Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary (20 page)

“But
what?
”

“I don't know…it's not like I was trying to
hide
it from you. So Heather's my sister. She's a pain in the neck, I agree, but
I'm
not Heather.”

I didn't know what to say to that. I mean, theoretically he was right. He wasn't Heather any more than Dot was Stan or Troy, but still, my brain was all jumbled up and I was having trouble processing this. It was like the
Huntleys and the Murdocks—it would never be over. Generations from now Keyeses and Acostas would be killing each other, burning down buildings, and plotting revenge. I didn't want that. I wanted to be miles
away
from Heather Acosta, not tied to her.

I shook off the avalanche of thoughts and said, “Look, I've got to go.”

“Wait! Why?”

“Because I'm supposed to be spending the day with my friends. Because they're back there, waiting for me. Because I…because I just have to, that's why.” I swung onto the bike and tore off down the road. And when I got to the end of Golden Oak Circle and looked back, he'd already gone inside. Inside with his sister.

I tried laughing about it. Tried telling myself that it was just so ironic. So funny. But inside I wasn't laughing. Not at all. And when I passed by Wagonwheel Road and saw the Elephant Truck, I felt downright miserable. Like over the past two days, I'd banged and bruised about every inch of myself on the outside, and now my insides were getting a beating, too.

And I kept telling myself that I shouldn't be so upset. I mean, how long had I known Casey? One whole day. And his best friends
were
Taylor and Jake, and he
did
have the same basic genetic makeup as the person I liked least in the world. And it was clear that he wouldn't be ditching his friends anytime soon, and he could never ditch Heather. Not really.

And the whole time I'm pedaling and brooding about Casey, there's a little thought kind of knocking on the
back door of my brain. I know it's there, but it's a door I usually keep locked up tight. But the more I think about Casey and Taylor, the harder it is to keep the door closed.

Finally, it swings open. And standing there, haunting me, is Brandon.

He's there because none of this makes any sense to me. If I'm so weirded out by the fact that Casey likes hanging around with Taylor—a guy who thinks he's so hot, who's manipulative and sneaky and isn't bothered at all by the Edge of the World—then maybe Brandon's somebody I shouldn't trust, either. I mean, Karl is
his
best friend, and from what I've seen and heard, Karl is ten Taylors rolled into one.

By the time I got back to Dot's, my brain felt like overcooked spaghetti. I didn't want to go inside and answer a bunch of questions. I wanted to go someplace, be by myself for a little while, and recover.

But I got lassoed. By Anneke and Beppie. They came out of nowhere with coiled lengths of rope, looped the ends over my handlebars, and started running around, tying me up.

Now you'd think I could handle being ambushed by two little girls, but the minute I'd get Anneke's rope off, Beppie would loop me with hers. And if I'd grab the end of one, they'd just pick up the other end and start using it.

I laughed and said, “Okay! Okay! You got me!” but that just made them giggle and wrap faster and
tighter
. And since part of each rope was hooked around the bike, I couldn't run, I couldn't roll, I couldn't do much of anything but tell them to quit it.

I guess Dot heard me, because she comes crashing out the front door and down the steps, and shoos her sisters off like they're crows in a cabbage patch. They squawk a bit as they're running away, but just like crows, they watch us from a distance and we know—they'll be back.

Marissa and Holly come out and help Dot untangle me, and they're all laughing, saying, “How'd you let them
do
this to you?”

“Don't ask me…those two are…are…”

Dot laughs, “Little monsters, I know.” Then she says, “I guess this explains why Stan and Troy never found the rope.”

I park Hudson's bike next to the others and ask, “So what are you guys up to?”

Dot says, “We played some more
sjoelbak,
watched Rose Parade reruns, talked about
you
…”

“Yeah. So tell us what happened,” Marissa says. “Did you find him? Did you straighten everything out?” and then Holly adds, “I don't see any skateboard…”

Oh yeah. The skateboard. I sighed and said, “You know, I could really use a glass of water.”

