The Gypsy Game (7 page)

“Not Egypt,” April said, grinning. “Remember? It’s the Gypsy Camp now.”

“That’s right, you did tell me. I was forgetting. And you were about to introduce Ken to the change of scene.” She mugged an exaggeratedly anxious face. “Well, how did it go?”

But April barely got started telling her when she had to rush off to work. “I’ll have to hear all about it tonight,” she said over her shoulder.

“Yeah,” April called after her, “tonight. I’ll tell you all about it tonight.” And the strange thing was, she probably would. While April cleared off the breakfast dishes and put on her backpack, she was thinking about how it still seemed
a little weird to be telling an adult about stuff like the Gypsy Camp. But Caroline was different. You could tell Caroline anything. Well, almost anything, she corrected herself, as she pulled the “found” notice out of her pocket to check it one last time.

NOT LONG AFTER her grandmother left for work, April left the Casa Rosada too, and headed down Orchard Avenue for Peterson’s grocery store. It had seemed strange passing the door to the Rosses’ apartment without stopping to see if Melanie could go too. Particularly since Melanie was the one who’d insisted that they should post a “found” notice in the first place. But Melanie had this thing about being fair, and she just might think it wasn’t fair to post a “found” notice that nobody would ever see. And probably couldn’t read even if they did see it. So for just this once April decided to go alone.

Peterson’s was a small neighborhood grocery that did a lot of community-type services like delivering food to old people and keeping a bulletin board in the entryway where customers could post notices about things such as rentals and jobs and things for sale. One corner of the board was marked off to be used just for “Lost and Found.” Before pinning up her own note, April inspected the board carefully.

There were, as usual, two or three missing cats, plus a found cockatiel—and one very large poster about a lost dog. April studied the dog poster carefully before she breathed a sigh of relief. The dog was described as white
with black spots and weighing about twenty-five pounds. Definitely not Bear. The other good thing about the lost dog was the size of its notice, which meant that there really wasn’t room for anything new except, of course, directly under some other things. Which would be pretty frustrating if you were desperate to have lots of people read what you’d written, but wasn’t any problem if you weren’t. April smiled smugly as she tacked up her notice—directly under one of the cats and a part of the lost dog. She was just stepping back to see if anything was showing that shouldn’t be when Toby Alvillar came out of the store.

Toby was carrying a big paper bag and a mop, and he seemed to be in a hurry, but when he saw April, he slid to a stop.

“Hey, what do you know. It’s February.” He did one of his crazy eye rolls that meant he was about to make a joke. “I thought it was still December, but now here it is February already. How time flies!”

“Very funny,” April said in a disgusted tone of voice. Then, remembering how Toby had mysteriously disappeared the night before, she asked, “Hey, where’d you go last night, after we left”—she lowered her voice—“the Gypsy Camp? You were there one minute and then you weren’t, and nobody saw you go. Ken was looking for you.”

Suddenly the stand-up comedian was gone and the worried, spacey look was back on Toby’s face. “Yeah,” he said, “I just had to—get home. I had to find out …” His grin came back, but somehow it didn’t seem real. “I just remembered something I had to find out.”

“Find out?” April prompted. Toby didn’t take the bait,
so she tried another question. “Hey, what’s with the big mop?”

“Yeah”—Toby seemed glad to change the subject—“some mop, isn’t it. First one we’ve had in about six years. I wore out the last one when I was in kindergarten.”

That sounded like another of Toby’s tall tales. “Gimme a break,” April said. “I’ll bet you never mopped a floor in your life.”

Toby laughed. “Not mopping,” he said. “You know, riding the range.” He straddled the mop handle and started galloping in circles, yelling, “Ride ’em, cowboy!”

April was trying to keep from laughing when Toby’s mop-headed mustang tripped and he dropped his paper bag, scattering all sorts of cleaning stuff across the sidewalk. As she helped gather up S.O.S. pads, cleanser, scrub brushes, and several kinds of soaps and disinfectants, she said, “Looks like somebody’s going to be doing some housecleaning.” Remembering what the Alvillar attic looked like, she thought of adding that it was about time, but she managed to control herself. Instead, she said, “Hey, you guys going to have a party or something? Bet you’re getting ready for a big New Year’s Eve party.”

