Spyhole Secrets (10 page)

U
nfortunately the next day was Saturday, which meant there wasn’t much chance to find out anything for two whole days. Zachary had never been at the library on a weekend, and the spyhole wasn’t much of a possibility either. The spyhole problem on weekends was, of course, that Mom was usually at home. But that wasn’t the only obstacle. Now and then, when Mom let Hallie stay home while she was out on an errand, Hallie had sneaked upstairs for a quick look, and there had never been anything going on in the spyhole apartment. Nothing at all. It was almost as if the Crestmans lived somewhere else on weekends.

Hallie had almost given up on the spyhole until Monday but then, unexpectedly, Sunday became a possibility because of Ellen. Ellen, it seemed, was going to be in Irvington on Sunday, and she wanted to take her dear friends, Paula and Hallie Meredith, out
for brunch. Or Paula, at least, if Hallie had other things to do.

Hallie didn’t want to go. She knew that all her mother and Ellen would do was talk about art and people back in Bloomfield, neither of which she wanted to hear about. Mom wanted Hallie to go, but she managed to get out of it by bringing out all the library books on ancient civilizations that Mrs. Myers had found for her. Piling the books up on the kitchen table, she pointed them out to Ellen and Mom and, without exactly saying so, she managed to give the impression that she’d checked out the books because of a humongous homework assignment that she really needed to get started on.

It was about ten-thirty, just a few minutes after Mom and Ellen went out the door, when Hallie started up the attic stairs. It was the first time she’d been there since she’d hidden behind the trunk and, just as she’d feared, some of that awful trapped and helpless feeling came flooding back. At the top of the stairs, she stopped to calm down and to check things out.

Nothing much had changed except for the heat. Now that summer was over the attic was a little bit less like an enormous oven, but the air was still heavy with ancient dust. Tiny dust motes floated in the bands of light that filtered through the dirty windows, and in the far corners, way back under the
slanting ceiling, the shadows deepened into pools of darkness. And the ghosts? She smiled. It had been a long time since she’d really worried about Mrs. Crowley’s bashful ghosts, but now that they’d come to mind, Hallie kept her eyes on the darkest shadows as she made her way toward the tower alcove.

No sign of ghosts and, just as she’d feared, no signs of life in the Crestmans’ apartment. As usual on weekends, the bleak, bare-walled rooms seemed deserted. Hallie had been sitting on the trunk for several minutes, looking through the spyhole now and then, and in the meantime going over everything she’d learned about the Crestman family, when suddenly something happened. Something entirely unexpected.

She had just leaned forward and put her eye to the spyhole again when, from only a few feet away, a face stared back at her. Shocked and frightened, she quickly pushed herself away from the spyhole and covered it with both hands.

The face hadn’t been a familiar one. Not Zachary’s or his sister’s, certainly. She was sure now that what she had seen was the face of a man. The face of a complete stranger who had seemed to be staring back at her from just outside the tower window. But of course that was impossible. Slowly and cautiously she took her hands away from the spyhole and leaned forward.

The face was still there, but now, seeing it more
calmly, Hallie realized that the man it belonged to was not floating in midair outside the tower room, as it had seemed to her at first. Instead he was inside the Crestmans’ apartment, standing at the window just as Tiffany had done when she had looked down toward Warwick Avenue. And like Tiffany, the man was not staring back at Hallie. He was only standing in the window where the sun fell on his face, looking out at nothing in particular with a blank, unfocused stare. As she watched, he turned his eyes up toward the sky, then straight across the narrow air well toward Hallie’s spyhole, and then down again toward the ground four stories below. Gradually the blank stare tightened into a frown that narrowed his eyes and slanted his heavy eyebrows. Angry eyebrows, Hallie thought, and then she caught her breath in surprise.

The man wasn’t a stranger after all. She had seen him before several times, talking with Zachary, and arguing with other angry people, and once driving a gray car. But she had never before seen him face to face, and certainly not when he was so close to her. She was sure now that the wide-jawed face, with its dark eyes and heavy eyebrows, belonged to Zachary’s father.

Yes, it was Zachary’s father, dressed in a bathrobe, holding a cup in one hand and staring angrily at the outside world. Then, as Hallie watched, holding her breath, he turned away, put the cup down on the
table, and went to the built-in cupboard on the far wall. His back was to Hallie now and he was farther away, but she could see his arm move as he pulled open a drawer and reached into it. Turning quickly, he crossed over into the living room area and disappeared into his hidden corner.

