Spy in the Alley (10 page)

“You can't think old Mrs. Nickablock is the spy,” I said. I was beginning to wonder if Mrs. Gumboldt's recent illness had taken a heavier toll on her than we'd thought.

“Rosalie — a spy? The woman hasn't the necessary stealth. Always loudly complaining about something or other,” scoffed Mrs. Gumboldt. Her husband blared the horn a second time.

“
No
, dear,” Mrs. Gumboldt continued. She didn't even bother glancing round at her husband. I had a feeling he was often kept waiting like this while his wife gossiped. “The bucktoothed boy you described. I've seen him wearing the sun hat, too. He borrows it when Rosalie's not about. You can't blame him. The sun beating down on you all day would be dreadful, especially with that pale skin. Though why he doesn't buy a hat for himself is beyond me. Some people are so
cheap
!”

Mrs. Gumboldt removed her own floppy white straw hat and fanned herself, whether from the heat or out of indignation, I couldn't tell.

“Um,” I said, confused. “You mean Buckteeth
lives
at Clark Rose Gardens? Is he Mrs. Nickablock's son? Or grandson, maybe,” I amended. “But I thought it was a seniors-only development.”

A further blast from the long-suffering Mr. Gumboldt. Cramming her hat back on, Mrs. Gumboldt answered, slightly impatiently, “Wrong again, Dinah. My goodness, and I've been setting things out so clearly for you!” She gave my hand a rather sharp squeeze.

She began backing down the front walk, waving at her husband and calling to Madge and me in a hoarse, melodramatic whisper: “Buckteeth is the gardener at Clark Rose Gardens, silly!”

Chapter Twelve

And now, a musical interlude

Talk about a cliffhanger. Mother, however, was totally unsympathetic to my protests about the need for immediate follow-up investigation. She bundled me into the car.

“So babyish,” I fumed a short while later, as, along with kids of varying ages, I lined up at the arts camp's registration desk to receive an official T-shirt. “I don't even
want
one of their stupid shirts.”

A tall, reedy young man behind the registration table arched his long neck over the kids ahead of me and glared. “These shirts,” he informed me, “were designed by last year's senior arts class. They put their hearts and souls into the design. You might show a bit of appreciation.”

He held up one of the shirts. It depicted the Granville Street Bridge, which soared up and away from Granville Island. But whereas in real life the bridge looked solid and reliable, the bridge on the T-shirt flung itself about in several directions, a colorful serpent against the downtown skyscraper landscape.

“It makes me feel dizzy,” I said.

Everyone else in the line turned and looked at me with mingled shock and disapproval. I didn't mind, but Mother had grown pink with embarrassment. “Dinah's pleased to be here,” she assured the tall, long-necked young man.

“I should hope so, madam.” He withdrew, pale and hurt, behind the desk.

Mother did convince me to put on one of the T-shirts — oh, not through behavior modification or anything like that. She simply threatened to remove the brownie from my lunchbox unless I gave in.

After that, though, musical-arts camp started to improve. Following a floor plan of the building, Mother led me past studios from which singing or musical-instrument playing — pianos, flutes, drums, oboes, saxes — spilled out in a river of lively notes that made me want to dance. These, I grudgingly realized, were
my
people. Like me, they liked rhythm. Like me, they wanted to make music, preferably loudly. I developed a wide, foolish grin.

“I knew you'd like it,” Mother whispered.

Of course, I instantly tried to squelch my grin, but I didn't succeed. This place was too cool.

We reached the singing-class studio designated for my age group. A pianist played jazz notes while a boy crooned along, and the other kids snapped their fingers in time. Feeling right at home, I walked in.

“Oh, it's
you
,” said the long-necked young man from the front desk. He was playing the piano. Now he crashed through a bunch of discordant notes to express, I suppose, his horror at seeing me.

“I cannot have this child in my class,” he told Mother stiffly. “It would be far too dispiriting.”

I wasn't sure what “dispiriting” meant, but my heart — er, heart and soul, as he would have said — sank.

“You could put her in drum class,” the young man added witheringly. “She might respond to the jungle atmosphere.”

“Sing,” Mother muttered to me.

