YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED.
Mrs. Willawago gasped when she read it. “Heavenly Father! It's another threat!”
I tried to wipe the I-told-you-so look off my face, but let me tell you, it wasn't easy.
“What's this about?” Marissa whispered. “Why is she being threatened? What rock?”
“I'll explain everything in a minute,” I said, then I eased the paper out of Mrs. Willawago's hand and started inspecting it. Front side, back side, up to the light, sideways.
I didn't see a doggone thing.
“What are you looking for?” Mrs. Willawago asked, her voice kind of croaky.
I shook my head. “I have no idea.” Then I checked out the envelope and said, “This is postmarked Saturday. That's the day after the rock was delivered.”
Mrs. Willawago nodded, but she was staring at the paper. “This is a very ominous threat. It can mean two different things.”
Then I saw the Santa Martina Times lying on the coffee table behind her. The headline read LOCAL MONUMENTS UNDER SIEGE, LONGTIME CITIZENS RAILROADED FROM HOMES.
There was a picture of Mrs. Willawago in the parlor car and another one of the front of her house. “Hey! You made the front page,” I said, picking it up.
Her face lit up. “And it's a fantastic article.” She pointed to a section of it. “Read this right here.”
So Marissa looked over my shoulder as I read the part she'd pointed out.
Willawago's Train House is a ferrophiliac's delight—full of antique equipment such as signal lanterns, inspection torches, coal picks, fire hooks, and surveying equipment as well as brass bells, headlights, and whistles. There is also a collection of clothing, ranging from a telegrapher's uniform to the hickory-stripe overalls, hat, and goggles of an engineer. The walls are decorated with nearly one hundred locomotive builder's plates dating back as far as 1875, and among these are mounted, framed ink-on-linen drawings of locomotive prototypes, employee record cards, telegrams, and photographs of the Last Spike ceremony.
To one side of Willawago's original house is a restored Pullman parlor car used now as a sitting room, and to the other Willawago has attached a Union Pacific caboose that is utilized as a guest bedroom.
A short walk away, the abandoned Santa Martina Railroad Office is likewise a hidden historic treasure. Behind the boarded-up doors and windows lie what Annie Willawago describes as “tools and toys of the trade,” a museum waiting to open, an era yearning not to be forgotten.
“He really paints the picture, doesn't he?” she asked, beaming away. “And I love that last line right there.”
“Lots of people in Santa Martina are into trains,” Marissa said. “My dad has a friend who collects—he would love to own this stuff.”
“You see?” Mrs. Willawago said. “There's a real value to these things. And I think it's important that kids today understand the historical significance of the railroad. Why, it's—”
“Uh, Mrs. Willawago,” I said, because I could tell she was about to give us a little sermon on the toils and sacrifices of the men who gave their lives or limbs to tie our great country together. “Don't you think you should call the police?”
She blinked at me a minute. “Oh! Oh yes, of course.”
“We'll be walking Captain Patch,” I said as she headed for the phone.
“Thanks, angel. Thanks so much!”
The French door to the backyard had been repaired over the weekend, so I told Marissa, “This is the door someone threw a rock through on Friday. It was totally shattered.”
Captain Patch yip-yap-woofed a happy hello as we stepped outside, and Marissa said, “So catch me up, would you? What rock? Who threw it? What's going on?”
I latched the leash to Captain Patch and led him down the street to Miller, instead of toward McEllen like we usually went. And I was explaining to Marissa about the city trying to seize the land and how Coralee Lyon was in cahoots with Leland Hawking, but I was talking really fast, and I'm afraid it came out kinda jumbled because Marissa's face crinkled up and she said, “Sammy, slow down. I'm not following any of this. Eminent doh-what?”
“Domain. Eminent domain.”
“Wait a minute—didn't Mr. Holgartner talk about that in history?”
“Yeah. It was boring then, but it's interesting now.”
“Coulda fooled me,” she grumbled. “And why are you whispering?”
