Shadow of Doubt (6 page)

The first name Ms. Denholm called out was Rob Stanford. Rob was trying out for the male lead. It turned out that almost all of the boys there were. After Rob had finished, Ms. Denholm asked him to read for the part of a police officer. Rob looked surprised, but he did as he was asked. I made a note that he sounded pretty convincing—he'd probably be good in the part.

Next up was Sam Lee, who turned out to be terrific in the lead. I put a big star next to his name and wrote down that he would be a great lead. Ms. Denholm must have liked him too, because she didn't ask him to read for any other part.

Gordon Cosh was one of the few boys who didn't want the lead role. He wanted to read for the part of the menacing gang leader. He even looked the part—tall and beefy, with a face like a bulldog. But his voice didn't match—it was high for a boy's voice, and soft.

“That was great, Gordon,” Ms. Denholm said. “But try to make your voice come from down deep inside,
like this
. And scare us. Be as menacing as you can.” She stood up tall, dropped her voice an octave so that it came out like a rumble, and recited the lines that Gordon had just read. She sounded so much like a gang leader that everyone laughed in surprise. A few people applauded when she finished. Ms. Denholm smiled and bowed deeply from the waist. “Now you try, Gordon,” she said. “I know you can do it.”

Gordon didn't look as certain, but he did as he was told. Ms. Denholm smiled. Gordon sounded downright scary. I put a star next to his name too.

And so it went, until everyone had had a turn. As Ms. Denholm explained that she'd be reviewing her notes that night and thanked everyone for coming, I turned and saw Billy sitting a few rows behind me, gazing dreamily at Ms. Denholm. I got up and slipped into the chair next to his.

“I thought you were meeting with Ms. Rachlis,” I said.

“I was. But we finished, so I thought I'd stick around and watch the auditions.”

“Right,” I said, grinning wickedly at him.

Billy's cheeks turned pink.

Kids filed out of the auditorium. Billy and I got up and trailed after them. I got my coat from my locker and then followed Billy. By the time I caught up with him the halls were deserted. Everyone, even the teachers, had gone home.

As Billy and I headed back down the stairs, we both glanced out a window in the stairwell. I spotted Ms. Denholm halfway across the parking lot. She had an enormous purse slung over one shoulder, a tote bag over the other, and her arms filled with books and notebooks—our journals, I bet. We were supposed to write in them every day. She went through them once a week. She stopped beside a small Toyota and set the books and notebooks on the roof of the car while she opened the rear door. Then she stowed the tote bag and the stack of books in the back of the car and climbed in behind the wheel.

Billy peered out the window while the little Toyota pulled out onto the street and disappeared.

“Come on,” I said. “I'm starving, and I'm supposed to meet my dad for dinner.” It was turning out to be a late dinner. I'd already called him once to let him know that the auditions were taking longer than expected.

Billy pulled back from the glass. “I think she dropped something,” he said.

I glanced outside. “I don't see anything.”

He started to hurry down the stairs.

“I saw something fall out of her purse,” he said. “I'm sure of it.”

I sighed and went after him. The school's front door clicked shut behind me.

Sure enough, there was a wallet lying on the ground near where Ms. Denholm's car had been parked.

“Told you so,” Billy said. He picked it up and handed it to me.

“What are you giving it to
me
for?”

“So you can see if there's a phone number.”

“
You
found it,” I said, holding it out to him. “You look.”

But he refused to take it.

“Okay, fine.” I opened it and looked inside. There was some cash, some IDs. Billy stared.

“She's driving without her driver's license,” Billy said, looking over my shoulder. “If she gets pulled over, she'll be in big trouble.”

I looked through the whole wallet.

“There's no phone number anywhere in here, Billy. Even if we could get back into school, what good would it do? There's no one in the office to give us her number. We'll just have to wait and give the wallet back tomorrow.”

“My mom lost her wallet once,” Billy said. “She was so afraid she'd been pickpocketed that she canceled her credit cards and reported all her ID stolen.”

I sighed again, dug out my phone, and did a search.

“Well?” Billy said when I finished.

