Disappearing Acts (6 page)

“Hey, this is about a Flapdoodle. I didn't know you knew what a Flapdoodle was!”

Meat was surprised to find that in the middle of this pleasant memory, he had dialed Herculeah's phone number. Well, he had tried.

On the third ring a recorded voice came on. These recorded voices were always so cheerful, Meat thought, making callers who weren't cheerful feel even worse. Mrs. Jones said, “This is Mim Jones. I can't take your call right now, but you can leave a message at the beep, and I'll get back to you.”

At the beep, Meat cleared his throat and said, “Herculeah, I'm going back to Broadview to look for Marcie Mullet. If you don't want to come with me, fine! I'll go alone. Good-bye.”

He hung up the phone, proud that he had resisted the urge to revert to childishly adding fourteen or fifteen pleases.

He took a deep breath. Now that he had announced his intention, he had to carry it out. He had to go to Broadview.

Meat put on his jacket and went out onto the front porch. He took more time than necessary zipping his jacket up. He kept his eyes on the upstairs window of Herculeah's bedroom. He knew that was where she was and maybe if she saw him ...

To give her plenty of time, he took out the blue wallet and opened it. He stared at Marcie Mullet's ID picture on her driver's license. The picture didn't actually look like the girl on the bathroom floor. Her hair had been straighter and longer, but sometimes girls changed things like that.

The statistics didn't quite fit, either—five feet seven inches tall, 185 pounds. The girl on the bathroom floor had seemed taller than that, thinner too. Of course he wasn't an expert on girls' sizes.

He checked the rest of the wallet, though he knew the contents—no folding money, three quarters, two dimes.

But wait. What was this? There was a folded piece of paper behind the driver's license.

Meat took it out and unfolded it. He read the words and drew in his breath.

“All right. All right. I'll be at F.B. at 7:00. We'll talk.”

F.B. Funny Bonz.

And seven o‘clock was about the time he found the body.

He glanced again at Herculeah's bedroom window. He wanted to run across the street, beat on the door.

“I found a note—a note. You have to see this!” he wanted to read it aloud, giving it the menacing quality he felt it deserved.

But he had been left standing at Herculeah's front door enough times today. He went down the steps and at the corner turned toward Broadview.

 

 

Herculeah watched from her mother's office window as he put on his jacket and went through the blue wallet.

She watched intently as he discovered the piece of paper, watched as he unfolded it. The look on his face made her want to run across the street and read the message for herself. But she couldn't face Meat, not yet.

When Meat was out of sight, Herculeah picked up the phone and dialed a number of her own.

“Police Department, zone three. This is Captain Morrison. Can I help you?”

“Hi, it's Herculeah Jones, Captain. I want to speak to my dad.”

“He's not here, but I can give him a call if it's important.”

“I'm afraid it is.”

Herculeah waited until he came back on the line.

“Did you get him?” she asked.

“Yes, he's out that way. He says he'll stop by on his way back to the station.”

“Oh, thanks.”

She hung up the phone and waited, walking back and forth in front of the window until she saw her father's car. She burst through the front door and was on the sidewalk before her father had opened the door.

“Hi, Dad, I am so glad to see you. Can you come inside? Please!”

“I've got a few minutes. What's up?”

“Two things really,” she said as they went up the steps. “One is sort of, well, police business.”

“Oh?”

“I was wondering—well. Met thought he found a dead body last night.”

“Herculeah, you kids have got to stop finding dead bodies—”

“Just listen, Dad, please. Don't give me the finding-dead-bodies lecture. Meat went into the bathroom of Funny Bonz. Funny Bonz is a comedy club in the basement of the old hotel. There was a body on the floor—it sort of fell out of the toilet stall. Well, then the man who runs the club, Mike Howard—”

“Mike Howard ... Mike Howard,” her father said as if he were turning through a mental Rolodex.

“Yes, Mike Howard. And this is really suspicious. Mike Howard goes to check and he is gone a long time—much longer than it would take him to check. And then he comes back and says there was no body—that it was probably some sort of April Fools' joke.”

“Maybe it was. And it's not unusual for people to do drugs in public rest rooms.”

“I guess, but I was wondering if a body fitting this description had turned up. The corpse was a girl with brown hair, maybe dyed. Her name could be Marcie Mullet.”

“Is Meat at home?” her father interrupted.

“No.”

“I'd like to hear what he's got to say about this.”

“He could have gone over to Marcie Mullet's house—it's on Broadview—thirteen twenty-nine.”

How do you know the name and address of this dead body?“

“I don't. I'm just telling you what Meat told me.”

“I'll swing by there.”

“And, Dad, about the dead bodies?”

“I am happy to say we have no dead bodies, identified or not.”

“You probably wouldn't tell me if you did.”

There was a silence. Then her father said, “So what else is bothering you?”

“Dad, this is one of the worst things that has ever happened to me in my life.”

“Not again.”

“I'm serious this time. I bought a camera in Hidden Treasures yesterday. I don't know why I bought it except that I was drawn to it.”

“Why can't you shop at the mall like other girls?”

“Oh, Dad. But even as I was buying it, something was bothering me about the other objects for sale on the table. Like I'd seen them before.”

“So
^?
”

“But I couldn't think where. Anyway, whoever had owned the camera had taken nineteen exposures. I finished the roll and got it developed.” She paused to swallow. “Well, there were five pictures of Meat and Mom that I took and nineteen others.”

“So?”

“The other pictures were taken a long time ago—maybe ten years ago.”

“So
^?
”

“And I know the people in the pictures.”

“Herculeah, don't make me keep saying, ‘So.' Just tell me what's upset you about these pictures.”

