Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man

  Number 123 was one of the dollhouses. And it was different from the other dollhouses not because of the yard—it was perfect just like the rest of them—but because the yard had grass and nothing else. No trees, no flowers, no vines. No bushes.

  I didn’t really know what I was doing there. Part of me wanted to go up and ask Chauncy’s brother a bunch of questions, and part of me thought it was the stupidest idea I’d had in a long time and just wanted to head out to the Thrift Store. Before you know it, though, I’m on the porch, pushing the doorbell.

  Nobody answers. And I’m turning around to leave when a man and a woman decked out in white cotton and carrying tennis rackets come walking toward the house.

  They stare at me and I stare at them, and the man says, “May I help you?”

  There’s no doubt about it—this is Chauncy’s brother. He’s a bit taller and healthier-looking than Chauncy, but his eyes are what give it away. They’re a clear brown, like toffee-colored marbles. And sharp, like he knows what you’re thinking before you’ve even had a chance to finish thinking it.

  “Mr. LeBard?”

  He looks straight at me. “Yes, and you are …?”

  I stick out my hand. “Samantha Keyes.”

  While he’s shaking my hand, he never takes his eyes off me. I try to keep looking straight at him, too, but it’s hard—like looking at the sun.

  “Chauncy was robbed the other night. I thought you might want to know.”

  He looks at me like he doesn’t quite believe what he’s hearing. He leans his head forward a little, then squints and says, “He sent you here, didn’t he? Well, you just tell him I’m not interested in this ploy of his. If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a hundred times—I’m through with him. I want nothing to do with him!”

  I squint right back at him. “He did not send me. I just thought you might want to know.”

  “Well, I don’t!”

  “Wait a minute, would you? Hudson says you guys used to be really close and—”

  “I do not want to hear any more of this. You tell that busybody Hudson Graham to mind his own business!”

  Up until now Mrs. LeBard has just been standing there, watching and listening, but when her husband starts getting all worked up she holds him by the arm and says softly, “Douglas, give the girl a chance to talk. It’s been almost ten years. Life doesn’t go on forever, you know.”

  While he’s busy thinking about telling her to stay out of it, I say, “He didn’t want the inheritance, you know. He said that your mother did him no favors.”

  Ol’ Douglas turns on me. “I’m sure charming Chauncy has told you a lot of things. He may think he can talk his way out of any situation, but this is one time his vocabulary isn’t going to do him any good. I’m not listening!”

  That’s when I realize—he doesn’t know. “You’re wrong, Mr. LeBard. Chauncy hasn’t talked to me very much at all. He can’t. He’s had a tracheotomy.”

  That stops him cold. His wife says to me, “When, dear? When did this happen?”

  I shrug and say, “It must have been quite a while ago, but I don’t really know. All I know is he’s living without heat or electricity or a phone or anything, and he can’t talk.”

  The Mr. and the Mrs. are looking at each other, just kind of letting this sink in, and finally the Mrs. says, “Without heat or electricity? What about the inheritance? He can’t possibly have used it all up! Why, the appraiser said that—”

  Douglas cuts her off, saying, “Never mind about that! If he’s spent it all, he deserves to suffer, and if he didn’t learn his lesson from what happened to Mother, it’s his own doing.”

  I look at Mrs. LeBard and ask, “What happened to their mother?”

  She says softly, “She died of lung cancer, dear. Douglas tried for years to get them both to quit but—”

  “Courtney, that’s enough! It’s none of her business, and the whole matter is no longer any of our concern. If he’s been sick, I can’t help that. If he’s spent the inheritance, then so be it.”

  “Excuse me, but it doesn’t look like he’s spent money on much of anything. Maybe if you went over there and talked to him—”

  That does it. Douglas says, “Don’t tell me what to do, and don’t stand there expecting me to justify the situation to you!” He pushes past me, “Out of the way, out of the way!”

  Mrs. LeBard follows him and looks over at me from the porch, but it’s pretty obvious from the way the door slams shut that she won’t be inviting me in for butter cookies.

