Object of Desire (15 page)

Mom just stood in the center of the kitchen, seething.

“Where's Patsy?”

Nana was in the door frame of the living room.

Mom exploded. “
She's dying!
Okay? She's
dying!
”

Nana blinked.

“I've got to get out of here,” Mom grumbled in a low voice, pushing past her confused mother-in-law and heading back outside. In a few seconds I heard the door to the cab slam shut and the tires crunch over the snow in the driveway.

Nana just looked at me. Her eyes were moist, and her chin was trembling. “Where's Patsy?” she whispered again.

“She's just resting for a while at St. Luke's,” I told her, and she nodded, like she always did, as if she remembered everything.

We both returned to the living room, where we sat on the couch and looked at the Christmas tree. I had no idea what my mother had meant when she'd said my father wasn't at the drugstore, but neither did I have any idea what could be taking him so long. Mom should have gone looking for him. He should be informed about this latest news of Becky. Because maybe, in fact, by the end of the day, my sister would be back home, telling us all about how she'd been kidnapped. The newspapers would run stories about it for several days, and Becky and Mom would be featured on the local news. And then everything would get back to normal—except, of course, that Aunt Patsy would still probably die, and we'd have to deal with that.

We sat there for quite a while. Dad didn't return. Neither did Mom. She must have gone straight from the bank to Caldor's. I looked at the clock. Eleven thirty-five. Twenty-five minutes before twelve, before the money was due to be dropped off. Nana had dozed off, her chin on her chest.

I stood up when I heard a car pull into the driveway, but it wasn't a car I recognized. It was big and black, with a silver hood ornament that looked like an animal. A Jaguar. That was what it was. Dad had always commented on Jaguars, wishing he had one.

And its driver was Troy Kitchens.

“Hey,” he said, coming to the front door.

“Since when can you drive?” I asked, opening the door a crack.

He shrugged. “I've known how to drive since I was twelve.”

“But you're too young to have your license.”

He shrugged again. “Maybe. But I'm not too young to drive.”

I studied him, all wrapped up in a shiny down parka trimmed with fur. His red hair stuck out from under the hood. His eyes were hidden, as usual, by his blue aviator glasses. He wore no gloves and rubbed his bare hands together to keep them warm.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“'Cause my father told me you were about to find your sister. He went down to meet your mother at the bank and give her the money. So I came here to get you.”

“To get me?”

Troy nodded. “Don't you want to see what happens?”

I didn't know what he meant.

“Don't you want to go and see your sister get rescued? We could hide and wait and see what happens.”

“My mom is going to hide,” I told him.

He gave me a face. “You're gonna let your mom take that chance? What if these guys have guns? What if they shoot her?”

“Oh,” I said in a little voice, suddenly terrified.

I hadn't thought of that. I supposed it could happen. Mom could get killed. And I had just let her run off without even trying to stop her, or to offer any help. She had wanted Chipper to follow her for protection, but he'd refused. And that old guy Bud the cabdriver didn't seem like he'd be much protection. He'd probably have a heart attack if he tried to save her. I suddenly felt horrible. I should have insisted to Mom that I go with her. What kind of son was I? If something happened to her, it would be all
my
fault.

Troy took off his glasses. His pupils were wide, and the whites of his eyes were flecked with red. I knew what his eyes were saying to me.
I saw my mother with her brains blown out. Do you want to see the same?

No, I didn't. No, I wanted my mother safe and protected. To lose your mother had to be the worst thing ever, in the whole entire world. Look what it had done to Troy.

“Okay,” I said. “Take me down there.”

I turned and saw Nana. I couldn't leave her alone. I opened the door again and called back out to Troy. “My grandmother's got to come, too.” He just shrugged and got into the car to wait.

“Nana,” I said, “find your coat. We're going for a ride.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just for a ride with my friend Troy. You'll like him. He's nice.” Troy wasn't nice, but that didn't matter at the moment. Neither did the nagging feeling in my gut that Mom would be very, very pissed that I had taken Nana out for a ride with a kid who didn't even have his driver's license yet. But Mom would certainly forgive me if I could save her from getting shot.

