Under Cover (6 page)

Frosty Dan was extra busy and Ben had a girl
helping him. She must have been new. Why would they hire her
instead of me? She looked to be in her late teens, with brown hair
and bangs, and brown eyes that were soft and cow-like. She had on
brown Bermuda shorts and a brown apron. Ben’s apron was white.

I took Mei up to the counter and showed her
pictures of all the different concoctions. As usual, I chose a
banana split and so did she. I could never feel guilty about banana
splits. How can you go wrong with all those vitamins and minerals
in the fruit?

We took a table near the window. It looked
out on parked cars and the foot traffic going past. We ate for a
couple of minutes before I began my questions. I started small,
with the ones that weren’t quite so important.

“Did you always live in Borneo?” I asked.

“Yes. Always. My father has business.”

I wondered if her father approved of my dad,
a man much older than Mei and not a big earner. Unless he earned
more than he let on to Mom and me.

“I wish I could see Borneo,” I said. “The
pictures look so beautiful.”

“Is not so busy as here.”

“We saw the busiest part yesterday, I think.
But there’s a lot of countryside, too. Did you know my father a
long time?” I saw Ben watching us and tried to wave him over. He
didn’t move.

“Three years I know your father,” said
Mei.

“Is Mrs. Mulvaney a friend of his?”

“Yes. Very long time.”

“Funny, I never knew she existed. Is there a
Mr. Mulvaney?”

“No, she is—it is her name when she is
born.”

“Maiden name. She’s not married?”

“Yes, she was married. Now she is Mulvaney
again. Is how she wants it.”

It must have been a contentious divorce, I
thought. “What’s her first name?”

“First—name?”

“The name you call a person, um—informally.
Like, I’m Cree. My dad is Jules.” I didn’t say anything about Mei
herself. I supposed it was her first name, but I knew that in China
they put the last name first.

“I don’t—oh, yes. She tell me call her
Sue.”

“Sue,” I repeated. “I thought her first name
started with U.”

“With me?”

“No, the letter U.” I traced it on the fake
marble tabletop.

“Oh. Oh, I see. Letta U.” She, too, wrote it
with her finger. “Maybe—is—Oo-sala.”

That stumped me as much as it did her. I
recovered faster. “Ursula?”

“Yes. Oo-sala.” She smiled, now that that was
settled.

“Oh, I get it. Ur-
sue
-la. And Liam is
her son?”

The smile disappeared. “Yes, her son.
Leem.”

“I wonder if that’s who Hey Buddy is. Liam
Mulvaney.”

“No, no. He is—Leem Penny.”

Chapter
Six

Liam Penny.

That was a new one.

“His brother?” I asked. She didn’t know what
I was talking about.

A younger brother. A half-brother, if he was
Mrs. Mulvaney’s son. Grandma said she didn’t know anything about
Dad’s family.

If he was Hey Buddy, what was he doing in
prison? Was that why my dad came all the way from Borneo? Why
wouldn’t anyone
tell
me?

I was not going to ask Mei. She clearly
didn’t want to spill the Mulvaney secrets. Or even the Penny ones.
Maybe it was none of my business.

I couldn’t help feeling it was sort of my
business, with my dad being involved. But he had opted long ago not
to be my dad, so that took care of that.

I looked over at Ben for some kind of
reassurance. He was busy chatting with the girl in brown shorts.
That got me temporarily off the Mulvaneys and the Pennys. Or was
the plural of it Pennies? There had never been any others besides
Mom and me, so I didn’t know.

Somehow I finished my banana split and got
Mei back to Hudson Hills. That time the door was unlocked. She
pulled it open and thanked me way too much for the ice cream. I
didn’t see Mrs. Mulvaney. Or Dad, or anyone who might have been Hey
Buddy. They were all on my mind as I drove back to Southbridge.

So was Ben. And that girl in brown shorts. I
told myself he had a right to talk to his coworker. By the same
token, I had a right not to like it. And I didn’t, jealous bitch
that I was.

Grandma and Jasper were on the sofa watching
a show about deep sea divers. I gave her back the keys and said,
“Why can’t somebody
tell
me?”

She muted the TV and put on her innocent
look. “Tell you what, hon?”

