Room One Page 6

  Ted thought, Oh, this is great. She’s talking about being honest? After what she did? What, does she think I’m that stupid? Unbelievable!

  Mrs. Mitchell saw that dark thought pass across Ted’s face, but she kept talking, trying to win him over. “Well, I just want you to know that you can talk to me about anything that’s bothering you, and it’ll stay just between us.”

  That was too much.

  Ted snorted and said, “You mean like the girl and her family at the Anderson farm? You’ll keep everything a secret, like that?”

  Mrs. Mitchell said, “I’m glad you brought that up. We have to talk about them some more.”

  Ted stood up fast, knocking the chair against the wall. “What’s there to talk about? Just … just forget about it, okay?”

  Mrs. Mitchell said, “Well, it’s not that simple. Because of the children. If I—”

  Ted cut her off. “You should have thought about them before. Because now it’s too late.”

  Mrs. Mitchell shook her head. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Right,” Ted said. “You didn’t mean to mess everything up and ruin their lives, but you did. You did. And don’t try to lie about it. Because I know Deputy Linwood was out there. I saw the tire tracks this morning, on the grass behind the house. And I found this.”

  Ted held out the blue pencil he’d found. Mrs. Mitchell took it and looked at the lettering, and then she looked into Ted’s face and saw the anger and the hurt and the shattered trust.

  Ted narrowed his eyes. “And they’re gone,” he said. “Gone. Thanks to you.”

  She reached out quickly and took both his hands in hers, and when he tried to pull away, she held on. “Ted, listen to me. I’m so sorry. But you have to hear this. I started feeling like I had to do something last night. Even though I promised you I wouldn’t tell anyone. But I wanted to talk to you first. So I didn’t do anything, and I didn’t tell anyone. Not even my husband.”

  Ted shook his head, as if he hadn’t heard right. “What?”

  She said it again. “I didn’t do anything, and I didn’t tell anyone. No one.”

  Looking into her face, Ted knew Mrs. Mitchell wasn’t lying. He just knew. And the mistake he’d made about her cut him to the heart. Not to mention his rotten detective work. Good detectives are suspicious of circumstantial evidence.

  He stammered, “I … I thought … I thought you …”

  She shook her head. And before Ted could finish his apology, another question took complete control of his thinking, and he said, “Then what happened? Why did the police show up and take them away?”

  Mrs. Mitchell said, “I don’t know. But I can find out. I’ll call Deputy Linwood at lunchtime, and I’ll tell you everything I learn, all right?”

  Ted wanted to run out the front door of the school and ride his bike over to town hall and make somebody give him the facts, right now.

  But he knew he couldn’t, so he nodded, and Mrs. Mitchell said, “Then let’s get back to class.”

  Ted opened the door. In one corner Kevin was arguing with Hannah, Lizzie, and Keith, shouting about the best way to find a lowest common denominator. And in the other corner, the eighth graders were passing Carla’s iPod from hand to hand, trying to make one pair of earphones work for four pairs of ears.

  Mrs. Mitchell had the corners of room one quiet and focused on schoolwork in less than fifteen seconds.

  But at the sixth-grade island out in the middle, Ted Hammond was focused on something else. He was thinking like a detective again, a detective who had work to do.

  Because this case wasn’t closed. Ted felt responsible for April. And her mom and brother, too. He wouldn’t feel settled about it until Mrs. Mitchell learned exactly what had happened to them.

  Chapter 15

  OFFICIAL BUSINESS

  When Mrs. Mitchell came out the playground door, Ted pounced.

  “What? What did he say?”

  Mrs. Mitchell shook her head. “Not much.”

  It was after-lunch recess, and Ted had been pacing up and down, waiting to hear about his teacher’s talk with the police.

  Ted frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Leonard—I should say, Deputy Linwood—is being very official today. He wouldn’t give me any details. He did say that he had gotten a call about a disturbance at the Anderson place last night, and that he went out there and took care of it. I asked him about the children, and he said ‘Official police business. I’m not at liberty to talk about that.’ But you were right. He was certainly there.”

