Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (26 page)

Plus there were things Dusty Mike had said about Gordon that just didn’t seem like the truth anymore. Like how Gordon was afraid of the old section. He sure didn’t seem that way to me. We’d watched him walk right through it with Officer Borsch.

So maybe he’d just stayed away from the old section to avoid running into Dusty Mike.

Maybe it was as simple as that.

I’d also been wrong about El Zarape. I’d thought he
was a desperate trick-or-treater—someone kinda like us—but he turned out to be a skull robber who had no problem pulling a knife on a kid.

Added to all of that was the fact that everyone had jumped to conclusions about us, too. People at the cemetery thought we were tombstone-tipping troublemakers, but we’d had nothing to do with it!

So was Dusty Mike like us zombies? Strange looking and misjudged by people?

Or had
he
maybe pushed over the tombstones himself to get his old job back? Maybe this was a case of him faking vandalism so he could say, See? You need me here. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d been here.

So maybe El Zarape had nothing to do with Ofelia Ortega’s grave. I mean, come on—digging up a grave to take out the skull?

But then … what was El Zarape doing, running around the graveyard with two skulls?

Plus the office manager said she’d seen kids knock over the tombstones, which eliminated Dusty Mike.

So I really didn’t know what to think. And by the time Grams got home from the movies, my brain was fried and my homework was still not done, and there was really only one thing I could think to do.

Pack it in and go to bed.

Heather was back at school the next day strutting around in a pair of distressed black jeans that had metal studs in the shape of a dragon going up one leg.

“Wow,” Dot whispered. “Those must’ve cost a fortune.”

Holly just shook her head. “I don’t know how she does it.”

Heather was getting a lot of attention for the jeans, but she still didn’t seem happy. Oh, she’d smile and nod and agree that they were the coolest jeans ever, but when she wasn’t holding court she looked all … furrowed.

I had nothing to say to her and that’s exactly what I tried to do. But on my way into history she was waiting at the classroom door and hissed, “You’re gonna wish you were dead.”

“Cool jeans,” I told her, and took my seat.

Still, I knew I had to be careful, and not just for my own sake. Maybe a sane person would be thanking Casey for defending them in front of Danny, but Heather was queen of Psycho City, so instead she’d do whatever she could to get Casey in trouble, even kicked out of the house.

And then at lunch I forgot about Heather because Marissa and Billy walked up holding hands.

“All right,” I said, grabbing Marissa and yanking her to the side.

“What?”

“Since when did you start liking Billy?”

“I’ve always liked Billy!”

“No! I mean, liking-liking. When did you start
liking
Billy? When you found out he liked
you
? That’s no reason to like someone!”

“I
do
like Billy. This has been, like, the funnest two days of my life!”

“But is this a rebound thing? Because if it is, you have to be careful. Billy’s all funny on the outside, but inside he’s a marshmallow.”

“Would you stop worrying?” She frowns at me. “You’d think you’d be excited for me. You’d think you’d be happy I was over Danny. You’d think you’d be saying, Yay Marissa!”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

So we left it at that and she went back to Billy and that’s pretty much all I saw of her for the rest of the day.

Now, all day I’d been trying to keep Dusty Mike out of my mind, but he’d been there, sort of haunting me. And by the time school let out, I’d decided I needed to check some things before I met Casey at the graveyard. So when the dismissal bell rang, I didn’t even wait for Marissa to tell me she was going to hang out with Billy. I just grabbed
my skateboard and flew over to Nightingale as fast as I could.

The first thing I did was open Dusty Mike’s mailbox.

There were now five pieces of mail in it—the three from yesterday plus an electric bill and a subscription postcard for
Horticulture
magazine.

I put it all back in the box, closed the door, and went to his converted garage.

The curtains were drawn, I couldn’t hear any noise coming from inside, and when nobody answered the door, I checked the knob.

It was locked.

So I went up to the front door of the main house and rang the bell, and when a woman with a sleeping baby on her shoulder answered and whispered, “Yes?” I whispered back, “I’m wondering if you know where your neighbor is. The one who lives in the converted garage?”

“Mike?”

“Yeah.”

She shakes her head. “He’s pretty quiet. We don’t say much but hi to each other.”

“So you don’t know if he has relatives or friends or … people he visits out of town?”

She shakes her head. “He works at the cemetery. That’s about all I know.”

I thank her and turn to go, but she asks, “Why all the questions? Is something wrong?”

“I’m not sure,” I tell her, but in my gut I
am
sure—something bad’s happened to Dusty Mike. So I get out of there, cross the street, squeeze myself and my stuff through
the cemetery gate, and hurry over to the place Holly and I had been the night before.

Sure enough, Dusty Mike’s hoe is still lying there.

Same place, same angle, same everything.

So I go back to the gate, squeeze out of the graveyard, then haul down Stowell on my skateboard until I get to a gas station where I know there’s a pay phone. I pop in some leftover change from my laundry room scavenging and call Officer Borsch’s cell phone. And when he answers, “Borsch here,” I say, “Hey, it’s me. Sorry to call
again
, but to make a long story short—which I know you like me to do—I think something bad’s happened to Dusty Mike.”

“Who?”

“Michael Poe.”

A slow, heavy sigh comes over the line. Like he’s just too tired to deal with me or my overactive imagination.

