Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job

  I felt rotten about it, but I had to say it. “Irene, maybe the best thing for Diana would be to tell somebody about her. My mom would know what was the best thing to do—”

  “Dance, you promised! You promised not to tell!”

  “No, I didn’t. You promised for both of us,” I objected.

  “Well, you didn’t say you didn’t promise, when I said it. That’s the same as saying it yourself. My gosh, Darcy, imagine what it must be like for her at home. She only has to stay hidden for three weeks, and then her brother will get her away from here. Once she’s in San Diego she’ll be okay. We have to help her!”

  “I know we have to help. I’m just not sure that feeding her and not telling anybody about her is the way to do it. That young cop we met, that Chris Roberts, I know he’d try to get some help for her—”

  “You heard what she said. Her sister told, and they couldn’t help her. If your dad mistreated you, would you dare stand there in front of him and tell people what he did, unless you were positive they’d take you away immediately and protect you from him?”

  I had to confess I wouldn’t. “Our garage isn’t a good place, though. There’s nothing but junk in that room, and nowhere for her to sleep that’s any better than where she is, really. And no way to get her in and out. There are too many people around our garage, and no telling when Jimmy and Bobby will decide to go upstairs for something. One summer the neighborhood kids used it as a club house.”

  “What about that tree house they had last year? Do they still play in it?”

  My steps slowed. “That might be an idea. I don’t think they’ve been in it since Jimmy fell out of it and broke his arm last August. Dad got sort of annoyed about it, and they lost interest. It’s on the other side of the house from the garage, too, in the edge of the woods. I’ll check it out when I get home.”

  I still felt as if I ought to discuss it with my folks, or at least with Tim. For a brother, Tim wasn’t bad, and he knew how cops thought about things. He and Clancy were good friends, and sometimes he rode on patrol with Clancy.

  I couldn’t quite bring myself to give Diana away, though. It was true that when I hadn’t protested what Irene said, I was sort of giving a promise of my own.

  I felt guilty, eating roasted chicken and potatoes and gravy and buttered corn and salad and spice cake, thinking about Diana and the empty box of crackers. Even if she had a few dollars, she didn’t dare go any place where she’d be recognized to buy anything, and I went to the store for Mom often enough to know how little you could get for three or four dollars.

  Mom had a meeting that evening, and Dad was helping Tim overhaul an engine, out in the garage. I washed the dishes and left them draining dry, then started checking to see what I could take to Diana.

  There were two chicken legs and a thigh left, not enough to go around again or put into a casserole, I decided. I stuck them in a plastic sandwich bag and probed further. There were leftover mashed potatoes, but I didn’t think they’d transport well, nor taste good cold, though Diana probably wasn’t particular. Salad, though—with a plastic fork to eat it—and some bread and butter. On impulse, I buttered six slices and packaged them and took some cheese and lunch meat, then one each of the apples, oranges, and bananas from the bowl in the middle of the table. I put all this in a paper bag, stashed it on the front porch, and went out to see how the tree house looked.

  It had been there ever since I could remember. Tim and Dad built it together when Tim was younger than Bobby was now. I’d played in it too, when I was a little kid.

  The ladder up to it—boards nailed up the side of the tree—still seemed sturdy enough. I looked inside and saw only a few dead leaves and a spider.

  It was big enough for a person to lie down comfortably, it had a roof and two windows and an open doorway, and this time of year it was almost hidden in foliage.

  Irene was right. It was an ideal place for Diana.

  By the time I had it ready for her, it was dusk. I walked back through the summer evening to the park, checking to make sure nobody was paying any attention to me before I strolled down into the ravine.

  Irene was there ahead of me, and we laughed as we compared the supplies we’d brought. Irene had three chocolate bars, a cold pork chop, two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, two cans of diet pop, and a bag of sunflower seeds.

  Diana ate the sandwiches and the pork chop and two pieces of fruit so quickly that Irene and I looked at each other and swallowed hard. Neither of us had ever been really hungry, not as hungry as Diana was.