  Ted nodded. “And the family’s gone. I saw that myself. But where are they?”

  Mrs. Mitchell said, “Well, I’m not sure. Maybe at the social services center in Wheaton. Or maybe they’re already on the way to their relatives. But we know that there are good people taking care of them now. And they’ll have enough to eat, and everyone will have a safe place to sleep tonight. You can be sure of that. And you can stop worrying about them.”

  Mrs. Mitchell wasn’t quite as sure about that as she sounded. So many things could have happened out at the Andersons’ farm last night. But wherever the little family was now, it wasn’t right for Ted to keep feeling responsible for them. It was out of his hands, and he needed to let it go.

  When Ted didn’t say anything, Mrs. Mitchell added, “And you were a big help to them. You really were.”

  Then she said, “We’ll talk again later…. I’ve got to go be the referee before someone gets hurt.”

  Mrs. Mitchell hurried toward the field where the fourth graders and the eighth graders were playing a lopsided game of kickball.

  Ted sat down on the low doorstep.

  You were a big help to them. That’s what Mrs. Mitchell had said.

  Some help I was, he thought. People you help shouldn’t end up being hauled off in a police car. But it wasn’t my fault—was it? No. Couldn’t be. Mrs. Mitchell didn’t squeal, and I didn’t tell anyone else. I guess it just happened, that’s all. There was a disturbance, and then Deputy Linwood went …

  Ted jumped to his feet, his detective mind sparking to life. “A disturbance”? What does that mean?

  Ted began pacing again. Because in his mystery books, a disturbance that brought the police was usually something scary. Like a gunshot. Or a big fight. Or a fire, or maybe an animal attack. “A disturbance” could mean a lot of things—and none of them were good.

  It was great that Mrs. Mitchell had talked to Deputy Linwood. And Ted was glad April and her mom and brother were safe somewhere. But he still wanted to know what had happened on Thursday night out at the Anderson farm.

  And that’s when Ted decided he needed to go have another look around. A slow look. A careful look. He could go over there tomorrow and give it some time. Now that he wasn’t upset. Now that it was just a matter of curiosity.

  Because a good detective shouldn’t need to ask the police about what happened at the scene of some “official business.”

  All a detective needed was a good long look at the evidence.

  Chapter 16

  A LITTLE HOME

  The Saturday bundle of the Omaha World-Tribune got dropped off before dawn, same as the weekday papers. But all the subscribers in Plattsford, Nebraska, understood that the Saturday paper didn’t get delivered until about nine o’clock. Saturday was the day that the paperboy stayed in bed an extra hour or so.

  But not this Saturday. Ted was up and out the kitchen door at his regular time. Even though it was the weekend, and even though he could ride out to the Anderson farm anytime he’d finished his chores, he wanted to go before he delivered his papers. He wanted to get there before the clues got any older.

  And this time Ted was prepared. He had five or six plastic sandwich bags for collecting evidence, some long tweezers for picking up small clues, a magnifying glass, a cheap plastic camera with nine shots left on the counter, a flashlight, his field notebook, and two freshly sharpened pencils.

  Ted noticed something odd befor
e he even got to the house. There was a patch of soft ground next to the mailbox where the driveway crossed the ditch. He’d been expecting to see a set of tire tracks going in toward the farmhouse, and the same tracks coming back out. But it looked like there were tracks from two different kinds of tires. Had there been two cars? Two police cars? Or maybe Deputy Linwood’s car had snow tires on the rear wheels and regular tires up front. Hard to say.

  Ted pulled out his camera and snapped a picture.

  Around back, both basement doors were still wide open, just like on Friday morning. There were a lot of early-morning shadows, so Ted decided to look inside first. The light in the backyard would be better later on.

