Down the Rabbit Hole (23 page)

“Then perhaps an extra rehearsal might help,” Vincent said.

“Oh, yes,” said Ingrid. “Thanks.”

“Shall we say tomorrow, the regular time?”

“I'll be there,” said Ingrid. “Do you want help making the calls?”

“No,” said Vincent. “And in the meantime, rethink your approach to this darker Alice. I suggest you work from within.”

T
HE WIND ROSE AND
the waves rose with them, whipped into a frenzy. At first the snug little boat did what it always did, bobbed snugly along, staying warm and dry. Then a worm crawled up from the space between two deck planks. It started mouthing at the wood. Another worm wriggled up, and another and another. Soon there were hundreds, thousands, millions of worms, chewing and chewing, the worms in a frenzy too, eating the boat out from under her. Ingrid awoke. Nigel was whimpering beside her.

 

Brucie Berman got on the bus, did what he must have thought of as a cool King Tut dance down the
aisle. No one looked at him. He stopped by Ingrid's seat.

“Way cool,” he said, “that thing in
The Echo.
”

“Huh?” said Ingrid.

“About dogs not voting.”

“Guy,” called Mr. Sidney from the front. “Zip it.”

“Thing in
The Echo
?” said Mia, sitting beside her.

“No one reads
The Echo
,” said Ingrid.

“I do,” said Mia. “What thing?”

It turned out that lots of people read
The Echo
, including Mr. Porterhouse, a dodgeball lover who taught gym and was also Ingrid's homeroom teacher, which meant taking attendance and recording tardies before letting them loose.

“Our friend Ingrid here made the paper,” he said, standing under the basketball hoop and holding up
The Echo.
He took reading glasses from the pocket of his warm-ups—Mr. Porterhouse always wore warm-ups, the colors always intense—and read aloud: “Heard on Main Street. Best quote yet on the widespread and much-to-be-lamented disobedience of the town's leash law comes from the mouth of thirteen-year-old Ingrid Levin-Hill, eighth grader at Ferrand Middle. According to young Miss Levin-Hill, ‘The problem is that the dogs didn't vote.'”

No one laughed except Mr. Porterhouse.

“Get it, kids?” said Mr. Porterhouse, looking at them over the rims of his glasses. “Town meeting voted in this leash law thing—but
the dogs didn't vote!
”

Silence, unless all the blood flowing into Ingrid's face made a noise.

Mr. Porterhouse cleared his throat and read on: “We had the pleasure of making Miss Levin-Hill's acquaintance when she dropped by
The Echo
office while researching a school project about ‘pretty much anything.' Our intrepid middle-schooler, who has chosen ‘The Life and Death of Kate Kovac,' is a young lady to watch indeed.”

More silence. Ingrid's embarrassment deepened, got all mixed together with the dread.

“Enough culture,” said Mr. Porterhouse. “Choose up for dodgeball.”

Mia was a captain. She chose Ingrid first. “What school project?” she said.

Who else was going to be asking that same question?

 

At lunchtime Ingrid hung out by the swings with Mia and Stacy. No one actually ever swung on the
swings, but they stood in a corner of the yard farthest from the school and partially screened off by trees. Clouds were thickening overhead, growing darker and darker, and the wind was blowing across the grounds, scattering dead leaves and the shouts of a bunch of boys playing touch football.

“You sick?” Stacy said.

“No,” said Ingrid.

“Does Ingrid look sick to you?” said Stacy.

“Maybe a little,” said Mia.

“I'm fine,” said Ingrid.

A football came bouncing their way, end over end, and landed in the sand. A boy ran over, picked it up, turned to run back. Joey. Ingrid hadn't recognized him at first, partly because he wore a wool ski hat that hid his blunt-feather thing, but mainly because she'd never seen him run before, hadn't realized he was pretty fast. He saw her.

“Hi,” he said.

Joey threw the ball back to the other boys, stayed where he was.

“Hi,” said Ingrid.

Stacy and Mia kind of melted away. What the hell? Ingrid thought.

“How's it going?” Joey said. His face was getting
unpudgier by the day, or maybe it was the ski hat.

“Good,” Ingrid said. “You?”

“Good,” said Joey. “Um. You know the Rec Center?”

“Do I know it?”

“I mean more like…ever go there?”

“No.”

“Me either,” said Joey.

Silence.

“The thing is,” he said, “they're gonna start having dances.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He kicked at the sand. “Like there's one next Saturday. With a DJ from Hartford.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Um. He brings his own sound system. It's supposed to be awesome. The sound.”

