My lips felt numb. “Macey’s a cop! I thought he was our
friend
.”

I think that’s when Runks took a call out on the porch for privacy. Hard not to try to listen. I heard him talking about bikes.

When he came back in, he sat down with me again. He looked pretty stunned, I thought. He rubbed his face with his hands then said, “You were right. You filled Officer Macey’s right ear with blue paint.”

Across the room, Lil muttered, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod…”

“They already know?” I said. “It
was
Macey.” I wilted forward, my head in my hands. I realized then how much I’d wanted to be wrong.

“The evidence is overwhelming,” Runks said. “Marked man, so to speak, thanks to your good aim. It looks like this connects to several investigations.” He shook his head. “We have quite a lot of light being shed all at once.”

“Oh! Holy!” Robert rocked forward, nearly flew out of his chair. “The bike thefts at the police impound lot!”

My heart pumped. Lil stopped pacing.

Runks might have nodded slightly. “Macey’s apartment is full of bicycles, and some other items of interest. He was first on the scene at several robberies—incidences of jimmied doors—and now it appears he may have been the thief.”

“But why?” I said. “You said he was the best and the brightest.”

“Maybe that’s exactly why,” Runks said. “Every rookie has a lot to prove, and Macey seemed all out to do just that. But we think he was creating crime scenes, then controlling them to make himself look good.”

“Being on the outside and the inside,” Robert offered.

“Ew…oh, gosh.” Lil shivered as if she felt both pain and disgust.

“That derailleur,” I mumbled. “Bad guy, good guy.”

“I can’t say more,” Runks said. “But it’s possible that the whole story will hit the news as early
as tomorrow, anyway. The investigation is sure to go on for months.” He waited with a frown on his lips. He looked at Lil, then Vince, then me. Then he sighed. “I hope with all my heart that you understand that he acted alone. I, for one, am proud to work for Rocky Shores. Ours is a
good
department. Above all, please know how sorry I am that I ever brought him to the Marriss Bike Barn.”

Lil walked straight over to Runks and hugged him. “How could anybody have known?” she said.

I was counting on her remembering those words.

I DIDN’T DO MUCH SLEEPING. I CHECKED ON
Angus and Eva at least four times while it was still dark out. No real reason. Coming down from upstairs the final time I saw that Vince had crashed in Dad’s armchair. Robert was back on the floor—snoozing. Runks had suggested he stick around. “Another adult in the house,” he’d said, and Lil had yielded, even though I knew she was annoyed.

I heard Lil on the phone with Mom and Dad. She stood in the front window, where the dark of night was just beginning to creep away. I was exhausted and amped-up all at the same time. I registered just bits of what she said.

“Bribed the dogs. Got in through the hay door.
Dewey sprayed him. Cops are checking in. Runks will call you as soon as he gets a chance. We’re fine. It’s supposed to rain, by the way.” There was a long pause, then she added, “I’m tired, Mom. I’m just tired. Yep. Love you, too.” Lil hung up. She landed on one end of the couch and slumped there. I landed on the other.

“You didn’t tell them,” I said.

“What?”

“That I knew stuff was missing and didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah. Well. You look bad, I look bad.” She flopped sideways and closed her eyes. She was done talking to me.

I woke to find Vince standing over me and daylight coming in the windows behind him. He stretched his arms above his head and gave the day some heck with a mighty yawn.

“Robert went on home for a shower,” he said.

We did the morning milking together, me resting my forehead against Camilla’s side. The police were around, wanting a quick look at the crime scene in the light of day. I unlocked the Bike Barn
for them, but we stayed out of their way, stealing just a peek around the side of the barn.

I looked at the scaffold. I remembered the body dropping down from it. The scramble on the ground. The flash of white hair. Me, hitting my target…

And speaking of my target—or what I
thought
was my target when I’d squeezed that trigger in the dark—there stood Mr. Spivey at the edge of the yard. He had his hands tucked firmly in his pits and he watched the cops through one squinted eye. For just one tiny part of one tiny second, I felt bad for suspecting him. Bike parts—that wasn’t his kind of stealing, and now it seemed to me that I should have known better. I turned toward the house with Vince. I felt the handle of the milk bucket in the crease of my fingers. I felt my neighbor’s eye on my back.

