The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (8 page)

His eyes wandered over the postcards instead; he knew these as well as he knew that pair of snippers. They were from every province in the Kingdom. Elliot’s father had traveled years before; he and his brother Jon had run away from home when they were kids, heading out exploring for a year.

Pinned to the far right of the corkboard were a couple of old casings from spells that Abel had collected at the Lake of Spells on the same trip, their symbols worn and fading.

In the center of the board was a photograph of Elliot himself. He was about ten in the photo, and playing deftball. He was leaping into the air, his shirt lifting up with the leap so you could see his bare stomach, the ball just beyond his fingertips.

Someone outside the family must have taken the photo — probably Jimmy, actually; the shot had the vibrant look of Jimmy’s photographs — because both his parents were in the crowd on the sideline, blurred a little, but clear enough so you could see the laughter on his mother’s face, the concentration on his father’s.

Elliot turned back to the workbench — and again to the TV — “Where
is
my TV?” he murmured, in the imagined voice of that imagined person sitting alone in an imagined living room.

He laughed at himself, and headed out the door to the truck.

7.

T
here were five of them — two boys, three girls — sitting at a table outside the Toadstool Pub in the square. They were Elliot’s friends.

The summer light was fading, but the air was hot, still, languid.

“Gotta hit the road,” said the taller of the boys, Gabe Epstein. He was at the table’s head, leaning back so his knees rose up like a grasshopper’s knees. His cap was inscribed with the fading words
Bonfire Antelopes ’07.

“Give me a ride?”

They all turned to the girl who had spoken. Shelby Ryerston wore her red hair in a braid, a studded black band around her left wrist, and a frayed and graying cast on her right. She had two tattoos on her neck: one, a skull and crossbones; the other, a small reindeer.

“You still haven’t got your driver’s license? You can fly a crop duster but you
still
haven’t got your driver’s license?”

The studs on Shelby’s armband clanged against the table, defensively.

“Why’s there got to be a written test?” she complained. “Been driving since I was two years old. I don’t need to write a
book
about it.”

“Two?” said the darker, thinner girl beside her, a saxophone case under her chair, beaded bracelets sliding up and down her arms. That was Kala Mansey. “You have not.”

“Ah, well, five, anyway. I drove the ATV when I was two.”

“Test is easy,” said the other boy. Cody Richter had a head wild with curls, and dried flecks of paint on his knuckles. Cody’s head was tilted at a thinking angle now, but a slow smile was forming as he spoke. “It’s multiple choice.”

“Ah, I never learned to read. Grew up in a grain silo.”

They laughed, and she added, “The Farms should be exempt from written tests,” and they laughed again, their chairs scraping in the evening quiet.

The fifth person at the table was Nikki Smitt, hair the white-gold of a zephyr nectarine.

“He might still come,” she said. “We should wait.” The muscles in her arms tightened as she reached into her bag for a pencil case. The zipper on the pencil case was broken; she used her nail to slide it open, took out a pen, and handed it to Shelby, who stuck it underneath her cast, to scratch.

Then a figure entered the square from behind the clock tower.

It was Elliot. Faded gray T-shirt smudged, streak of mud on his jeans, old sneakers with no socks.

They watched him approach, and he stopped and said, “Hey,” and they all said, “Hey” back. Then they asked him questions, long pauses between each while they waited to see if he had any more to say.

“You get it done?”

“Just took the last load.”

“Hot day for it. Where’d you put it all?”

“Shed. Back of the shed.”

“It fit okay?”

“Yeah. Broken TVs and program players and stuff. Twicklehams were keen to try fixing them — get their business started that way — but they didn’t buy the business, just took over the lease. I figure I’ll look up the paperwork and take everything back to the owners. Should’ve done that sometime back, I guess.”

Now the quiet carried on for a while; someone slapped at a mosquito and the table shook.

“You missed the thing in History — the test, the test thing,” said Shelby, pulling on her braid.

Elliot looked across at her. Everyone’s face was in shadow now.

“He’s not in your History class,” somebody said, and she said, “Oh, yeah,” and they all laughed.

Then Gabe reached out and dragged a chair across from another table.

“Have a drink,” he said.

“I need a shower,” said Elliot, but he sat down anyway.

“Someone get this guy a beer.”

Nobody moved. There were a couple of pitchers of fresh-squeezed lemonade on the table.

“They let us drive at fifteen,” said Nikki. “They should let us drink now too.”

“Yeah,” laughed someone. “’Cause drinking and driving, they’re kinda hand in hand.”

“Ah,” shrugged Nikki. “You know what I mean.”

“We could cross the river into Jagged Edge,” someone else suggested, and a few of them said, “Yeah,” and somebody said, “Why do the Edges get to drink younger than us anyhow?” and somebody else, “’Cause they need alcohol to cover their own stench,” and somebody else, “’Cause they’re not actually people, they’re holograms,” and another, “Yeah, we should go.”

But nobody meant it.

They all had to be up at dawn. Normally they’d be home by now, but today they’d been waiting for Elliot.

Elliot was clicking his fingernails on the table.

He looked at his watch.

“Train comes through in ten,” he said. “You want to hitch a ride down to Sugarloaf? Pick up some hooch at their local — guy there never checks ID.”

Elliot pushed his chair back. There was a single beat of hesitation, then they were all standing too, picking up their things, dropping cash onto the table.