“Because this is Leland Hawking's office coming up right here. See?” I said, pointing over the hedge. “That's where Coralee Lyon's car was parked. And that's the window where I went up and heard them talking.”
When we rounded the corner and Patch pulled over to sniff out any new “postings” on Leland Hawking's sign, I said to Marissa, “Hey, hold Patch for a minute, would you?”
She sighed and shook her head like she just knew I was about to do something she didn't want me to do. “Why?”
“I just want to go in for a minute.”
“And do what?”
“And see if I can spot some paper like that threat was written on.”
She scowled but put out her hand for the leash. “I'll meet you at the ball fields, okay?”
“Great!”
Trouble is, when I got up to the front door of Leland Hawking's office, there was one of those cardboard clocks in the window, and the time on it was 10:00.
Leland Hawking, Esquire was gone for the day.
I peeked through the blinds for a while anyway but didn't spot any odd paper anywhere. Just a big room with a little waiting area, an oversized desk, a few chairs, some plants, and a whole wall of books. Everything was in lawyer colors, too: greens, browns, and brass.
So I hurried toward the ball fields to find Marissa, only when I got to the edge of the hill that leads down to the backstop, I couldn't believe my eyes. Marissa was trotting Captain Patch around the bases, and he was staying right at her side. She took a U-turn at second base. He took a U-turn, too. No yanking. No dragging. No looking like a marlin on a line. She went fast, he went fast. She stopped, he stopped. And in between all these maneuvers, she knelt and ruffled his ears and told him, “Good boy!” Then she took off again, saying, “Heel!”
After I'd watched them go forward and backward around the diamond again, I came down the hill, shouting, “How'd you do that?”
“He's smart.” She nuzzled him. “And he likes me, don't you, boy?” Then she grinned at me and said, “Plus, I bribed him with bits of cracker.”
“That's amazing!”
She shrugged. “I'm not gonna walk a dog that yanks me around like that.” She handed back the leash and said, “Find anything?”
I shook my head and started toward the sidewalk. “The office was closed.”
“So hurry up and tell me the rest of the story so we can talk about the dance, okay?”
I laughed. “Nothing like being direct.”
“Well, come on.” She put her hands out like she was a scale, weighing two items. “Eminent domain, the Farewell Dance. Old people and their problems, our first date …”
Captain Patch was starting to pull my arm off again. “Stop calling it a date, would you? It's not like that.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said. “Just finish the story. And tell him to heel! You're giving him bad habits.”
“Heel!” I said, pulling on the leash. I might as well have been tugging on a tiger, though, 'cause he kept right on yanking.
“Oh, good grief,” Marissa said, taking the leash from me. Then she commanded, “Patch, heel!” and two seconds later he was smacking on a microscopic piece of cheese cracker, walking by her side.
“How come you know how to train a dog? You've never even had one, have you?”
Marissa scowled. “No. But my mother made me go to obedience training with Brandon when he got a puppy. That was like four years ago, and she still doesn't think it's the ‘right time’ for us to get a dog.”
I chuckled, 'cause just when I think my mom's the worst, I hear about something her
mom's done, and I don't know—it sort of helps to balance things out.
“Now,” she said, “would you tell me the story?”
So I picked up where I'd left off, telling her about Earl Clooney Management and Hudson's friend and all of that. And when we got to the corner of Miller and Cook, I pointed across the street and said, “See that building? It's haunted.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, like I was dumber than dirt.
Now, usually I'm the one saying haunted stuff is bogus, and she's the one biting a nail, shivering in her shoes. And it's not like I was shivering in my shoes or anything, but I had actually said it like I believed it, and that's when I realized that I wanted to believe it.
So as we walked west on Cook, I told her about Goldie Danali and how the mall got built. The more I talked, the more her jaw dropped, and when I was all done, she just blinked at me and said, “I had no idea …!”