The twins came in from the coop, and Eva asked, “Why did Officer Runkle and his friends come today?”

“To see the mural,” Lil said, without flinching.

“Is this the unbailing?”

“Unveiling,” said Lil. “Sure it is. Whatever.”

“But you didn’t peel off the papers yet.”

“They’re taking pictures of it already,” Angus said. “What about Officer Macey? He didn’t come?”

I tried to field that one. “Uh…no. He’s…uh…”

“Feeling blue.” Vince finished with an amazing snort. It was like all the tension in the room had been drawn right up his nose. It all came out again in a big laughing fit. Lil and I couldn’t help but join in. Angus and Eva just smiled because we were laughing.

But I sidled up to Lil and said, “I think we have to tell them.”

“You mean
be honest
,” she said, and she gave me a hard look.

“Right,” I said.

So we gathered up the twins and Lil broke the news. I think our twins felt less betrayed than we did, and luckily, they didn’t seem afraid. Maybe that was because they were used to daily egg robberies. But they were full of questions—the kind
that are hard to answer.

“Well, but he stole stuff even though he is the police?” Angus said.

“But doesn’t he just have the keys to the jail?” Eva asked, her nose wrinkling up. “He could let himself out. Because he
is
the police, right?”

“I’m sure they took the keys away from him,” Lil said.

“He brought us lollipops when our bikes got stole,” Angus said.

“He was going to find our bikes,” Eva added.

He sold me back my own derailleur. I couldn’t dump that thought.

Wow. Kindnesses turning to crimes.

“Well, I guess we have two thieves,” Eva said. “Mr. Spivey is our thief and now Officer Macey is too.”

AFTER WE TOLD THE TWINS ABOUT OFFICER
Macey, Lil began thrashing through the house chores. She still didn’t have much to say to me. I just wanted to get out to the Bike Barn. My oasis. But Runks and the other officers were still wrapping it up out there—inside and outside the barn.

I screwed up the courage to ask Lil about the mural. “Hey, weren’t you going to do something out there today? Peel paper?”

She stopped her furious scrubbing of the refrigerator. “My mural is a crime scene,” she said. Vince thought that was funny, but he stopped laughing when Lil didn’t even break a grin.

“They shouldn’t be out there much longer,” I said.

“I’m just not that interested in it today.” She
went ahead with her scouring. I decided to look useful
and
stay out of Lil’s way, so I took the compost bucket out and dumped it. When I was rinsing it out at the hose below the kitchen window, I overheard Vince saying, “Come on…he didn’t tell me either, Lil. And I’m not mad at him. Not at all.”

I would have liked to hear her reply. But if she said anything, it was drowned out by a lady who called to me from across the yard.

“Excuse me! Hello! Do you work here?” She pointed at the Bike Barn, and I nodded. She was one of several people waiting with bikes to log in. I set the compost pail on the steps and jogged over to help her. “Service seems a little slow,” she said. “Was there some sort of trouble here? I saw the police leaving.”

“Everything is okay,” I said. We talked about her bike and I pushed it into the shop with the rest.

I’d no sooner started work when Angus and Eva ran the phone out to me. It was Robert. “Boss Man,” he said, “hate to tell you, ’cause I know things are probably crazy this morning, but I was
feeling cruddy last night and I barely made it home this morning. I’ve got a stomach bug. I’m off today. Sorry.”

I closed my eyes. Felt tired. That all-night adrenaline rush was finally catching up to me. “Sorry for you. Feel better soon, Robert. We’ll get by.”

Truth was, I needed him. We were pretty backed up. Quitting early one afternoon and not getting started until late the next morning had caused a bike jam. And now we had a fair number of jobs that we simply didn’t have parts for. I couldn’t even blame that all on Macey. We’d been busy, and we’d run through plenty of parts on our own. And now, I wouldn’t have Robert today. I felt a little sandstorm blowing through my oasis.

