Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher (20 page)

“Can’t you stay for dinner?” Marissa asks.

I have to laugh ’cause she says it like it’s
her
house and
she’ll
be the one cooking. “Nah. I’ve got to get home to Grams.” Then I holler, “Bye, Hudson! Bye, Spy Guy!” and after they holler bye back, I jet out of there.

So I’m just cruising along on my skateboard, minding my own business, taking shortcuts when I can, jayriding when it’s safe, thinking about what another crazy day it’s been, when I turn a corner near the mall and finally notice something:

I’m being followed.

The car following me is a really generic-looking white sedan. It’s clean and seems to be in good shape, but it’s an older style. Sort of big, with lines that are sharp instead of rounded. And I’m sure I could have ditched it by cutting through the mall, but I didn’t like being spied on or followed, and I wanted to find out who was following me. So instead of ditching it, I flip a U-ie, cruise down a driveway, cut into the street, and ride my skateboard straight for the car’s front grille.

The car nose-dives to a halt.

I stop, too, and pop up my board. And when I see the driver through the windshield, my jaw drops. “Officer Borsch?”

He powers down his window. “Are you
nuts
?”

“Why were you tailing me?” I ask, coming around to the driver’s side.

“I was trying to catch up to you! Which would have been a lot easier if I ran stop signs and hopped curbs and cut corners!” He looks in his rearview mirror. “Get out of the street already!”

So I zip over to the sidewalk, and when he’s pulled up
to the curb, he rolls down the passenger window and leans across the bench seat. “I’ve been taken off the Vince case.”

I bend down. “What?
Why?
”

“I’ve been told I have a conflict of interest.”

“A conflict of—” But then I get it. “ ’Cause of me being in your wedding?”

He nods.

“So Foxmore heard my mom talking about it?”

“That’s right.”

Now, he’s looking real uncomfortable, with his cast hand gripping the steering wheel, leaned clear over the way he is. And since he’s not exactly parked legally, and since I’ve got a gazillion more questions and don’t want him just taking off, I ask, “Can I get in?”

He hesitates, then pops up the lock. So I jump inside, skateboard, backpack, and all, and as he pulls back into traffic, he says, “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you were a compulsive liar.” He eyes me. “Which is exactly what Blaine Foxmore thinks.”

“But you do know better, right?” I cross my heart and tell him, “I
swear
I had nothing to do with any of it.”

He nods. “I believe you.” Then he raises an eyebrow and adds, “And I would be alone in that, except for Bob Vince.”

I hesitate, ’cause I’m pretty sure I heard that wrong. “You’re saying Mr.
Vince
believes me?”

He turns onto the road that winds between the mall and the parking structures. “Every time someone suggested it, he brought up other people he thought might be guilty.”

“But he
hates
me.”

“Well, apparently, you’re not the only one who hates him. He thinks these are real death threats.”

“So … who
does
he think it is?”

“He’s all over the map. And he’s very testy. He’s got no patience for logical analysis. One minute he thinks this, the next that.”

“Well, who do
you
think it is?”

“I keep hitting roadblocks.” He eyes me. “Although Billy Pratt is hiding something.” A heartbeat passes. Maybe two. Then he adds, “And I’m pretty sure you know what it is.”

“Officer Borsch, he’s
not
the one doing this stuff!”

He comes to a complete stop at an empty mall crosswalk. “You seem pretty sure about that,” he says, studying me. “But I questioned him at his house today, and I’m not.”

“Wait—you went to Billy’s house today? How is he? And where does he live?”

Officer Borsch raises an eyebrow at me. “I wouldn’t tell you where he lives any more than I would tell him where you live.”

I don’t actually
say
Oops, but I know it’s written all over my face.

“And if you’re so sure he’s not the one who’s doing this, then tell me what he
is
hiding. Because I know it’s something.”

I felt like I was standing in the middle of a bridge that was collapsing. On one side was Billy’s secret, on the other, Officer Borsch’s trust. And the way Officer Borsch
was looking at me … well, I knew that if his trust in me was broken, I would never get it back.

