The Vandemark Mummy (15 page)

Althea waited.

Blatt blatt
, the phone said.

Phineas figured he'd better get it, since she was in a stubborn mood.

“I got the last two,” she called after him.

Blatt bla
—“Hello?” Phineas said.

Silence. A breathing kind of silence.

“Hello,” Phineas said. This was a little creepy.

“I know where she is,” somebody whispered.

She? Who she? The questions flashed across Phineas's mind, faster than light. It took no time at all to feel fear. Althea? She was right behind him in the kitchen. His mother?

“You want to know where?” the whisperer asked.

Phineas couldn't think of what to say. He didn't want to know. It could be a wrong number.

“Who—” Who are you calling? he meant to ask, but the whisper cut him off.

“You know. You know. By the tennis courts.”

“What—” What tennis courts? he was going to ask, but there was only a click, and a dial tone.

Phineas's fingers clutched the receiver. “Althea!” he called.

“What? What's wrong?” She was beside him in a second.

He held the phone out to her. She took it, watching his face, listened, looked puzzled and worried, and hung it up. “Fin? Who was it?”

He was trying to see if he remembered what had been said. He was concentrating, to remember it exactly. “I don't know. Somebody who whispered. He said—she said—I don't know if it was a man or a woman, Althea.”

“But what did they say? It's okay, Phineas, just relax. Tell me. It's not Dad, is it? Has anything happened to Dad?”

Phineas shook his head and then—feeling as if the memory would fly out of it, like drops of water when he'd been swimming and shook his head—he hurried to say it before he forgot. “He said she was by the tennis courts. He said I knew who.” He didn't know why he was so rattled. Except that it was so creepy.

“The tennis courts in the park?” Althea asked.

“I don't know any others.” Phineas pictured the courts, a dozen broad open spaces in line, surrounded by a twelve-foot fence. But there were trees and bushes around the courts, so you could hide a mummy there. “Is the ground wet?” he asked. “But why call us, Althea?”

“Did he ask for you by name?” Phineas shook his head. “So he just called the house, or she, because it could
have been a woman. Anybody who read O'Meara's article would know who to call. Let's go look for her, Phineas.”

“Shouldn't we call the police station and tell Dad?”

“Not until we're sure. Come on, Fin. What if somebody else finds it, someone who doesn't know what it is, or doesn't care, or who just takes it away? What if it gets wet?”

“The fog's already burned off,” Phineas said, but he was halfway out the door before he'd finished the sentence, and Althea was on his heels.

They ran, then walked when a stitch in Althea's side made it impossible for her to run any longer. “We should have taken our bikes,” Phineas muttered.

“We can't—carry her—with bikes,” Althea gasped. “Can't you—slow—?”

Phineas turned into the park entrance. He had a little sweat worked up, but he could still have been running. “Wait,” Althea gasped from behind him. He turned and waited for her to catch up. “Not—a jock—you know.”

Phineas didn't waste his breath on that put-down. What if some kids found the mummy, and messed around with it? Before they got there. If it was the mummy.

They went up the low ridge that overlooked the
courts. A few games were in progress, and as many courts were unoccupied. Sunlight poured over everything. Phineas, his feet hurrying down the hill, figured that probably the mummy had been left in the trees and bushes behind the courts.

They saw it almost immediately, a lumpy shape half tucked under a bush. It looked like somebody's garbage. That was because it was in fact concealed in two black trash bags, one pulled up over and one pulled down over, with the plastic drawstring tied in the middle. Althea knelt down beside it.

Phineas let her take charge. She was breathing heavily, but she didn't wait to catch her breath. It didn't look like a mummy to him, but it was definitely body size. Althea's hands went over it, fingers spread wide, as she tried to see by touch.

The reason it didn't look like a mummy was because there was no bump where the feet stood up; but that, Phineas told himself, didn't mean anything, if it was lying on its side, or on its stomach. He watched Althea's face. Althea watched her own hands, her eyebrows a dark line of concentration. Finally she looked up. “I think so.” She took a breath. “I think I can feel the portrait. She's all wrapped up—like in a blanket? Something soft. And thick.”

“Now what?” Phineas wondered.

“Now we call Dad. No, you stay here. I'll go.”

“Why should I stay? You're older.”

“Because,” Althea said as she got to her feet, “if somebody comes along you'll be able to stop them. People listen to you. Don't argue, you know I'm right, but you
always want to argue. Where's a pay phone, Fin, do you know?”

“At the refreshment stand.” He pointed. “You can't see it from here, but you will once you get to the top of the hill.”

Althea headed off.

“Do you have money?” he called after her.

“Don't need it to call the police,” she called back.

Phineas settled down to wait. He didn't settle down beside the mummy—if it was the mummy. He stood leaning against a tree, sort of watching the tennis players—there was one man with an interesting backhand stroke that began not low, but high, at his shoulder, which put a slice on the ball so it bounced low—and sort of wondering. The thief had called their house. If it was the mummy in the garbage bags, then the thief had known to call them. That had to mean something.

And the voice hadn't sounded surprised to be talking to a kid. As if he'd known who Phineas was.

Or maybe he just didn't care who he talked to. That was possible. Maybe anyone who read O'Meara's article in the paper could have figured out from the pictures which one Samuel Hall was, and then spied on them. But wouldn't they have noticed somebody spying on them? And why would anyone spy on them, anyway, since it was the mummy he was interested in? The mummy he was after.

Then why return the mummy?

Anyone connected to the college knew who they were, and where they lived. Anyone who was there when the collection arrived too.