  I just stand there on their walkway like a statue, thinking. And pretty soon my brain’s whirring around inside my skull so fast that I can’t stand there anymore; I’ve got to get moving.

  So I head out to Broadway, hang a left, and start walking to the Thrift Store. And while I’m walking, my brain’s busy chasing something that keeps slipping away. It feels like I’m trying to snag a fish out of the water—every time I grab for it I miss, because it’s not really where it seems to be at all.

  I have to wait for the light on Stowell Road, so I close my eyes and try to imagine the scene on Halloween night. I pretend that I’m Chauncy, with my hands and feet tied and a big rubber mask over my face. Pretty soon my heart’s speeding up and I’m feeling claustrophobic and I can’t breathe. And that’s when it hits me: Maybe whoever robbed Chauncy LeBard didn’t know he’d had his operation. Maybe the Frankenstein mask was more than just a blindfold. Maybe the Skeleton Man didn’t know that it wouldn’t stop him from breathing. Maybe, just maybe, whoever robbed Chauncy LeBard wanted something so badly that he was willing to kill for it.

  Either that, or maybe he just plain wanted Chauncy dead.

  TEN

  I don’t know why, but the thought that the Skeleton Man might have been trying to kill Chauncy kind of stunned me. I mean, the way I’d been looking at it was that he was after something, not someone. And I was so dazed that I didn’t even notice that the light had turned green until it was switching back to red.

  When the stoplight turned green again, I started running. Past gas stations and shops and about a mile of strip malls, and when I came huffing and puffing up to the Thrift Store, I felt a lot better. Like I’d outrun the Skeleton Man—at least for the moment.

  The Thrift Store doesn’t usually have much in it that I like. It has lots of clothes that are okay, I guess. They don’t have tags that try to bite you, and at least they’re not going to shrink. I mean, if it’s at the Thrift Store, there’s nothing you can do with a washing machine that’s going to make it any smaller.

  The trouble with Thrift Store clothes is they’re a little strange. They have pinks next to oranges, if you know what I mean. And flowers. Lots of flowers. And if you do find something that has okay colors and no flowers, it’s probably made of polyester or plastic. Either that or it has zippers and buttons where zippers and buttons don’t belong.

  So I went straight past all the racks of clothes to the back of the store where the shoes are. Most of the shoes are worse than the clothes. They’ve got pilgrim shoes and platform shoes and shoes that look like they’ve been worn by a duck, but in between all these ugly shoes they’ve also got high-tops. Really great high-tops. And I noticed a terrific pair of black and white ones right away.

  Trouble is, they were about an inch too big. I tried them on anyway, thinking that maybe I could wear two pairs of socks until I grew into them, but one lap around the shoe rack told me it’d be like wearing flippers.

  I flopped around in the black-and-whites looking for another pair, but all I could find that might’ve fit me was a pair of plaid ones—red and pink plaid.

  So I took another lap around the rack, thinking that maybe I could get used to the flippers, but finally I just sat down and switched back into my green ones.

  I headed for the door, zipping right past lamps and books and toasters and mixers, but then I noticed something. I wasn’t being real observant or anything, I was thinking about shoes, you know? I just no
ticed them because there they were, all alone, decorating the middle of a black Formica table.

  They weren’t silver, and they weren’t stainless steel or aluminum. They were just a dull gray, and kind of rough. But the longer I looked at them, the more sure I became—these were Chauncy’s candlesticks.

  I didn’t touch them for a long time. I just moved around the table telling myself, Nah! It can’t be.… Then I got the idea to trace around the base of the candlesticks. I knew the lady at the register wasn’t going to offer me a Magic Marker to scribble up her table, so I used the next best thing—spit. I got my finger good and wet and went around the base of a candlestick, making a nice shiny outline on that old black table. And when I picked up the candlestick and looked at my little spit tracing, well, I couldn’t say for sure, but the design in the dust at Chauncy’s house and the spit spot seemed to be about the same size and shape.