  I told her about the tree house. “You’ll have to go there after it’s full dark,” I told her. “I don’t dare stay here with you until then. My folks get excited if I’m not home before dark, and I don’t want them calling the police. Just go along the hedge on the east side of the house, and there’ll be enough light from the downstairs bathroom so you can find the tree. I put a blanket and pillow up there, and an air mattress.”

  Diana’s blue eyes filled with moisture. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said.

  I nearly cried myself. I hoped I was doing the right thing and that my folks would understand when they found out about it.

  I ran most of the way home, and when I got there the boys and Dad were still out in the garage and hadn’t noticed I’d been gone.

  I got ready for bed and was reading when Tim came upstairs. “Tim. Are you alone?” I called out.

  He paused in my doorway, not touching anything because he had grease all over his hands and shirt front. “No, I have a princess with me, waiting for me to take her to the ball. She’ll turn into a pumpkin at midnight, so I have to hurry.”

  “I think it was the coach that turned into a pumpkin,” I said. “Listen, can I ask you a legal question? In confidence?”

  He checked his shoulder to make sure it was clean, then slouched against the doorframe. “Sure. Are the cops after you for jay walking, or what?”

  I didn’t smile. “It’s a hypothetical case. Suppose somebody runs away from home, someone under age, I mean. And her folks call the cops. What will they do if they pick her up?”

  “You thinking about running away?” His blue eyes sharpened. His red hair was almost like Diana’s, except that he kept it cut short so it could just barely curl.

  “I said hypothetical. What would they do?”

  “Take her home, I guess. Why?”

  “Even if they knew she was mistreated at home?”

  He looked at me, then stepped inside the room and pulled up a chair beside my bed. “If she said she was mistreated, I suppose they’d call the Child Protective Agency, and they’d send somebody out to investigate.”

  “And in the meantime? Would they make her go home?”

  He considered this. “They might. Depending on whether they believed her or not. Does she have bruises? Burns? Hypothetically speaking, of course?”

  “Not right now, except for a bruise that’s almost gone. They wouldn’t put her in a foster home or anything like that, if her folks said she was lying?”

  “It would probably be up to a judge to decide. I’m not sure. You want me to ask Clancy?”

  I thought about it, then slowly shook my head. “No. Maybe you better not.” Clancy would know who I meant. He’d know they were supposed to be looking for Diana and that she was my age. He couldn’t fail to figure it out, and I didn’t want Clancy to ask me any questions I didn’t care to answer. “Do they call out the FBI for runaways?”

  “Not unless there’s some reason to think someone has taken them across state lines,” Tim said promptly. “Like in a kidnapping. Lots of places, they don’t even look very hard for runaways, unless they’re little kids. How old is this hypothetical runaway? Thirteen, maybe?”

  I flushed, but held my ground. “About, I guess. Listen, what if someone else helps a runaway? Is it a criminal offense?”

  Tim thoughtfully ran a thumb over his chin and left a black smear. “You sure you want to keep this hypotheti
cal, Darcy?”

  “I have to.”

  “Okay. Well, as far as I know, if the runaway isn’t a criminal, then you can’t be accused of being an accessory to anything. Mom and Dad might be upset with you, though, if you’re helping someone hide out.”

  I didn’t argue about that. “If you have to feel guilty no matter what you do, you might as well follow your own conscience, I guess,” I muttered.

  Tim was still looking thoughtful. He stood up when he heard the younger boys on the stairs. “I have to get in the bathroom before the beasts take it over. I hope you know what you’re doing, Darce.”

  I hoped so, too. For a little while I forgot all about the Foster kids and my responsibilities for them.

  Chapter Six

  Between worrying about harboring a fugitive in our tree house and wondering what Jeremy Foster would do to get me fired from my baby-sitting job, I was a wreck. I’d kept secrets from my mom before, silly things like walking past Ted Hansen’s house so he’d see me and say “Hi,” or eating two Hershey bars at Irene’s in one afternoon. I’d never concealed anything serious from her, though, and it bothered me.

