The Girls' Revenge (9 page)

“H
oly smoke!” gasped Jake. “Did you
see
that?”

Even without the binoculars, Josh and Wally saw very well what had happened in Beth's bedroom.

For a moment they stared at each other in horror. Then they went tumbling down the ladder to the floor below and ran like lightning down the hill, across the bridge, and into their house.

Mother was back in the dining room, still wrapping packages, and Dad, who was a sheriff's deputy as well as a postman, had not come home yet.

The boys tore upstairs, where Josh grabbed the phone in the hallway and dialed 911.

“I want to report a murder,” he said, breathless, his sides heaving. “Over on Island Avenue… the Ben-sons' house…I mean, where the Malloys are now. In an upstairs bedroom.” And then he hung up.

From downstairs they could still hear the Bugs Bunny tape Peter was watching on the VCR. Then Mother's footsteps sounded in the hall below.

“Boys?” she called.

“Yeah?” answered Jake, still breathless.

“Are all three of you home?”

“Yeah …”

A pause. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, we were just having a race,” said Wally.

“Okay. If any of you have homework tonight, you'd better get at it,” Mother said.

The boys went into the twins' bedroom and shut the door. Then they sat down on the two beds and looked at each other.

“Maybe Caroline didn't kill her. Maybe she only knocked her out,” Josh ventured.

“Well, if she didn't kill her, she sure meant to,” breathed Wally. They didn't call Caroline the Crazie for nothing, but they hadn't figured she was
that
crazy.

“Think we should have told Coach Malloy instead?” asked Jake after a minute.

“What if he tried to cover up? Say Beth fell and hit her head or something. I mean, wouldn't it be natural?” said Josh.

“Man! I never thought I'd see a real murder!” said Wally. He could still feel his heart racing. “Do you suppose Caroline will confess?”

“No. She'll lie,” said Josh. “But if there's a trial, and she does lie, we'll be witnesses.”

“You didn't tell the police who you were,” Wally reminded him.

“I'm not dumb. I don't want them to think
we
had anything to do with it. Don't tell Mom, either.”

“Let's sneak back over and see what happens,” said Jake.

They went downstairs again.

“Mom, we forgot something. Be right back,” Jake yelled, and they ran across the road, then over the bridge, and up the hill to a clump of bushes some distance from the Malloys' back door.

The policemen were already knocking, and just as the boys reached the bushes, they saw Coach Malloy usher them inside.

“Do you suppose he knows what happened upstairs yet?” asked Josh. “Jeez! Beth! I can't believe it!”

“I'll bet Caroline's made up some lie. She's such a good actress she'll probably get away with it too,” said Wally.

“What would make her that mad, though? I've been mad at you guys plenty of times, but I'd never hit you over the head with a hammer,” Josh mused.

They could see lights coming on upstairs, then the two policemen moving about from room to room.

“Well, they've found her by now,” said Jake. “Any minute they'll call for an ambulance.”

“Or a hearse,” said Josh.

The boys waited some more.

Much to their surprise, however, when the door opened again, the two officers came out alone. They were not leading Caroline Malloy out in handcuffs. There was no stretcher with a body on it, either. Mr. Malloy and one of the officers were, in fact, shaking hands.

“What?” said Josh, staring.

“Do you suppose Caroline hid the body?” asked Wally.

“Maybe Beth recovered, and was just dazed,” said Jake, and the boys watched dumbfounded as the squad car turned around in the clearing and headed back down Island Avenue toward the business district. The back door of the house closed, and the light on the porch went off.

“Wait a minute,” said Jake, grabbing his brothers' arms. “The light! Don't you remember? Right after Caroline hit Beth, the light went out.”

The three boys looked at each other.

“So who turned it out? Caroline wasn't anywhere near a light switch that I could see, and I had the binoculars,” said Jake.

“They
knew
we were watching!” gasped Josh.

“They had it all planned!” croaked Wally. “They must be in there laughing their heads off.”

Chagrined, the three boys started back down the hill toward the bridge.

“Listen,” said Jake. “We'll say we knew all the time. If they find out we made that call and start teasing us, we'll say the joke's on them. I'll bet Coach Malloy didn't think it was so funny. I'll bet he had plenty to say to Caroline.”

“Yeah, we'll get off the first shot. We'll ask
them
whether or not they were grounded for a week.”

The boys climbed up the bank from their end of the swinging bridge and started to cross the road. Suddenly, however, Wally grabbed Jake's arm with
one hand, Josh's with the other, and pulled them to a stop.

The police car with its red-and-blue lights flashing had circled around in the business district and was coming straight down the road toward them.

Step by step, the boys moved back into the bushes until the squad car passed, but then they watched in shock as it slowed and turned into the Hatfords' driveway.

“Oh, no!” wailed Wally.

“How did they know
we
made the call? I never told them who I was!” said Josh.

“We're dead meat! Roadkill!” moaned Jake. To make things worse, Dad was home.

The two officers got out of the car and walked toward the Hatfords' front porch. When they rapped on the door, it sounded like a hammer pounding in Wally's ears.

It was Mom who answered. In the light from the porch, Wally could see the alarm on her face, and he knew right away she suspected the worst—that he and Jake and Josh had drowned in the river or something.

“Good evening, Ellen,” said one of the men. “Don't be alarmed. I just wondered if we could come in for a few minutes.”

“Certainly,” said Mother. And then Wally heard her call, “Tom? Harry and Joe are here from the police department. I think you'd better come down.”

The door closed.

Outside, Wally, Josh, and Jake stared at each other.

“You want to spend the night in the Bensons' garage?” asked Jake.

