Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs (8 page)

When I got to Sylvia's apartment around one o'clock the cherry red mountain bike, which had been chained to the railing the day before, was gone. Many of the apartment doors were open, and from inside I could hear Spanish television, and smell good things cooking, I couldn't begin to name what. Three boys were skateboarding in the parking lot.

As I knocked on Sylvia's door, I watched the boys zooming down a ramp they'd made from an old plywood door propped on a pair of concrete blocks. They stopped for a minute and checked me out. I said hey; they said hey, and I started to think about why boys never seem to outgrow skateboarding but girls do.

I pondered this long after it was clear that no one was home. Then, just as I was about to turn and go, I heard
a sound from inside. It sounded like someone dropped a book. I put my ear against the door and listened. I could hear someone moving around. I put my hand on the doorknob and the door eased open a bit.

I felt a pinch of fear in my stomach. Someone was home but didn't want to answer the door. It was one of those great summer days when most people would want to be outside. Some of Sylvia's neighbors had their front doors open to catch the breeze. In addition to the skateboarding boys, a guy was washing his car in the driveway, whistling along to the classic rock station blaring from his radio. It was not a day you would want to be holed up in your apartment. Unless you were a boy who'd stolen a rare red diamond and you thought someone was on to you.

I pushed the door open an inch or so, hoping someone would call out hello or something. Nothing. I stood there another few seconds. I could feel my heart pounding in my eyes. I conjured up something I'd heard once about how being afraid was no excuse not to do something. The question was, of course, was this a smart thing to be doing?

I pushed the door open wider and stepped inside. “Hello?”

I pulled the door closed behind me but didn't let it latch, in case I had to bust out of there fast. The small apartment was just as it had been the day before. The only difference was that Tonio wasn't playing Halo 2.
The controller was neatly tucked away on a shelf beneath the TV. I'd never seen a boy do that. When my brothers weren't playing they would just leave the thing attached to the set, the better to trip over the wires every chance you got. A worn beige blanket was folded and set squarely on a pillow at one end of the sofa. Was this where Tonio slept?

Sylvia and Tonio were very tidy, that was for sure. I glanced again at the humane society calendar tacked to the wall, noted again the words “Tonio—Shooting” written carefully in every box until the end of the month. For that day it said shooting was at 6:00 A.M. Could Tonio still be at shooting practice, or whatever it was?

Something else was different: The black pug wasn't there. Maybe Tonio had taken him with him.

With three steps I was in the kitchen. I passed the small wooden table where Chelsea had set the ring with the missing center stone, but it was gone. The yellow daisies, still in their jelly jar, were beginning to wilt; no one had added water since I'd been there. The pile of unopened mail I'd spied the day before was untouched.

Just as I was about to turn to go, a man's voice said, “Is there something I can help you with?”

I jumped so high I can't believe I didn't hit my head on the ceiling. Until that moment I hadn't realized how truly scared I'd been snooping around this strange girl's apartment. I spun around. “Who are you?” I sputtered. The words just popped out. The man was wearing a
uniform—light blue shirt, dark pants, dark tie, thick utility belt with one of those big black sticks—but he wasn't a cop, he was a security guard. On one arm there was a big patch that said AMES SECURITY. Over his pocket was an oval name patch that said SHARK.

“You work for Ames?” I said. “My brother used to work there.” This was a complete lie, but I had to say something, to show he hadn't practically given me a heart attack.

Shark chuckled. “Sorry, didn't mean to startle you.”

I pegged him at about the same age as my brother, which meant old but not so old that you couldn't imagine being that age one day. He was tall and thin, with terrible posture. He had long pale eyes and a mustache. He smiled at me, but I could tell it was a mask beneath which he was sizing me up.

He'd come from the bedroom. He had a cheap flowered cosmetics bag in his hand, turned halfway inside out.

“Is Tonio around?” I asked.

He chuckled some more. What was so funny? His sleeves were rolled up to his elbow. His forearms were as big as that cartoon sailor named Popeye. “You one of Tonio's lady friends?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“He's not here. Name's Shark by the way.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake.