Just how I was going to do that was unclear. All I knew was that I needed to be with her. I couldn't let her do this alone. That day, worrying about my mother, was the worst day so far in the whole ordeal of Becky's disappearance. That worry was by far the worst I'd felt. I had let my mother go off on her own, possibly to get killed. I hadn't tried to stop her. My own mother. The mother who had always been there for me, worrying if I got sick and making sure I wore my boots and making me drink extra glasses of milk because she thought I had a calcium deficiency. In third grade, when I was having a hard time with math, she was waiting for me every day when I get off the bus, with a pack of flash cards to drill the times table into my head. Even though I'd hated it at the time, I'd known she was doing it for my own good, because she cared about me, because she
loved
me, because she wanted me to grow up to be successful. And I learned my times table, backward and forward, all because of Mom.

And now she was out there, all alone. All I could think about was Troy's mother, her brains dripping down the wall.

I helped Nana over the ice and snow and into the backseat of Troy's Jaguar. She was silent. The car smelled like leather and cigarettes.

“Park at the far end of the lot,” I told Troy, “so we can keep an eye.”

He shook his head. “You should hide in the Dumpster. You should be in there so you can see who reaches in to get the money.”

I looked at him as if he were crazy.

“No, really, man. You should climb inside the Dumpster.”

“No,” I said. “We can keep a lookout from the car….”

“Don't you care about your
mom,
Danny?”

Troy had taken off his glasses and was rubbing his eyes. They were tearing. I thought maybe he was emotional because all this made him think about his own mother.

“What if they have guns and shoot me in there?” I asked, my heart thudding.

Troy looked at me with his red, watery eyes. “Better you than your mother.”

He was right. I should get into the Dumpster. Kind of a stake-out for my mother's protection. I steeled myself. Troy started the car, and we headed down the street. He drove erratically, slamming on the brakes at stop signs, causing us all to bolt forward. Nana didn't seem to mind. “Wheeee!” she said, her eyes lighting up. Her worries over Aunt Patsy were far from her mind. At least she was having a good time.

I saw the Caldor's sign from a distance, and I began to shudder. It was ten to twelve. The taxicab was nowhere in sight. Mom was probably going to arrive just on the dot of twelve, like they said. Troy pulled around to the back of the store and parked at the complete other end from the Dumpster.

“Go on,” he told me. “Get out and hop in there.”

“Yeah,” I said, though I didn't move right away.

“Get going, Danny. Time's wasting. Any minute now your mother could get here, and they could shoot her head off.”

“Where's Patsy?” Nana asked from the backseat, her mood no longer so carefree.

I turned around to her. “Everything's gonna be okay, Nana.”

She gave me a smile but said nothing.

I turned to Troy. “Watch out for my grandmother,” I told him. “Don't let her get out of the car or anything.”

He grunted. He withdrew a cigarette from his coat pocket. “Does she mind if I smoke?”

“No, I guess not. Nana used to smoke. Just keep the windows open.”

He nodded, lighting up. It was an odd-looking cigarette, unevenly wrapped, like nothing I'd seen before.

“Keep an eye,” I said. “If somebody starts shooting, I'm gonna make a mad dash back here. So keep the motor running.”

Troy nodded. He didn't seem so interested anymore. He was more intent on lighting his cigarette than anything else.

I hopped out of the car. I didn't dare look around. I just ran as fast as I could across the lot to the Dumpster. It was big and green and smelly, with dirty snow piled up behind it. I used the snow, pushed there by plows, to reach the top of the Dumpster. I slipped once but caught myself. Throwing myself over the top, I landed on some wet cardboard boxes.

The thing stank of rotting bananas and spoiled milk. I tried to remain perfectly still, but the cardboard boxes beneath me were collapsing, and my ass was getting wet. I placed my hands down to steady myself and found myself sinking into a thick, sticky mess. Broken eggshells and celery stalks bubbled to the surface of the black water. Another smell was released, more foul than before. I closed my eyes and prayed to God not to get shot.