Dot leads the way up the steps. “Wouldn't you rather have an ice cold root beer?”

“Sure. Whatever.”

Holly and Marissa are looking at each other with their eyebrows up, trying not to be too nosy. And they can tell I don't really want to talk about it, but they're dying to ask, so I figure I'll get the whole thing over with. “The bottom line is, Casey has a sister.”

Marissa hesitates, then says, “So?”

I sit down at the kitchen table. “Her name's Heather.”

At first, it doesn't connect. Then their jaws drop and their eyes pop, and they gawk at me like a row of nutcrackers, waiting to crunch.

Marissa's the first to move. She sits down across from me, leans in, and whispers,
“Acosta?”

I nod.

Dot moves in beside her. “That is
too
bizarre!”

Holly keeps right on standing. “Was he setting you up? Do they have some kind of genetic predisposition to torture?”

I look at Holly and say, “No. I really don't think so.”

Marissa practically shakes the table. “So what
happened?
”

So I tell them. All about the way he'd watched me talk, the things he'd told me about Taylor and his brothers, about being friends and doing drugs and bailing out. Then I tell them how he'd held my hand and pulled me inside, and about Heather, standing in the kitchen in her ratty hair and saggy socks.

And when I'm all done, Marissa and Dot say, “Oh my god. That is just too much!” But Holly's not shocked anymore. She's grinning. Grinning and shaking her head. And when I ask her, “What are you thinking?” she says, “I'm thinking this is perfect.”

“Perfect?! How can you say that?”

She leans in and whispers, “Can you think of a better way to torture Heather?”

It was my turn to stare. “Torture Heather? I don't
want
to torture Heather! I just want to be out of her life, and have her stay light-years away from mine.”

Holly grins. “Seems to me, you're out of luck.”

“No, I'm not!”

Marissa says, “So what are you going to do?”

“I'm going to stay away from him, too, that's what I'm going to do.”

“But you
like
him!”

“No, I don't. I don't even
know
him, so how can I like him? Besides, it's too weird. The whole thing is just too weird.”

Dot pipes up with, “Yeah. Can you picture Sammy and Heather being sisters-in-law? Or having Heather's mother as a
mother
-in-law? Talk about torture! I can just see them gathered around the table at Thanksgiving, throwing food and yelling. Wow! It would be a mess!”

Well, that gets them going. And while they're busy marrying me off and writing the script for the rest of my life, I get up, get myself a drink of water, and listen. And after my firstborn child has been kidnapped and held for ransom, I can't help it—I bust up. And pretty soon we're all in stitches, crying from laughing so hard.

Then the phone rings. And Dot snatches it up with a giggle, saying, “DeVries.” But after a few seconds she's not giggling—she's looking real serious as she holds the phone out to me. “It's Officer Borsch.”

We look at each other like, Uh-oh! but what can I do? I take the phone and try to sound calm as I say, “Hello?”

“Sammy?”

“Yeah?”

“I thought you might want to know that Lucinda Huntley's pig is missing.”

It took me a second to realize he wasn't calling about stolen blueprints. “Still?”

“So you knew, then. Well, on the 911 tape she sounded very upset, but the sheriff doesn't have the manpower to go chasing after missing pigs. I'd go out there myself, but I'm on duty, and I can't really justify another trip to the boondocks. Especially not for a pig.”

“Are you asking
me
to go look for it?”

He hemmed and hawed, and finally he said, “That's up to you.”

I laughed and said, “Wow. For a minute there I thought you were actually asking me to
help
.”

He laughs, too. “You do have a fertile imagination, don't you?”

“So I've been told.” I twist the cord a little and say, “Um…that's all you were calling about?”

I could practically see his eyes pinch. “Should there be something else?”

Me and my stupid mouth. “Well, no. I mean…”

“Sammy…?!”

“No, really. Thanks for letting me know about Penny. I'll try to get over there and help Lucinda look.”

