Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf (3 page)

She stands there with her arms crossed and a great big elf-pout on her face. “I can go home by myself! Leave me alone!” She nods in my direction and calls, “Besides, she’s taking me home.”

“Oh?” He starts moving in on us, asking, “And who is ‘she’?”

I turn to face him and call, “It’s me, Officer Borsch. Sammy.”

Well, that stops him dead in his tracks. And you can tell that what he really wants to do is sit down and cry. But instead he takes a deep breath, motions back at the squad car to cut the lights, and then there we are, in the moonlight, in the middle of the library lawn, staring at each other.

Finally Officer Borsch sighs and says, “So, Elyssa. You’re friends with Samantha. Why am I not surprised.”

All of a sudden there’s a little elf hand in mine. “Yeah,” she says, “and I’m not going anywhere without her.”

Officer Borsch nods a bit, then eyes me and says, “Is
she
the reason you’re always running off, Elyssa?”

Now, it would really make Officer Borsch’s holiday season if he could pin something on me—anything. But Elyssa digs in and says, “I’m not going home without her.”

He shakes his head and says, “Suit yourself,” then motions toward the car. “Let’s go.”

So off we go. And the minute he’s got us tucked in the backseat, Elyssa scoots right over to the door and stares out the window at the moon. After we get going, she gropes around behind her until she’s holding my hand. Her fingers are cold and little, and I wonder—what is she looking at out there?

And what is she thinking, this little runaway elf?

Elyssa’s mom didn’t look anything like an elf. As a matter of fact, she was kind of tall. She came charging through the front door when we pulled up, crying, “Oh, baby, where have you
been?
”

Elyssa didn’t say a word. She hugged her mom back, but the whole time she wouldn’t let go of my hand. Finally the Elf Mom looks at Officer Borsch and says, “Where did you find her, Gil?”

“Near the library.”

“The
library?
” She turns to Elyssa and whispers, “What were you doing at the library?”

Elyssa shrugs, then gives her mom a smile and asks, “Can she stay?”

“Can she …?” The Mom blinks at me a minute, then turns to Officer Borsch for help.

Officer Borsch clears his throat like he’s sorry to have to break the bad news to her. “This is Samantha Keyes. I found them together outside the library.”

She looks me up and down. “What were you doing with my daughter?”

Now, I didn’t really like the way she was saying it—like I’d been teaching her little elf to play poker or something.
But I took a deep breath and said, “I was looking for a dog that ran away from me, and I found her instead.”

She looked at me like she didn’t quite believe her ears. “You were looking for a dog and you found my daughter?”

I shrugged and nodded, and then all of a sudden Elyssa lets go of my hand and runs into the house. She comes back a minute later with the Canine Calendar and shows her mom the cover. “This one.”

Well, there’s Marique, all right, looking like a snotty little lion on a sheepskin rug with a cigarette holder in one paw and a champagne glass with
Santa Martina Valley, Home of the Best
etched across it in the other.

Elyssa’s mom says, “That’s
your
dog?”

I’m about to say, “No, ma’am!” and explain about Mrs. Landvogt, when I notice Officer Borsch standing there, getting redder and redder. He spits out, “
You
were on that float? No wonder!”

I put both hands up. “Now wait a minute …! I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

Elyssa’s mom says, “Gil, don’t. Remember your blood pressure. Besides, it wasn’t that bad.”

He looks at her a minute and then chokes out, “You saw it, too?”

She shrugs and says, “It was only on for a second.”

“On? Oh, Janet, no! Not on TV!”

“Only for a second, Gil, now take it easy.”

“Take it
easy?
You know what it’s like—the guys are going to torture me with this! I’ll be the laughingstock at briefing tomorrow.”

“No you won’t. Anyone could see that it wasn’t your fault.”

“No, I
know
,” he says, and looks straight at me. Now I’m about to say it wasn’t
my
fault either, but before I can, he says, “I gotta get back. Janet, you call me if you need anything, and Elyssa, mind your mother! This running away bit has got to stop.”

Elyssa just sticks her tongue out at him.

