Behind the Curtain Read online

  Ingrid put in some more practice on the voice recorder, working it from her pocket by touch alone.

  “You’re all under arrest. Hands where I can see them.”

  She still sounded so young.

  “And don’t try any tricks. I can shoot a Coke bottle off a fence from a hundred yards.”

  That sounded a little better.

  Downstairs the angry trio came to a ragged conclusion. Ty stomped up, went into his room, slammed the door hard enough to shake Ingrid’s walls. Ingrid waited a few minutes, then crossed the hall.

  “Knock knock,” she said.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  She opened the door.

  Ty sat at his desk, playing a video game. He was just as good at video games as he was at football and baseball, blowing three hideous creatures to smithereens in a flash.

  “So,” she said, “what was that all about?”

  “They’re such jerks,” Ty said, eyes on the screen. Blam. Kapow.

  “Who?”

  “Dad and Mom, who do you think?”

  “Because they caught you in a lie?” Ingrid said.

  Ty turned to her. A muscle twitched in his shoulder. On the screen, monsters multiplied quickly, devouring all the soft and fuzzy beings in sight.

  “Caught in a lie?” Ty said. “Look who’s talking.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Kidnapped,” said Ty. “What a crock. Mom and Dad’s little pet, and they don’t even believe you.”

  Ingrid was so angry, she didn’t know where to start. “I’m nobody’s goddamn pet.”

  “Whatever.”

  “And you’re the jerk,” Ingrid said. “You don’t even know how big.”

  He threw something at her, the nearest thing at hand, an eraser. It bounced off the wall above her head and rebounded across the room, landing softly at his feet. Ingrid laughed, a taunting kind of laugh she hadn’t known herself capable of.

  “Ever stop to think what that temper’s all about?” she asked.

  Ty’s face started getting all bloated and purple. At that moment, Dad yelled up the stairs. “What’s going on up there?”

  Ty lowered his voice, low but still plenty mean. “You better get out of here.”

  Ingrid’s voice stayed nice and loud. “And you better watch who you’re hanging out with.”

  “You threatening me?” Ty said.

  Dad again: “Don’t make me come up there.”

  “It’s a warning, bro,” Ingrid said. “You don’t want to get swept up in this.”

  “Swept up?” said Ty. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Dad: “Damn you kids.”

  “Think about it,” Ingrid said.

  She was back in her room before Dad reached the top of the stairs. Silence while he paused there, and then heavy treads back down. Outside Ingrid’s window, the moon shone on the town woods, silvering the treetops and leaving dark shadows below. No wind at all; everything very still except for Ingrid, shaking a little.

  twenty-three

  A REAL BIG STORM, BUT Ingrid’s snug little boat was riding it out beautifully. Ingrid sat in the cabin, warm and dry in front of a roaring fire, the kind Grampy made, reading a book and sipping hot chocolate. Her little boat steered itself no problem, never needed any—

  “Ingrid! Wake up!”

  Ingrid opened her eyes, peered out through a gummy veil. Mom stood over her, toothbrush in hand and mouth a bit foamy.

  “It’s five after seven, Ingrid. Don’t make me come in again.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Ingrid! Your eyes are closing!”

  Because they were so heavy—wasn’t that obvious?

  “I’m not leaving till you sit up.”

  Whatever makes you happy. Just keep the noise level down.

  “Do I have to pull the covers off?”

  Was there anything worse than having the covers pulled off, especially on a cold late-fall morning in a house with a dad who kept the heat down? Close to child abuse. Ingrid sat up.

  And once up realized she felt pretty good, had had her best night’s sleep since all this started. Why? Must have been because now she had a plan. Foolproof, the very best kind.

  “You up for good?” Mom said.

  “Yeah.”

  Mom took a quick look around the room. She was always doing things like that. “Where’s St. Joseph?” she said. “Wasn’t he on your shelf?”

  “Um,” said Ingrid. “Must have fallen down behind.” The fact that he was out in the front yard, right side up and one foot under, ensuring that the house would never sell: Weren’t people entitled to the odd little secret about themselves?