“No listing for her that I can find.”

“Then we'll have to go to her house,” Billy said. I gave him a look. “So she doesn't worry,” he said defensively. “I recognize the address on her license. She lives right near that new homeless shelter, the one on Selwyn Street.”

I knew the place he meant. A lot of people in the neighborhood had put up a fight when the city had announced that it was being built. They didn't want a bunch of homeless people near their neighborhood.

“Since you know where it is, why don't you return it?” I said. I started to hand him the wallet again.

“Come with me.”

“Billy, I'm hungry.”

“Please, Robyn? You don't want her to worry, do you? Come with me.”

If Morgan could see the way he's acting
..., I thought.

I got my phone out again and rang my dad. I got his voice mail, so I told him that I'd had a change of plans, that maybe he'd want to go ahead and have dinner without me. Then Billy and I caught the bus.

. . .

“Wow,” Billy said as we stood on the sidewalk in front of Ms. Denholm's house.

Wow was right. It was a rambling old stone house with two turrets and a wraparound porch. It sat on a huge property that was set far back from the road. Directly opposite it was an enormous and popular park. I reread the house number and checked it against the address on the driver's license.

“It's the right place,” I said. I started up the walk to the porch. Billy followed me.

I pressed the doorbell and waited. No one answered.

“Maybe she's not home yet,” Billy said.

“She was driving. We took the bus.”

“Maybe she stopped somewhere.”

“There are lights on, Billy. Someone's home. Maybe the doorbell's broken.”

I knocked on the door. Nothing.

I knocked louder—a lot louder.

A curtain parted and a face peered out—the face of a very old woman. The door opened.

“Yes?” the woman said in a shaky voice.

“Is Ms. Denholm here?” I said.

“What?” the woman said. She bent toward me.

“Ms. Denholm,” I said, louder this time.

“Who?” the woman said, leaning even closer to me.

“Denholm,” I yelled. “We're looking for Ms.
Den
-holm.”

The old woman's face brightened. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Around the back.”

The back?

“Around the back,” the woman said again, gesturing this time. She closed the door and disappeared inside the cavernous house.

Billy and I left the porch and looked around.

“There must be a back entrance,” Billy said. He set off to find it. I followed him along the side of the house and was relieved to see what looked like Ms. Denholm's Toyota parked near the back door to the house. Beside the door were two buzzers, but neither was marked. I tried the first one.

After a moment, someone said, “Yes?”

“Ms. Denholm?” I said.

“Yes?” She sounded wary.

“It's Robyn and Billy—from school. You dropped your wallet in the school parking lot. We found it—”

There was a long pause. I imagined her checking her purse.

“Come on up,” she said at last.

A buzzer sounded. We pushed the door open and stepped into a tiny foyer that led immediately to some stairs. I led the way up to a second, much more spacious foyer on the third floor. Ms. Denholm was standing in an open doorway on the far side of it.

“I didn't even notice it was gone,” she said. “Thank God you found it.”

“Actually,” I said, “it was Billy who spotted it.”

She turned and beamed at Billy. “You didn't have to come all the way over here,” she said. “You could have waited and returned it tomorrow.”

Billy stood there, pink-faced and tongue-tied.

“Billy was afraid you'd worry and start canceling all your credit cards,” I said.

Ms. Denholm turned her megawatt smile on Billy, whose face went from pink to red. He stared down at the floor.

“Please,” Ms. Denholm said. “Come in. Let me make some hot chocolate to warm you up. It's the least I can do.”

Billy shuffled uncomfortably.

“Billy is a ve—” I started. Billy nudged me to stop me. Ms. Denholm looked quizzically at him.

“He doesn't drink milk,” I said. “He's a vegan.”

“I see,” Ms. Denholm said. “How about soy milk? I have a carton of it in the fridge.”

Billy's face lit up.

“If it's not too much trouble,” he said.

“No trouble at all. Please, come in.”

Her apartment was cheerful and roomy. There was a big, bright kitchen, a spacious living room, and a dining room with huge windows that looked out over the front of the house and the park across the street.

