Spyhole Secrets (6 page)

“Y
our sister!” Hallie tried to sound absolutely amazed. Zachary nodded. “Except for the beautiful part.”

“You mean you don’t think she is?”

He nodded. “I don’t,” he said, “but I guess some people do.” His forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. “Why would you dream about my sister?”

Hallie shrugged and swallowed a smile. “How should I know? You tell me. You’re the psychiatrist.”

Zachary’s eyes, in fact his whole small, pointy-chinned face, seemed to tighten suspiciously. “I think you know who my sister is. You must have met her somewhere.” He looked Hallie over thoughtfully. “Not at her school. You’re not old enough. Maybe … maybe at the video store?”

Hallie shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’ve never met your sister. Not in person anyway. But I guess I’ve seen her. You know, in my dreams.”

There was another long stretch of silence before he
got up and started gathering his stuff. Hallie stood up too, but after a moment Zachary sat down again. With his backpack on and his arms full of books, he looked at her long and carefully before he said, “Okay. About your dream. Tell me some more about your dream.”

“Well, all right,” Hallie said. She sat down again very slowly, giving herself time to think. “Well,… hey, don’t you want to put those down?”

He hugged the books to his chest. “No, I have to go in a minute. And besides …”

“Besides what?”

“I like holding books. My brain works better that way.”

Hallie smothered a smile. “Oh well, okay then. So about my dream …” But her mind wasn’t cooperating. After another long pause she said, “Well, in my dream the girl with the hair is a princess, like in a fairy tale, and her name is Rapunzel.” Zachary was listening carefully, his eyes wide and staring. When he was listening his face had an eager, hungry look. Or maybe thirsty, as if he were drinking in every word. Hallie smiled at him before she asked, “Do you know that fairy tale?”

He nodded slowly. “I think so. There’s a witch in the story, isn’t there?”

“Yes, and a prince who is the girl’s boyfriend. Only the witch has locked the girl in the tower.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. To keep her from seeing the prince, I guess.”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded, slowly at first and then faster. “Yes,” he said, “that’s why. To keep her from seeing the boyfriend. Because he’s too old—and has a ring in his nose.”

“What did you say?” Hallie couldn’t believe she’d heard right. “Ring in his nose? I don’t remember anything about a ring in his nose.”

He blinked and shook his head like someone just waking up. “Her boyfriend has one. I didn’t see it, but my dad did. My dad says anybody who—” Suddenly he was on his feet. “Here he comes,” he said. “I have to go.” He rushed off toward the Warwick Towers building.

Hallie looked the other way, where a long gray car was approaching. It slowed down as it passed her, and as it turned onto the ramp that led down into the Towers’ garage, she got a pretty good look at the side of the driver’s head. She thought she recognized him as the man whose feet and ankles always stuck out when he sat in the corner of the spyhole apartment, but she couldn’t be sure. She would have been a lot more certain if she could have seen his legs.

Hallie was headed for home when, just beyond the ramp that led down to the garage, she passed the main entrance to the apartment building. She stopped a minute to think, then went back and walked in the door. She’d never been in the Towers
building before, not even the bottom-floor shopping mall.

Turning to the left, she passed a shoe store and a women’s clothing store called The Warwick Look. Ahead she saw a flight of stairs and some double doors that led into a large room that resembled the lobby of a hotel. There was a modern statue that looked like what was left of a pretty badly beaten-up knight in armor, some big potted plants, a receptionist’s desk, and, against the far wall, some elevator doors.

A uniformed man on a stool at the high desk looked up as she came in. She was edging back toward the door when he called to her in a businesslike tone, “Can I help you, miss?”

Hallie smiled at him, the wide, crinkly-eyed smile that she knew would make a deep dimple in her right cheek. Her dad used to say she had a smile that could take the starch out of any stuffed shirt. She felt a little bit out of practice, but she gave it a try as she looked up at the man and said, “I don’t know, sir. I think this is where my aunt lives, but I’m not sure.”

The man smiled back at her before he checked his computer screen. “What’s your aunt’s name, girlie?” he asked.

She would have to choose an unusual name, she knew. If she said Smith or Brown he probably would call someone up and ask if she was expected. “It’s— Sinai,” she said. “Mrs. Sinai.”

“Hmm. Sinai,” he said. “How do you spell that?”

That was easy. “S-I-N-A-I,” she said.