“How about a one-way ticket to Texas?” moaned Josh.

There had been times in Wally's life when he had thought about running away. Not that he really planned to, or even particularly wanted to. He had just heard now and then about kids actually doing it, and wondered what it would be like—how you knew where to run off to, and what you did after you got there. Now the subject hit him squarely in the face.

The officers didn't stay at the Hatford house very long. It seemed only five minutes, in fact, before the front door was opening again, the men were saying good night to Mom and Dad, and then the squad car backed out of the driveway, without the flashing lights.

Mother went back inside when the police had gone, but Dad did not. Instead he walked to the edge of the porch, cupped his hands over his mouth, and bellowed like a bull moose: “Wallace, Joshua, and Joseph! Get in here!
Now
!”

“You want to spend the night in the woods?” Wally whispered to his brothers.

“He'd just come looking for us,” said Josh.

“Heck, we didn't do anything wrong!” said Jake. “Let's go in. All we did was report a crime. What
looked
like a crime, anyway. It's the girls who should be in trouble, not us.”

They came out of the bushes as their father yelled again, crossed the road, and went up the steps to the porch, where Mr. Hatford held the door open for
them. Whenever Dad held the door open, Wally always felt like a prisoner going into his cell.

“Sit down!” their father thundered.

Peter came in from the other room, eating a Pop-Tart, and watched with wide eyes.

“Okay,” said their father. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?” asked Jake and Josh together. Wally decided not to speak unless he had to.

“What was this ‘attack’ you reported to the police?”

“What attack was that?” asked Josh.

Now Mr. Hatford was getting red in the face. “Don't play dumb with me! Why did you guys call the police and say someone was being murdered upstairs at the Malloys'?”

“Because we saw Caroline hit Beth over the head with a hammer, Dad, and Beth collapsed on the floor, that's why!” said Jake, taking the offensive.

“Wow!” said Peter.

“Didn't Mom always tell us to report a crime? We were just being good citizens,” added Josh.

Now Mom was standing in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest. “What, exactly, did you see?”

The boys described the scene in detail, Wally forgetting his vow of silence and filling in whenever a new detail was needed: how Beth was arguing with Caroline, both of them getting angry, Beth stamping her foot and turning her back on her sister, and Caroline picking up the hammer…

“We just did like you said, Mom,” Josh finished. “We got involved. We reported a crime.”

“So you saw it in detail,” said Mother.

“Absolutely,” said Jake. “As though we were right there in the room.”

“Uh-huh,” said Mother. “And where exactly
were
you that you could see this so well?”

Wally's heart began to sink.

“They were in the Explorers' Club!” said Peter helpfully. “Looking through the binoculars. You can see really, really good from there.”

“What?” said Dad.

“We've got permission from the Bensons to use their loft,” Jake bleated. “They signed a paper and everything. We've got squatters' rights to the loft in the garage. We can meet up there whenever we want. Mr. Malloy said it would be okay.”

“And the window of this loft faces the girls' bedrooms?” asked Mother.

“Well, just Beth's,” said Wally uncomfortably.

“Do you boys mean to tell me that you were sitting up in the Bensons' garage after dark, looking in Beth Malloy's bedroom through a pair of binoculars like some low-down, sneaky Peeping Tom?” Mother cried.

Wally, Josh, and Jake stood like statues.

“We were just holding a club meeting!” Wally squeaked finally.

“A club meeting at nine o'clock in the evening? In twenty-degree weather? You and a pair of binoculars?” said their father. “I'm ashamed of you boys.”

Somehow that was the very worst thing Dad could say, Wally decided. That was worse than being whopped on the seat of the pants.

“But—but they know we meet up there!” said Josh. “They know we
could
have been watching. If they
didn't want us to see something, they could have pulled down their shades.”

“That is disgusting!” said Mother. “I don't want you boys over in that garage again. Do you understand?”

“Don't you think the Buckman police have better things to do than respond to false reports?” asked Dad. “What if there had been a real emergency and they were out wasting their time? This'll be all over the sheriff's office next time I go in.”

“Dad, we thought it was real! Honest!” Wally cried.

“Well, either you guys are more gullible than I thought or those girls are terrific actresses,” said Dad.

It was really embarrassing. The boys didn't want to admit to either one.

“How did the police know it was us?” asked Wally finally in a small voice.

“The officers called headquarters on their car phone and asked them to trace the call. In case you didn't know, boys, they can trace your call right down to the phone number and the time of day.”

“Wow!” said Peter.

Thirteen
Hot, Hot Chocolate

“W
hat we have to do,” Eddie told her sisters, “is pretend that absolutely
nothing
happened. The guys are going to be dying to know if we got in trouble, and if they even mention it to us, we don't know what they're talking about. Right?”

“Right,” said Caroline.

“And
then,
” said Eddie, her eyes beginning to glow, “we wait until they meet in the garage again, and then we trap them.”

Caroline had no idea how they were supposed to do that, but she didn't care. They
hadn't
got in trouble, because their parents believed that the Hatford boys were just playing a trick. It was great to have Beth and Eddie back again, thinking of ways to torment the guys, even though Eddie really wanted to make the softball team and Beth was sweet on Josh. The thing about the Hatford boys, they were a ready audience. Boys fell for so many things you wouldn't
think they'd believe. It was really incredible. None of her friends back home had been quite so stupid.

Well,
stupid
wasn't exactly the right word, because the Hatfords came up with some pretty good tricks themselves.
Fun
was more like it. And then she put into words something none of them had really said before: “At least the boys are fun.”

“And cute,” added Beth. “Josh is, anyway. And Peter.”