The school bell rang, lunchtime over. Joey had dug a pretty big hole in the sand with his foot.

“Maybe we could…go,” he said.

“Sure,” said Ingrid, and at the same time had a strange thought:
I'd rather go over to your place and have another look at the catapult.
She came very close to saying it—the words were forming on her tongue. Yikes. That would have been so out there,
so brazen. Catapult. Oh my God. They'd learned about metaphors. She was losing her mind.

“Sure?” said Joey. “Like yes?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” he said. “Good.”

They walked back toward the school. Ingrid noticed a police car pulling up to the front door.

“Do you read
The Echo
, Joey?” she said.

“No.”

“Do you get it at home?”

“Uh-uh. My dad hates
The Echo.
Why?”

“No reason,” Ingrid said. In the distance a man in uniform got out of the cruiser. Too far away to tell if it was Chief Strade, but Ingrid had a feeling. Joey didn't seem aware of any of this.

“I read the
Hartford Courant
,” he said.

“Yeah?” Maybe Chief Strade hated
The Echo
, but that didn't mean it wasn't delivered to the station, where someone might point out the Heard on Main Street column. And what then? Chief Strade would find out pretty soon that there was no school project. What was her answer to that? I was misquoted? She'd seen a million interrogations on TV and in the movies. Once you started giving any answers at all, they had you, would uncover every secret, especially
when there were secrets like a stolen murder confession lurking around. How many laws had she broken by now? Beyond count. She'd become a career criminal.
A young lady to watch indeed.

“Just the sports,” Joey was saying. “And
Dilbert
. You like
Dilbert
?”

Ingrid stopped. “I forgot something,” she said. “Go on ahead.”

“Forgot something?” said Joey.

“My gloves. I'll catch up.”

“Gloves?”

Almost all the kids were filing back into the school. Joey hesitated. Ingrid gave him a little push. He went off.

Ingrid returned to the swings. She glanced back. Joey had almost reached the school, seemed to have his head pointed in the direction of the cruiser, spotting it at last. Ingrid kept going. She got to the chain-link fence that surrounded the school, not high, maybe four feet or so, a symbolic sort of fence. Ingrid climbed it and hurried away.

 

Cold and blowy. Ingrid wished the madeup gloves were real. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her jacket, bright red, the only bit of color in the whole
darkening town. Wally's 99¢ Video Heaven stood at the bottom of Foundry Street across from the empty wasteland where the railroad yards had been. Ingrid didn't get lost on the way—School Street to Bridge, Bridge to Hill, Hill to Foundry. She was learning Echo Falls.

Ingrid opened the door and went inside. One of the reasons people avoided Wally's was the mildewy smell. Another was the gloom, getting darker and darker toward the back of the store, empty now except for Wally, avoidance reason number three, sitting behind the cash register at the front. He wore a tank top and had big flabby arms, a Freddy Krueger tattoo on one and a big
WALLY
—festooned with razor wire, blood dripping from the tail of the
y
—on the other. One of the tattooed blood drops had a hairy mole growing in the center. When you noticed little things, the world could sometimes be a nasty place.

Wally looked up from what he was doing, which happened to be cleaning his fingernails with a penknife.

“Help you?” he said.

“I'm looking for a movie called
The Accused Will Rise
,” said Ingrid.

“Jack Palance and Barbara Stanwyck?” said Wally.

“I think so.”

“Where he says I'm getting on that train and she says if you do it'll be in a box?” said Wally.

“I don't know,” said Ingrid. “I haven't seen it.”

“And then Jack Palance throws the city boy down the well, and just when you think he's drowned for sure, his head bobs up one more time like a curse?” said Wally.

“That sounds right,” Ingrid said, remembering the details of the blog. “Have you got it?”

“What a question,” said Wally. “This is Wally's.” He tapped his keyboard, peered at the monitor, nodded to himself. “Here we go—A419, way at the back. Hasn't been rented in five years.” Wally folded the knife. “Now what was the name of that actor, the one who played the city boy?”

“David Vardack?” Ingrid said.

Wally looked at her in surprise. “Movie buff, huh?” he said. “I got a discount club here, but you need a driver's license to join. Got one, by any chance?”

“No,” said Ingrid. “Was he in any other movies?”

Wally closed his eyes tightly, his face scrunching up in a really repulsive way. “Drawing a blank on
that one,” he said. “Which means no, ninety-nine point nine percent guaranteed.”

“What became of him?” Ingrid said.

