Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man (5 page)

I don’t know what
on
. I mean, I wasn’t eating candy or anything. I just choked. So there I am, hacking away, wondering why on earth Mrs. Graybill’s wearing a dress that looks like a honeysuckle hurricane instead of her old pink bathrobe, and my brain can’t seem to come up with a decent
lie about why I’m visiting my grandmother at ten o’clock at night with a sack of candy and a face full of green paint.

When I finally stop hacking, Mrs. Graybill stands there with her fists on her hips. “Rita needs a sugar boost, I suppose?”

I manage to squeak, “Ha-ha! That’s a good one!” Then I look at her like
she’s
the one with a green face and warts and say, “I forgot my schoolbooks.” I ring the bell and stare at her like I’ve got all the business in the world being where I am, and when Grams answers the door I say real loud, “Happy Halloween, Mrs. Graybill!” and go inside.

Now Mrs. Graybill’s not going to just tuck herself in bed. She’s going to hang up her honeysuckle hurricane, put on some thick socks and her old pink bathrobe, and wait. And if I don’t come out of Grams’ apartment in a few minutes, she’s going to sic Mr. Garnucci on Grams and me. Either that or she’ll call the police again, and with my luck Officer Borsch will be the one taking the report.

So the minute I’m inside, I say, “Grams, I’m sorry I’m late, but there was an emergency,” and then I tell her all about the Bush House and the fire and the mask, and about Chauncy and Officer Borsch.

The whole time I’m talking she doesn’t say a word. She just sits there staring at me, her eyes getting bigger and bigger, and when I’m all done, she takes a deep breath and says, “How do you get yourself
into
these things?” Then she says, “Chauncy?
LeBard?
That sounds like some kind of aristocratic English name.” She turns and mumbles, “Certainly not a name I would’ve pictured for the
Bush
Man.”

I shoot forward on the couch. “So you
do
know something about him!”

Grams smooths down her skirt. “All I know is gossip, and gossip is poison. Not something I want to spread around.”

I felt like saying, Tell me! Tell me what you know! but I could tell by the way her chin was pushed forward that she wasn’t about to spoon me any poison. I eyed her and said, “Did you know he’d had a tracheotomy?”

Her chin drops a little, and her head shakes back and forth.

“Did you know that he doesn’t have any electricity?”

She pops her glasses off her nose and rubs them with the hem of her blouse. “No! All I know is that people say he went crazy after his mother died. There. Are you satisfied?” She pops her glasses back on her nose. “I’ve also heard he’s dangerous—and obviously he’s unstable. The fact that you went into that house tonight …” She throws her hands up in the air and says, “Samantha,
why
did you have to go inside? Why didn’t you just call the fire department?”

I was about to tell Grams that she would’ve gone in too if she’d seen the fire, only she stands up and says, “And what are we going to do about Daisy? We can’t have you
not go
back out, but it’s getting so late, and heaven knows when she’ll decide to give up for the night.”

I look at her kind of doubtful-like. “Do you want me to go over to Marissa’s?”

“No, no. That’s too far.” She thinks for a minute. “How about Dot? Do you think she would mind?”

“She’s got a zillion brothers and sisters, and they live in this really skinny house,”

“A skinny house?”

“Yeah, and it’s—”

Grams closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Never mind about her house. I guess that’s out of the question, then?”

“Yeah. Hey, how about Hudson’s?”

“Hudson’s?”

“Sure! He’s got lots of room and a great big couch, and I know he won’t mind.”

She thinks about this for a minute, then lets out a big sigh, and off she goes to the kitchen to call. And before you know it, off
I
go to Hudson’s with a toothbrush and a change of clothes stuffed in my backpack.

Mrs. Graybill’s watching all right, but I just pretend I don’t know it. I wave bye to Grams and call, “Sorry I forgot my books! See you tomorrow,” and head over to Hudson’s.