  Mom had a thought of some kind. “Everything all right at school?” she said.

  “Never better,” said Ingrid; pathetically, that was almost true.

  “Good,” said Mom, a little surprised. “See you tonight.”

  She left the room, then poked her head back in. “Maybe you can do me a favor when you get home—I need a sign stuck in.”

  “Where?”

  “One thirteen.”

  “One thirteen Maple Lane?”

  Mom nodded. “I got the listing.”

  One thirteen Maple Lane, four houses down, was a shabby house unlived in since Mrs. Flenser—a terrifying old woman, like out of the brothers Grimm—had finally been dragged off to a nursing home a year or so before; but being the listing broker was never bad.

  “Nice job,” said Ingrid.

  “I hate estate sales,” Mom said.

  “Does that mean Mrs. Flenser’s a goner?” Ingrid said.

  “I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes,” said Mom. “And the inspection’s going to be a disaster.” Mom was starting to fret.

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” said Ingrid. “All it takes is one stupid buyer.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” said Mom.

  “Morning, petunia.”

  “Hi, Mr. Sidney.”

  “Planning to see that grandfather of yours sometime soon?”

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  “You could tell him about the reunion. I’m on the committee. We sent letters, but he don’t answer.”

  No surprise. Ingrid pictured those piles of mail all over Grampy’s kitchen. “What reunion?” she said.

  “Corregidor vets,” said Mr. Sidney.

  “Oh.” Ingrid knew Grampy and Mr. Sidney had fought on Corregidor together, but whatever happened there wasn’t something Grampy talked about. This reunion thing wasn’t going to fly with Grampy. “How about calling him?” she said.

  “He never answers,” said Mr. Sidney. He glanced up at her from under the bill of his BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA cap. “Any chance he’s got hold of that caller ID?”

  Grampy? What a thought. “No way,” said Ingrid. “He must’ve been out in the barn or something.”

  She moved toward the back of the bus. Maybe a few kids looked at her funny, maybe not. She didn’t care. This was all going to be over real soon.

  Ingrid sat next to Stacy. “Yo,” said Ingrid.

  “Hi.”

  Just a soft little hi from Stacy, not her at all.

  Ingrid lowered her voice. “What’s up?”

  “Yeah,” said Brucie, leaning forward from the seat behind. “I’m all ears.”

  Stacy turned quickly. Brucie shrank back, did a Dracula-in-sudden-daylight thing with his arms.

  Stacy pulled her history notebook out of her backpack and wrote: Sean and my dad had a fight.

  Ingrid took the pencil. physical?

  Stacy took it back. last nite.

  “Ai haf cahm,” said Brucie, “to sock your blahd.”

  The bus pulled up to the door at Ferrand Middle.

  “Got a note?” said Mr. Porterhouse in homeroom.

  “Note?” said Ingrid.

  He checked his sheet. “You’re down as missing in action yesterday.”

  “I forgot it,” Ingrid said, coming very
close to patting her pockets, a pantomime that would only make her less believable.

  “But you’ll remember tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Or else it’s level two.”

  Level two already? That was where detentions started, and it was only November. At this rate, she’d hit level five—death row—by April.

  “He’d been drinking, no question,” said Stacy, on the bench by the swings at lunchtime. “Slurring and everything. Then my dad was, like, give me the keys to the Firebird, and Sean said no.”

  “So your dad tried to get them off him?” said Ingrid.

  “Yeah.”

  “And that’s when the fight started?”

  “My mom had to break it up.”

  “God.”

  “My dad was crying.”

  “’Cause he got hurt?”

  “I don’t think so.” Stacy looked like she might start crying too, and Stacy was not a crier. “Just that it was all so…gross.”

  Ingrid handed Stacy half her peanut butter sandwich.

  “Marshmallow Fluff in it?” Stacy said.

  “Yeah.”

  Stacy ate in silence for a while. Then she said, “You ever think about having kids?”

  “Nope,” said Ingrid. “I plan to be a kid all my life.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Total.”