And why did he keep assuming it was a man? A woman could wield a blowtorch. A woman could carry the mummy around. The mummy was more bulky than heavy.

Phineas looked down at the lumpy garbage bags at his feet. The sunlight made the plastic glisten like water. It was about quarter of eleven, he figured. Althea had been gone for maybe four minutes, it would be about ten before she got back, then another ten or fifteen before his father and Detective Arsenault could show up. . . . He didn't know if he should move the mummy out of the sunlight. If it was the mummy. He didn't know what the kind of heat that built up inside a plastic garbage bag would do to a mummy.

Maybe nothing. The reason mummies still existed was because Egypt was such a hot country. But Egypt was a hot, dry country, desert, not tropics, and Maine got a fair amount of rain.

It made Phineas edgy, just standing there, standing still, so he decided to pace back and forth, like a soldier on guard duty, to pace off the time before Althea returned. He wouldn't abandon the bags, just take twenty paces along beside the tennis courts. He counted his steps. Then he turned.

Two policemen were hurrying down the hillside, sideways so they wouldn't lose balance. They were coming for him. Phineas knew that without even wondering how he knew. He went back to stand beside the mummy.

A couple of tennis players stopped playing to watch whatever excitement there would be.

The two police officers, both men, strode toward him,
in blue uniforms, guns at their sides, faces shadowed under their hats. Phineas pushed his hair into place with his fingers, as if he were a guilty person trying to look innocent. They made him nervous the way they stared at him and didn't say a word.

One had a mustache and one didn't. Didn't was the spokesman. “You the kid who called?”

Phineas shook his head. “That was my sister. It sure didn't take you long.”

The mustached officer smiled, as if he didn't like a joke Phineas had made. “Don't be sarcastic, kid. We're busy men. One hour isn't bad for a nonemergency call.”

“I'm not being sarcastic. She just left, about five minutes ago, to call the police.”

“That so? Then you're the second call we got on this. Probably somebody's garbage, all the excitement over nothing.” The mustached officer bent down to pull the bag off.

“Wait!” Phineas cried. “Don't do that!”

The man ignored him. His fingers gripped plastic.

Phineas crouched down and grabbed his hand. “We think it's the mummy.” A hand fell on his shoulder. Phineas talked, fast. “The one stolen from the college last night. Detective Arsenault's case. Please don't touch it.”

They looked at one another and made their decision without a word. “Okay, tell.”

Phineas told, concluding, “My father will be here any minute.”

“How do we know this isn't some cock-and-bull story?”

Phineas didn't know how they'd know. “It isn't. Honest,”
he said. “If you'll just wait, you'll see.” He thought. “What would be the point of it, to waste your time?”

“Beats me,” the officer, who still had a hand on Phineas's shoulder, said. “Ralph?” he asked.

“Can't do any harm,” the mustached man said. “If it's a body, it won't get any deader.”

They all settled down on the ground around the garbage bags. “Somebody else called you about this?” Phineas asked.

“Some kids said there was this bag, might be a body.”

“Who were they?”

“Just some kids playing tennis.”

“But they didn't open it,” Phineas wondered.

“Hey, kid, if this is a body, I can tell you you don't want to see it. Or smell it. I can promise you that. Thank God for TV, everybody knows you don't touch anything around the scene of a crime. If this
is
a crime and not an illegal garbage drop.”

“Even if it's the mummy,” Phineas promised them, “there's a crime, because it was stolen.”

Sirens sounded in the distance. The sirens stopped and it was only seconds before Phineas saw his father—his frizzy hair no longer slicked down—come sidling down the hill, with the big detective moving parallel to him. Phineas waved. Althea was just coming around the other side of the fenced courts.

“Guess we're not needed,” Ralph said. “Back to business. See you around, kid.” They were out of earshot before Phineas remembered that he ought to thank them.

By that time, the three Halls and Detective Arsenault all stood around the garbage bags, looking down. It reminded Phineas of a funeral, at least the way movies showed funerals, everybody standing around, looking down at something that had a dead body in it. The detective finally spoke. “Let's see what we've got, shall we?”

“I'd like to wait until the mummy is out of the open, somewhere safe. . . . I'm sorry,” Mr. Hall said. “I'm pretty sure I'm overreacting but I'd hate to do it wrong. I'd much rather look like a fool, or inconvenience everyone, than have something else go wrong that I could help. . . .” His voice trickled off, worried.

“But what if it isn't the mummy?” Detective Arsenault asked. “What if it's some other body? Or even somebody's garbage?”

“It felt soft and thick, what I touched,” Althea told him. “I felt something very like the portrait. No, Dad,” she reassured her father, “I didn't put any pressure on it. But it felt thickly wrapped. Nobody would wrap up garbage like that, would they? What would be the point?”

The detective looked doubtful. He was a busy man, probably. Phineas could see why he wouldn't want to waste his time, if it turned out not to be the mummy.

“The ambulance will be here any minute,” Mr. Hall said. “It would be a big favor. . . .”

“I guess I can. I guess this mummy can't be replaced.”

“We could probably get another, if it was a mummy that was wanted,” Mr. Hall said, carefully precise. “It's
not like this is the mummy of any historical personage. The mummy isn't anyone in particular. It's not like it's one of a kind. Except insofar as every individual is one of a kind.”

“Like I said,” Detective Arsenault said, “irreplaceable.”

They were ignoring Phineas and Althea.

“Irreplaceable,” Phineas's father agreed.

At that point, the ambulance driver arrived, the same woman but with a different young man in tow. “I guess you found your body. We still taking it in for an X ray?”