  I flipped the candlestick over, and there was the price—$10.75 for the pair. Which was about $10.75 more than I wanted to pay for a pair of candlesticks that might never have seen the inside of the Bush House.

  So I marched them right up to the cash register. Right up to CeCe.

  Most people think CeCe’s a little strange, but I happen to know she’s sharp like paper. She looks like a bag lady, and I’ve heard people say she used to be a bag lady, only she was so good at collecting stuff that she had to open a store just to have somewhere to put it all.

  Bag lady or not, she’s like a walking commercial for her store. She wears hats and scarves and lots of orange and pink polyester with jewelry dangling everywhere. And every time I’ve gone into the Thrift Store she’s been friendly to me—like she remembers me even though I only go there a few times a year.

  She looks at me over the top of her glasses. “Didn’t have your size?”

  At first I didn’t know what she was talking about—I was thinking about the candlesticks. Then I realize she must have been watching me do laps in her shoe department. “No.” I look down at my Marsh Monster shoes. “And if I don’t find a pair soon, my grams is going to force me to go to the mall.”

  CeCe wrinkles her nose in sympathy and then looks over the counter at my feet. “Too bad they’re worn out. That’s a beaut of a color.”

  I look at her and start to laugh, but then I can tell she’s serious so I switch the subject. “How long have you had these candlesticks?”

  She looks at them through the bottom part of her glasses, and her eyebrows disappear under her bangs. “They’re new. Why do you want to know?”

  I’m trying to come up with something that isn’t a complete lie, when CeCe looks at me straight through the middle of her glasses and says, “Ah-ah. Out with it.”

  I take a deep breath and say, “It’s important. They might’ve belonged to a friend of mine.”

  She chews on this a minute. “Wouldn’t know about that. They were a donation. Got dropped off in the box outside.”

  Hearing that gets my heart thumping around a bit. “Was there anything else with them?”

  She squints at me, then nods toward the appliance table. “They were in a sack with a toaster. Sucker had a loose wire’s all. Fixed it up and buffed it out. It’s good as new.”

  Now my brain’s whirring and clacking, thinking Rats! because if she hadn’t cleaned it up maybe there’d be fingerprints. “Which toaster was it?”

  She walks over to the table and picks one up. “You act like a cop, you know that?”

  I look it over and see an $8.50 sticker on the side. “Can I borrow this and the candlesticks for a day?”

  She tosses her head back and laughs. “Oh, that’s a good one. I suppose next you’re going to tell me they’re stolen property. I’ve heard that one before.” She goes back to the register and settles onto her stool. “And no, I won’t come off the price any.”

  So I stand around trying to figure out some way around paying for stuff I don’t even want, when she taps the ALL SALES FINAL sign behind her. “Don’t be gettin’ any bright ideas, girl.”

  I sigh and say, “Look, I’ve only got about nineteen, and with tax—”

  She perks right up. “Cash? Forget the tax. I’ll refigure. We’ll call it an even nineteen, if that’s all you’ve got.”

  She tucks the money away in one of her polyester pockets, puts the candlesticks and the toaster in a paper sack, and says, “Come back anytime!”

  It didn’t take me long to figure out that I’d been an idiot for giving CeCe all the money I had. Now I couldn’t ride the bus. Instead I had to trudge along Broadway with my green shoes and nineteen-dollar sack of junk.

  The whole time I’m walking, I’m thinking. And what I’m thinking is, before I go home or even over to Hudson’s, I’ve got to go to Chauncy’s and see if this is his stuff. So when I get over to Stowell Road, I hang a right and keep on walking until I get to Miller Street. Then I walk and walk and walk some more until finally there’s Orange Street.

  And I walked down Orange Street like I didn’t have a care in the world. I picked up a stick and ran it across Chauncy’s neighbor’s picket fence, slapped the FOR SALE sign with it, and then poked my way through the bush tunnel and right up to Chauncy’s door like I’d done it a hundred times before. My heart wasn’t thumping, my knees weren’t bumping; I just pounded on the door and hollered, “Chauncy! Open up! Hey, Chauncy, it’s Sammy! Open up!”