I sat down in the shop and closed my eyes for just a minute. Should I call Mr. Bocci for parts? Should I run a whole new triage? Do I have to decide?

“Gaw!” I said it out loud. I scrubbed my head with my hands. For the first time all summer—or all crunch—I didn’t want to work on bikes. I wanted people to fix their own. You ride it, you
repair it! Okay. Bad attitude for a bike mechanic.

Then Vince came through with a bike on his shoulder and headed out to the paddock. “Did you see that sky?” he asked. “It’s going to rain.” He put the bike on the stand. He twisted one bare toe into the dirt and crouched down to check the crank.

Days can flip on you—sometimes for the better.

If Vince could work, I could work. And I did. I even got into the zone for a while. I was completing jobs and wheeling them to the front. I was on a second wind, and in the middle of it I realized something else. I had one less worry than I’d had the day before. My thief was
caught
! A big chunk of my Bike Barn trouble was over with.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

I WAS LEANING DOWN TO INSPECT A JOCKEY
pulley when my ears picked up on a humming sound. I straightened up and listened. It was coming from the driveway.

Vince hurried in from the paddock. “What is that?” he said.

I stepped outside. The dogs ran by me. I took a look. Then I ducked back in. “Oh. My. Hell.” I stared at Vince. “It’s a news crew in a wheelie pod.”

We could hear two women talking. “O-o-okay, this way. Watch the—uh—ew, I think it’s chicken poop, right there. Nice dogs, nice dogs. They seem friendly. Bring it around. Yep, yep. Watch that! Another poop. Oh, and here comes the chicken…uh…make that two. Cock-a-doodle-doo, fellas!
Okay, okay, let’s make sure we get a panoramic of the property…and get a clear shot of the door to the shop…see if you can get the animals in it. That’s a classic….”

“News crew?” Vince said. “W-w-why?”

I thought for a second. “The Officer Macey stuff!” I said. My brother turned into Petrified Vince right before my eyes. “I got this,” I said. I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him toward the loft stairs. “Go! Go hide. Disappear!” He was gone in a flash.

“Hello? Hello? We’re looking for Dewey Marriss?” A woman in a dressy pink suit came right in the shop door. Microphone in her hand. Goodie wagged his dusty tail into her skirt.
Thwump! Thwump!
Greatie kept going in for a lick at her shin. The camerawoman sidestepped another chicken dropping. The Athletes flapped and scattered.

“Are you Dewey?” The reporter checked her notes. She looked me up and down. “He’s about fourteen. Looks like we have our man!”

My memory of the interview is hazy.
Surreal
,
as Lil says. And there was nothing more
surreal
than watching myself on the early evening news. There I was. On the screen. But I could hardly remember it happening. Of course I’d only said two things before Lil had come flying out of the house to shut them down—in no uncertain terms. But they didn’t need us. They had their report and their footage. Like Runks had predicted, the story of Officer Macey had hit the news.

The preamble to the report said:

Then it really got going:

“Hey! Wasn’t that my line?” Vince said.

“Ha! Look at you, Dew!” Angus pointed to the TV.

My face stretched across the screen. A bug flew by my nose. My eyes moved left to right to left again. In our living room, my loyal siblings laughed hysterically. Angus and Eva shouted my name.

The TV station had spliced together footage of me saying the two sentences I’d managed to utter, which were: “W-well, we r-repair bikes.” And “W-well, our parts were going missing…and stuff…and so…I wanted to stop that.” Again, my two oldest siblings were in spasms.

Okay, it was funny.

But the rest of the report wasn’t. First, they ran the footage of the Bike Barn and our yard on a loop along with some stills of the Rocky Shores Police Department while the reporter rattled on.

Some photos came up on the screen. I squinted. “What is that? A living room full of bicycles?” I said.

“We did
not
say that,” Lil said. She sounded disgusted. She picked up the remote and waited
with her finger on the button.