But Toby’s tense, anxious expression had come back. “No party,” he started to say, shaking his head slowly. Then suddenly he was the old Toby again. “Yeah, that’s it. A party. My dad’s having this big blast tonight for a bunch of his friends. So we’ve got to shine the old place up a little.”

April wanted to ask some more questions about the party, but everything was back in the bag by then, and suddenly Toby took off running. Clutching the bag and
mop, he disappeared around the corner toward University Avenue, without even waiting to say good-bye. April watched until he was out of sight before she started home.

April was back on Orchard Avenue and still wondering about Toby when, just as she passed the A–Z Store, she happened to see the Professor. She had been noticing the store’s clean windows at the time and the artistic way the junk and antiques were arranged now that Elizabeth’s mom was working there. The windows were so clean, in fact, that she could see the Professor himself, sitting at his desk at the rear of the store. On the spur of the moment she decided it would be a good idea to talk to him. Partly just for a visit, but also to find out if the Professor might have seen anything strange in his storage yard last night. Or heard any unusual noises, like a barking dog, for instance. If there had been a problem, she decided, it would be best if she and Melanie found out about it before the Professor did something drastic, like calling the police, or maybe the pound.

The Professor was working on his account books, but when April came in, he seemed really glad to see her. Dr. Julian Huddleston—the Professor’s real name—was as thin and bent as ever, and his dark, deep-set eyes still looked a bit mysterious. But now, instead of being blank and empty, they had a lively, curious gleam. Curious, in particular, about anything April had to say.

“Well, good morning, Miss Hall,” he said. “And what new enterprise are you pursuing on this beautiful last day of the year?” Even though the Professor’s rating had gone way up on the friendliness scale, his conversation still tended to be a little bit on the stuffy side. April said she was fine and wished him a Happy New Year. They went on chatting
about whether the beautiful weather was going to last for New Year’s Day before she got around to mentioning the storage yard and the Land of Egypt. She didn’t call it the Gypsy Camp because she really didn’t have time to go into the reasons for the change right at the moment. And besides, she certainly didn’t want to make the Professor think that he’d see anything new and interesting if he looked out his rear window. Like something new and interesting and covered with shaggy black hair, for instance.

Instead, she just said that no one had been spending much time in Egypt because of all the holiday trips and visits, but that they all had been there again just yesterday. “All of us,” she told him. “Did you hear us yesterday? There wasn’t too much noise, was there, like in the evening?”

The Professor said he hadn’t heard any unusual noises the evening before, which was a big relief. After visiting for a few more minutes, April asked if she could look around before she went home, “Just to see if you have any new ancient things,” she said. But what she really wanted to see was how easy it would be for the Professor to see through the window in his back room nowadays, the window that looked right into what had once been his storage yard, before it became the Land of Egypt, and was at present the Gypsy Camp. Not to mention, and she certainly didn’t intend to, the temporary home of a large, shaggy animal.

Back in the old days before Mrs. Chung took over, the rear window had been almost too dirty to see through, but things were a lot cleaner now, which might present a problem. So April snooped around for a few minutes before she
headed back to the Casa Rosada feeling very relieved. As soon as she got to the Rosses’ apartment, she started telling Melanie all about everything—the good news and the not so good. The good news about how she had posted the “found dog” notice and how the Professor couldn’t even get near his rear window anytime soon, because the back room was so crowded with new merchandise. And the not-so-good news about running into Toby and how he still seemed to be in a pretty weird mood.

But on that particular morning telling Melanie anything the least bit private wasn’t easy. Mrs. Ross was home, and both Marshall and Melanie had chores to do. So April had to follow Melanie around while she vacuumed, while Marshall followed them both around dragging a bunch of toys he was supposed to be picking up and whining that he wanted to go see Bear.

“Come on, Melanie,” he kept whimpering, “I got to go see my Bear. Right now.”

“Shhh,” Melanie kept saying, “Mom will hear you.” But he kept right on. Once or twice April was pretty sure his mom did hear him, but she didn’t seem to pay any attention. April guessed that she figured Bear was just one more of Marshall’s imaginary animals.