  For one thing, I wasn’t at all sure that hiding Diana was the best thing to do, not even for her own sake. I’d have liked my mother’s advice on that—she’d have cared about another kid enough to make the effort to get the kind of help Diana needed. Most of the time I felt quite grown up, but some things take more than thirteen years of experience, and this seemed like one of them. Yet the secret wasn’t really mine to share.

  And I dreamed about the Foster kids. The thing Diana told us about Jeremy building a fire that scorched the wall of the house was scary, and in my dream he burned down the whole house. It was so vivid in my mind, the flames leaping and the fire engines screaming to the rescue, that I woke up gasping and had trouble going back to sleep.

  I did tell Mom about the dream. She didn’t laugh, as I half expected her to do.

  “He really did build a fire?”

  “That’s what—” I almost said Diana’s name, and quickly remembered to change it, in case they listed runaway kids in the paper or gave their names on TV or something. “This girl told me. Her sister sat them a few times, and Jeremy built a fire. Some of the other things he does aren’t dangerous, just messy or annoying, but the idea of a fire scares me.”

  “And most of the time this Mrs. Murphy, the housekeeper, is the one who takes care of them? I wonder how much time they spend with their parents.”

  “I don’t know. Mr. Foster is president of a big bank, and Mrs./Dr. Foster is a psychiatrist. Irene says she has an office in the Garden Park Building. They’re gone all day, both of them. Mrs. Murphy keeps the kids from messing up some of the rooms by locking the kids out of them, and I’ve got a hunch that when she wants a nap she locks them out of the whole house, in the back yard. It’s got a high fence around it; they can’t get out, but still . . .”

  Mom nodded. “Still, that’s not the way to look after small children. It makes me wonder if the kids aren’t doing some rather outrageous things just to make someone pay attention to them. That business about calling their grandmothers, in Seattle and Texas, it’s the kind of thing I’d expect when they need affection from someone. It doesn’t sound as if their parents are around enough, and the housekeeper might not do any more than look after their physical needs—keep them clean and fed, I mean. Children need more than that.”

  I thought guiltily of my own approach to the Foster kids—all I had to do was keep them from killing each other, I’d thought. “You had more kids than the Fosters,” I said. “How did you keep track of all of us?”

  She laughed. “Well, I wasn’t working part time then; I was home with you until after you started school. Tim was good at watching over you younger ones, but I didn’t depend on him to do it all. We read together and played games and talked a lot, and you knew what was expected of you. Your dad and I were consistent in what we asked of you, and we always spent time together as a family. Remember the fun we had when you were little, going camping and on picnics? I wonder if the Fosters do things like that with their kids? That reminds me, Dad is getting things together for his camping trip with the boys this weekend, and he can’t find his air mattress. It didn’t get put away in your closet somehow, did it?”

  Another thing to feel guilty about, I thought wildly. “No, uh, I’m sure it’s not in my closet,” I said, hoping I sounded calm. I wasn’t used to this kind of thing, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if my thoughts had been plain to see in my face. I never even thought about the upcoming camping trip when I fixed up the tree house for Diana.

  “I guess he can take mine,” Mom said, returning her attention to the casseroles she was making to put in the freezer. She did that on days she wasn’t working so when she got busy we could just defrost something to eat. “Since I’m not going this time. I guess I’m getting too busy, too. I miss the things we used to do together. Maybe the next time they camp out, you and I should go, too. What do you think?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Mom, what do you think I should do about the Foster kids? It’s hard to find something fascinating to do that will interest all three of them at once.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Darcy. Except that if you show them you like them, they’ll probably behave for you.”

  “Jeremy may be hard to like,” I said slowly.