Elyssa’s mom gives her a scolding look, then says, “Thanks again, Gil.”

So I’m standing there holding my breath, hoping that Officer Borsch has forgotten about me, when he gets to the curb and calls, “Get in, Samantha, I’m taking you home.”

Oh man! What am I supposed to do now? See, Officer Borsch thinks I live clear out on East Jasmine. It’s kind of a long story, but as far as he knows, I live with my best friend, Marissa. And since East Jasmine is
miles
away from the Senior Highrise, if I let Officer Borsch take me there I’m going to have to spend the rest of the night walking back.

So when Elyssa grabs my hand and says, “No! I want her to stay!” I start breathing again and call, “Thanks anyway, but I think I’ll stay here awhile.”

He shrugs, then zooms off. And when I turn around, there’s Elyssa’s mom, checking me out like I have a third eye somewhere. Finally she says, “Why don’t you come in for a minute?”

Now really, I don’t want to. I want to get home to Grams and maybe call Holly and Vera to see if they know anything about Marique. But Elyssa tugs me up the steps,
and before you know it I’m in their house with the Elf welded to me on one side and the Elf Mom staring at me from the other.

The Mom says, “Elyssa, why don’t you bring your new friend a soda.”

Elyssa looks up at me like that’s a great idea. “What do you want?”

The Elf Mom doesn’t take her eyes off me. “Anything, Elyssa. Get her a black cherry … anything.”

Elyssa runs off, and all of a sudden her mom squints at me and says, “Hudson’s! That’s where I’ve seen you before. Down the street at Hudson Graham’s. Are you a relative of his?”

I dig at the carpet with my high-top and say, “No, just a friend.” And it’s true—he may be seventy-two and have a few marbles on the loose when it comes to cowboy boots, but he’s my friend. My good friend.

“Hmm,” she says. “Hmm.” Then she shakes her head “Okay, well anyhow, tell me what you were doing with Elyssa.”

“What was I
doing
with her? Nothing. I saw her under the tree, and I went up to ask her if she’d seen the dog.”

Her face softened up a bit as she plopped into an easy chair. “You didn’t talk about anything?”

“Not really—she was just looking at the moon.”

She put her face in her hands and groaned, “The moon again … what am I going to
do
with that child?”

Elyssa comes bouncing back and hands me a can of soda. “Here you go!” she says, then sips from a glass, full almost to the brim. “I took a little, okay?”

I shake what’s left in the can and can’t help but laugh. “Sure,” I say. “Have all you want.”

The Mom doesn’t even notice. She says, “Elyssa, what were you doing tonight?”

“Just watching, Mom.” Elyssa smiles at me and says, “It’s good, huh?”

I sip a lot of air and say, “Uh-huh.”

Elyssa gives her mom a hopeful look. “Can Sammy stay over?”

“Stay over?” I put the soda can down. “I’ve got to get home! My … um … mom is going to be real worried if I don’t show up soon.”

Elyssa’s mother jumps up and says, “See, Elyssa! That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to come home so your mom doesn’t worry.”

Elyssa looks at me, then looks down at her little elf boots. She doesn’t tell her mom she’s sorry or promise never to do it again. What she does is peek up at me and say, “Can you come back tomorrow?”

Well, what am I supposed to do? I shrug and say, “I guess so. If it’s okay with your mom.”

The Elf Mom sighs, “If that’s what she wants, it’s fine with me.”

I got out of there as fast as I could, and the minute I hit the sidewalk, I hung a left and went two doors down. To Hudson’s.

The lights were out, and for a minute I thought he’d gone to bed, but just as I’m about to turn around I hear, “Sammy! What brings you here at this hour?”

So I went through the gate, and sure enough, there’s
Hudson in the dark on the porch, watching the moon. I sit down next to him without a word.

He pulls on one of his bushy white eyebrows and says, “I saw the news. There wasn’t much left of that float of yours when it passed by the judges.” He gives me a funny little smile. “Is that what’s brought you here?”

So I sigh and tell him. All about Stinkbug Petersen and his stupid antlers, and about getting talked into taking care of Marique. And when I get to the part about the Three Kings and the cats he says, “Ahhh … that would explain the condition of the float.”