The train was heading out of Bonfire Station, but they were fast runners — Elliot and Nikki, the fastest — and they chased it down the track into the deep blue dusk.

Then they leapt, one at a time, and fell into the back carriage.

It was empty and unlit. The six of them formed vague shadows moving inside, breathless, tipping into one another, holding on to the backs of seats in the rattling speed.

There was a squeal of brakes then, and the train shuddered, slowed, and stopped altogether.

Kala leaned out of the window. Her saxophone was lying on a train seat.

“Cow on the track,” she said.

Shelby scratched at the edge of her cast and said, “We ran for shit,” and they all laughed at their own breathlessness, then the cow wandered off the track and the train started up again.

Later, slick and wet from swimming, Elliot was standing apart. He’d just pulled on his jeans, but he was shirtless. He was drinking from a bottle, looking around at the shades of gray, thinking about the colorlessness of night, watching the blackness of the water with its ripples of moonlight, and then Kala, thin and dark, moved from somewhere nearby and stood behind him. Her arms reached around his shoulders; her long fingers clasped together against his chest.

He was still for a moment, then he turned, loosening her hold, touched her cheekbones with the tips of his fingers, held the bottle to the side, bent his head, and kissed her, underneath the high, dark stars.

8.

T
hat same night, Jimmy called the Sheriff.

Hector was home, making grilled cheese sandwiches for a snack to eat with his favorite true-crime TV show.

“That missing persons report from Jagged Edge?” said Jimmy. “The fax you got the other day?”

“Guy with the gambling habit,” recalled Hector. “Blew his wife a kiss, then the loan sharks got him. You solve it already?”

“Loan sharks never got him. He’s run off with a coworker. They’re someplace in Olde Quainte as we speak, running that very gambling page.”

“You sure about that?”

“Ninety percent,” said Jimmy.

The Sheriff limped across the kitchen, his phone cord untangling behind him. He grabbed a cloth and pulled out the grill. Cheese was getting nice and brown and crisp, the way he liked it.

“What’s the story, then?” he said.

“He and the coworker had been having an affair the last few years,” said Jimmy. “They started up the gambling business together on the sly. Things heated up and they ran away to a seafaring village in Olde Quainte called, if you can credit it, Why.”

“Why?”

“Just plain Why. A village called Why.”

“No, I mean, why? Why’d they go there?”

“Ah, its registered Hostility’s as high as you can get. Sky-high. It’s officially Ferociously Hostile.”

“I’m with you,” said Hector. “So it’s exempt from Cello laws.”

“They can run their gambling pages from there without getting into any trouble,
and
it’s a tax haven. They’re rich and in love —”

“And living in Olde Quainte,” laughed Hector. “I’ll take poor and lonely over that any day.”

They both chuckled awhile.

“How’d you figure it out?” said the Sheriff.

“Got them to fax me work records and bank statements — in Jagged Edge, they just about never pay cash, see, so it’s all right there on their bank statements.”

“Sweet,” breathed Hector.

“The guy bought flowers same day every year — date matched up with this colleague’s birthday, so I looked at
her
records, and seems she quit her job a week after he disappeared. The rest I got from the network — passwords on the gambling page matched our missing guy’s dog’s name. That kind of thing.”

“You can work it?” said the Sheriff. “The network?”

“Ah,” said Jimmy, “I’m just tinkering.”

There was an admiring silence from Hector. He had the phone under his chin now and was cutting his grilled cheese sandwich into triangles.

“Thing that got me thinking,” said Jimmy, “was that bit about the kiss — the guy blew his wife a kiss when he set off to work. Now why’d she mention that to the police?”

Hector nodded. “Hadn’t happened in a while,” he guessed.

“He was saying good-bye,” Jimmy said.

“Sad story.”

“Sad,” said Jimmy, “but
it happens
.”

The way he said it —
it happens —
that emphasis made Hector straighten up.

“It happens,” he agreed, “but it’s
not what happened here
. Not here in Bonfire.”

“Hector,” began Jimmy, “Abel Baranski was always a player. His boy, Elliot, takes after him. I don’t think there can be a girl in that school Elliot hasn’t gone and broken her heart.
Nobody
expected Abel to stay with his wife. I don’t like it any more than —”

Hector interrupted. “Abel Baranski did not run away with that teacher,” he said. “He was a good man. He loved his wife and his
boy. Setting that aside, how’d you explain the dead body of his brother, Jon, and Abel’s own truck on the side of the road. How’d you explain that?”

“He and Mischka took the train where they were headed?” suggested Jimmy. “Gave Jon the truck to take home to the family?”

“Now why would they do that?” said Hector.

Jimmy sighed. “All right,” he said. “So let’s say you’re right and all three of them were in the truck, and the Purple’s chasing them. Why get out? Why not just put up the protective shutters on the truck windows?”

“Shutters must’ve malfunctioned. They pulled over and tried to run. Purple killed Jon, then took Abel and Mischka away with it.”

Another silence.

“We’ve been through this before,” Hector added.

There was a clamorous silence, then Jimmy spoke again. “Hector,” he said gently, “you think anyone in this town really believes that Abel and Mischka were taken by a Purple?”

Hector took a bite from his cold grilled cheese sandwich and spoke rough and firm through the chewing.

“That’s the story,” he said, “and I’m sticking to it. I’ll fax Jagged Edge about their missing guy tomorrow. Night, Jimmy.”