April was still screeching away about Toby, trying to be heard over the roar of the vacuum, when Melanie suddenly turned off the switch.

“Like he was what?”

“Like he was”—April toned her screech down to a whisper in midsentence—“nervous. Scared almost.”

“Yeah, scared. That’s what I thought yesterday. Scared.”
Melanie nodded slowly, her forehead puckered into a worried frown. Then she turned on the switch and went back across the room. And April went on following her, feeling very frustrated. She hated having to compete with a vacuum and a whining kid when she had important things to talk about.

By the time the Ross kids finished all their chores and received permission to go outside for one hour, Marshall was practically standing on his head with impatience. When April and Melanie got out onto the landing, he was already tearing down the stairs, with his shoes untied and his jacket only halfway on. And
no
Security. Melanie pointed that out right away. “Look, April. No Security. And this time,
don’t
mention it.”

April promised she wouldn’t.

They didn’t stop by for Elizabeth because the Chungs were still away visiting relatives, so it was only a few minutes later that they reached the gate to the Gypsy Camp and were almost trampled and kissed to death by a wildly joyful Bear.

“A bouncing Bear,” Melanie said, a few minutes later. She and April were sitting on the edge of the shed floor watching as Bear bounced around the yard with Marshall right behind him.

“Yeah. And a bouncing Marshall, too,” April said. “Marshall seems—different. You know, when he’s around Bear.”

“Different?” Melanie asked. “How different?”

April couldn’t put her finger on it at first. “Well, kind of … Well, like he was younger. Not so—dignified.”

Melanie understood right away. “Yeah. Right!” she said. “More like your normal pain-in-the-neck four-year-old.”

They’d talked before, lots of times, about how dignified and grown-up Marshall was, almost like he didn’t know how to be a little kid. Except where Security was concerned, of course. But now suddenly, it was as if he didn’t need to be so grown-up, or need Security so much either. And it seemed to be Bear that made the difference, which was pretty amazing.

Bear was amazing in other ways, too. April had never had a dog before, and neither had the Rosses, so they were all surprised to find out how smart he was. For instance, he knew that his bag of kibble was hidden in the base of the statue of Diana, and he knew how to make it very clear that he wanted them to get some out. He knew how to let them know he wanted to play tug-of-war with one of his blankets, and he also knew how to walk on his hind legs even without anyone holding up his front paws. And, as Melanie pointed out, he was careful to poop neatly only in one corner of the yard. It was the kind of thing that an organized person like Melanie would be sure to notice.

No one else showed up at the Gypsy Camp that day, but April and Melanie weren’t too surprised. Toby was probably too busy cleaning house, and who knew what Ken was doing.

“He’s probably home getting ready for a party too,” Melanie said. “The Kamatas have lots of parties.” They waited around a little longer, but no one came, so they fed Bear one more time and went on home.

New Year’s Eve was pretty quiet at the Halls’ that night.
After dinner April was in her room reading when she began to hear the sound of firecrackers and horns, and right afterward the phone rang and it was Melanie.

“Hi.” Melanie sounded worried. “I hear loud noises. Outside I mean.”

“Big news,” April said sarcastically. “Loud noises? On New Year’s Eve? I can’t believe it.”

“I know.” Melanie paused and then went on, “I know it’s New Year’s Eve. But I didn’t hear any
dogs
barking, though. You know, some
dogs
bark like crazy when they hear loud noises. Particularly when they hear the kind of loud noises like on New Year’s Eve.”

“Oh yeah. I get it.” April said, and she really did. What she got was that Melanie was trying to tell her something without actually saying it. Like maybe she was in the same room with her parents or something. “Okay,” April said, “I’ll go out on the balcony and check.” They went on talking for a few minutes, wishing each other Happy New Year, to make it sound like a normal conversation, before they hung up and April hurried out to the balcony.

Since the balcony of Caroline’s apartment was on the A–Z side of the Casa Rosada, it was a good place to listen for noises that might be coming from the storage yard. But there weren’t any. The Gypsy Camp seemed to be very quiet. It was such a beautiful night, strangely warm for New Year’s Eve, that April stayed out on the balcony for longer than she’d meant to. When she finally came in and called Melanie, Mrs. Ross answered the phone.