“The woman in that house. Mulvaney. Who is
she? And why is there somebody named Liam
Penny?
”

“You’re kidding me!” Grandma seemed genuinely
flabbergasted. “Honey, I don’t know any more than you do, I told
you that. Why didn’t you ask?”

“Ask who? That’s as far as I got with Mei. I
thought Dad might have said something.”

“I told you, he didn’t. I’ve hardly seen him,
except to get him there and then all he did was talk about
Borneo.”

I tried a different approach. “Does the name
Ursula Mulvaney ring any sort of bell?”

“Can’t say that it does. That’s whose house
he went to?”

“I just told you. She has a son named Liam,
who might be Hey Buddy, because at the airport Dad asked, ‘Where’s
Liam?’ But she doesn’t look old enough to be dad’s mother.”

Grandma shook her head. “Never heard of any
of it. Or them. But aren’t you ignoring another possibility?”

It was there, in the back of my mind. I
couldn’t do anything except ignore it. “If she’s not his mother,
what is she?”

“Honey, he never talked about his family. I
told you that, didn’t I? What’s with all the tough questions? Did
you actually go there and ring the doorbell?”

“I might have.”

“You’ve got more nerve than I do.”

“Nobody,” I said, “has more nerve than you. I
took Mei out for ice cream. Dad wasn’t there.”

“Did Mei explain who
she
is?”

“I didn’t ask her,” I said. “It would have
been rude. Do you think Mom would know anything? I already tried
that when we got the letter.”

“As far as I can figure,” Grandma said, “your
mom wanted to know as little as possible about your dad.”

“Maybe that’s why he took off.”

“Correction. It’s
because
he took off.
Not to change the subject, but I kind of remember the word ‘prison’
in that letter. Could be it has something to do with why they don’t
want to talk about it.”

She might have a point there. As for the rest
of it, I could almost believe she didn’t know any more than I
did.

“Sorry I interrupted you,” I said. She turned
the TV’s sound back on. I went upstairs to my room and sat down at
the computer. It stared back at me with its big blank eye. I was
hoping it would tell me where to begin.

I booted up and typed in “Hudson Hills.”

It gave me a lot of stuff about the murder,
stuff I’d seen in the paper.

“Okay, then, what about it?” I asked the
computer. “If that’s what you want to talk about.”

Hudson Hills was where Dad had gone, someone
Dad called Hey Buddy was in prison, and a kid named Johnny had been
killed. All those pieces. There just had to be some kind of
connection. I tried to see what else they had on Hudson Hills,
NY.

Teen Questioned in Death of
Friend

It was the same story I had read before. They
didn’t give any names except for the victim.

A coat hanger. What a horrible way to die.
How could anyone do that?

So, if Hey Buddy was in prison—unless Dad had
exaggerated—and the police were questioning a suspect, could they
possibly be the same?

I tried a search for Liam Penny.

Nothing.

Mei could’ve gotten it wrong. I tried Ursula
Mulvaney.

Still nothing.

I called Maddie. I thought she’d seemed kind
of interested in the story. She might have followed it up.

She hadn’t. “Cree, there are a lot of people
in Hudson Hills. Just because your dad knows someone there doesn’t
mean it’s the same person.”

“I know that. It’s what I’m trying to find
out. He did mention prison in his letter.”

She was unimpressed. “Being questioned by the
police isn’t the same as being in prison.”

“I am
aware
of that. You don’t know my
dad’s sense of humor.”

Neither did I, but I’d been reading his
letters for years. It would be just like him to put it that way,
trying to lighten the mood. I wondered if it helped or only
irritated Hey Buddy. If I were in prison, or facing it, I don’t
think I’d appreciate someone making jokes.

I tried Google again. Nothing new had
appeared in the last couple of minutes. At least nothing new about
any Mulvaneys or Pennys.

So I called Ben. It was late enough that I
was sure he must be home. I called him on his BlackBerry so only he
would answer. It rang a few times and then went to voicemail.

I left a message. “Hi, Ben, it’s me. I really
want to know if you know anything about that high school murder in
Hudson Hills.”

I explained why I was asking. About Dad’s
reference to prison and his coming all the way from Borneo.

“I thought Mrs. Mulvaney said Liam was her
son. I tried looking up Liam Penny and Mulvaney but I couldn’t find
anything.”