Hudson Graham may be seventy-two, but except for the fact that his hair’s all white and his eyebrows need a good raking, it’s easy to forget he’s that old. He’s nowhere near slowing down. As a matter of fact, with Hudson you get the feeling that he’s just warming up.

When I got to his house, he was sitting in the dark on the porch, drinking iced tea, thinking. You can always tell when Hudson’s thinking because he props his feet up on the railing, crosses them at the ankles, and taps the edges of his boots together like he’s listening to music. And since his boots were clicking pretty fast, I knew—he was thinking pretty hard.

He didn’t jump up when he saw me coming up the walkway, either. He just reached over to the pitcher, poured me some iced tea, and said, “Hello, Sammy. Have a seat.”

What I really wanted to do was take a shower. A nice long, hot shower. I was tired of being the Marsh Monster, I was sick of the smell of hair spray, and I was cold. But I could tell from the way Hudson’s boots were beating each other up that I was going to have to sit there all sticky and green until Hudson had heard the whole story.

I was expecting him to start right in, asking me what I thought I was doing, going into someone else’s house and all of that, but instead he says, “So, you’ve met Chauncy.”

That took me by surprise. “How do
you
know him?”

Hudson rocks a bit, then shoos a moth that’s fluttering around the brass tip of his boot. “Knew him. Years ago.” He nods over at the chair I’m in and says, “He used to sit right there and argue politics with me.”

“You’re kidding! How’d you meet him?”

Hudson chuckles. “I took an evening course at the college—he was the instructor.”

“Chauncy was a
teacher?
”

“That’s right. A good one, too. He taught a number of poli. sci. courses there. The kids loved him. He was an eloquent speaker and quite deft at debating—a real champion of liberal causes.”

“So what happened?”

Hudson shakes his head. “I don’t really know. It had something to do with the death of his mother. He took care of her until the day she died, and when the will was read, Chauncy wound up with everything.”

“Were there other relatives?”

“A brother.”

“And the brother didn’t get anything?”

“Not one thin dime. Even Chauncy didn’t understand it. Apparently Mrs. LeBard was annoyed with the brother and didn’t care for his wife. Courtney seemed like a fine woman to everyone else, but from what I understand a
saint
wouldn’t have been good enough for the mother.”

“How come?”

“Who knows? I always figured she had trouble letting go.”

We just sit for a minute, and finally I ask, “So where’s the brother now?”

“Oh, he still lives in town—off Morrison somewhere. The man’s very stubborn. He somehow blames Chauncy for everything—the inheritance, even their mother’s death.”

“How long ago did Chauncy’s mother die?”

Hudson takes a deep breath. “Oh, it’s got to be ten years by now. After that, he quit coming over, and pretty soon he started letting the yard go. I used to go over there and offer to help out, but he didn’t want it, and after a while he wouldn’t even answer the door.” Then he says very quietly, “I didn’t know about the tracheotomy until tonight.”

We both look at the stars for a bit. “Grams says he’s dangerous—or unstable, anyway.”

Hudson throws his head back and laughs. “Rita told you that?” He takes a deep breath and smooths an eyebrow. “Chauncy is fragile. Brilliant, but fragile. He’s an honorable man—he’d go to his grave before he’d hurt another
person.” He grins at me and says, “I’ll have to have a talk with your grandmother about her information sources.”

Hudson goes back to staring off into space, and I’m about to ask him if I can
please
take a shower when he says real softly, “How’s he doing?”

Well, somehow I don’t feel like telling him that this brilliant, honorable friend of his is living like a rat in Vampire Heaven, so I kind of stammer, “Um … ah …”

Hudson shakes his head. “Rita said he’s got no power, no phone …? I can’t imagine it! That house used to shake with Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. You could smell the coffee brewing from the foyer! How does he make his coffee? Chauncy without coffee … can’t imagine it! And this time of year … he must be freezing.”

By now I’m sitting there with my teeth chattering out of my mouth. Hudson turns to me and says, “You’re cold? Say, don’t you want to get out of that costume?”

