Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (9 page)

“Sure,” André says. “They were just here. Went out that way. Probably at Maynard’s Market by now.”

“Thanks, sir.”

“No problem.”

He’s already leaving when André says, “You want to leave a number in case you miss them and I see them walkin’ around?”

“Nah. I’m sure I’ll find them.”

The minute he’s gone, André says, “Stay low,” then goes across the lobby and does a real sly check of Broadway. After a minute he saunters back to the counter, saying, “Deli mustard is a good description.” He crouches beside us. “I get the feelin’ that fella’s bent about more than his wiper. I don’t know what you two did, and I don’t want to know. Just get home quick and stay there.”

“Can we go out the back?” I ask him. “I know it’s fenced in, but I’ve climbed it before.”

“Why am I not surprised.” He snorts. “Have at it.” And as we scurry out the back door he says, “Good thing you don’t look like yourselves or I’d be pretty worried about him trackin’ you down. Once you’re cleaned up you should be okay.”

“For the record,” I tell him as we’re going outside, “all we did was cut through the graveyard and climb over a car to get out.”

He rolls the cigar to the side of his mouth. “Then why’s Big Boy there so interested in trackin’ you down?”

“I have no idea.” Then I turn and tell him, “Thanks, okay? And oh—if you see a guy with black hair and really pale skin—”

“And crazy weird teeth,” Holly throws in.

“Right. Don’t tell him anything!”

André squints at Holly. “Crazy weird teeth?”

“You’ll know if you see them,” she says.

He turns his squint on me. “And what makes you think I’d tell anyone anything, huh? Have I ever done that before?”

I shake my head. “Yeah. Right. Sorry. Just a reflex.”

“Well, reflex your way outta here. You’re hurtin’ my ulcer.”

“You’ve got an ulcer?”

“Scram!”

So we scram, all right, through a swamp of monster weeds and trash to the shaky chain-link fence.

“What is Shovel Man doing with the Vampire?” I ask. “And what do they want?”

“I think André’s right—it can’t be about the windshield wiper.”

“Then what?”

“I have no idea.” She trips on something and picks herself back up. “What is this place? It’s like a big cage of junk.”

“I don’t know, but let’s hurry, okay?” I scurry up the fence. “You’ve got a key to your back door on you, right?”

“Yeah. Luckily it’s the same as the front door.” Holly starts climbing up as I work my way down the other side, but when we’re at about the same level, she stops and says, “I just thought of something.”

“What?” I ask her through the fence.

“The front door’s unlocked. It may not even be
shut.
”

I stare at her. “But … he saw us leave. You don’t think he’d just walk in, do you?”

“He might if he didn’t buy our act. Did you see the way he was looking around the lobby?”

My skin creeps a little. “Yeah. He was pretty intense.”

“And obviously no one’s going to cover for us at Maynard’s.”

“Good point.”

We start moving again, and when we’re both safely on the other side, we check around, then sneak over to the back door of the Pup Parlor.

“Please don’t go home,” Holly whispers as she slips the key in. “Call your grandmother and tell her you’re spending the night. Vera and Meg are both really heavy sleepers and there’s no way I want to be here alone.”

I tell her, “Okay,” because besides seeing that Holly’s scared, I’m also not wild about having to go home. See, I have to sneak up five flights of fire escape stairs to get into my building because I’m not
supposed
to be living with my grams. It’s actually, like, a federal offense or something that I am since the Senior Highrise is “government subsidized” and for seniors
only
. So if people find out I’m living there, Grams will be kicked out and she can’t exactly afford to live anywhere else. And since sneaking up the fire escape is tricky enough when nobody’s on the lookout for you, I sure don’t want to risk it now that somebody is.

Anyway, as we step through the Pup Parlor’s back door we look around for something to defend ourselves with.
Holly grabs a broom, but all I can find is a toilet plunger. I hoist it like a softball bat and whisper, “Let’s go.”