It was a miracle that he’d given it to me in the first place.

So as he pulled forward, I blurted out the truth. I told him about Billy writing the Die Dude on the board and about Heather blackmailing him, and how Sasha Stamos disposed of Heather’s phone and all that. And I probably didn’t have to tell him about Sasha, but I was doing a truth dump, and the story felt like it had holes in it without the Sasha part.

Now, while I was talking, Officer Borsch turned into the mall parking structure and stopped the car. I guess listening to me was too distracting, because he didn’t exactly pull into a parking
slot
or anything.

He just, you know, stopped.

So when I’m all done running at the mouth, I look around and ask, “Uh … should you be stopped here?”

He eyes me. “Roadway concerns from a notorious jaywalker?” But he does pull into a parking slot and cut the motor. He stares straight ahead, and I can tell there are some heavy thoughts duking it out inside his skull, and I’m guessing they have to do with telling me things that maybe he shouldn’t.

So I throw a few punches of my own. “Look, the stuff I just told you? That was a big secret between Billy and me. And it was a secret between Sasha and me, too. So whatever you’re thinking about not telling me? You need to just spill it. Fair’s fair.”

He sucks at a tooth. It’s a long, slow, sputtering sound that migrates from one side of his mouth to the other. Finally he says, “What makes you think I’m not telling you something?”

I shrug. “You’re Gil Borsch, aren’t you?”

He laughs.

Then I kind of look around and say, “And are you on duty or what?” because I can’t quite figure his car out. There’s a police scanner mounted under the console that’s been staticking and chattering in the background the whole time I’ve been in the car, and there’s one of those portable magnetic lights on the floor by my feet. You know—the kind cops can stick out through their window and slap up on their roof? Plus, Officer Borsch is in uniform, and there’s a gun at his hip.

“No, I’m on my way home.”

I’m still looking around. There are boxes of stuff and a beat-up old briefcase on the backseat. There’s also a big black flashlight, a pair of handcuffs, and about a dozen to-go coffee cups on the floor
behind
the front seat. I look back at him. “So … is this an undercover car?”

“No. It’s mine.”

And that’s when it hits me—Officer Borsch is a cop. He’s not a guy with a family who dotes on his kids, or likes to watch movies, or follows basketball on TV and
also
reports to his job as a cop. He
is
a cop. From the minute he wakes up to the moment he falls asleep—and probably also
in
his sleep—Gil Borsch is a cop.

And that’s when something
else
hits me.

“It bugs you to be taken off a case, doesn’t it.”

He sucks around his teeth some more, and
finally
he says, “I hate it.”

“So stay on it through me!”

“How’s that?”

“Tell me whatever it is you’re thinking you don’t want to tell me.”

He frowns. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s that it’s not professional for me to discuss it with … a suspect.”

“But you know I didn’t do it, and if I really am a suspect, I could use some help getting unsuspected.”

He frowns and just sits there, quiet.

“Oh, would you tell me already? I promise to keep it totally to myself.”

“Hmm,” he says, and I’m thinking he’s probably thinking what
I’m
thinking—that I’d promised Billy and Sasha that I’d keep their secrets to myself, too. But then he says, “It’s nothing earth-shattering. Just a pile of random facts that don’t seem to add up.”

“Such as?”

“Such as …” He looks at me. “Your vice principal seems to have a certain level of disdain for Bob Vince.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think he likes him very much.”

“Well, who does?”

He shrugs like, Yeah, true. “Vince’s ex-wife also seems to have a real beef with him. Apparently, the child-support payments have stopped.”

“Wait. Mr. Vince has
kids
?”

“Two girls, ages ten and eleven.”

I slide down in my seat a little. “Man, I feel sorry for those kids.”

“Yeah, well, he told me he didn’t want to get divorced and that he’s tired of having to pay while the boyfriend acts like he’s their dad. His ex told me she’s going to attach his wages.”

“What’s that mean?”

“She’s going to get a court order that will automatically give her part of his paycheck.”

“But if
she
left
him …
”

“It doesn’t matter. They’re still his kids, and he owes child support.”