“Huh?” I muttered back. “But he doesn't want—”

“Sing,” hissed Mother, and pinched me.

“AAAA,” I winced, then, wanting to avoid another pinch, transformed this into, “a-a-a-a-after you've gone, and left me cryin'…”

What the heck. If I was going to be booted out I might as well exit loudly. I looked up at the ceiling to avoid facing Drippy Long-Neck, thought of Dad and just kept on belting out. A few refrains later the instructor used his long neck to project his face over mine, blocking my view of the ceiling. I paused, mouth open. We stared at each other for a few seconds. No way I was going to blink first.

Then something funny happened. His face lost that pale, pained look and grew quite fond and misty, just the way my music teacher's had in school.

“Don't you
dare
think of switching to drums,” he told me.

By the time Mother brought me home, Madge had drawn a rose, mixed several of her watercolors close to the creamy beige shade of Jack's roses and painted in the petals. The picture had just finished drying in the sun.

She put it in an envelope and we walked down the alley to Jack's house. The painting was for him.

“You can see that my guilty conscience got the better of me,” Madge explained.

I hummed as we went down the alley, enjoying the sun, and the birds singing, and the thought of the songs my class had done all day at camp. Even the warm-up exercises had been fun. “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” I sang happily, remembering them.

“
Please
,” said Madge, wrinkling up her nose. “That's not exactly Top Ten material.”

Then she went on dreamily, “You know, this alleyway would be as lovely a scene to paint as any of the Victorian pastoral settings I've seen at the art gallery. Even the garbage cans we're passing are picturesque, if you think about it, with those wild pink roses tumbling about them.”

“Right,” I said, reflecting that this sort of pronouncement by Madge was just as irritating to me as my singing had been to her.

Madge daydreamed aloud, imagining just how she would capture this perfectly ordinary alleyway and transform it, until finally I got interested, and the alleyway looked magical to me, too. “It could be like a Brent Heighton painting,” Madge said. “Brent Heighton is one of my favor — ”

“HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?”

Buzz Bewford, red-hot as a grilled wiener, had lurched out to sweat and leer in front of us. We returned to earth with a rather rude suddenness, and the alley became ordinary again.

“It's hot enough, thank you,” Madge said, making no effort to smile at him. I knew she had disliked the security guard ever since he'd shoved his large, box-like face in the window the other day.

Buzz just kept standing there, leering. I guess quick repartee wasn't one of his strengths. But I felt that the leer was as nasty as any of his remarks.

“Good afternoon,” Madge said, and, taking my hand, stepped around him.

“You models have a great life, huh?” he called after her. “Just lazin' around all day. Well, if I was as good-lookin' as you, I'd take it easy, too. Not think about nothin'!”

“Just ignore him,” Madge whispered.

I nodded. Sticking one hand behind my back, I gave him the finger. Unfortunately, the security guard was just getting warmed up. “Plenty of nothin'!” He let loose a gale of yelping laughter.

Gritting my teeth, I hurried with Madge through the Rinaldis' tomato stalks. Security or not, this guy had to go.

“Young Jack isn't there,” boomed Buzz from behind us.

Was there no getting rid of Buzz? Reluctantly we turned. He was removing two large squares of bubblegum from a bright pink package. Unwrapping the squares, he stuffed them in his mouth. For a moment his cheeks were bulging so much that he couldn't speak.

“Jack's out,” Buzz elaborated finally. He scrunched up the two wrapping papers and lobbed them into the midst of the tomato garden. “On Roderick's orders, I've been checking this house every now and then. Good neighbor policy.”

I tried not to notice the pink foam escaping from between Buzz's teeth. I could see that Madge was trying to regard him more kindly. After all, the security guard was being pretty decent to watch out for Jack's house, especially since Jack's one interaction with Buzz had been to knock him to the ground.

“I'll just leave this for Jack in the mailbox then,” Madge said.

I scrunched up my eyes until I could barely see Buzz. I wished he would gather the bubblegum back into his mouth, or blow bubbles with it, or
something
. Right now it looked like he was using the gum to do an imitation of a volcanic eruption. Utterly gross.