We make our way past stacks of towels and pet carriers to the main part of the Pup Parlor, tiptoeing along with our eyes peeled and our ears perked. We don’t see anyone, but the front door
is
open a crack.

Holly shuts and locks it, but that’s not really making me feel any safer. “What if he’s upstairs?” I whisper.

She looks at me all bug-eyed—like she hadn’t even considered the possibility. And before I can say, “You want me to call Officer Borsch?” she’s racing up the steps.

“Wait!” I whisper, but she’s already halfway up. So I chase after her and once we’re inside the apartment, she hoists her broom again and I do the same with the plunger, ready to knock the, you know,
intestinal stuffing
out of someone.

And then all of a sudden we hear footsteps coming down the hallway.

Holly yanks me around the corner into the kitchen, and we hold our breath and shake in our shoes as we watch a shadow creep forward across the floor.

It’s a big person’s shadow.

And there’s something in their hand.

Something long.

Raised high.

And my heart practically explodes when I realize what it is.

I mouth, “That’s a shovel!”

Now, there’s no way I want to take on Shovel Man with a toilet plunger—even with a broom backing me up. So we
cower back into the kitchen and I know Holly’s thinking what I’m thinking: What if he’s already killed Meg and Vera?

And just as I’m looking over my shoulder for a
real
weapon, like a butcher knife or something, Shovel Man pounces.

“AAAAAH!” Holly and I cry.

Only it’s not Shovel Man.

It’s Meg in a puffy bathrobe holding a vacuum cleaner attachment.

“What are you girls
doing?
” she gasps, holding her heart.

“Uh, we heard a noise?” I tell her.

“So did I!” She looks at Holly. “I thought you said you were going to bed. I thought you were sound asleep!”

“I was planning to but—”

She looks at me, so I tell Meg, “I got scared going home and … and I was hoping I could spend the night?”

Meg blinks at us both for a minute, still holding her heart. Finally she says, “Is that all right with your grandmother?”

“Can I call her?”

“You haven’t?” She points to the phone in the living room. “Go! Call! Now!”

So while I call Grams and get permission and another mini-lecture about making her worry, Holly brings me a towel, a blanket, and a change of clothes, and Meg goes back to bed.

And while Holly’s taking a shower first, I peek through the curtains, down to the traffic on Broadway, wondering
if the Vampire and Shovel Man are out there in the Deli-Mustard Car looking for us.

And if they are,
why
they are.

It felt like we were in real trouble.

Way more than we knew.

It felt great to take a shower and get into some clean pajamas, but I still didn’t sleep very well. It wasn’t the couch—I’m used to couches. It was because for some reason I kept looking out the window. Kept checking Broadway for the Vampire and Shovel Man and the Deli-Mustard Car.

Which was stupid. I mean, it’s not like we’d dented a Mercedes, or
stolen
something.

But still, I kept looking out the window.

Meg and Vera may go to bed early, but they’re also always
up
early. Holly says they like to squeeze in a little life before the poodles and schnauzers start showing up for grooming, and I can’t blame them. They work really hard, including on Saturdays, and are always busy, sometimes clear to eight at night.

But when you’ve been up half the night looking for vampires and shovel men and deli-mustard cars, 5:45 is a little early in the morning to rise and shine for biscuits and gravy. And since the family room runs right into the kitchen, there was really no avoiding the noise or the light or the smell.

“Just go sleep on the floor in Holly’s room,” Meg told
me when she saw me hide my head under a pillow. “You’ve got young bones, you’ll be fine.”

So I dragged myself into Holly’s room and crashed on the rug. And I did close my eyes and try, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. Maybe it was what Meg had said about my bones, or maybe it was just leftover images from Halloween, but I kept picturing myself as a skeleton on Holly’s floor.

One with a stupid, laughing skull.

“You awake?” Holly whispers.