“Officer Borsch, look. I know that Gordon guy thinks he’s a loon, and maybe he is, but Dusty Mike hasn’t picked up his mail in two days, he doesn’t answer his door, his neighbor hasn’t seen him, and his hoe has been lying on the same grave in the exact same way for two days.”

“His
hoe
has.”

The way he says
hoe
is so huffy and slow that my mind flashes to an image of him in a Santa hat with so little jolly left in his big ol’ belly that he can’t even finish a ho-ho-ho.

“Yes! It’s just lying there! In the graveyard! For days! Which I know sounds stupid, but I’ve never seen him without it!”

He heaves another sigh. “And how often have you seen him, Sammy?”

In my head I count quick and get all the way up to maybe six. In almost a year. “Lots!” I tell him, but he’s right—it’s not like I’ve seen him that often.

Or know anything about him.

“Officer Borsch, listen to me. Something’s wrong. I can just tell.”

“Sammy, this sort of thing happens all the time. People report someone missing and it turns out they’re at a friend’s house. Or they went away for the weekend. Or they’re taking a nap. No one’s reported him missing and—”

“
I’m
reporting him missing!”

He sighs again. “No
family
member has reported him missing. No co-worker.”

“He was fired!”

“Nobody who
knows
him.”

“Well, what if he doesn’t have family? What if
I’m
the only person who cares?”

There’s a moment of silence and then, “Why
do
you care, Sammy? From what I’ve heard, Michael Poe is a pretty strange character.”

“Why do I care?” Something in my head snaps. “The same reason
you
should care! He looked after Elyssa last year when nobody knew she was running away from home to visit her dad’s grave! And since her dad was a cop and you saw him get killed—”

“Okay, okay!” he says, shutting me up. Then he grumbles, “It would have helped a lot more if he’d called the department and told us a young girl kept appearing at the graveyard without supervision.”

“But that’s not how he is. He’s just kind of in the shadows, watching out for people.”

“So I’ve heard,” he growls. “A real stalker type.”

“How can you say that! You don’t know anything about him!”

“I’ve been told plenty by the office manager and the cemetery workers.”

I take a deep breath. “Officer Borsch, he may be strange, but he’s nice and he cares, and it’s really starting to bug me that nobody seems to care about
him.
”

He’s quiet a minute, then says, “Look, I can’t do anything official for forty-eight hours.”

“What about unofficially?”

“Sammy, do you have any idea what I’m going through here? I am buried in investigations.”

“What if Dusty Mike’s the fourth person to go missing?”

“It isn’t even in the same ballpark!” he snaps.

“You don’t have to get mad.”

“Sorry,” he grunts.

We’re quiet a minute before I say, “I take it those other cases aren’t going well?”

“We’re getting nowhere fast,” he growls. “They all just vanished. No trace. No ransom. No body …”

“Sounds like Dusty Mike to me. No trace, no ransom, no body …”

“Oh, Sammy, please,” he says like he’s rubbing out a migraine. “Just because
you
don’t know where he is doesn’t mean he’s missing.”

“I’m telling you, Officer Borsch, something’s not right.”

“And I’m telling you, Sammy, he’s not missing until someone who
knows
him reports that he’s been missing for forty-eight hours.”

“What if no one ever reports him missing and he never comes back? Does that mean he’s not missing?”

He hesitates, then growls, “Look, Sammy, I’ve got
real
work to do,” and hangs up without even saying goodbye.

I stand there for a minute staring at the phone, then I slam it on the cradle and ride toward the cemetery to meet Casey.

Now, from where I am, using the main cemetery entrance is way quicker than going back to the sneak-through gate. Easier, too. And since there’s an actual road, I just cruise up the driveway on my skateboard, go through the open gates, and keep on riding.

The road leads right to the cemetery office, so at first I feel a little like someone’s going to come out and bust me for riding a skateboard through the cemetery. But I tell myself they drive
cars
through, so what’s a skateboard going to hurt?

And maybe I should also have been worrying about someone seeing me and thinking I was one of the Tombstone Tippers, but I’m by myself, not with a bunch of other kids, and besides, I’m not really thinking about tombstones or Halloween.

I’m thinking about Dusty Mike.

And just as I’m getting ready to turn with the road as it goes to the left, I get a brilliant idea. I check my watch, and since I’m still running a little ahead of when Casey would
be able to get to Sassypants Station, I hop off my skateboard and carry it up to the cemetery office.

The sign on the door says
OPEN
, so I turn the knob and go inside.…

And right away I wish I hadn’t.

Hudson says that if you act like you’ve done something wrong, people will assume that you have. So when I walk through the cemetery office door and find myself face to face with the ruby-haired woman we’d seen on Halloween, I try real hard to act like I’ve never seen her before in my life.

Even though her van had practically run us over.

Even though she’d watched us slide down the Vampire’s car.

Even though we’d seen her calling the cops on us.

I remind myself that I’d been dressed as a zombie on Halloween and that there’s no way she’ll recognize me. Still, the office is small and cluttered and she’s staring at me, so right away I feel claustrophobic and panicky.

“May I help you?”

She has a beautiful smile—sparkly and warm—and I suddenly feel worse about any trouble I caused. Especially since it’s obvious that she’s in the eye of a big junk storm. There are files and papers and boxes and catalogs and boots and jackets and a leaning tower of ancient computer parts and printers and just
junk
all around her, but her desk is really tidy. It’s got only a big desk calendar over it, a
phone to her left, and a pencil jar and a small vase of flowers to her right.