“This place is amazing!” I said.

“It is lovely, isn't it?” she said. “I was lucky to find it. The apartments are brand new. They were put in just last year by the owner's son.”

“I think we just met her,” I said.

“Mrs. Wyman is in her eighties, and this property is probably worth a fortune. Her son says he feels better knowing that there are other people close by, in case anything happens.” She took our coats and hung them up on a couple of pegs inside her front door. “Please, have a seat.”

She pulled out a carton of soy milk, a container of cocoa, and a pot. From somewhere below I heard applause. I glanced at Ms. Denholm.

“My landlady is hard of hearing,” she said. “When she watches TV she cranks up the volume. Sometimes she falls asleep with the TV on, and I have to go downstairs and get her to turn it off. I have a key. Her son—”

Suddenly something thumped on the floor beneath our feet. Billy and I both jumped. Ms. Denholm merely sighed.

“That's Mrs. Wyman,” she said. “Whenever she needs something, she thumps on the ceiling with a broom handle and one of us has to go down and help. But her son keeps the rent low in exchange for the tenants' agreeing to give her a hand from time to time. I won't be long.”

“Mrs. Wyman must be stronger than she looks,” Billy said after Ms. Denholm had left. “I bet her ceiling is a mess from all that jabbing with a broom handle.”

I glanced around. I had never been at a teacher's house before.

“We should go, Billy.”

“But she asked us to stay. It would be rude if we just took off.”

Ms. Denholm's phone rang. I glanced at it. It sat on a small table in her kitchen. The phone rang once, twice, three times. After the fourth ring it fell silent, but the voice-mail box didn't beep on. Whoever called had decided not to leave a message.

Ms. Denholm was gone for a full fifteen minutes. Just before she returned, the TV downstairs stopped blaring. She bustled back into the apartment, apologizing profusely for leaving us alone. The milk that she had left on the stove was warm, and she made three mugs of steaming cocoa. She asked Billy how and when he had decided to become a vegan, and the next thing I knew Billy was telling her all about the Downtown Avian Rescue Club, an organization he had founded. DARC members rescue migrating birds (if they're still alive) that have collided with downtown office towers. They also collect the birds that don't survive these collisions. On most days the dead outnumber the living. Ms. Denholm asked a lot of questions, and Billy was only too delighted to answer.

My stomach rumbled, despite the hot chocolate. I nudged Billy under the table.

“We should get going,” I said.

Billy sighed and looked wistfully at Ms. Denholm.

“I'll drive you,” Ms. Denholm said.

“That's okay,” I said. “We can take the bus.”

Billy shot me a look.

“Nonsense,” Ms. Denholm said. “You came all this way to return my wallet. And it's cold out there. Just let me wash out these mugs.”

She put them into the sink and pulled a heavy-looking gold ring from the middle finger of her right hand. I must have been staring, because she said, “A lot of people wonder about it—because it's a man's ring.”

I didn't want to pry.

“It's a family heirloom,” she said. “I had it adjusted to fit my finger. It's very old.”

She handed it to me so that I could look at it. It had a flat surface with a crest on it.

“That's the crest of my great-grandmother's family. Father's side,” she said.

“It's really heavy.”

“Valuable too,” Ms. Denholm said. “Not that I'd ever think of selling it.”

She washed the mugs, and Billy muscled me out of the way to grab a dish towel and dry them. Then we all put on our coats and headed out the door at the rear of the house where Ms. Denholm's car was parked.

My cell phone rang—my dad.

“Robbie, I'm in the neighborhood. How about I swing by and—”

I couldn't hear what he said next. Ms. Denholm moaned loudly, and Billy's eyes widened in astonishment.

“Your car,” he said to Ms. Denholm.

“What was that sound?” my father said.

Ms. Denholm was standing beside her car, one hand over her mouth. With her other hand she reached out gingerly to touch the hood. Billy stood helplessly behind her, doing what I was doing: staring at the car. Every single one of the Toyota's windows had been smashed. So had the headlights. Huge dents dotted the hood. Ms. Denholm moaned again.