“First name?”

“Pen … Penelope. Mrs. Penelope Sinai.”

He nodded and turned to the computer. While he was scrolling down the screen she looked around for what she’d been hoping to find: a list of the people who lived in the fourth-floor apartments. But other than the list on the computer, there didn’t seem to be one. So when the doorman said he couldn’t find a Mrs. Sinai, she said she was sorry she’d bothered him. “This must not be the right place. My aunt said it was a big tall apartment house on Warwick Avenue. But I guess I kind of forgot which one.”

She smiled again and he gave her a big grin as she turned to go. Back in the shopping mall, hurrying toward home, she was surprised when a couple of little old ladies cooed at her like she was some cute little kid. And she was even more surprised when she realized she must have brought it on by forgetting to get rid of the smile she’d managed to come up with for the doorman. It was the kind of thing that didn’t happen to her much anymore.

Wiping the smile off her face, in fact turning it upside down, she stalked out the door and onto the sidewalk. It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. She still hated Irvington and everyone who lived there. Nothing had changed, and it wasn’t about to.

B
y the time Hallie left the Warwick Towers shopping mall, it was almost four-thirty. Her mother was due home any moment, so a visit to the attic spyhole would have to wait. But on Thursday there would be an after-work meeting at the savings and loan, which meant some extra spyhole time. It would be hard to wait that long, however. Somehow, learning so much about Zachary and the Rapunzel girl only made finding out more seem increasingly important. So important, in fact, that a weird little shiver ran up Hallie’s back every time she thought about it.

There were still so many questions to be answered. Was the long-legged man in the chair the same person as the driver of the gray car? And was he Zachary’s father, and Rapunzel’s too? And who were the other people, the angry man and woman, and what were they all saying when they yelled at each other? What kind of mean, violent things had the
three of them been yelling while poor old Zachary was hiding behind the sofa hearing every word of it?

And then there was the other question, the most important one of all: How was she going to arrange another meeting with Zachary?
Doctor
Zachary. She almost grinned. How do you go about getting an appointment with a doctor who is only eight years old? Or as he said, almost nine, even though his birthday wasn’t until November.

The next afternoon on her way home from school, Hallie made a detour that took her past the library. But after a quick check showed her that Zachary’s favorite table was empty, she hurried home and went directly to the attic. This time she remembered to look right away to see if the witch-doctor mask was back on the mantel—and it was. The strange wedge-shaped head with its enormous white fangs and tall crest of frazzled feathers was sitting right where it had been that first time she looked through the spyhole. And it was definitely the same head she’d seen another time as well, only that time it had been sitting on the shoulders of the little black-robed monster that was fighting with Rapunzel.

She was still checking out the mask when the door directly across from the big window opened and suddenly there he was: Zachary himself. Hallie gasped and almost slid off the trunk, and then wondered why. Why was she so amazed to see Zachary there in the apartment when she was almost sure he was the
person she’d seen in the witch-doctor mask and also caught glimpses of behind the love seat? Ever since she’d met him in the library, she’d been certain the little monster, the fuzzy-headed couch spy, and the wannabe psychiatrist were all one and the same person. Even so, it was a real rush to see the familiar big-eyed, knobby-kneed kid bouncing into the blue-lit room. As usual, he was carrying a couple of big books.

Hallie went on staring, feeling as thrilled and excited as if she were catching a glimpse of a movie star, while Zachary crossed the room and stopped for a moment to look up at the mask on the mantelpiece. Hallie held her breath, hoping he’d take it down and put it on. But instead he turned away and, disappointingly, disappeared into the corner of the room that she couldn’t see, the corner where the man with the long legs usually sat.

Of course, Zachary’s legs were too short to stick out, so he quickly became completely invisible, but Hallie could see him very clearly in her mind’s eye, curled up in his father’s chair with his nose in one of the fat books. She could picture the chair too. A big, thick-armed leather chair like the one that had been her father’s.

She was still picturing the chair and how Zachary looked curled up in it when the door opened again and another person entered the room.

It was the same guy, all right. Hallie recognized the profile she’d seen in the gray car. The same
long-legged man who usually sat in the hidden corner was walking across the room, carrying a newspaper in one hand and a glass in the other.