I open my eyes, and there she is, looking over the edge of the bed, her little poodle, Lucy, peeking out from under her arm. “Yeah. I can’t get back to sleep.”

“What a night, huh?”

“No kidding.”

“You still worried about those guys finding us?”

I sit up cross-legged. “You know, André’s right—even if they do see us, they won’t recognize us.”

“What I don’t get,” she says, sitting up, “is what the big deal was.”

Now, for as long as I’ve known Meg and Vera, they’ve only owned one dog, and that’s Lucy. Lucy rarely barks, she doesn’t fuss, and the instant Holly walked through the Pup Parlor door, Lucy decided Holly was
her
girl.

Something that can make a big difference to someone who’s been living homeless.

Anyhow, Lucy immediately curls up in Holly’s lap and cocks her head at me like, Why are you here?

I give her a little scratch on the head and kind of start thinking out loud. “Everyone agrees that trespassing in the
graveyard is not that big of a deal. I mean, we didn’t hurt anything, right?”

“Right.”

“And denting the roof of a rust-bucket car or bending an ancient windshield wiper … ?”

She strokes Lucy’s fur. “Not worth tracking someone down.”

I nod.
“But …”

“But what?” Holly asks, because she can see that the wheels in my head are gaining some traction.

“But we weren’t the only ones chased through the graveyard last night.”

“El Zarape?”

“Right.”

“Didn’t we decide that Shovel Man had chased him from the haunted house to get those skulls back?”

I give her a little squint. “Did that ever make sense to you?”

She shakes her head. “Not really.”

“Plus if the Vampire and Shovel Man are both roaming through a graveyard at night and then cruising the streets of Santa Martina
together
, they must know each other. And at least one of them must have a key to the graveyard gate.”

“Right.”

“So I don’t think it has anything to do with recovering stolen property from the haunted house.”

“Then what?”

“Well, if we’ve ruled out trespassing, and we’ve ruled out damages to the Deli Mobile, then I think they’re after Billy.”

“Billy? Why Billy?”

“Because he’s got El Zarape’s sack of skulls.”

“But why would they …” She stops petting Lucy and stares at me as it sinks in.

“First Shovel Man’s chasing El Zarape. Why? We don’t know. Then the Vampire sees Billy with El Zarape’s sack—he must’ve seen it, right?”

“Right.”

“So he tells Shovel Man and now they’re looking for us.” I nod. “They
must
be after the sack.”

Holly’s looking a little pasty. “But … why?”

I eye her. “I think those skulls are real.”

She scoops Lucy into a hug. “That would be very … disturbing. Why would someone be carrying around skulls?”

We both sit quiet for a minute, and then I say, “Whatever the reason, we need to tell Billy and Casey. It’s way too early to call or go tapping on windows, so I’m thinking we should go back to the haunted house and check out the skulls they had there—just so we can compare them to the ones Billy’s got. I mean, everyone else thought they looked the same, and I don’t want this to be another case of my imagination running wild.”

She laughs. “Right. Because we all know how dangerous
that
can be.”

I laugh, too. “At least it’ll be a place to start.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

So we make up some excuse about wanting to go for a walk, grab a couple of biscuits and bananas, and hurry downstairs before Meg or Vera starts asking questions. And
we’re beelining for the front door when all of a sudden both of us stop, look at each other, and, without a word, turn around and go out the back door.

I guess we were both still feeling a little shaky from our close encounter with the Deli-Car Duo.

It was almost seven, so it was light out, but it’s not like the sun was blazing overhead or anything. And since the air was pretty chilly, we wound up jogging most of the way to Feere Street, just to get warm.

The street barricades were down, and as we walked to the haunted house we noticed how what had seemed spooky and creepy in the dark was pretty unscary by daylight. But it wasn’t until we got to the haunted house that I realized how fake a haunted house it really was. The pointed roof and the whole second story—the dormer windows, the shutters, the shingles—it was all a façade that was now leaning against the porch in sections.