I waited for Ben to call me back. He should
have been home by then. Unless he’d gone out with Miss Brown
Shorts.

Skinny legs. Knobby knees. Actually her legs
weren’t bad. I just wanted to think they were.

Then I began to feel like an idiot. Why
should I care what my dad was doing in Hudson Hills? He didn’t care
about me. Not even enough to get a computer so we could email.

It got to be after midnight. If Ben did call,
the phone would wake everybody. I knew he wouldn’t do that, so I
went to bed.

At 7:30 in the morning, he called.

“You up?” he asked.

“I am now. Where were you last night?”

Stupid me, asking a question like that. Why
couldn’t I stop being jealous?

He let it go. “Why are you so concerned about
all that?”

“Ben, he’s my
dad.
Isn’t that a good
enough reason?”

“Are you his keeper?”

“He’s my
dad.
I haven’t seen him in
what, six years?”

“So he finally pays a visit, but not to see
you. And that bothers you.”

Ben had me all figured out. Amazing, for an
Aspie. Or maybe it showed how close we were.

“Wouldn’t you be curious if it was your dad?
Wouldn’t you want to know who his associates are?”

I deliberately didn’t say anything about
their relationship to me. With him being a foundling, it might hit
a sensitive spot. He would never know who his actual relatives
were.

I went on, “He did mention something about
Hey Buddy being in prison. I need to know more about that
murder.”

“Can’t help you there,” he said. “I don’t
know anything about the murder or about Hudson Hills. A place that
size, it’s bigger than Southbridge. It might have more than one
murder.”

“I haven’t heard of any others.” Not that I
was watching for them. “I know! Phil Reimer.”

“Who’s that?”

“My friend at
The Chronicle.
Maddie
knows him, too.”

“Give it a try. And good luck.”

Maddie didn’t know anything, either. Not
about my dad’s family—why would she?—or about the murder. She
hadn’t been keeping track.

“Psychopaths,” was all she had to say.

On Monday I asked if she would go with me to
see Phil Reimer.

“Oh Cree, I’d love to, but I have this giant
project for Daddy and a paper for French. Anyway, what would Phil
know about your relatives?”

“I’ve given up on that,” I said. “I want to
know about the murder.”

That interested her. “Can it wait a few days
till I finish the typing?”

By then she would have another project. I
said, “My dad’s not going to stay around forever. I need to know if
his being here has anything to do with anything.”

“Why would it? And what can you do about it,
anyway?”

She was being so logical, it annoyed me.
“Aren’t you curious?” I said. “Just to find out?”

“I’m dying to find out. But I promised Daddy
I’d do the typing and I don’t want to let him down.”

I couldn’t blame her. She had a sweet, cuddly
daddy, not a mystery man like mine. The main reason I wanted her
was for moral support, but maybe I didn’t need that with Phil
Reimer. He was a reporter I’d met last year when little Kippie
Hurlow got kidnapped, and I’d seen him a few times since then. He
always called me Lucretia.

After school Maddie drove me home, as she
usually did. I dropped my book bag, freshened up a bit, and set off
along Riverview Boulevard.

I walked a couple of blocks, then down a long
flight of steps built into the hillside. They led to the lower
village with the train station just across the street.
The
Chronicle
was on one side of the station plaza.

It wasn’t a huge newspaper office because it
wasn’t a huge newspaper. It had one main room with some desks, a
few cubicles along one wall, and several food vending machines. I
peeked into Reimer’s cubicle. Only his plaid jacket was there,
hanging on the back of his chair. I went out to the main room where
a skinny guy with rubber bands around his shirt sleeves sat working
at a computer.

“Is Phil Reimer anywhere?” I asked.

“Yeah, somewhere,” said the man. “Have a
seat, take a load off. He’ll show up.”

I went back to Phil’s cubicle and tried to
decide how I was going to explain myself. I needed a stronger
reason than mere curiosity even though my father might be involved.
All the way down those long steps I’d been thinking, but hadn’t
come up with anything that made a lot of sense.

Reimer came in, wearing a pink shirt and a
pink and gray tie. He was somewhere in his fifties, with brown hair
graying at the sides, and a frown of concentration that turned to a
grin when he saw me. “Hey there, Lucretia!”