I chatter and laugh and nod all at the same time.

After I take a shower, Hudson brings me some cocoa and shows me to the couch.

When he leaves, I rearrange the cushions, turn off the light, and sit there, snuggled up in a blanket, sipping hot chocolate, and thinking about Chauncy.

But as my eyes get used to the darkness, I start to feel very uncomfortable. See, Hudson’s den is really a library. And I’m not talking a set of encyclopedias and a dictionary or two. I’m talking a
library
. He has shelves that go from the floor clear to the ceiling, and whenever I come over with a question that he can’t answer, we come to the den and he finds a book that’ll tell us.

And I’ve always liked coming to the den to watch him dig for answers, but sitting there in the dark with books all around me—all of a sudden I feel like I’m spending the night in Vampire Heaven.

It takes me a while to shake off the creeps, and the last thing I remember thinking before falling asleep is, Why would anyone want to rob a man who seems to have nothing? Nothing but books.

Hudson didn’t wake me up in the morning; his cooking did. I could smell bacon frying and hear eggs popping on the griddle, and let me tell you, that got me out of bed quicker than oatmeal ever has. And it wasn’t until I’d eaten three eggs, six pieces of bacon, and a couple slices of toast that I noticed the clock on the wall.

I jumped up. “Holy smokes! I’m
late
.”

Hudson looks over his shoulder at the clock and says, “You’ve still got twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes! It takes me almost twenty to
get
to school!” Now part of me’s thinking that it’s a done deed. I’ve got detention with Vice Principal Caan for being late, and that’s that. But I run into the den anyway, switch into my school clothes, and yank a brush through my hair, because I’m thinking that maybe, just
maybe
I can make it.

And I’ve got the couch thrown back together and my junk just about stuffed into my backpack when Hudson walks into the room. “I’ve got your lunch made and Jester’s out front warming up. Whenever you’re ready.”

I stop stuffing. “You’re giving me a ride?”

Hudson grins. “You bet.”

Jester seems like a brand-new car because it’s so shiny it sparkles, but one look at it and you know it’s ancient. It’s
big with pointy taillights, whitewall tires, and a mammoth steering wheel. And it’s lavender. Hudson insists that it’s “sienna rose,” but believe me, it’s lavender.

It was fun riding to school in Hudson’s car. Every time we came to a stoplight people would kind of look, or nudge the person they were with and point, and when we pulled into the school parking lot some kids came up to me and said, “Cool car!”

So the day was off to a pretty good start, when who comes sneaking up behind me? Heather Acosta and a group of her friends. And what does Rude ‘n’ Red say? She says, “Who was that? Your
dad?
” Then she turns to her friends, and they all laugh like a pack of hyenas.

I felt like telling her to go somewhere deep and toasty, but instead I turn and walk toward homeroom. Heather walks right behind me, though, mimicking the way I’m walking so her friends will keep on laughing.

I try to ignore her, but I’m getting madder and madder and I really want to whip around and push her over. Then she comes up beside me and says, “Those shoes are just
divine
. Such a luscious green. Oh, do tell! Where did you get them?”

I’m walking faster and faster, thinking I know my high-tops look stupid all sprayed green, but they’re my only shoes and I didn’t have time to wash them so what was I supposed to do? And I’m about to tell her to shut up when all of a sudden her eyes get really big and she starts to giggle. Then she backs off. Just like that.

I look across the patio to see what Heather’s giggling about, and what I see is Amber Bellows coming at me like
a line drive. And let me tell you, she is
mad
. I move aside because I don’t want to get in her way. I mean, I know Amber because she’s the head cheerleader and the eighth-grade president, but Amber doesn’t know me from the man in the moon, and I figured there was no way she could be mad at
me
.

Boy, did I figure wrong. She comes right up to me with her nostrils flaring, whips that long brown hair out of her way, and says, “You stop bothering him, do you hear me? I’ve had enough of this! It’s not funny, and it’s not cute!”