Before long his feet and lower legs came back into view as they always did when he sat down, but she hardly noticed them. Her mind was too full of other things. Full of one question in particular: What had Zachary’s father taken out of the drawer? What was the small, dull black object that had been partly hidden by his big hand as he crossed the room and disappeared into the corner? Hallie hadn’t seen it well enough to be sure, but for some reason she felt certain she knew what it was.

“He’s got a gun,” she found herself whispering. “He’s sitting there in his chair with a gun in his hand.” She nodded and then whispered it again before she jumped up and ran across the attic, down the stairs, and back to her own apartment.

Back at home in her cell block apartment, Hallie put the key on the shelf and then stood in the middle of the kitchen without moving even a finger while her mind raced in crazy circles that began and ended with the same two questions: What was about to happen to Zachary and his family? And what should she, what
could
she, do about it?

She didn’t know the answers, didn’t know any
answers except… Her eyes turned to the old-fashioned dial telephone. She would call. Call the same number she’d used when Tiffany had thought it was Tony calling. And then … She didn’t know, and there was no time to think about what might happen next, no time to do anything except dash into her bedroom, pull out the Crestman notebook, and look up the phone number. And then rush back to the kitchen.

What was she going to say? She didn’t know and there was no time to decide. The phone had begun to ring before she’d even tried to think about it. What would she say to Tiffany if she answered, or to Zachary? Or to …

“Hello.” Someone was answering. Someone with a deep voice. A man’s voice. “Hello.” And then once more with a questioning rise, “Hello?”

“Hello,” Hallie gasped. “Is Zachary there? Could I please talk to Zachary?”

“Who is it, please?” the deep voice said.

“It’s, it’s …” Not Hallie. Some other name. “It’s—” She sputtered again and then came up with “Susie. I’m Susie. I’m in Zachary’s class. At school.”

“I see.” A long pause. What was he doing or thinking? Why didn’t he answer? “I see,” he said again at last. “Well, I’m afraid Zachary isn’t here right now. Could I take a message?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. It’s just that…” She was calming down a little, her brain getting back to work,
even reminding her to make her voice higher, more like an eight-year-old instead of an almost-adult sixth grader. “It’s just that we’re working on the same project at school and there’s something I have to ask him.” She stopped to think and then went on, “Could I call back later? When will he be back?”

“Not until Monday, I’m afraid. Zachary is never here on weekends. He should have told you.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess I forgot. I guess I can ask him Monday. Thank you. Good-bye.” Hallie put the receiver back on the phone and collapsed into a kitchen chair.

So Zachary was never there on weekends. Or maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe his father was lying and there was some other reason why Zachary couldn’t come to the phone. Shutting her eyes, Hallie went over the conversation in her mind, trying to remember exactly what the man had said and, at the same time, imagining how he might have looked when he said each thing. She could picture him clearly now, the wide mouth and the dark eyes almost hidden under the frowning eyebrows.

And the gun? Was the gun still in his hand when he came to the phone, or had he left it there by his chair? There was no way of knowing.

Hallie sat at the kitchen table for a long time before she remembered Mom and Ellen and what she had told them about the books on ancient civilizations. Picking out the one on the Ch’in Dynasty in
China and the terracotta warriors, she took it to her favorite reading spot in Dad’s leather chair.

It wasn’t really homework. Actually, they were still finishing up on Rome in Mr. Montoya’s social studies class, and she’d already finished her projects except for drawing a map of the Roman Empire. But last week in the library Mrs. Myers had turned her on to this book about the weird emperor who’d ordered the construction of an enormous life-sized clay army. It was a pretty interesting book but, at that moment, not quite interesting enough to keep her attention from wandering. From drifting back to what she had just seen through the spyhole window. Her mind was still flickering back and forth between a cruel emperor and Zachary’s armed and dangerous father when Ellen and Mom came home from their brunch.

W
hen Mom and Ellen came in they were jabbering away, talking mostly about the art that had been on the walls in The Gallery, which was the name of the restaurant where they’d just eaten brunch.