I think about this a minute. “But she can’t be the person doing the Die Duding. For one thing, no middle-aged lady is going to say ‘Die Dude.’ And besides, how can anybody think it’s a woman or a girl or whatever when that phone recording was a
guy’s
voice?”

He eyes me. “Maybe it’s the boyfriend.”

“Oh, wow.”

Officer Borsch sorta shrugs. “That theory’s got holes in it, too. And it doesn’t do you any good at school. Foxmore thinks that you and Billy are in it together and that you used a Halloween voice changer. And I did some checking. They are in the stores already, and when I had Debra speak into one, she sure didn’t sound like herself.” Then he says, “And speaking of that phone message, something about that whole day bothers me.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

He just sits there staring through the windshield, so finally I ask, “And … ?”

“And the timing of the fire alarm and the phone message seems like a strange coincidence to me. Sure, someone could have seized on the fire alarm as an opportunity to leave Vince that phone message, but it’s all too tightly choreographed for me. Especially since there was no fire.”

That made my eyebrows reach for my bangs. And the thought of the calls being connected and someone trying to frame
me
for it was kinda freaking me out. “So … did you figure out who made the call about the fire?”

He gives me a little smile. “Very good. And yes.” He does a nose wag out through the windshield toward the mall. “The call was placed from that phone booth right over there.”

I let
that
sink in. “No view of the school from here.”

“Unless you’re on the roof of the mall, and even then, barely.”

“So it was a crank call, but … how does that connect to someone using Billy’s phone to leave a message on Vince’s machine?”

He shakes his head. “More random facts that don’t seem to want to work together.” He eyes me. “But I still don’t like the coincidence.”

We sit there a minute, and finally I ask, “So what else? What about his car getting keyed. How bad was that, anyway?”

He reaches over and grabs the briefcase off the backseat with his good hand. “You want to see?” Then he clicks
open the latches and pulls out a laptop. He boots it up, then jabs in a password with his right hand, and pretty soon I’m looking at the messiest computer desktop I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t slow him down, though. He double-clicks on a folder icon and then opens up a photo file.

Suddenly the screen is filled with a picture of Mr. Vince’s SUV’s door.

The DIE DUDE looks angry and deep.

And the letters are
big
.

Like, four inches tall.

And they go nearly clear across the driver’s door.

I shake my head. “That’s brutal.”

He nods, then clicks through some other pictures of the door, until he gets to one where the DIE DUDE takes up about half the screen. “Notice anything interesting here?”

I study it but have no idea what he’s seeing that I’m not.

He gives me a minute, then says, “I didn’t really notice it when we took the report, but I definitely see it here.”

I study the picture some more, but I still don’t get it.

So he tells me, “Maybe lean back a little,” and when I do, I notice that there’s a rectangular area around the DIE DUDE that seems darker than the rest of the door. “This right here?” I ask, tracing the area.

He cries, “Yes!” which is weird because I don’t think I’ve ever seen Officer Borsch
excited
before. Then he says, “I’ve been told I’m imagining things, or that it’s just a function of lighting, but once you notice it in one of the
pictures, you start seeing it in all of them. It’s very uniform. Maybe a foot by a foot and a half.”

“So what do you think it is?”

“That’s just it. I have no idea. If the message had been sprayed on through a stencil, I’d think it would be from contact with the stencil. Or maybe someone held something up to the door to prevent leaving fingerprints.”

“But you wouldn’t need to touch the door to scratch in the letters, would you?”

“That’s right,” he says with a frown. “So you see what I mean? The more we know, the less things seem to add up.”

I think about this a minute, then say, “Well, I probably should get going.” And as I grab my stuff and open the door, he asks, “You don’t want a ride?”

“Nah.”

“Well, thanks for the talk,” he says as I’m getting out. “I don’t know why, but I feel better.”

“Me too,” I tell him. “Except that now I know Mr. Foxmore has it in for me.”

“Just tell the truth. And
try
to be respectful.” He shakes his head a little. “Do yourself a favor, Sammy, and curb the attitude.”

So I tell him, “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” with
plenty
of attitude.