  The flashlight let Ted have his first real look around the basement. He saw the wooden crate he’d almost tripped on. Shining the light in a wide arc, he saw some broken Mason jars, a row of paint cans on rough wooden shelves over near one wall, water and steam pipes hanging overhead, a fuel oil tank, a big furnace, and lots of spiderwebs. The dirt floor gave the place a damp, musty smell.

  There wasn’t much to investigate, so Ted headed up the stairs.

  The kitchen was the way he remembered it—can opener on the counter, empty water jug by the sink. But when he opened the cabinet above the counter, a surprise: Beef stew, soup, instant coffee, Sterno, matches—almost everything he’d brought, all neatly arranged.

  But it made sense. You don’t stop and bring groceries when the police take you away. Ted thought, I should take this stuff—after all, I paid for it. But it seemed like a lot to carry around. Maybe later. He closed the cabinet and went into the living room.

  The place was messy, but it looked like Deputy Linwood had given them enough time to pack up all their things. Ted began a careful search of the living room, but his heart wasn’t in it. He wasn’t feeling much like a detective. It was more like he was looking for proof that April and her family had actually been here. All he found were six crumpled granola bar wrappers and a small order form for X-Men T-shirts, something Artie must have torn out of a comic book.

  On the stairs going to the second floor Ted saw footprints in the dust. He stepped on the first few treads to be sure they felt solid and then walked up.

  Some kids had been in the house, probably right after the Andersons moved. All the closet doors were open, and there were shoe boxes and newspapers and coat hangers scattered across the floors, along with some broken bottles. Someone had written and drawn pictures with black and red spray paint all over the walls in the bedrooms. It made the place feel creepy, sort of dangerous. Ted thought, No wonder April and her family stayed downstairs. He would have left right then, but the upper windows weren’t boarded up, so the morning sunlight made the rooms feel almost cheerful, in spite of the vandalism.

  Ted had an idea, and he went to the front bedroom. He was looking for something. And there in front of the window on the right, he saw fresh footprints in the dust. He snapped a photo. Those had to be April’s footprints, right in front of the window where he had first seen her face. And he thought, That was less than a week ago. It seemed much longer.

  There was a closed door in the hallway, and when Ted opened it, he saw a set of narrow steps going up to the attic. And again, there were footprints in the dust.

  The attic was another surprise. It looked like the Andersons had left almost everything they had stored up there. Ted could see why. Most of the stuff was in bad shape. Three wicker-bottom chairs with tattered seats, a broken iron bed frame, stacks of empty cardboard boxes, a painted dresser with a split top, a broken mirror on its own wooden stand, two big steamer trunks with the leather straps chewed to bits by the mice, a wooden baby cradle with a missing rocker. Almost everything he saw was broken or damaged in some way, but it still made him feel like he was looking at a family’s history.

  Standing in the center under the peak of the roof, Ted looked toward one end of the room, and then toward the other. And that’s when he noticed something unusual. Amid all the dusty rummage and the cobwebs loaded with dead flies and moths, the window facing the northwest was spotless, perfectly clean.

  Ted went closer, watching his step on the loose floorboards. Someone had pulled a sagging armchair in front of the window. On the floor to one side he saw some dirty rags, the ones used to clean the glass. And Ted knew instantly what they were. Little blue pajamas and some tiny T-shirts—baby clothes. From the two bags downstairs in the living room.

  On one arm of the chair was a book, an old one: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Looking at the footprints in the dust, Ted could tell which cardboard box it had been taken from.

  He picked up the book and sniffed it. Old. His mom had some books like this, and the paper had a special smell. Ted saw a bookmark, and when he opened the brittle yellow pages, it fluttered to the floor. It was a folded Snickers wrapper.

  Ted suddenly knew where he was. He was in April’s hideout, the place she came to be by herself. A place she had cleaned and dusted. A quiet place, with a beautiful view out across the prairie. April had made herself a little home.

  Ted sat down, and as he looked out the attic window, he saw how April had seen him coming, that first afternoon when he’d tried to sneak up close. Over the roof of the barn he could still see the path he had left as he’d walked through the long grass.