I didn't wear a watch, so I didn't know what time it was. But it had to be close to twelve. In a few minutes, I knew, I'd see a box of money tossed over the top by Mom. I couldn't let her find out I was in there. I was still sinking into the muck, so I looked around for something to steady myself with. That was when I spotted the blue bag with the Connecticut Bank and Trust logo on front. Carefully, I pulled it close and peered inside. Wads of money, held together with brown wrappers.

Mom had already been there.

I waited. Overhead I could see heavy gray clouds moving in to obscure the blue sky. What if it started to snow again? My ass and legs were soaking wet and freezing cold by now, and the smell was starting to make me gag.

Then I heard the sirens.

A screech of tires, a slamming of car doors. “Come out of the Dumpster now,” a voice boomed through a megaphone. I froze. “Show yourself, with your hands up.”

It was the police. Maybe they'd caught the kidnappers. Maybe…

A rush of running footsteps surrounded the dumpster. There was a loud clanging of metal.
Guns,
I thought. Rifles hitting the Dumpster.

“Don't shoot!” I screamed, standing up as quickly as I could, but I lost my footing, sliding down into the scummy water of the Dumpster. I looked up. A policeman's face peered over the top, looking down. It was Detective Guthrie. I recognized him. And he was, indeed, holding a gun.

“Please don't shoot me!” I cried again, terrified.

Guthrie's face disappeared. I managed to stand, wet and cold, and climb my way back to the top. I exited the way I'd come, over the pile of hardened snow. I was covered with eggshells and green, oily slime. Three police cars had blocked all access to the Dumpster. I turned toward Troy's car at the other end of the lot and saw another police car parked over there. A cop had Troy up against the car and was frisking him. And then I saw my mother.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” she screamed. “It's Danny! It's my
son!
”

“Mom,” I said in a little voice.

“What the hell are you
doing?
” she shrieked.

I started to cry. “I just…I just wanted to make sure nobody shot you.”

Mom was so flabbergasted, she couldn't speak. Detective Guthrie put his hand on my shoulder. “Why did you think somebody might shoot your mother?” he asked in a low, calm voice.

“Because…because she was going to hide and wait for them, and I wanted to make sure they didn't hurt her.”

Guthrie looked from me to my mother. She was crying now, too, heaving. Her hands covered her face. She turned and walked away.

“No one's going to hurt your mother,” Guthrie said to me. He was a thin man, with a narrow face, and his voice was kind. “We caught the guys who called your house. It was a prank. A couple of drifters who'd seen the publicity and thought they could make some easy money. Sickos.” He gave me a sad smile. “They don't have Becky.”

“They…don't?” I asked, hiccuping now through my tears.

“No. I'm sorry.” Detective Guthrie removed his hand from my shoulder. “They'll be punished, you can be sure of that, for causing your family such distress.”

My mind was spinning. “How did you know I was in there?”

“We were watching from inside the store. There's a monitor here. We had already apprehended the punks. They were loitering around here, and when we took them in, they admitted to making the call. But we were keeping an eye on the Dumpster to see if they had any accomplices. When we saw a kid get out of a car and hop into the thing, we thought we had one.” He smiled wanly. “But turns out it was you.”

I wiped my eyes with my sticky, stinky hands. “So Mom called you, after all?”

He looked over at my mother and sighed. She was leaning, with her head down, against a cruiser, sobbing into the backs of her arms. The other cops were keeping their distance from her.

“No,” Guthrie told me. “Mr. Kitchens called us after he gave your mother the money. He was worried about her, too, just like you were. We came down here and found your mom in the woods.” He nodded toward Troy's car. “And then we found Mr. Kitchens's own kid in the car over
there.
”

I thought of Nana. “My grandmother's in the car, too. She's getting kind of senile, so we should go get her.”

Guthrie nodded. “Oh, we got her out.” He cocked his head to look at me. “Were you smoking pot, too, Danny?”