“Showbiz,” said Wally with a shrug. “Tell me about it.” Did Wally think he was in showbiz? He pushed himself to his feet. “Anything else you want while I'm back there?” he said.

“Is
The Accused Will Rise
the one with the honey scene?” Ingrid said.

“Honey scene?” asked Wally.

“Where Barbara Stanwyck keeps spooning honey into her tea.”

Wally shook his head. “Nothing like that in
The Accused Will Rise
,” he said.

“It must be in another one of her movies,” Ingrid said.

“Nope,” said Wally.

“Nope?”

“She never did a scene like that. You're looking at her number-one fan. Name me a Barbara Stanwyck movie and I've seen it a dozen times.” Wally started naming them himself.
“Forbidden, Baby Face, Woman in Red, Double Indemnity, Witness to Murder…”
The list went on and on. He waddled toward the back of the store, disappearing in the shadows.
Ingrid heard rummaging, grunting, muttering, more rummaging. The phone rang on the counter beside her.

“Wanna get that?” Wally called.

Ingrid picked up the phone. “Wally's Ninety-nine Cent Video Heaven,” she said.

“You open?” asked a man in a low whispery voice that wouldn't have been out of place on a Freddy Krueger soundtrack.

“No,” Ingrid said, in case he lived around the corner.

Wally came back empty-handed. “That's weird,” he said.

“What?” said Ingrid.

“The Accused Will Rise,”
said Wally. “I know I had it.”

“You mean—”

“It's not there,” said Wally.

“Maybe it got put on the wrong shelf,” Ingrid said.

Wally shook his head. “The backups to my backup systems have backups,” he said. “It's gone.”

I
NGRID LAY ON HER BED
. Lying on the bed in the middle of the day—not her at all. Plus it was a school day and she'd just cut for the very first time. She actually wanted to be back in school—even though she'd be in math at this very moment with Ms. Groome—back with the other kids, bored out of her mind and itching to get out of there.

Also, she was feeling weird. Or at least everything around her felt weird. It was hard to describe. All the colors had a brownish tint, like she was trapped in one of those old sepia photos. Maybe that was a result of the day being so dark, but how to explain the fuzziness in the air, how all sound seemed muted
and faraway, as though she were wrapped in insulation? At the same time, her hearing was sharp, maybe sharper than ever. Right now, for example, she could hear Nigel down in the kitchen, lapping water from his bowl. How could sound be muted and clear at the same time?
Does she look sick to you?

Ingrid rose, crossed the hall, went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror to see if she looked sick. Oh my God. Maybe not sick, but something: face pale, lips without color, the only color being those sunken purple half-moons under her eyes. And the eyes themselves? They looked scared.
Get a grip,
she told herself, willing strength and confidence back into her eyes.

How about a cup of tea? She started downstairs. And why not with honey, since it was on her mind. A little strange, Vincent remembering Barbara Stanwyck spooning honey into tea and Wally saying it hadn't happened. Both of them movie buffs, so—

There was a knock at the front door. Ingrid, in the front hall, turning toward the kitchen, froze. Another knock, harder. A voice called from the other side of the door.

“Ingrid?”

It was Chief Strade.

She stayed where she was, silent, motionless.

He knocked again. The door vibrated. “Are you in there, Ingrid?”

She said nothing, hardly breathed.

“Open up, please. I want to talk to you.”

She didn't move.

“Can you hear me, Ingrid?” He paused, waiting for a reply. “Are you scared, is that it? If you just tell me what's going on, what kind of trouble you're in, I can help.” He knocked again. This time the whole house vibrated, scaring her even more. “Say something.”

She kept her mouth shut.

“I know some kids don't like cops,” he said. “I understand that. I'll be fair, whatever happens. I promise you.”

Would he be fair? What did that even mean, especially after she told him all her crimes? Fair might just mean she'd get a fair trial. And no matter what, he'd be disappointed when he heard. That went for everyone: Everyone she knew would be disappointed, at the very least, and no one would ever forget or see her the same—the way the DUI had changed how people looked at Sean Rubino. Ingrid didn't say a thing. She had to solve this case, quickly and on her own.

Chief Strade knocked once more, softly this time. His footsteps faded down the walk. A car door opened and closed. The car drove off. Ingrid stayed where she was, just breathing.

Then the phone started ringing. She let the answering machine pick up.

“This message is from the guidance department at Ferrand Middle School. It appears that Ingrid left during school hours without authorization. This infraction automatically puts her at Level Two, meaning a week of detention, and requires parental notification. If there are any questions, please call the office.”