  But he didn’t open up. And pretty soon I’m tired of banging my fist on his splinters, and I’m thinking that maybe he can’t hear me because he’s out back watching Fuzzball.

  So around back I go, ducking branches and thorns like I own the place, and, sure enough, there’s Chauncy, up to his forehead in binoculars. And since the rusty old chair he’d used the last time I visited was still out, I just sat down and waited.

  And waited and waited. And when he finally takes the binoculars down and looks at me, he says, “You’re … per … sistent”—the way most people would say, You stink.

  I just smile at him and pop a candlestick on his rusty little table. “This yours?”

  At first he stares at it, then he stares at me. Then he picks it up like it’s made of crystal instead of tin, and he nods as he turns it over and over.

  I tug the other one out of the sack. “Are you sure they’re yours?”

  He holds them both and nods a bit faster.

  So I pull out the toaster and say, “How about this?”

  Well a toaster was about the last thing Chauncy expected me to pull out of my little bag of tricks. He scratches his head. “Where … have … you … been?”

  So I told him everything. Including how it had cost me nearly twenty bucks to get his stuff out of CeCe’s store.

  The minute he hears about the money, what’s he do? He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. And while he’s piecing together twenty bucks, my eyes kind of bug out and I say, “When’d you get your wallet back?”

  He hands me the money, then flips his wallet closed. “Police. Found … near … mall.”

  I think about this a minute. “Was anything missing from it?”

  Chauncy shakes his head no.

  “Was Officer Borsch the one who brought it back?”

  He nods.

  “Did he have anything else to say—like who their suspects are?”

  “No.”

  I kind of mumble, “Figures,” and for a split second I thought I saw a little twinkle in Chauncy’s eye, but it was gone before it was really there.

  We sit a minute, and then I ask, “Have you found anything else missing? Anything?”

  There goes his head again, shaking back and forth.

  “Well have you looked?”

  He gives me half a shrug and looks the other way.

  Now with all this shaking and shrugging he’s doing, I’m getting pretty frustrated. So I take the toaster and stuff it back into the sack and say, “Okay, you tell me—why would someone come into your house and steal some stuff he didn’t want?”
br />   He looks down at his feet and shrugs.

  I say real quietly, “The Skeleton Man was trying to kill you, wasn’t he?”

  For a long time he just sits there, but finally he shrugs.

  “You think it was your brother, don’t you?”

  He jumps to his feet and starts pacing back and forth, shaking his head. “Why … now? Why … the … disguise?” He sits back down, motions to the candlesticks, and says, “Thank … you,” then puts his head in his hands.

  I can tell that he wants to be left alone, so I pick up the sack and go out the way I came. And I’m about halfway home when I decide that home is not where I should be going.

  The police station is.

  ELEVEN

  I didn’t want another conversation with Officer Borsch, but I didn’t know what else to do. The toaster had to be connected to the Skeleton Man somehow, but I sure didn’t know how.

  And I’m walking along, thinking about killers and toasters and how Chauncy would probably rather die than tell the police that he thinks his brother tried to do him in, when I notice these two men arguing on the other side of the street.

  I know it’s none of my business what these two guys are pointing and yelling about, but I slow way down anyway, and pretty soon I’m practically stopped, listening to them. They’re both about the same age, but one of them looks like he changes oil for a living, and the other—well, I’d bet what’s left of my high-tops that he has a closet full of ties and a cell phone in his car.

  Mr. Cell Phone’s yelling, “Look, park them in your garage, park them in your driveway, put them down the street somewhere, but don’t put them in front of my house! You’re breaking an ordinance and you know it. This is not commercial property. If you want to run a used car lot, rent yourself a spot across town!”

  I look around and, sure enough, there are about ten old beat-up cars right around the Oil Man’s house. He wipes his hands on a rag. “I ain’t breaking any ordinance. You’ve had the cops down here so many times you ought to know that by now.”