The desk anchor said:

Lil hit the button. The screen went blank.

“Hey,” I said. “They were going to talk about fuel!”

“Talk, talk, talk. When it flows, we’ll know about it.”

I supposed she was right. “Well, at least it’s true, what they reported,” I said. “We
are
glad the thefts will stop.”

“But that didn’t come from us! They are fabricating!” Lil complained. “They just want to blow a little story up into a big one.”

“Big news for little Rocky Shores,” Vince said.

“Blah, blah…
unassuming little bike shop
…” Lil mocked and mumbled. She shook her head. “They’re trying to create entertainment out of it.” I couldn’t understand why she felt so crabby about it.

The phone rang all through dinner. Everyone had seen the news. Everyone was in shock over the story of Officer Macey. We heard from Pop and Mattie. They wanted to come over but agreed with Lil that with the storm gathering it would be a terrible idea. Mrs. Bertalli sounded indignant on our behalf. We heard from a few of our regular milk-and-egg customers, and we took a couple of calls from people who had left bikes and wondered if they were safe. Finally, Robert called.

“It’s crazy,” he said. “It’s like it happened right under everyone’s noses.” I was just happy to hear that Robert was feeling better and would come back in the morning.

The phone rang yet again. “Who else is left?” I said as I hopped up to grab the call. “Haven’t we talked to everyone in town?” But it was Mom and Dad. They were calling in early. The connection was bubbly-sounding from the start. We cut
through a lot of the is-everybody-okay talk. Mom was quick about saying that Runks had been keeping them apprised of the post–Bike Barn theft situation and that she and Dad were mightily sorry and fiercely proud of us. But she had something else to say—something important.

“Good news!” she cheered. The phone crackled. “We’re on the move! That’s why we’re calling early. Not sure how the signal will be later on. We’re getting into a line for diesel! They’re supposed to get a delivery in the morning. Dad got a special stamp on his ration cards. It’s a new process, but that’s what the aid trucks are doing right now,” she explained.

“Sounds like they’re
rationing
the ration cards,” I said.

Mom laughed. “You could say that. We’ve been told where to go. We aren’t sure how many gallons they’ll let us have, of course—”

“But you’ll be able to at least
start
home?” I asked.

All four of my siblings’ heads turned toward me then.

“Yes!” Mom said. “That’s the idea! And I
cannot tell you how good that sounds.”

It was the news we’d waited for. Yet it seemed to take its time to settle into my head now that it’d finally come. When Mom said good-bye, I stood still with the phone against my chest. This was it. The crunch was winding down. In my mind’s eye I saw a gear turning and a pipe filling and slowly, slowly, a drop, then another and another until—

“Dew!”
Lil shouted. She was staring at me.

“What?”

“What did they say?” Lil leaned toward me. “We heard something about starting home.”

“Oh. Sorry,” I said. “Yes! It’s good news!” I announced that Mom and Dad were heading to a pump.

“Hah! I told you we’d hear about it if the fuel was really going to flow! But that was fast! There ya go!” Lil shouted. “Angus! Eva! Mom and Dad are about to get a fill-up!”

“W-well, they are getting in a line,” I said. “And it seems like there will be at least
some
fuel.”

“Oh,” said Lil. “Okay, so it’s maybe going to be a process…”

“So when will they get home?” Eva asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Lil said.

“But tomorrow. Maybe?” Angus suggested.

“They’ll keep us posted,” Lil said. “And we’ll make another paper mural and you can draw the truck at all the stops it makes until it gets all the way home with Mom and Dad in it.”

After that, the twins talked nonstop about Mom and Dad “getting gallons” at lots of pumps. They rolled out the butcher wrap and drew rows and rows of cars and trucks rolling along a crayon-stripe road.

“Did you tell Mom and Dad that we were on the news?” Lil asked. She drummed a finger on her bottom lip.

“Oh, I didn’t even think of it,” I said. I grinned. “Stardom. Easy come, easy go.”