  He would have had a hard time putting it into words, but sitting there with her book in his hands, looking out the window she had cleaned, Ted felt like he and April could have become friends. Maybe they already had.

  He leaned over, picked up the folded candy wrapper, and tucked it back between the pages. And as he put the book into his shoulder bag, Ted wished that he’d had a chance to say good-bye.

  Chapter 17

  LIFE GOES ON

  Monday and Tuesday felt dull and ordinary to Ted. Up at six thirty. Eat. Get the papers. Deliver the papers. Ride to school. Say the Pledge. Read. Review the homework. Listen to Mrs. Mitchell. Begin the new schoolwork. Eat. Play outside. Read. Ride home. Do chores. Eat. Do homework. Read. Sleep.

  The quiet little town of Plattsford, Nebraska, was back to its same old self again, and for the first time in Ted’s life, the place seemed sort of slow and boring to him.

  Ted got a new mystery at the library on Monday afternoon, and it had a great title: The Blood Runs Cold. But the plot? Routine. Predictable. After the real-life events of the week before, the story seemed pale and thin.

  To be fair, other local mysteries were still bubbling, still needing to be solved. At the beginning of the week, every home in Plattsford had gotten a letter from the Wheaton school board. The superintendent explained that with so few students next year, it seemed likely that Red Prairie Learning Center would have to close.

  That letter caused a stir at Ted’s dinner table on Tuesday.

  His dad said, “It’s a bad sign, the school closin’ down. Market’ll be next, an’ then we’ll have to drive thirty miles just to get groceries.”

  Ted’s big brother speared a piece of meat on his plate and said, “’Bout time this town died.”

  His mom snapped, “Lucas Hammond, you take that back!” She was furious. “After all the hard work that’s gone into giving you a good place to grow up, and you say something like that!”

  Lucas had one more year of high school, and everyone knew he wasn’t going to stay on the family farm one minute longer than he had to. Lucas was going to the University of Nebraska, and after college, he’d made it clear that he was headed for someplace that had wide sidewalks and tall buildings, restaurants and taxicabs. And, over time, his dad had accepted that. You can’t force someone to become a farmer.

  Ted and his sister Sharon waited for the secondary explosion. But it didn’t come. Their dad finished the bite he was chewing, swallowed, took a sip of coffee, and said, “Everybody’s entitled to his own opinions.”

  And after a short silence, the talk turned to news about Sharon’s class trip at the end of May to Washington, D.C.

  Sharon wasn�
��t interested in farm life either. But Ted? Ted was going to stay. He knew it, and so did his dad.

  When Ted’s 4-H adviser had come by one Saturday in April to give him some pointers about grooming his calf for the local 4-H competition, afterward he had told Ted’s dad, “Looks like you’ve got yourself a cattleman there.”

  And John Hammond had smiled and said, “One kid out of three ain’t great, but it’ll do.”

  Still, it’s hard to have a farm without a town nearby, and it’s hard to have a town without a school. So a lot of people in Plattsford were thinking and talking about the future of Red Prairie Learning Center.

  Did Ted like the idea that his school might close? No, but there was no point in worrying about it. Did Ted like the idea that he might have to sit on a school bus for two hours a day next year? No, but it wasn’t his decision. And would the town survive if room one suddenly went silent? As far as Ted could see, only time would solve that mystery.

  A couple of times on Sunday, and once on Monday, Ted had almost told his mom how he’d discovered this homeless family, and how he’d given them some food. He had to tell her, because he had to pay for the things he’d borrowed. But it felt too soon. He still wanted to keep the story to himself.

  Riding past the Anderson farm to get his newspapers on Monday morning, and then again on Tuesday, Ted wondered about April and her family. He thought about them off and on during school, sitting inside his pentagon of desks in room one. And he also thought about them at night when he turned off the light and tried to sleep. He couldn’t help it. Were they in Wheaton? Or maybe in Lincoln somewhere? Or had the authorities really been able to help them get all the way to their relatives in Colorado?