Under Cover (18 page)

If not him, they might have killed somebody
else and I’d be in it, anyway, if Liam was involved. It was because
of that killing that I even knew Liam existed and that he was my
brother. Did Dad have any plans for telling me, ever?

He hadn’t said a word even after he got here.
I’d had to find out for myself. And that, only because he’d mixed
up the envelopes. Could Grandma be right that everything happens
for a reason? Then how come so many things work out badly? Maybe
that’s part of the Grand Design, if there is one. Maybe the bad
things are supposed to teach us a lesson.

What did this teach me? That I shouldn’t jump
into a dangerous situation without better planning?

Okay, I’ll remember that and hope there won’t
be a next time.

What did getting strangled with a coat hanger
teach Johnny Kinsser? Not to trust his so-called friends? So now
maybe he won’t do that again.

There goes my pesky old sarcasm.

Sorry, Grandma. Your theory has holes in
it.

Chapter
Seventeen

Grandma must have been getting sick of me. I
thought maybe she should give Archie to me and then she could
borrow him back when she needed him.

Just kidding. If it ever happened, I would
faint dead away.

“When?” she wanted to know.

“Um—afternoonish?”

“What’s that mean? Three o’clock?”

“Maybe a little before. Like around
noon.”

“What happened to school? You got the
afternoon off?”

I didn’t think fast enough to come up with
something believable, like exams.

“Not exactly,” I said. “But I have to go
somewhere. I really have to.”

“Then you can go without Archie. I’m not
having him be an accomplice to whatever it is you’re up to.”

“Okay, then.”

“What are you up to?”

How could I tell her? She would want to be in
on it. Or else it would get back to the wrong people. Or maybe
both. Either way, the truth wasn’t going to help, so I said
nothing.

I kept hoping to hear from Rick. When I
finally did, he had nothing to tell me that I didn’t already
know.

“Evidence is stacked against the Penny kid,”
he said. “He’s the only suspect. What makes you think there were
other people in the car?”

“That’s what he told me. He wouldn’t say even
that much to the police, so please don’t pass it along.”

“There wasn’t any evidence of other
people.”

“Did they look for evidence?” I asked.

“Yep. Because that’s what he said initially
and then he changed his story.”

“He was scared. Of the other people.”

“When a suspect changes his story,” Rick
said, “it tends to look suspicious.”

“I can’t help that. Maybe it’s too late,
already, even if he does decide to tell the truth. And there’s no
way they’re going to believe me, even if I can name the other
people.”

I hoped Rick would ask for those names. I’d
already told him about Austen. But it wasn’t his jurisdiction and
he didn’t think the HH guys would want him butting in. So what
could I do? Every time I tried to get hold of my dad, I washed out.
I would have to make a supreme effort to patch things up with
Maddie. If I told her all I knew about Austen… But it wasn’t much,
and hadn’t I already done that?

The school year was almost over. Then what
would I do? How could I investigate? We had a history exam on
Thursday. I got out before Maddie because, as usual, she had to
talk to people. I was waiting by her car for the ride home when
another car came by and hesitated.

I didn’t pay much attention beyond noticing
it was old and black. I wished Grandma had an old black one instead
of that bright orange attention-getter of hers.

The car came to a full stop. Dark eyes and a
mischievous grin looked out of the passenger window.

“There’s Peggy!” he said. “Hey, Peg!”

I waved. Freddie waved back.

Austen was at the wheel. I walked over to
Freddie’s open window and spoke across him to Austen. “I thought
you didn’t have a car. Did you just get it?”

“Nope. Borrowed,” he said.

I didn’t ask who he borrowed it from. He did
the talking. “Where is she?”

“Who, Maddie? Um—she might be at a newspaper
meeting. She’s on the staff.”

I was of two minds. Send him packing before
he found her, or wait for her and all of us get together? If she’d
had a newspaper meeting, she would have told me. Furthermore, I
didn’t think there were any more meetings since the year was
over.

“Newspaper?” Austen blinked.

“Just a school paper. They have meetings to
talk about what they’re going to write about.”