“Great.” Buzz waved in quite a friendly way and made as if to lumber off down the alley again.

“Wait a moment,” Madge said.

Was she nuts? I unscrunched my eyes and glared at her. Lose the guy while we had the chance!

Madge tapped the corner of the watercolor sketch against her palm. “About Buckteeth … ”

“Huh?” Buzz was puzzled. “Who's that?”

“The man who was spying on us. The one you told us you'd spoken to, and thoroughly frightened so that he'd never come snooping round here again.”

“Spying on — oh, right. Yeah.” Buzz beamed. “Don't worry about him, Miss.”

“I'm not,” Madge said firmly. “But did you know he's a gardener at a seniors' development?”

“Uh.” Buzz scratched his head. “Should I?”

“Well, no,” Madge admitted. “But when you questioned him, did you even get his name?”

“No, ma'am,” Buzz replied promptly. With a forefinger he reached up, shoved the drooping blob of gum into his mouth and then mashed on the whole thing with enthusiasm. “Don't you bother you pretty head 'bout spies 'n such. After all, the Buzzer is here. It's my job to protect ya.”

Madge glanced from Buzz into the Rinaldis' tomato-filled garden. I followed her gaze: several tomatoes lay squished on the path and red juice covered the soles of Buzz's shoes. Barging along the path, he'd obviously knocked against the stalks; he wasn't the most graceful guy around.

“Maybe Jack would rather you didn't protect his sister's property,” she told Buzz.

“Like, this vandal dude is working for him, right?” Buzz leered at her. “I gotta watch out that nothing else gets spray-painted.”

I blurted, “But that's the work of Buckteeth, the mutant GASPer. Jack doesn't even know who that is!”

Buzz removed his glob of bubblegum and stuck it on his forefinger, which he then twirled around. I guess this was some kind of trick he did to impress girls. Ignoring me, he told Madge confidingly, “See, I'm keepin' watch
on
Jack even while I'm watchin' out
for
him. Clever of the Buzzer, huh?”

Smirking, the Buzzer lumbered out of the yard, knocking two more tomatoes off their stalks as he went. Curious, I followed him to the edge of the Rinaldis' garden. I watched him head down to the end of the alley, where he'd parked his car.

Squeezing himself in, he turned the key while reaching into the glove compartment. He withdrew a bag of cookies and, as he was pulling away from the curb, spat the pink bubblegum out the window and stuffed a couple of cookies into his mouth. Chomping, he roared off.

“Interesting guy,” Madge commented, when I'd returned to her side.

“
Buzz?
Yeah, interesting … like a doctor's needle is interesting.”

“No, I mean it's interesting that Buzz, who likes to make a pest of himself, retreated the minute I started asking him questions,” Madge mused.

I shrugged. “Maybe questions are a challenge to his intellect. His brain probably starts aching and he has to escape. You know, the way insects feel when you spray Raid at them.”

But I had started wondering, too. Why
had
Buzz fled at the mention of Buckteeth?

Chapter Thirteen

Sleuthing among the rosebushes

Mother would be home at 6:00. It was only 4:30. Plenty of time for some investigations — if only Madge would conveniently get out of the way.

“What, no date with Roderick?” I asked. Usually Roderick showed up after work to play tennis with Madge at the nearby public court. Or else, in an attempt to avoid the commoners, he would whisk her off to his club.

“Roderick did phone,” Madge said vaguely. She was flipping through
Vogue
. “I told him I was busy.” She caught my raised eyebrow. “I had to finish that painting,” she said defensively. “By the way, you're going to acquire premature forehead wrinkles if you keep doing that.”

She kept flipping the pages, but fast and agitatedly, the way you flip cards when you're shuffling. Not the way you read a magazine.

I began doodling circles around the freckles on my legs with a felt pen. I weighed my options. I'd been planning to tell Madge I was going for a bike ride, and then indeed take one — over to Clark Rose Gardens for some investigations. Normally I wouldn't have told her this last bit, because she would have disapproved. Busy streets and all that.

But Madge was in a different mood today. Her confrontation with Buzz just now had been quite impressive. Very detective-ish. A rare sisterly impulse came over me. Maybe I should invite Madge along.