“Me neither,” I told her. Then I grinned and said, “You still think it's boring?”
She just said, “Wow,” so I added, “And now they're trying to do the same thing to Mrs. Willawago and the Stones.”
Marissa shook her head. “It's too bad they don't want to sell. That neighborhood's a wreck. And batting cages and a rec center would be awesome.”
“I agree.” I shrugged. “But not if they're haunted.”
So we walked down McEllen, and by the time we were past the pool complex, Marissa was pretty much caught up on everything. And she'd just said, “So. Can we talk about the dance now?” when I heard a sound coming out of the old railroad office. I stopped and whispered, “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” she said, looking around.
“Shhh.” I put up a finger and perked an ear. Then I heard it again. “That!” It was a strange sound. A muted sound. A slow, metallic screeching sound.
“So?” she said, looking toward the boarded-up windows of the railroad office. “And why are we whispering?”
“Because somebody's in there.”
“It's probably just some homeless guy.”
Sound eeeeeked from the building again.
“Or maybe it's haunted … !” she said, making fun of me.
I eyed her. “Yeah? Well, come on. Let's go find out.”
“Find out?” She grabbed me. “Wait a minute, Sammy. Wait just a minute.”
“What's the matter?” I said, pulling her along to the rear of the property, where I'd spotted a gap in the chain-link fence. “You afraid of ghosts?”
“Stop it. No. I just don't want to go inside some boarded-up building and find some deranged homeless guy cooking a can of beans.”
“Cooking a can of beans?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Or whatever homeless guys do when they break into abandoned buildings.” Captain Patch was back on the march now, yanking her along as he weaved in and out of the trees behind the property.
“Look,” I told her, squeezing through the hole in the fence, “I'm not going inside, I'm just looking inside.”
“Yeah, right! Do you remember the last time you said that? Do you remember how it almost killed us? Do you—”
“Take it easy, would you?”
“What if they've got a gun? What if they've got a knife? What if—”
“It's broad daylight, Marissa,” I said through the chain-link.
“It was broad daylight last time!”
I hesitated. “It was, wasn't it.”
“Yes!”
“Well …” I shrugged. “This is different.” Then I smiled at her and said, “Wanna come?”
Captain Patch had wrapped the leash around her legs twice as he sniff-sniff-sniffed the ground. “No!” she said, trying to pull her legs free. “I'm going to stay right here so I can call the police when you get yourself in trouble again.”
So off I went, zipping up to the railroad office. And I discovered that even though it still looked boarded up from a distance, the graffitied plywood that covered the back door had been pried back and was just leaning against the door frame.
I peeked behind the plywood and found that the door was slightly ajar. I'm talking very slightly—like an eighth of an inch. And maybe I should have just flung it open, looked, and run, but what I did was try to inch the door open a little farther.
Screeeeeech went the hinges.
I jumped to the side, ducked around the building, and waved at Marissa to take cover behind the trees.
We both held still and waited. But after a minute or two of nobody coming out, Marissa started asking me questions with her arms. You know, flagging at me. Shoulders up. Hands up. Hand in circles. Arm this way, arm that way, foot up, foot down … She was one big, bossy, semaphoring spaz.
And when I got sick of trying to explain with my arms that I didn't know what was going on, I just gave her a Forget-it! wave and tiptoed back to the door.
And great. Now I could see a whole wedge of nothing. Well, it was better than before—I could make out an old desk and a bunch of train stuff on the wall—but the door had only squeaked open about an inch, and I couldn't see anybody. So maybe I'd imagined that someone was inside. Maybe it was just a draft causing something to swing on its hinges. Like the squeaky door. I mean, no one had come to see what the squeak was about, right?
But then I realized that because the whole place was boarded up, it should have been dark inside. But there was light.
And the light was moving.
Then I heard footsteps.
And a clang.
“Shhh!” someone whispered.
My heart started beating faster. Shhh meant that not only was there someone inside, there was more than one someone inside!