Freddie said, “There she is!” Austen beeped
his horn. That was a no-no on the school grounds, but nobody got
after him. Maddie lost her preoccupied look, smiled, and came
toward us.

“Hi, guys!” She rested her arms on Austen’s
open window. “Don’t you have school?”

“Not anymore,” Austen said.

“You’re all finished?”

“Exams, you know.” He gave her a benign
smile. He could fool anybody with that charm. I kept remembering
how he treated Liam while I hid in the mini office. That was the
real Austen.

Freddie moved to the back seat and kept the
door open for me. I got in next to him and Maddie got in next to
Austen.

“Is this your car?” she asked.

“Nope,” said Austen. “Grandpa’s.”

“Aren’t grandparents wonderful? Cree gets to
borrow her grandmother’s car sometimes.”

I punched her through the space between the
seatbacks. “You’re the only one who calls me that. Nobody else even
knows who you’re talking about.”

Maddie smacked her forehead. “I’m so used to
it, I forgot.”

Which was probably true. “Please try to
remember,” I said. “It’s annoying. People don’t like being called
by their ethnic origin.”

“We got any plans?” Freddie asked.

Austen looked back at him. “What do you want
to do?”

“Make out.” Freddie laughed and looked at me
sideways. I hoped Maddie wouldn’t blurt that I already had a
boyfriend. She must have realized I could do the same to her and
mention that hers was a cop. I looked to be sure she was belted in
case Austen got mad and tried to push her out of the car.

I said, “What’s that thing in Hudson Hills
that’s out in the river past the railroad tracks? Is that a park of
some kind?”

The two guys were silent for a bit. Then
Austen said, “Yeah, it’s a park. Nothing to see there.”

“It’s right out in the river,” I said. “It
looks interesting.”

“It’s not. Trust me. I’ve got a better
idea.”

I didn’t ask, but I was getting nervous. It
made me glad Maddie had come along. What would I do if I were alone
with two guys I didn’t know well and one of them wanted to make out
while the other was a cold-blooded killer? Or if they had a clue
that I wasn’t who I said I was?

Austen glanced back at me with a grin. “You
like views?”

Because I’d raved about their school’s view
of the Hudson. We were on the highway now. He shouldn’t have been
glancing back.

He said, “I can show you one I’ll bet you
haven’t seen.”

“There’s a lot I—” I began.

Maddie whooped. “Katmandu!”

“In
Nepal?
” I said.

Then I remembered. It was the name of an
estate built in the nineteenth century by some rich tycoon. When he
died it became an artists’ colony and now was a museum. People came
from all over to look at the artwork and antiques. And the view. I
was amazed that Austen had enough sensitivity even to know it
existed, and Freddie, too.

“Have you ever been there?” Freddie asked me.
I shook my head.

Maddie said, “I have.”

No surprise there. Her family went in for
that sort of thing and they had more leisure time than mine. Well,
Grandma had leisure, but until last summer she couldn’t drive.

Katmandu was on a mountainside above Hudson
Hills. We climbed up and up on a narrow, winding road. Every now
and then through the trees I caught flashes of red.

After ages of climbing we came out onto a
huge rolling lawn with an Oriental-looking castle at the far end of
it. Bright red. The lawn was so vast I wondered how they kept it up
back in the nineteenth century before mechanical mowers. Maybe they
had sheep.

Austen stopped at the very edge of a parking
lot that overlooked the now-distant Hudson. A row of giant boulders
kept cars from falling over into the treetops below.

He looked at Maddie. “Feel like going
in?”

She hesitated. She’d been there, done
that.

Then she made up her mind and they got out of
the car.

Freddie looked at me. I wasn’t in the mood
for culture, only in getting the right person charged with murder.
But Freddie wanted to make out and a car was the place to do it. I
wasn’t in the mood for that, either. If it were Ben, that would be
different, except that Ben shied away from public displays. What
could be more public than a car in an open parking lot in
mid-afternoon?

I opened my door. “Is there anything to see
if we just walk around?”

He shrugged. Clearly he was not a culture
freak. If he’d ever been to this place before, it was probably for
the purpose of making out. Or it might have been the sort of thing
a fourth grade teacher would drag a class to. I wondered why mine
hadn’t.