“I can’t imagine why they’re showing that Rupert woman’s stuff,” Ellen was saying to Hallie. “Nowhere near as good as your mother’s work.” And then, turning back to Mom, she went on, “Like I was saying, you should take some of your stuff over there right away and—”

Mom was shaking her head. “No,” she said. “Now stop it, Ellen, you know I can’t. You know I don’t have nearly enough finished work for a show.” But Ellen kept insisting and finally Mom said, “Well, all right, I’ll think about it at least, if you really think I should.” She paused, her eyes going dreamy and unfocused as she stared into space. “I have been wishing I could find the time to do some painting again.” Her lips twisted into a smile that was probably meant to
look happy but wound up looking more like an apology. “Maybe just a small still life or two.” She looked around the tiny room before she went on, “There must be someplace here that I could set up my easel. Don’t you think so, Hallie?”

At first Hallie was surprised, and then a little bit pissed off. Mom hadn’t said a word about painting since they’d stored all her painting stuff in the attic when they’d moved into the Warwick Mansion. If she’d been dying to get back to it all this time, she should have said so.

Hallie shrugged. “A place where you could set up your whole studio?” She looked around. “Well, not in here. That’s for sure. But maybe in the living room if we move things around a little. Wait a minute.” She jumped up and went to look, and when she came back she told them she’d found a place that might work. “If you could paint in the afternoon when you’d get a little better light.”

So Mom and Ellen had to check the place out and decide just where the easel and the palette stand could go. Hallie went back to Dad’s chair. She was only pretending to read at first but after a while she really got into how the hundreds of warriors in the terracotta army were copies of real people, and one story was that the emperor had all the sculptors killed afterward so they wouldn’t give the secret away.

After Ellen left, Mom went in to change her clothes, and when she came out she was dressed in an
old paint-smeared work shirt of Dad’s that she used to wear as a painter’s smock. Hallie hadn’t seen the shirt since Dad died and she must have been staring at it, because Mom looked down at it too.

“I know,” she said, running her hands down over the paint-spotted denim. When she looked up there were tears in her eyes. Hallie put her book down and stood up.

“So,” she said, “I guess we’re going up to get your painting stuff.”

Mom sniffed and blinked before she said, “I thought maybe I’d bring a few things down. You don’t need to help if you don’t want to.”

Hallie shrugged. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get it over with.”

It was strange being in the attic with Mom. Hallie had to remember to look around curiously and say the kinds of things she might have said if she really hadn’t been there since that first day with Mrs. Crowley. Things like “Wow. Pretty dusty, isn’t it.” And “I guess those ghosts old Crowley was talking about are on their day off.”

On the way back downstairs Mom carried the easel, Hallie the big box of painting stuff. Then Mom went off to the tower room that was probably going to be called the studio now instead of the living room. Hallie went back to reading. At least then she wasn’t thinking about Zachary’s dad and the gun.

What she really didn’t want to think about was
what Mom was doing. She didn’t know why, except it had some connection with how Ellen was always talking about things getting back to normal.

Back to normal. Hallie got up, threw her book down on the chair, went into her room, and collapsed on the bed. “Normal,” she whispered angrily. “Normal. Yeah, sure.” How could things ever get back to normal for Hallie Meredith? Or for Dad? “Yeah, how is that going to work?” she asked out loud, talking to Ellen, who wasn’t there. Or maybe to God, who probably wasn’t either. “Tell me that. How are things going to get back to normal for Alexander Meredith? Who used to be my father, in case You’ve forgotten.”

But the anger didn’t last the way it used to, even though she tried to hold on to it. And this time, when it was gone, she didn’t start crying. But that didn’t mean anything. Certainly not that things were getting back to normal. All it meant was that, at the moment, there were too many other things on her mind. Things like Zachary’s father and what he was planning to do with that gun.

Monday finally came and sure enough, Zachary was right there in the library when Hallie went looking for him. And this time it was pretty clear that he was looking for her too. He almost jumped out of his chair when he saw her come in, and as soon as she sat down he leaned forward and whispered loudly, “Did
you phone me? Yesterday. Did you talk to my dad yesterday?”

“Me?” Hallie said. “How would I do that? You didn’t tell me your phone number.”

Zachary’s dark, pointy eyebrows tipped downward. “I don’t know how you did it but it must have been you.”

Hallie grinned. “You mean you don’t have any school friends who might have called you up?”

“Aha!” Zachary said. “See, that proves it. It was you!”

“Why does that prove anything?”

Zachary looked triumphant. “Because my dad told me that the person who called said she was a friend from school. How did you know about that, if it wasn’t you?”