Then all of a sudden, less than four feet away, someone crosses my slice of view.
It's a woman.
A woman I know.
And when I see what she has in her hand, I inch away from the door, tiptoe away from the building, then scamper as fast as I can to the hole in the fence.
FIFTEEN
Marissa and I ran to Mrs. Willawago's as fast as we could. It would have been faster to hop the back fence, but since we had Captain Patch with us, we had to run back to McEllen and then down Hopper. There was a police car out front, which in this case was good. I ran up the cow-catcher, burst through the front door, and said, “Come quick! Appliance Andy and his Old Lady are ransacking the railroad office!”
Mrs. Willawago was in the front room with Mrs. Stone, who had apparently also gotten a threatening letter. Standing with them were two police people I'd never seen before—a blond-braided woman and a man who looked like an oversized boy playing policeman, his face was squeaky clean, and his cheeks were round and soft, even though the rest of him wasn't at all fat.
Now, even though I said, “Come quick!” none of them did. They all just stood there, staring at me.
So I said, “Hurry! Appliance Andy is stealing stuff out of the railroad office!”
The first person to move was the blond-braided cop, and you know what she did? She flipped to a new form in her report-taking notebook and hoisted a pen. 160
“Don't write a report! GO! It's happening right NOW! Right down the street!”
Squeaky Cheeks looks at the Police Chick, then asks me, “Who's doing what where?”
“The neighbor on that side,” I tell him as I point to my right, “is stealing stuff out of the railroad office down that way,” I say, pointing to my left.
And I can just see them thinking, What could someone possibly want to steal out of that place, when Mrs. Willawago says, “It's full of railroading treasures. They probably read about it in the paper.”
So now Squeaky Cheeks and the Chick jet out to their car and take off, ka-thumping over potholes as they try to zoom down the street.
I roll my eyes and say, “Brother,” and head through the house for the French door, grumbling, “They don't know about the back fence, they don't know about the back door…”
“How do you know it's the Quinns?” Mrs. Stone ask
s, trailing behind Marissa and me.
“We heard them, then I found a break in the fence and looked in the back door.”
“You went snooping around other people's property?” Mrs. Stone asks. “Again?”
She didn't sound too happy, that's for sure. But I realized that in the last couple of days, I'd eavesdropped on Leland Hawking, gone into Mrs. Stone's backyard for a hose, and ducked through the fence of the railroad office.
I hadn't exactly been minding my own business.
“Do you need me out there?” Mrs. Willawago calls from the French door.
“Uh, no!” I call back. “I just want to make sure they don't escape this way.”
“Right!” she calls, and disappears inside.
So Marissa and I step onto the bottom frame of the back fence and look down toward the railroad office.
“Do you see them?” Mrs. Stone asks, but when I look over my shoulder to say no, it seems like she's more interested in Captain Patch than she is Appliance Andy. Patch is zigzagging around, sniff-sniff-sniffing the ground near where he'd dug before. “Sure hope it's not another dadgum gopher,” she mutters.
Then all of a sudden Marissa cries, “There they are!” and when I whip around, I see Andy and his Old Lady trucking toward us along the corridor of trees, their stomachs leading the way, their hair flying, their fists clamped around pillowcases of loot.
“They're back here!” I shout at the top of my lungs, even though the railroad office is so far away that the cops for sure can't hear me. “Help, police!” I shout into the sky.
Mrs. Stone cups her mouth and calls over to her house, “Marty! Call the police!” But then Marissa bounces up and down on the fence brace, crying, “There they are!” and this time she's talking about Squeaky and the Chick.
The trouble, though, is that they're not moving very fast at all. Yeah, they're shouting, “Stop! Police!” but it looks like they're fumbling around with guns or holsters or radios or who knows what, and they're sure not catching up.
“Oh, brother.” I start to climb the fence, only Marissa yanks me back, saying, “What are you doing? Stay out of it!”
“But what if they get away?”