I got out and walked to the nearest boulder.
Below me was a terrifying view of those treetops. The hillside
didn’t go straight down but it was steep enough. And to think, we’d
driven up it. The mountain was thickly forested but I saw glimpses
of Hudson Hills between us and the river.

Freddie came and stood beside me.

I said, “Austen was right, it’s a fantastic
view. Were you ever here before?”

“Nope. You?”

“No, but I’ve heard of it.”

“Why don’t you want to go in?” he asked.

“What is it, mostly art things?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “Maybe another
time.”

“You don’t dig that stuff?”

“Not at the moment.”
Get with it, Cree.
Make him talk

This was my chance, but I didn’t know where
to start. And I wasn’t Cree, I was Peggy. I should have picked a
name that I didn’t identify with my mom. But now I was stuck with
it. Peggy Mellin was me and I had a mom named Peggy Mellin, too.
That could work. A dad in California. A grandmother and a dog. Any
siblings? I should have set up a complete dossier before I got
going.

I started toward a path that didn’t look too
steep. It wandered sideways across the hill instead of down it.
Freddie came with me.

I said, “Why didn’t Austen want to go to that
park in the river? You can see it from here. It looks like an
interesting place, with the river right up close.”

“He must have thought you’d like this better.
Or Maddie would.”

“I’m sure she does. Her folks really dig this
sort of thing. But I know she’d like the park, too. I wish we had
something like that in Southbridge.”

“You will when you move here,” he answered
lazily. “Are you really gonna move here?”

“That’s what they keep saying. I know they’re
looking, and they’d better do it soon. I don’t want to change
schools after it starts.”

“Me and Sam’ll help you out.”

“I’m counting on it. What about Austen? Oh, I
forgot. He’ll be graduating. Is he going to college?”

The path was narrow and I had to keep looking
back at Freddie. He shrugged. “Beats me.”

“Doesn’t he ever talk about it? Don’t any of
you guys have plans? What about his folks? What do they do?”

Freddie paused and squinted down at the
river. “Hasn’t got folks. He lives with his grandparents.”

“That’s folks, isn’t it?” I said. “How come
he lives with them? What happened to his parents?” Now we were
getting somewhere, maybe.

The path got steeper. It was hard to walk and
talk. I sat down on a log bench with a good view of the river.

“Grandparents is all he’s got.” Freddie sat
beside me and stretched out his legs. “We could make out,” he
said.

I liked him, but didn’t feel that way about
him. I kept talking. “What do you mean, it’s all he’s got?”

“That’s what I mean. His grandparents raised
him.”

“His parents are—gone?”

“There’s more than one way of being gone.”
Freddie picked up a rock and rolled it down the hill to show how
steep it was.

I looked around to be sure Austen wasn’t
following. Again, I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Aw, I shouldn’t talk about him. It’s not
right.”

“Freddie, you’re too noble.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I’m a great guy. Glad you
noticed.”

“I mean it. But whatever you say, I won’t
pass it along. Austen won’t know you told me anything. We’d better
get back.”

I stood up. My foot skidded on the steepness.
“This is murder,” I said, and wished I hadn’t said it.

He caught me and steadied me. “Your feet are
too small. That’s your trouble. Not enough base.”

I noticed his were kind of large for his
size. But I liked mine the way they were. We turned around and
started back.

Being the determined cuss that I was, I kept
on. “Tell me about Austen’s parents. I promise I won’t let on.”

“You better not. Snitching can get you in
trouble.”

“I know. I understand it’s sort of what
happened with, um—Johnny Kinsser?”

That took a lot of nerve, and then I was
scared when I said it.

He almost didn’t answer. Then, slowly, “I
don’t know if he did, but he might’ve. That’s what they said.”

“Who said?”

“You ask a lot of questions, Peggy.”

“If you don’t want me to know anything, why
do you keep volunteering information?”
But please don’t
stop.

That shut him up temporarily. I went on as if
he hadn’t said anything. “I can’t stop thinking about that. A coat
hanger. It’s so—it must have really hurt.”