Shadowed Summer (7 page)

I felt like I should help him. I knew better than to offer, though, because he liked things just so. Even Ben just opened and unpacked the boxes when he worked; he left everything in the back for Mr. Ourso to put away. Mr. Ourso was particular about everything in the Red Stripe, probably because that was all he had.

Normally, I wouldn’t have given him much thought, but his name was on our list, too. He hadn’t joined the search parties—my guess was he’d been old even then—but he had donated sandwiches and coffee. Since everybody had met up here, he’d have to know something, even if it was just the places they’d looked and found nothing.

When I got to the register, I was careful to hold my can instead of setting it down. I didn’t want to get a dirty look for leaving a ring on his counter. Mr. Ourso returned from the back, scrubbed his hands with a dish towel, then threw it over his shoulder when he saw me waiting.

“Got some salt and vinegar chips that go real good with that,” he said, nodding at my soda as he opened the gate to get behind the counter. “They’re on sale.”

I hesitated, because I didn’t really like salt and vinegar chips. They were only fifty cents, though, and I thought Mr. Ourso might like me a little better if I bought them. Plucking a green bag from the stand, I turned and dropped it on the counter with a smile. “Now I’m set.”

Nodding, Mr. Ourso punched a couple of buttons on his register, one at a time. He probably knew how much everything in the Red Stripe cost, down to the penny and the tax, but he always rang it up slowly anyway.

Since I had him there, I didn’t see anything wrong with asking about Elijah. I did just buy a snack from him I didn’t want after all. “Hey, Mr. Ourso?”

He answered me with a grunt, the register chiming when he hit
TOTAL
. “Two sixty-two.”

I dug the last of my coins from my pocket. Between Shea and Mr. Ourso, finding Elijah had started to get expensive. “You’ve had the Red Stripe a long time, huh?”

“Forty-seven years,” he said. He smoothed my dollars with the heel of his hand before putting them in the register. I guess he didn’t want the rest of the money getting any ideas about being unruly in the drawer.

“Wow.”

He looked up at me with watery blue eyes, but he didn’t nod, or smile, or even frown. He had the stillest face I’d ever seen. Thin lines dug down around his mouth and across his brow, but he seemed made out of paper. I could see the thin blue veins beneath his skin. In fact, I could see his heartbeat, his pulse fluttering at his temple. The quiet scared me more than yelling would have, and I think I might have flinched when he said, “Thirty-eight cents.”

The change went in my pocket, and I mumbled a thank-you as I slunk toward the door. Tucking the chips and soda into my bike bag, I decided that cracking Mr. Ourso could wait until later. A lot later.

Sweaty and out of breath, I stood on the side of the highway. There were tire tracks where Deputy Wood should have been; he must have needed some new scenery.

In my brilliant plans, he was sitting right out in his cherry-picking spot, just waiting to spill terrible secrets about Elijah’s disappearance, if only somebody would come along and ask him.

I stood there for a long time, like wishing would make his cruiser appear. Funny enough, it didn’t, so I got back on my bike.

The police outpost wasn’t much, just a cinder-block box with some dingy windows, but it had air-conditioning, at least. The frigid, tinny blast of it went right through my sweat-soaked shirt as I approached the front desk.

The woman there didn’t look up from her computer. Her fingers rushed along, still going as she asked, “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Deputy Wood,” I said. I craned to see if he might be in the back. “Is he here?”

“He’s on patrol. Is there something I can help you with?”

“I don’t know,” I said, studying her smooth skin and unlined hands. “How old are you?”

The typing stopped. “Excuse me?”

Something started bubbling in my chest. “I mean, I was wondering about something that happened a long time ago, and you don’t look very old. . . .”

The woman typed out four more letters, pounding the keyboard hard on each one before spinning her chair to face me. “Do you have a report number?”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”

“Do you have new evidence you’d like to share?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are you an interested party?”

Drawing my shoulders up, I hesitated. “Well, I
am
interested.”

Her voice clipped, she plucked a pen out of a can on her desk and produced a form. “If there’s something you want to claim, fill out your name and address, and to the best of your abilities, describe the object or objects you believe should be returned to you.”

I shook my head when she tried to hand me the pen. “There’s nothing I want, not a
thing
I want, I mean. I just wanted to talk to Deputy Wood.”

She whisked the form off the counter and replaced it with a new one. “Requests for interviews need to go through the Public Information Office.”

“I don’t want to interview him. I just want to talk to him!”

The woman drew her fingers across the counter. She spoke slowly, like I wasn’t bright enough to follow her. “About a police matter?”

“No, ma’am, never mind,” I said, and gave up.

Waterlogged and weepy, I got back on my bike. Between jerking my head back every time I snuffled and trying to swipe at my face to keep my view clear, it was a lucky thing I didn’t get run over.

More than anything, I just wanted to be home, curled up in the armchair, rubbing my fingers on the air conditioner. I wanted to be home just like that, right that minute, but I was stuck.