I got off the phone before he could ask me any more questions, and when I turned around, there were Dot, Holly, and Marissa, waiting. I smiled at them and said, “Anyone up for a pig hunt?”

Marissa groans, “Oh, please.”

“C'mon. It'll be fun. Besides, Officer Borsch says Lucinda's really upset.”

So after some moaning and groaning and serious armtwisting,
everyone agreed: We'd go back to Lucinda's
again,
this time to scare up her pig.

What none of us knew—or could ever guess—was just how scared
we
would be, once we got on Huntley property.

Kevin hadn't come home yet, but Lucinda wasn't pacing pine boards over
him
. “Where can she be?” she kept asking. “Where can she
be?
Do you think they stole her?”

We ask, “Who?”

She stops and looks at us. “The Murdocks, of course!”

Dot asks, “Why would the Murdocks want to steal your pig?”

“They've stolen everything else, haven't they? My home, my nephew, why not Penny, too?”

I'd never actually seen anyone wring their hands before, but that's exactly what Lucinda was doing. Back and forth, back and forth, her knuckles stretched and white. She says, “To their eyes, Penny would make a mighty tasty New Year's supper. Those…those… barbarians!”

I'd had enough of watching her fret; I wanted to get out and
look
. “Okay, Lucinda. When's the last time you saw Penny?”

“Right after you left this morning.”

“Where was she?”

“Right here. On this very spot. There's only about an hour of daylight left. Oh, I have a horrible feeling. A horrible, horrible feeling.”

So I said, “Okay. We'll split up and scour the place. Are there fences anywhere but along the road?”

“All the way around, except for by the ravine.”

“So. She's got to be either somewhere on your property, or over on the Murdocks'.”

“Oh, she couldn't have made it up the other side of the ravine. That's much too steep for her.”

We decided to start on the side of the property opposite the ravine and work our way around the fences—Holly and Dot inspecting the back end of the property while Marissa and I scoured the front end. And after about half an hour of looking in and out, up and down, whistling and calling, “Here, Penny! Come on, girl!” Marissa and I found ourselves at the length of broken fencing where we'd been so many times before.

The sections were still together, and along the bottom of the fence there was only a gap of about six inches. Marissa says, “No way she could squeeze through that…”

I nudged the bottom end, but it didn't flex very much at all. “Nope. No escape there.” I looked up and down the road and shook my head. “I wish I knew who's been coming in and out through here. I think it would explain a lot.”

“Probably the Murdocks, don't you think?”

“Maybe. But I can't exactly see Chubby and the Darling Damsels
walking
down here, can you? They'd drive, and if they drove, where would they park? Right along here? Everyone would see their car.”

Now as I'm talking, I'm looking at an area off the shoulder just across the road. It's your typical section of
Sisquane wilderness—shrubs, oaks, dry grass, and weeds. At least it looks that way, until I notice that there's an area about four feet wide where the weeds are smashed flat.

I pop off the leather strap and wrestle the fence open a few inches, but Marissa grabs my sleeve and says, “Where are you going? I thought we decided she couldn't be out there!”

I point at the road and say, “Look.”

“At
what?
”

“At those weeds! C'mon!”

She follows me, but when we get across the street, she says, “Why are you looking at weeds? We're supposed to be looking for a pig!”

I stood at the section of smashed weeds, and straight ahead of me is a sort of tunnel into the shrubs and oaks. “Marissa, look! Do you think a car could fit in there?”

We took a few steps inside. “I think so. Oh, yeah—easy.”

Right away my heart sped up. Right away I knew. I whispered, “Marissa, this is where they parked their car.”

“Who?”

“Whoever burned down the cabin!”

“You think so?”

I start thinking out loud, saying, “Well, okay. How can we tell if a car's actually been in here?” but I must've been talking to myself, because as I squat down and start checking the bed of oak leaves in the tunnel, Marissa walks off to a different part of the tunnel. And just as I'm confirming that all the leaves in the middle are crushed and the ones on the sides
aren't,
she says, “Sammy! Oh my god, Sammy, come here!”