“I figured.” I nodded toward his name patch.

I shook his hand, but it was as if I was with Reggie, and he'd dared me to touch some dead thing he'd found in the backyard. Suddenly, I missed Reggie. Why wasn't he here having this strange encounter with me? Oh, I know, because it was more important for him to hang out with that twit Amanda the Panda. I felt myself starting to lose my grip on the situation.

“And what's your name?” he asked.

“Suzanne,” I said. Suzanne is my middle name, so I wasn't totally lying.

“How long have you been seeing Tonio? I didn't think he had a girlfriend. Or not a serious one, anyway.” Again, the fake smile. Didn't he just ask whether I was one of Tonio's girlfriends, plural, which means one of many? I seriously did not like the way this was going. Why hadn't I left the door wide open behind me? Outside, I could hear the sound of skateboard wheels coasting down the plywood ramp. Suddenly, it seemed like the most fun in the world.

“I don't know. A while. Where's Sylvia? Maybe she knows where he is.”

“She must be out,” he said.

The question was, of course, what in the heck was he doing here? “Are you the house sitter? Tonio said they might be going out of town on vacation.”

This time Shark really laughed. Just as I was about to
write him off as a harmless dork he said, “You got it, Suzanne, Sylvia's gone away on a Hawaiian cruise and I'm the house sitter.” He grinned at me again, pleased with his sarcasm. I was always a little unnerved when any grown-up besides my brothers was sarcastic with me.

There was nothing else for me to do but be on my way. I moved toward the door, and half expected him to block my escape. He stepped aside, and as he did, I could see through the tiny hallway into the bedroom. It was obviously Sylvia's room, with a comforter splashed with big pink and orange flowers.

All her dresser drawers were hanging open. I tried not to look shocked, or like I cared much. It was obvious that I'd interrupted him in the process of turning the apartment upside down. The rest of the apartment was so neat because he'd just started when I'd walked in.

Shark saw me notice this and took two big steps and pulled open the door. He wanted me out of there.

“I'll tell Tonio you stopped by, Suzanne. I'm sure he'll be sad he missed you.”

I was so glad to be home I offered to make Minerva's Special Deviled Eggs. Mark Clark had broken out the barbecue, in celebration of the arrival of summer. He was going to grill some ribs and chicken and corn on the cob. Morgan was in the kitchen chopping carrots for Morgan's Special Chopped Salad. Have you noticed how everything we cook has a name, and usually includes the word “special”? In truth, it's just regular food, but we like it.

I put on a dozen eggs to boil in a big pot, then fetched myself a cold Mountain Dew from the fridge. I put ice in a glass anyway. Sometimes, when I have to think, I like chewing on ice. It's supposed to be bad for your teeth, but I don't care.

It was warm in the kitchen. The late-afternoon sun
beat through the row of dining room windows and through the door leading into the kitchen. We live on a slight hill, so we don't have any curtains there. I'd let Jupiter out of his cage so he could stretch his legs. “Stretch his legs” was Clark code for allowing Jupiter to crawl inside the small hole beneath the cupboard and romp around. We could hear the thumps and bumps of him galloping in the dark among the pans and plates.

“I see you survived your electronics class,” said Mark Clark. He was standing in front of the sink shucking corn, dropping the pale green husks into a brown paper garbage bag beside him.

“It was actually pretty cool. I mean, boring in a lot of ways, and the teacher, Mr. Lawndale, is a complete loon, but we got to blow up these things called capacitors.”

“Yeah, baby,” said Morgan, doing his Austin Powers impersonation. “Could this by chance be because your prof didn't have your undivided attention?”

“I guess,” I said.

“It's an old trick to get kids to take electricity seriously.”

“I take electricity seriously!” I said.

There was a moment of silence in which I imagined that my brothers and I all contemplated the electric shock that had basically made me more confident, but also more stubborn.