  The bell rang. They got up, walked back toward the school.

  “After it was over,” Stacy said, “Sean took off.”

  “In the Firebird?”

  Stacy shook her head. “On foot. My dad ended up getting the keys.”

  “Did he come back?”

  “Sometime in the night. Mom found him zonked out in the truck. Kind of funny—he was the only one who got any sleep.” Stacy’s face, always glowing with health, looked patchy and washed-out.

  “Everything’s going to turn out all right,” Ingrid said.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “A feeling,” said Ingrid.

  “Great,” said Stacy, brushing the corner of her eye. A sharp wind was rising.

  After school, Ingrid carried Mom’s for-sale sign—RIVERBEND PROPERTIES, CALL CAROL LEVIN-HILL—down the block to 113 Maple Lane. It was really blowing now, twigs getting ripped off the trees, dead leaves making tornadoes in the air, low dark clouds speeding across the sky. Nigel whimpered the whole way.

  “Suck it up,” Ingrid said.

  One thirteen was set back deeper than the other houses on Maple Lane, its shingles aged almost black, the whole front overgrown with bushes and vines. Ingrid found a good spot near the road and stuck the sign in the ground. The metal pole had a sharp end and a little footpad for pressing down on. It went in real easy.

  She stepped back to check it was straight for traffic coming either way. Nigel picked that moment to cross the lawn and lift his leg in front of the garage door, making a puddle that spread and spread.

  “Nigel. Get over here.”

  Instead he found a dry place and curled up like a sled dog trying to survive a blizzard.

  “It’s just a little wind.”

  But he didn’t budge. And then came a particularly strong gust. Nigel closed his eyes as though getting ready to die, like with Scott at the South Pole. Ingrid went after him.

  She’d never actually been on this lawn before—Mrs. Flenser had spent a lot of time on the front porch, always with knitting needles in hand. The grass was long, brown, and stringy, clumps of weeds everywhere, the driveway pavement cracked in three or four places. An odd kind of driveway—it seemed to continue around the side of the garage.

  Ingrid went around the corner for a look. The pavement soon petered out, but a pair of ruts extended all the way to the woods, twenty or thirty yards away. And what was this? Tire tracks in the ruts? Ingrid knelt and examined them. Not fresh tracks; kind of eroded, maybe by rain. When had it last rained? Ingrid didn’t know for sure. The last rain she remembered was on the day she and Chief Strade failed to find any duct tape evidence in the gully off Benedict Drive.

  She followed the ruts to the beginning of the woods, the tire tracks sometimes very faint but visible till the end. She looked to the right, toward her own house. Surprise. Ninety-nine Maple Lane couldn’t be seen from here, the woods jutting in so sharply that they even blocked most of the house next door. You could park a car here and no one would know. And a car had been here, beyond doubt. Plus: If she was right about the last rain, then the car had parked here before she was kidnapped, maybe just before. Like maybe around the time Mrs. Grunello was seeing no cars at 99 Maple Lane, one of the biggest holes in Ingrid’s story.

  She stepped into the woods. Was there a path that led from the back of one thirteen to the back of ninety-nine? No. But if you could squeeze past this tangle of brambles, the horrible purple kind, so spiky and—

  Whoa. What was this? Caught up high in a twist of thorns: a baseball cap. Ingrid reached up, pulled it free. A Yankees cap, not unusual in Echo Falls, right on the border between Red Sox and Yankee territory. Ingrid turned it over, spotted four dark-brown hairs inside, about five inches long. Carl Kraken Junior had hair that color, not a lot, but enough for a comb-over. Wouldn’t comb-over hair be pretty long?

  Ingrid folded the cap with care and stuck it in her jacket pocket. Hair equaled DNA. Now she had two samples. And that quiet excitement that always overcame Holmes when he was building a case? She felt it in real life.

  Something nudged the back of her leg. Ingrid glanced down and there was Nigel, tail wagging, suddenly energized.

  “Good boy.” He’d overcome his fear, or maybe it had just slipped his mind.