Ingrid pressed the delete button.

But what good would that do? Just give her a little extra time, no more than that. Time was closing in, crushing her. She could sense it, sense it in the way the colors were getting squeezed out, in the way sound was getting flattened.

Ingrid looked outside. The school bus was going by, her bus. It was so dark now that Mr. Sidney had the interior lights on. Brucie was tracing the letter
F
on the dusty window, maybe for Ferrand, although Ingrid doubted it.

The phone rang again a few minutes later.

“Hey, Ingrid, you there? It's Mia.”

Ingrid didn't pick up, didn't want to start lying to Mia.

“You feeling all right?” Mia said. “Call me.”

Mia sounded really worried. Ingrid felt bad. Mia had enough to worry about.

Ingrid went back to her room, closed the door. The day got darker and darker. Time closed in. Her once-snug little boat, now full of worms, took shape around her.

 

“Ingrid?” Mom's voice, very soft. “Are you all right?”

Mom stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the hall light.

“Yeah,” Ingrid said. Had the school—or worse, Chief Strade—gotten in touch with her?

“Just tired?” Mom said; meaning that they hadn't.

“Uh-huh,” said Ingrid.

“Wasn't there an extra rehearsal tonight?”

Oh my God. “What time is it?”

“Quarter of seven.”

She bolted up.

 

Mom dropped her in front of Prescott Hall. The wind was blowing hard now, driving the clouds
away, exposing the night sky. Across the river, the moon had risen, hung just above the horizon, It was huge, huge and yellow, not the golden yellow of the sun but paler, like lemon sherbet. She'd never seen the moon this big, had trouble accepting it for the real thing. Then that huge cat, almost bobcat size—like everything was growing out of proportion—glided across the parking lot into the shadows of the Hall and disappeared. The moon, the cat: everything growing out of proportion, or…or was she getting smaller, Alice style? This was turning into the weirdest day of her life, and why would tomorrow be any better? She had good reason to believe it was going to be worse.

 

Ingrid walked up to the front door, opened it, went inside. It was quiet. She walked through the octagonal entrance hall and into the theater. Except for a single spotlight shining on the Mad Hatter's table, the theater was dark and no one was there. Had she gotten the time wrong?

“Hello?” she called.

Vincent's voice floated down from the balcony. “Up here, Ingrid,” he said.

Ingrid turned, looked up. In the dim glow of the
exit signs and the aisle lights, Ingrid saw him sitting behind the balcony railing, front row center.

“Where is everybody?” Ingrid said.

“No need for the full cast,” Vincent said. “A one-on-one will be more efficient. Come on up.”

“To the balcony?”

“Sometimes a fresh perspective is all it takes.”

That made sense. This new vision of the play was all about perspective; Ingrid saw that. She went back out to the lobby and up the balcony stairs.

“Should I turn on the lights?” Ingrid said.

“If you like.”

Ingrid switched on the balcony lights, went down to the front row, sat two seats from Vincent. His driving gloves were curled over the railing.

“Sometimes it's good for actor and director to get better acquainted,” he said.

“Thanks for taking the time, Vincent,” she said. “But I'm not sure how we're going to do this.”

“Do what?”

“The tea-party scene,” Ingrid said. “Without the others. We're going to try it again, aren't we? I've been thinking that maybe if Alice is actually frightened inside, her behavior might seem kind of mean but it's only because she's scared.”

“Interesting,” said Vincent. “And what would she be scared of?”

“Being in such a strange situation,” Ingrid said.

“Is that always scary?”

“Maybe at first,” Ingrid said. “I don't know.”

“I can see you've thought about this,” said Vincent. “Like one familiar with strange situations.”

She didn't quite get that.

Vincent saw that she hadn't and raised something from his lap. Ingrid had assumed it was a copy of the script, but it was
The Echo
, open to Mr. Samuels's Heard on the Street column, the part about her circled in red.

“Isn't this a strange situation?” he said. “A schoolgirl getting so interested in a murder?” He glanced down. “‘The Life and Death of Kate Kovac.'” He read that dramatically, like an announcer.

Ingrid didn't like being called a schoolgirl. Vincent was smart and talented, but did that give him the right to be so…contemptuous? He did contemptuous very well. She didn't say that, of course. But her voice rose a little. “It's not so strange. She was an actress, a Prescott Player on this very same stage.”

“Is that a fact?” Vincent said. “What else do
you know about her?”