  “That means he needs liking, or loving, most of all, I suspect. Children will sometimes push a parent with unacceptable behavior, until the parent sets a limit to it. Tim was terrible that way, but when we told him he simply could not do certain things, and then stopped him from doing them, he seemed relieved that it had all been settled, and he stopped fighting us on that issue. Until the next issue came along, of course.”

  My mom didn’t have a degree in psychology, but she seemed pretty smart to me. “I don’t understand why Mrs./Dr. Foster doesn’t know what’s happening with her own kids, though,” I said. “She’s a psychiatrist, for pete’s sake.”

  Mom fastened foil over the tops of the casserole dishes and sealed them shut. “Here, put these in the freezer for me, will you? The thing is, Darcy, it’s a lot easier to look at other people’s children and see what’s wrong with them than to interpret what’s happening right under your nose. We’re too close to our own families and it’s easier to pretend nothing’s wrong than to have to try to deal with the problems. Maybe I’m mistaken about the Foster kids, but it can’t hurt to be firm but loving with them. I never saw a child who didn’t respond to love.”

  So I went to work the next day determined to love Jeremy if it killed me, and that lasted for about twenty minutes after Mrs. Murphy had gone off to her dental appointment.

  We started off all right. They’d had lunch, this time, so we didn’t have to risk cooking anything. Shana wanted a story—the same one, Gregory Gray and the Brave Beast—so I read that while the other kids were looking for books.

  “She always wants that one,” Melissa told me. “It’s her favorite.”

  By the time I finished the first story, Melissa was there with her book, but Jeremy had disappeared.

  “Just a minute,” I told the girls, “I have to find Jeremy.”

  And right then this horrible noise began, so that my hair stood on end and chills ran all through me. It was loud and terrifying and made me want to scream at it to stop.

  It didn’t stop, though. It would break off for a few seconds, and then start again. “What is it?” I asked wildly, looking around for the source of the sound.

  Shana sat on the couch, her book closed on her lap, blue eyes very wide and startled. Melissa held her hands over her ears and scrunched up her face.

  “It’s the burglar alarm, I think,” Melissa said.

  Burglars? In the middle of the afternoon?

  The racket was awesome; I felt as if I were being assaulted, and I didn’t know what to do. Call the police? I looked around for the telephone.

  Jere
my suddenly appeared in the doorway of the playroom, looking about the way I felt—frightened.

  “What did you do, Jeremy?” Melissa asked, and he shook his head.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he protested earnestly, “honest I didn’t.”

  It was hard to recover my wits with that alarm going off. I didn’t know much about burglar alarms, but there must be a way to turn it off. I asked Jeremy.

  “I don’t know. Is there really a burglar?”

  “I don’t know,” I echoed. “I think we’d better call the police. Where’s the telephone?”

  It was hard to think, to dial, even with the number written on a sticker on the phone book so I didn’t have to look it up. If I were the burglar, I thought, if there was a burglar, I’d run for my life, with that sound going on and on. It must be almost loud enough to be heard over at our house.

  In a moment, between the blasts of the alarm, I heard two separate sounds. Someone pounding on the front door and a siren.

  “Marysville Police Department,” a voice said in my ear.

  “Uh, I’m the baby-sitter at the Foster home on Oakwood Drive,” I said nervously. “Ah—” I had to wait for the next blast of sound to end before I could continue. “The burglar alarm is going off, and I don’t know why, or how to stop it—”

  “We have an officer on the way,” the dispatcher’s voice said calmly. I suppose it was easier to stay calm when you weren’t where the crime was actually taking place.

  Jeremy ran to the front of the house to peer through the windows, which were covered with the iron grillwork. I had thought that was decorative, but now I wondered if the windows were barred to keep burglars out. They were all that way except the ones that opened inside the fenced yard.

  Could someone really have attempted to burglarize the house? Or had Jeremy, in spite of his denial, been responsible for setting off the alarm?

  “The cops are here!” Jeremy said excitedly as I entered the front hallway.