“Yeah …”

He studies me a second, then says, “I know that look. What’s cooking up there?”

“I’m not sure …”

“But …?”

“But the more I think about it, the more I’m sure that Heather Acosta was one of those Kings.”

He went back to tugging on an eyebrow. “So the demon resurfaces.”

I laughed, and said, “Well, it’s not like I’ve got proof or anything, and I don’t really know how she could’ve found out so fast that I was going to be on the float—it just seems like something she would do.” I let out a sigh and looked up at the moon. “The trouble is, I can’t blame losing Marique on Heather—if it
was
Heather. Marique jumped off the float
before
it got bombed with cats.”

“Oh?”

“It was really weird. I heard someone call, ‘Maaaariiique!
Maaaariiique!’ and then all of a sudden she charged right off the float.”

“Why’s that so strange?”

“Because a lot of people called her name. We’d be driving by and someone would call, ‘Go, Marique, go!’ or whistle and clap and call her name. She ignored all of them. Then all of a sudden she hears her name and
zoom!
off she goes.”

“Hmmm,” he says. “Have you called Mrs. Landvogt? Maybe the dog’s been returned to her.”

“You think so?”

“It’s worth a try.”

So I went inside and dug through the phone book. I found a Landsford, a Landstad, two Landwers, but no Landvogt.

Hudson shrugged. “Why don’t you give Vera a call? She’ll probably have her number.”

It was pretty late, but I decided to do it anyway.

Holly answered, “Hello?”

“It’s Sammy.”

“Oh, Sammy! Oh, thank God. Have you got Marique? Mrs. Landvogt’s called here twenty times wanting to know about her dog.”

“Rats.”

“What? You
haven’t
got her?”

“No. I’ve been looking for her all night.”

“Ho-boy.” She was quiet for a minute, then whispered, “Vera’s a nervous wreck. Mrs. Landvogt’s threatening to get her business license revoked.”

“What?”

“Yeah. She’s blaming it all on Vera.”

“It’s not Vera’s fault!”

Holly laughed. “Try to tell Mrs. Landvogt that!”

“What a mess.” I sat there a minute, thinking. Finally I said, “Well, I’ve looked everywhere for her and I don’t know what else to do. If you hear anything, call me at home, okay?”

I got off the phone, and as I’m heading out the door I ask Hudson, “Do you know that little girl who lives down the street? Elyssa?”

“Keltner? Sure. She comes over here once in a while.” He kicked his boots up on the porch railing and grinned. “Usually right after I’ve baked a chocolate cake.”

“What do you know about her?”

“She’s a cute little thing … wants a sheepdog … doesn’t like her brothers too much. They’re twins, and I guess they don’t let her tag along very often.” He dusted off a boot. “The mother seems nice—I don’t know about the father, I haven’t met him. They’ve only lived there about six months.” He looked me over. “Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.”

“Oh, come on, Sammy. You don’t ‘just wonder’ about things. Out with it!”

So I sat down next to him and said, “I guess she runs away a lot.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and when I was out looking for Marique I found her instead, and now she’s acting like I’m her best friend.”

He eyed me. “So be her best friend.”

“She’s only like seven or eight years old!”

He looks at me like, So? and all of a sudden I realize that the difference between thirteen and seven is a lot less than the difference between thirteen and seventy-two. And thinking about that made me feel uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable.

I stood up and said, “I’ve … I’ve got to get home. Grams is probably starting to get worried.”

He just smiled at me and said, “Tell her I say hi.”

The whole way home it bothered me. I mean, was my hanging around Hudson like the Elf wanting to hang around me? And if it was, why in the world did he let me do it?

I was on autopilot, going up the fire-escape stairs, sneaking down the hall, thinking about Hudson and Elyssa, when all of a sudden there’s my grandmother, in the hallway with a fireman. Then I notice that Mrs. Graybill’s door isn’t cracked open a few inches like it usually is so she can spy on me—it’s wide open. I run up to Grams and whisper, “What happened? Did she start a fire?”