Immediately, before the man had reached the center of the room, Zachary was back in sight too, as if he’d jumped out of the chair and scurried away. It was almost as if… Hallie smiled, remembering how Zeus used to act when someone came in and found him sleeping on a chair he wasn’t supposed to get up on.

The man turned toward Zachary and began to talk. Hallie could see his lips moving. Then Zachary was saying something back and holding out his book. Maybe telling his father about what he’d been reading. Yeah, that was probably it, holding out the open book and telling his father about it. He was still talking, his lips moving rapidly, when the man turned his back and disappeared into the invisible corner.

Finally Zachary stopped talking. But he was still looking toward the hidden corner where his father was probably sitting in the chair, putting his drink on a side table and shaking out his newspaper. Sure enough, the legs came back in sight then, long legs and big feet in shiny black shoes. Zachary went on standing there, staring into the corner, for a long time before he slowly closed the book, turned around, and went out of the room.

After Zachary disappeared, Hallie went on watching for a while to see if something else was going to happen. But nothing did. Before long she got tired of
looking around the bare-walled, boring room and watching the motionless black shoes, and she decided to leave.

She was on her way across the attic when she thought again about the way Zachary had jumped up, and how it had reminded her of Zeus. She started to smile again, remembering Zeus’s guilty-faced retreats, but the smile fizzled out suddenly when she decided it wasn’t really all that funny. It was funny when a dog got up and scurried away looking guilty, but a kid who did it when his father came into the room …

It wasn’t until she was going down the stairs that she started smiling again, this time remembering how, when she was a little kid, she used to fight with her dad over his big leather chair. She would try to beat him to the chair when he got home from work and when she won he would pretend to sit on her, and she would scream and kick and they would both yell and laugh. Usually the game ended with her sitting on his lap while they read a book or the comics or sometimes just discussed really important things. Things like having conversations with God, for instance.

Some people, even good friends like Marty, would kid her when she told them about the things she used to say to God, but Dad never did. Dad said everybody talked to God in one way or another, and he thought the kind of chatty, neighbor-to-neighbor way she did it was just fine.

But that brought back other memories, the ones about how many times she’d asked God why He had let Dad be a part of the accident on the foggy freeway. God hadn’t ever answered that question no matter how many times she’d asked it, and after a while she’d stopped asking Him anything at all. When she got back to the hot, stuffy apartment she was crying angry tears again, but this time they didn’t last very long.

By the time her mother got home, Hallie had stopped crying and had started thinking about how she could find out how often and on what days Zachary stopped at the library on his way home from school. When her mom asked how her day had been she said the usual “Oh, okay, I guess.” But then, for some reason, she had a sudden urge to talk to Mom about Zachary. Without spilling the beans about the attic and the spyhole, of course.

“Mom,” she started out, “something funny happened on the way home the other day. This little kid, who I’d kind of met at the library—he came along carrying a whole bunch of books and all of a sudden he fell down and the books went everywhere and …”

Mom winced. She’d always been that way about kids or animals getting hurt. “Oh dear,” she said. “I hope he wasn’t—”

“No. He wasn’t hurt. Not really. Just a skinned knee. But I started talking to him and we wound up sitting on the bus bench talking about a lot of stuff. And Mom, this little kid, he’s only eight years old, is
really pretty weird. He reads all these big books about things like psychiatry and shamanism….”

“Shamanism?”

“Yeah, do you know about shamans?”

Mom nodded uncertainly. “Not a great deal. Only that they are something like wise men, or gurus.”

“Yeah, like that, sort of. I didn’t know either, so I looked it up. But this kid says that the reason he’s interested in being a shaman is that they cure mental cases who need to get their heads straightened out. Like being a psychiatrist, sort of. That’s the other thing he thinks he is—a psychiatrist. I think he wants to be a psychiatrist because they get to ask people a lot of personal questions. You know, like how they feel about things and why they feel that way.” She smiled, remembering.
“Why
seems to be his favorite word.”

Mom laughed and Hallie laughed too. “He sounds like quite a character,” Mom said. “Does he live near here? In the Towers, maybe?”

Hallie quickly looked up at her mother. Dad used to say that he was married to a mind reader, and sometimes Hallie thought he wasn’t just kidding. She tried to make her shrug say she didn’t know and didn’t really care where he lived. “Could be,” she said. “I guess an awful lot of people live there.”

Watch it, Hallie. Better change the subject. Better cool it about Zachary, and anything else that might bring up the spyhole.