“They're of Meat.”

“Meat across the street?”

“Yes, Meat and his dad. Well, seven of them are of Meat and his father doing normal things—like standing in front of the house and sitting on the front steps. There's one of them in the park, and one Meat must have taken of his dad because his head's cut off. Those were normal, everyday pictures like any father and son would take.

“And then I remembered where I'd seen all those other things at Hidden Treasures before. One time I was over at Meat's and he went into his mother's room. He'd bought some pecan rolls from the Lion's Club and they'd disappeared, and Meat suspected she'd hidden them in her closet.

“So I stood outside the door as a lookout to warn Meat if his mom came home. Finally, I got curious about what was taking him so long and I went in there and he had a whole box of stuff—and now I remember that most of what was in that box was on the same table with the camera. Meat's mom must have cleaned out her closet and taken all the stuff to Hidden Treasures.” She looked at her dad.

“And then, wouldn't you know it, Mrs. Mac came in and caught us. Meat blurted out that he was looking for his pecan rolls, he knew she'd hidden them, and she said that she'd found the empty wrappers when she was making up his bed that morning, that he must have eaten them in his sleep.”

“The pictures?” her father said tiredly.

“Oh, yes, sorry. I got carried away.”

She handed him the seven pictures, and he shuffled through them, glancing at each one for only a moment. He looked up at her. “I take it there's more.”

“Yes, the rest are of his father dressed for—” She made a face. “For, I guess you'd say, work.”

“What kind of work did he do?”

With a sigh she handed her father the rest of the photographs.

“See for yourself,” she said.

Meat approached 1329 Broadview with caution. He was on the opposite side of the street and he paused periodically to tie and retie his shoelaces. He had seen spies do this to make sure they weren't being followed. As he worked on his shoelaces he glanced up and down the street.

He straightened once again and went over his plans. He would cross the street, go up to the house, enter, and ring Marcie Mullet's bell. If she answered, he would ask to speak to her. “I have something that belongs to you,” he said, speaking out loud. He put one hand over his back pocket to make sure the wallet was still there.

A car pulled up beside him and a voice said, “Just the man I was looking for.”

Meat stared. He hadn't heard or seen the car approaching. Although Meat didn't think he was either a man or someone being looked for, he glanced around.

It was Chico Jones, Herculeah's dad, and Meat was very glad to see him.

“Mr. Jones, what are you doing here?”

“I stopped by the house, and Herculeah told me you might be here.” Chico Jones got out of the car and put one hand on Meat's shoulder. Meat couldn't remember him doing that before. Maybe Chico Jones suspected him of something.

“You talked to Herculeah?” he asked.

“She told me about what happened last night at Funny Bonz. I thought I'd check and make sure this—” he paused to look at his notes—“Marcie Mullet's all right.”

“Can I go with you? I want to know if she's all right, too.” It was extremely pleasant to have Chico Jones on his side.

“You wait in the car. I want to talk to you.”

“But—”

He held the car door open like a policeman and Meat got in like a victim. He watched as Chico Jones went up the walkway to 1329.

Even though Meat was extremely glad to have run into Chico Jones, he was uneasy about the way Chico Jones was treating him. Herculeah's dad was being too nice. Also, his look seemed more piercing than usual, as if he were actually trying to see into his brain—the way Herculeah frequently did.

He glanced out the window. Beside him the police radio sputtered with requests and information.

Could Herculeah have said something to her dad—something about—he couldn't think of anything to explain Herculeah's behavior. It was almost scary the way she was avoiding him, as if he had some terrible illness.

Suddenly, Chico Jones was coming down the steps, down the sidewalk.

“Not there,” Chico Jones said.

“‘And nobody's seen her?”

“No, but the superintendent heard someone in the apartment during the night.” Chico Jones turned his head to Meat. “So. What happened last night?”

“I was at Funny Bonz—that's a comedy club—and I went to the bathroom.”

“What time?” “A little after seven. And there was a dead body in one of the stalls. It fell forward into the room.”

“You're sure the person was dead?”

“She wasn't moving.”

“Did you feel for a pulse?”

“No, I couldn't.”

“See any blood?”

“No.”

“And what? You went back to the room where the class was being held?”

Meat felt that Chico Jones wasn't asking his usual sharp questions. It was as if something had distracted him.

“Yes, and I told Mike—”

Mike Howard.“ Another turn through the mental Rolodex.

“Yes, Mike Howard. I told him I'd found a dead body and he went and checked it out and came back and said there wasn't anyone there. He claimed it was an April Fools' joke. Another person went to the rest room later and didn't see anything either.”

“Well, I'll check it out, Meat.”

“Will you let me know what you find? Herculeah probably won't tell me anything. She's avoiding me these days.”

He watched Chico Jones closely to see his reaction. Chico Jones gave him another of those sympathetic looks that Meat didn't care for.

“You'll be the first to know,” he said cheerfully.

Meat got out of the car. He waited for Chico to start the motor, but he didn't. He leaned out and said, “Go on home, Meat. Herculeah's got something she wants to talk to you about.”

“What?”

“I'll let her do the honors.”

And Chico Jones drove away.

He knows what it is, Meat thought, and it's bad news. It's such bad news that he couldn't even tell me, and that's part of a policeman's training—to tell people bad news.

Everybody knows what the bad news is but me.

When Chico Jones's police car had rounded the corner and was out of sight, Meat sighed. Well, there was nothing to do now but go home and hear the bad news.

He looked up at the house, and his hand covered his back pocket. The wallet. He should have given it to Chico Jones. It was the only real evidence he had. But somehow he wasn't ready to give it up. It was his excuse for asking questions, for solving the mystery.