  Nigel wagged his tail harder, to the point of ridiculousness, then nimbly made his way around the brambles. Ingrid followed. The going grew easier—no path, but plenty of space between the trees. A minute or two later, she stepped out of the woods and into her own backyard.

  She walked up to the garage. There was a little door at the back, never locked, too crooked to even close properly. Ingrid opened it: all shadowy inside, feeble light barely penetrating the dusty windows. For a moment she saw her garage through a predator’s eyes. It would do nicely.

  What was the expression? Knowledge is power? Ingrid felt herself getting stronger.

  The wind was dying down. Nigel was perking up. He chased a squirrel up a tree and thought he almost caught it. Dogs fooled themselves all the time.

  twenty-four

  MOM AND DAD BOTH came home before five, very unusual. Ingrid was at the table, rearranging her homework in different piles. Ty was standing in front of the open fridge drinking OJ from the carton—a no-no. His back stiffened, taken by surprise.

  But they didn’t call him on it. Instead Dad said, “Mom and I have been talking.”

  Uh-oh.

  “And we’ve decided we could all use a quick getaway,” Mom said.

  “To Jamaica?” said Ingrid. That Christmas at the Sands of Negril two years ago: the best week of her life—splitting coconuts with a machete, the reggae band around the pool, snorkeling at the reef, all those little fishes like jewels that had learned to swim.

  “No,” said Dad.

  “But we can discuss it over dinner,” said Mom. “The dinner we’re all going to make right now, together.” She laid some grocery bags on the counter.

  “Ingrid,” said Mom, “you can set the dining-room table.”

  “We’re eating in the dining room?”

  “Ty,” said Dad, “clean the grill.”

  “The barbecue grill?” said Ty. “Outside?”

  “Hasn’t been used since Labor Day,” said Dad. “Needs cleaning.”

  “Now we’re barbecuing in the winter all of a sudden?” said Ty.

  “I got swordfish,” Mom said. “I’m making that wonderful barbecue sauce, the one with the balsamic vinegar.”

  “And by the way, Ty,” said Dad, “it’s not winter yet. Try to be more optimistic.”

  Eating in the dining room on a weekday, o
n any day for that matter, except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthdays? Swordfish? That wretched balsamic gunk? What the hell was going on?

  They sat around the dining-room table, Mom and Dad digging into swordfish steaks smothered in balsamic sauce, plus wild rice and mesclun salad, Ingrid and Ty eyeing the food warily.

  Dad poured wine for himself and Mom.

  “How about a little sip for the kids?” he said.

  “I’m not sure that’s the direction we want to go,” said Mom.

  “Oh, right,” said Dad.

  Mom gave him a quick look. “How was everyone’s day?”

  “Fine,” said Ingrid.

  “Yeah,” said Ty.

  “How’s Shakespeare coming along?” Mom said. First semester, ninth grade at Echo Falls High meant Romeo and Juliet, no exceptions.

  “No complaints,” said Ty.

  “Good,” said Mom. “Where are you in the play?”

  “You know, um,” said Ty.

  Ingrid swirled the Fresca in her glass. Entertainment was on the way.

  Ty cut off a big hunk of swordfish, stuffed it in his mouth. “Hey, real tasty,” he said, or something like that—hard to tell with his mouth so full.

  “Your mom asked where you are in the play,” Dad said.

  Ty made a big show of chewing, held up his index finger for more time.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Mom said, “as long as he’s enjoying it.” She got a faraway look in her eye. Ingrid knew what was coming: poetry. Mom had tons of it in her head. “‘What’s in a name?’” she said. “‘That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.’”

  “That’s from Romeo and Juliet?” Dad said.

  “Act two,” said Mom.

  Ty’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he got the swordfish down. “We’re still on act one,” he said.

  “I’m not sure about that,” said Ingrid.

  “What the hell?” said Ty.

  “Not where you are in the play,” Ingrid said, just stopping herself from adding bozo, what with this formal dining-room atmosphere and all. “I mean about the rose.”