“She was engaged to marry Philip Prescott, the last of the Prescotts, who owned this place. You wouldn't know, being a newcomer, but he broke the engagement and ran away to Alaska, supposedly, which was what started all her problems.”

“Supposedly?”

“That's what people say.”

“Based on what?”

“He wrote a letter to
The Echo.
I saw a copy.”

“Where?”

She was about to say “At the
Echo
office” when she remembered that in fact Chief Strade had shown it to her. But she didn't want to bring him up, so she said, “In my research.”

Vincent was watching her closely, liquid eyes yellow under the balcony lights. “But you doubted the letter?”

“Not at first.”

“But now?”

Now, having read Philip Prescott's letter to Katie, which made no mention of Alaska, she had her doubts, but how could she say that without exposing everything?

Vincent spoke again, his voice as soft as she'd ever
heard it. “Why do you doubt he went to Alaska?”

“It's just a feeling,” Ingrid said.

“Just a feeling?” Still soft, the voice, but the contemptuous part was back.

She nodded.

“I assume that drive we took to the Flats was part of your research,” Vincent said.

“I'm sorry about that, Vincent. I didn't mean—”

He raised one of his long, saintly hands. “We all have our little secrets,” he said.

At that moment—irony, essence of—Ingrid was suddenly tempted to spill the whole thing, every secret she had, crimes and all. Did she know anyone smarter than Vincent? Probably not. Plus he was sophisticated and unconventional, might come up with an answer no one else would, the same way he had an original vision for Alice. But there was that contemptuous tone. Maybe it went along with being so brilliant, but she didn't like it.

“Having deep thoughts?” he said.

“Not really,” said Ingrid. “Should we get started?”

“Started?”

“On the play.”

“Oh, that. So much less interesting than your little project. Tell me what else you've discovered.”

“Barbara Stanwyck didn't spoon honey into her tea,” Ingrid said. “At least according to Wally at Wally's Video, and he's seen all her movies.”

Vincent went still. Maybe he didn't like being corrected. And why, of all things, had she brought that up? It wasn't connected to anything, except perhaps very distantly to the David Vardack thing, and Vincent had already told her he'd never heard of him.

“I must have been mistaken,” he said. “But how does that fit into your research?”

“It doesn't, really,” Ingrid said. “Should we try the tea-party scene or something else?”

Vincent reached for his driving gloves. “I'm afraid I have some unpleasant news. For the good of the play, especially in light of the new vision, I've decided that Chloe will take over the role of Alice.”

Ingrid actually felt faint, the theater turning white around her. “But we haven't even worked on it yet, Vincent. I know if I had another chance—”

“Time is against us,” Vincent said.

It came out of nowhere. She was stunned. “Then you…you'd already made up your mind. Why did you bring me here?”

“To get better acquainted, as I said. But in doing
so, I'm more convinced than ever that your talents lie in the comic vein, as I suspect you know yourself.”

Was he right about that? Even if he was, it didn't make this fair. She wanted to cry but was too damn angry.

“You should have just told me on the phone.”

“The personal touch is always preferable,” Vincent said, “although perhaps you're right in this case. But in the end, the play's the thing, the only thing.”

So unfair. But maybe Dad was right, maybe it was like sports, and that made Vincent a sort of coach. Ingrid remembered what had happened to Stacy when she'd gotten into a battle of wills with Coach Ringer, how she'd been sent down to the Bs even though she had the strongest foot on the team. No
I
in team. And this wasn't like being cut, more like switching positions. Come on, step up.

“When's the next rehearsal?” Ingrid said.

“I beg your pardon?” said Vincent.

“I'll need to learn the March Hare, won't I?”

“Ah,” said Vincent. “The March Hare is now in the hands of Mrs. Breen.”

Mrs. Breen, the bank teller who could cry on cue?
Ingrid barely heard what came next.

“It's best that you sit this one out,” Vincent was saying. “You'll come back to the next production rested and refreshed, like a rebirth. That's how we learn in the theater. Trust me.”

Ingrid jumped up. “No,” she said. “It's not right.”

Vincent rose too, one hand on the railing. Somewhere along the way, he'd put his gloves on. “An actor must take direction,” he said, “or—”

“Hey, Ingrid!” a voice called from down in the orchestra. Ty. “Didn't you hear the horn?” She—and Vincent—looked down. Ty was looking up. He wore his red varsity jacket, and from this angle his shoulders looked huge. “Mom's been honking for five minutes.”

“We can't have that,” said Vincent.

 

They rode home in the MPV, Ingrid crying a little in back.