To break the silence I told about the breadboards and sticking the wire legs of capacitors, which looked like alien bugs, into the positive and negative holes, and not knowing—because we weren't listening—that if you stick the long leg into the negative you'll wind up with an explosion.

“The little ones are fun, but if you get a huge capacitor—like say from a computer power supply or something—you could blow the roof off.” Mark Clark chuckled. I added “the love of blowing stuff up” to skateboarding on my mental list of things boys never outgrow.

The eggs finished boiling and I plucked out the yolks and mashed them in a bowl with a fork. Morgan and Mark Clark started trading stories, first about various capacitor explosions and then about other cool things they've blown up over the years. They forgot all about me, which was fine, because it gave me a chance to think.

As far as I could tell, Sylvia had returned to her apartment with Chelsea's ring, but then hadn't been home since. My main clue was the mail sitting on the table, still unopened. Everyone opened their mail when they got home, didn't they? Maybe she bought the ring, came home and pried the red diamond from the center, got in her car, and took off. If she had a car. It wasn't like you could take MAX to the Mexican border.

The only problem with this theory was, was she the type of person to leave her little brother behind? The folded blanket and pillow set on the corner of the couch meant that either he was living there or staying there. I'd heard of fathers leaving the family, and mothers leaving like mine did, but never brothers and sisters. Usually, if you were left in the care of your older brother or sister, they took their responsibilities seriously.

Maybe I was totally jumping to conclusions. Maybe Sylvia had spent the night at a friend's house, or had gone out of town somewhere for the weekend. The thing about trying to solve a mystery was that while you had to see what was right in front of your face, you had to be careful not to read more into it than was there. For example, running into Shark the security guard, who acted as if he had every right to be in the apartment. It seemed as if he'd been going through Sylvia's stuff, but maybe not. Maybe, she just had a really messy bedroom and made Tonio keep the rest of the place clean.

I sprinkled paprika on top of my deviled eggs, wondering as I always do whether paprika has any taste, or if it's just for decoration. No one seems to know. Quills helped me set the picnic table, even though technically setting the table was my job. Morgan asked me what kind of salad dressing I wanted on my chopped salad. Mark Clark was pouring the drinks, and asked, as he always did, whether I wanted milk or juice. I reminded
him it was the weekend, when I got to have soda with my meals.

It was 7:30 or 8:00. The sun had dropped behind the other side of the house, leaving us in a chilly shadow. We had just started passing the food around when I remembered Jupiter, still racing around behind the kitchen cupboards, his own private obstacle course. I excused myself and went into the house to find him. He was inside the cabinet where we keep the plates and bowls, sitting on the top dinner dish washing his paws.

I dropped Jupiter back in his cage behind the piano in the living room. Suddenly, the phone rang in the kitchen. My brothers and I all have cell phones. No one ever calls on the landline except our dad, who spends most of his time doing his lawyer work out of town, mostly in Los Angeles. Dad calls often when he's traveling, so I figured it was him. I answered the phone.

“Hi, Charlie.” Dad's real name was Howard, but we called him Charlie after the boss you never saw in
Charlie's Angels.
It was a dumb family joke that cracked us up anyway.

“Charlie! Is this the Clark residence?” I was surprised to hear my mom's voice. I'd forgotten that Mark Clark said Mom was coming home next week. It was sort of sad that I'd forgotten, but Mom had been planning on coming home about a dozen times over the past year and she never had.

“Um, yes it is.” Why didn't I just say “Hi, Mom, it's me!” Why did I pretend I didn't recognize her voice?

“Minerva? Is that you, honey?”

“Oh, hi, Mom.”

“Hi, honey! I can't wait to see you. I'll be home Sunday.”

“Me too you, Mom.”

“I've got big plans for us—and a surprise, too.”

“Are you bringing me a pony?” This was an old joke from when I was small. Every time she and my dad went somewhere together, and would call home and say they had something for me, I wondered if it was a pony. It was an inside joke with my mom, I thought, but she just kept right on chattering.

“You don't know the
meaning
of quality time, Minnow. We're going to have so much fun together.”