Daddy didn’t keep the ringer on in his room during the daytime, so even if I’d had a way to call, he wouldn’t have answered. Collette’s mama would have come to fetch me, but I could imagine the way her voice would go up and down all the way home if she had to leave the diner to carry me home.

The highway was dizzy hot, white waves rolling off the asphalt to make fun-house mirages out of the distance. I kept telling myself I only had to make it to the next sign, but the next sign always looked closer than it was.

Cars zipped by me, and sometimes, out of pure meanness, they honked. It was a surprise every time, and I kept wobbling off into the gravel to get away from them.

I wished horrible things on those people. I prayed they’d get a flat tire and have to walk—at least I had a bicycle. And then, when I ran across them staggering toward Ondine, I’d laugh and pedal faster.

Meanness of spirit was all I had left in me. I was burning from the inside, my legs started turning to jelly, and it got harder to keep myself from sitting down in the tall grass to bawl.

I hated that woman at the sheriff’s station, her and her dyed red hair that wasn’t fooling anybody; I hated Deputy Wood for being somewhere besides his cherry-picking spot, where he could have written slips for half of Ascension Parish, considering how fast everybody drove past me.

Just for good measure, I hated Shea Duvall, too, because he didn’t happen past on a whim and pick me up. Me and my bike would have fit in the back of his bronze and primer station wagon just fine, and I had almost a dollar left. That should have been enough for a ride home. Next time I saw him, I planned to call him Horatio, just out of spite—he’d been named for a Shakespeare character, too.

The sky folded over on itself, new shades of bruise and brown painting the clouds, but the rain wouldn’t come, no matter how hard I wished it. Road dirt clung to my sweaty skin, and my clothes were soaked through. A good gully washer would clean me off and cool me down, and besides, nobody would be able to tell I had cried all the way home if the rain came.

I slid off my bike to walk it for a while; as I walked I made mystic signs with one hand, like I was one of those traveling rainmakers who used to come through during a drought. I kept at it until the sky finally opened.

Whether I had anything to do with it or not, I took credit for the storm. Maybe the secret to making wonders happen was just waiting for the right time to try.

I left my bike in the front yard, and I’d just started inside when I saw the red and blue lights coming down my street, gliding slow enough that I knew the police weren’t on an emergency.

The rain dulled everything, even the bright red stripes on the white-paneled sheriff’s car, and it made the tires sound like they had a scrub brush to the pavement.

My heart jumped, beating hard and happy in my chest. Elijah had decided to help after all, sending Deputy Wood all but to my door. I squeezed the wet from the hem of my shirt, as if that’d make me more presentable, and waited.

Rennie Delancie came onto his porch with a big aw-shucks smile. His strawberry-blond hair fell into his eyes, and I guessed if you liked the wicked type, Rennie was probably pretty fine to look at. Waving a bandaged hand at me he shifted from one foot to the other, looking like he had to pee.

Since gawking was rude, I pretended to fumble for my key, listening as Deputy Wood went up Rennie’s walk.

“No, sir, we haven’t blown up anything for weeks.”

Rennie lied like most people breathed, natural and smooth. I couldn’t see him, but I figured he had painted on that smile of his until it was permanent.

Rennie and Deputy Wood went back and forth awhile; the bandage came from a cooking accident, and Lord, no, he hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary. Deputy Wood took a peek in the garage and around the back of the house, then told Rennie he and his brother needed to knock it off or next time he’d haul them in. They probably heard that once a week, though, so when Rennie said, “Yes, sir, I promise,” I laughed under my breath.

Deputy Wood headed for his car, and I jumped down the steps. I tried to walk fast but not too fast, in case that was suspicious, and caught him as he fit himself behind the steering wheel again.

“Everything all right, sugar?” He hung his hat out the door, shaking the rain off before tossing it onto the seat next to him.

“Yes, sir, but could I ask you a question?”

Deputy Wood turned down the radio on his shoulder. He rested an arm across the steering wheel and grinned up at me. His dark brown eyes sparkled. They didn’t look as old as the rest of him did. “Besides that one?”

“Yes, sir.” I blushed, but I didn’t shy away. “You helped look for Elijah Landry, didn’t you?”

“Well, me and most of the parish, but yes, ma’am, I did.” His smile curled with curiosity, crooked at one corner like his brows. “I reckon that was before your time, though.”

I nodded. “It was, but I was . . . Me and my friend, we’re gonna do a report on local mysteries, and that’s the biggest one we’ve got.”

“I don’t know that it’s much of a mystery,” he said. “Fact is, he probably run off.”

I didn’t mean to shake my head, but I did. Folks ran away from Ondine all the time; it was practically tradition. When you lived in a town as big as a flea, anywhere with a movie theater was a step up. Everybody in town had an uncle or cousin what did that and nobody ever searched for them except maybe their mamas.

So right off, Elijah’s disappearance was different.

“How come you all had that big search party?”

Grinning again, Deputy Wood crooked a finger to draw me closer, then whispered like he was telling a secret. “His granddaddy was friends with the parish president.”