Hallie winced and glanced over her shoulder at the checkout desk. Zachary’s triumphant voice had been getting louder and louder. And sure enough Mrs. Myers was looking toward them. In another minute she’d be heading their way. Hallie got up and picked up her books, but before she turned away she bent over Zachary to whisper, “Meet me outside on the steps. Okay?”

Zachary nodded and whispered back, “Okay. I was just about to say it. Out on the steps.”

A few minutes later they were sitting on the front steps of the library, close enough to talk but far enough apart to pretend they weren’t together if
anyone who knew them came along. The first thing Zachary said was “Okay. Was it? Was it you who called me up?”

Hallie shrugged. “Yeah, it was. I called you up.”

“Why?” Zachary’s eyebrows were scrunching down over his big, dark eyes. There was something catlike about Zachary when he frowned. Something that made her think of the way Thisbe used to go all fierce-faced when she was pretending to chase something, even when she was still just a kitten. Hallie had always liked Thisbe’s wildcat act, and Zachary’s was kind of cute too.

Hallie grinned at him but he didn’t smile back. She sighed. “Well, to tell you the truth I called you up because I was worried about you.”

Zachary’s frown faded into his superfocused stare.

“Why?” he said.

Hallie said it in unison with him. “Why? Yeah, I know—why? Well, let’s see. I guess you’re asking why I was worried about you,” she said. “Is that it? Why was I worried about you?”

She wished she could lay it all out. That she could say “Well, the thing is, I saw your father getting something that looked like a gun out of a drawer in your apartment, and I was just wondering what he was going to do with it.” But of course she couldn’t. She was still trying to think of a good way to explain what had worried her when Zachary said, “Was it something you dreamed?”

Hallie almost said “Hey, I thought you didn’t believe my dream story.” But then she realized that talking about her “dreams” might be a good way to find out what she wanted to know. So what she said was “Well, actually it sort of was. It was—well, it was one of those mixed-up dreams that don’t make a lot of sense, but there was something in it about a—gun. Does someone in your family have a gun?”

She was watching Zachary’s face closely as she asked the question but it didn’t tell her anything at all. He just went on staring at her wide-eyed and unblinking. “See, in this dream I saw someone in your house, in a living room it looked like, with a gun in his hand.”

He still showed no reaction except for a slow, uncertain shake of his head. So Hallie went on, “I was afraid that this person I dreamed up might have shot somebody and that was why I called. But then when your dad answered I just asked to speak to you, only he said you weren’t home. He said you weren’t ever home on weekends.”

Zachary shook his head. “No. That’s not right. None of that is right. There’s no gun, and I
am
home on weekends. I’m always home on weekends. It’s my dad who isn’t.” Hallie was just opening her mouth to ask him why on earth his father would lie to her, when he said, “Now it’s my turn.”

“Your turn?”

Zachary took a stubby pencil and a little notebook
out of his backpack before he nodded, looking very solemn. “To ask the questions.”

“Questions? What kind of questions?” Hallie asked suspiciously.

“Questions about you.” He looked Hallie over critically. “You ought to be relaxed, like on a couch or something.”

Hallie snorted. “On a couch? Why should I be on a couch?”

“Because people need to be relaxed when they answer questions.” He tipped his head to one side and, with a thoughtful expression on his face, he looked Hallie up and down. “You don’t look very relaxed,” he said.

“Well.” Hallie was getting angry. “I guess that’s because I don’t feel very relaxed. I mean, get real, kid. How am I going to relax sitting out here on some stone steps, where somebody I know might walk by any minute and see me….” She trailed off before she said “talking to a weird little dork.” But just barely before.

For the next minute or two they just sat there glaring at each other. At least Hallie was glaring. What Zachary was doing was more like his usual laser-beam psychiatrist’s stare, only this time the facts he was getting ready to record were going to be all about Hallie Meredith herself, not her dreams. Finally she managed to say through clenched teeth, “Okay, now that I’m relaxed, what do you want to ask me?”

Zachary glanced at his notebook. “Well, the first thing I wanted to ask you was who else you have dreams about, besides me and my family. Do you ever dream about your own family? Like maybe your own mother or father? Do you ever dream about your own father?”

That did it. Jumping to her feet, Hallie said, “Forget it, kid,” and took off down Larsen Street at a run.