The Girl from Felony Bay Page 22

  Just as my feet started to leave the ground, a huge blue arm circled my chest and arms and stopped me cold.

  “Let me go!” I snarled.

  “It’s okay,” a gentle voice said into my ear.

  “It’s not okay. He killed my father!”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  I froze.

  “He didn’t kill him,” the policeman said. “He wanted to, but we caught him in time. Now I need for you to relax, because I’m going to take that knife out of your hands. Okay? And then I’m going to put you down. But first you have relax and promise to let me have the knife.”

  I nodded and let my arms go and relaxed my hand so the policeman could take my knife. I wiped the tears from my eyes, and when I did, I saw that Mr. Barrett was looking at me with an expression like a junkyard dog might get when it wanted to get off its chain and tear out my throat.

  “You okay now?” the policeman asked.

  I nodded.

  He put me down very gently, and as he did, I heard Custis come into the room behind me. “Crawford, my God. Abbey said it was you. But I didn’t believe it.”

  Mr. Barrett didn’t say anything; he just turned his head and looked out the window.

  “I almost forgot about him,” I said to everyone in the room, “but then I remembered that there had been another person that night when they buried the crate. We couldn’t see him, because he stayed in the shadows, and we couldn’t hear his voice well enough to recognize it. But I knew it had to be somebody with enough money to buy Felony Bay, because Uncle Charlie and Bubba Simmons sure didn’t have that much, and also somebody who had managed to get the combination to Miss Jenkins’s safe. Only two people were supposed to know that combination, Miss Jenkins and Daddy, right? That’s why everybody thought Daddy stole the money.”

  I was talking really fast. I knew I was running on at the mouth, but I couldn’t help myself. “And then I thought even if I could solve everything else about Felony Bay, people would still think Daddy had been in on it unless I could figure out who stole the combination.

  “My first idea was that maybe Esther Simmons got the combination somehow and gave it to Bubba, but that still didn’t explain how they got the money to buy Felony Bay.” I turned and looked at Custis. “Sorry to say that I suspected you, but I realized it had to be either you or Mr. Barrett, and when Mr. Barrett wanted to go to the hospital alone, and he sent you out to Felony Bay, I was pretty sure it had to be him. Mr. Barrett wanted to make sure the coast was clear so he could kill the only other person who could have tied him to the robbery.”

  Behind me a couple of the policemen started to clap. When I glanced back, they were smiling and nodding. The policeman who had driven us to the hospital laughed and said, “I think we’ve got us a twelve-year-old Sherlock Holmes.”

  Another one of the policemen grew serious and added, “If it hadn’t been for you, this might have ended very differently. When we came in, Mr. Barrett here was just starting to put a pillow over your father’s face.”

  I turned and looked at Mr. Barrett, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You think you’re such a big-shot lawyer,” I said. “Let’s see if you can talk your way out of this one.”

  “Come on,” one of the policemen said, reaching out to take Mr. Barrett by the arm. “No reason for you to stay here. We got a nice cell for y’all down at police headquarters.”

  “Officer,” I said. He stopped and looked in my direction.

  I glanced at Daddy. His eyes were closed the way they always were, but deep in my bones I could feel something changing. I knew he was slowly coming awake. Maybe the doctors didn’t know yet, but I did. It might not be today or tomorrow or even next week, but it was happening, just as surely as corn was growing in our fields. “My father can’t speak to me yet, but I think I know what he would tell me to do if he could.”

  The policeman’s eyebrows went up in question.

  “This,” I said, and with that I turned and kicked Mr. Barrett in the crotch as hard as I possibly could.

  He let out a wonderful sound of surprise that changed into a groan of serious pain. Behind me, the policemen broke into laughter, and when Mr. Barrett tried to straighten up and come after me, the policeman who had him by the arm laughed. “How’s it feel, Mister Big Shot?” he said as he dragged Mr. Barrett out of the room and down the hallway. “Taken down by a twelve-year-old girl.”

  Twenty-nine

  I asked Custis if I could stay for a while and spend some time with Daddy, and he said he would ride back out to Felony Bay with the policeman and get his car and then drive me back to Reward when I was ready to go. I sat beside Daddy’s bed, holding his hand, dozing off from my own exhaustion, and then, when I was awake again, trying to stuff down my impatience for him to wake up. Once of Daddy’s doctors stopped by, and when I told him that I was sure Daddy was getting ready to wake up, he got a sad look on his face and told me that waking up from a coma isn’t like waking up from a long nap. He said that if Daddy woke up—and there was no way to be sure that he would—the whole process might take days or even weeks.

  I might have been discouraged if somebody had told me that earlier, but Bee and I had gotten away from Green Alice and we had beaten Uncle Charlie and Mr. Barrett at their dirty game. Right at that moment, I knew that there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do if I really put my mind to it. If I had to spend the rest of my summer visiting the hospital and talking to Daddy without him talking back to me, that would be okay. Because I knew for certain that things were getting better.

  I didn’t think about much else, like where I was going to live from then on, until later that afternoon when Custis came back to the hospital to take me out to Reward. Daddy was sleeping, just like always, but I told him I would be back tomorrow. On our way out, Custis told me that Grandma Em had arranged for someone to come with a horse trailer and pick up Timmy and Clem from Miss Walker’s.

  I felt terrible for a moment, because I realized that I had totally forgotten about the horses. “They were okay, weren’t they?” I asked.

  Custis laughed. “It apparently caused quite a stir when the head of school found a carriage horse blocking the way into her office.”

  That actually made me laugh. The Miss Walker’s head of school was a nice lady, but she was sure a stickler for the rules. I loved picturing her trying to order Clem to get out of her way and him not paying her the slightest attention.

  In the next instant all my humor disappeared, because it suddenly struck me that Custis was taking me back to an empty house. Uncle Charlie and Ruth were in jail, and I certainly didn’t think they would be coming home soon. I thought about Rufus, who had been stuck in the house for hours. And then I also thought about the two of us living in Uncle Charlie’s house all by ourselves, every night of the year, and it scared me.

  I must have fallen so silent that Custis sensed it, because he turned to look at me. “Grandma Em called earlier to let me know that the police had given her your uncle’s house keys, and she and Bee went up to the house to get Rufus.”

  I nodded. That made me feel better, but only a little bit. I was still feeling small and lonely, thinking about living in the house all alone.

  “Grandma Em has already put a dog bed under the kitchen table for Rufus,” Custis said.

  I nodded.

  “And she said they’ve already gone and moved your clothes up to the big house. You and Bee will be sharing your old room, if that’s okay with you.”

  I looked at him, and suddenly I understood. It was more than I could ever have hoped for. I felt a huge smile burn through all my exhaustion and loneliness.

  When we reached Reward, Custis drove me straight to the big house, where I found Bee throwing tennis balls for Rufus out in the yard. Bee was jumping up and down in excitement, because she had heard the news about Daddy and was so happy about me moving in with them. Rufus was jumping up and down, which is what he did most of the time, since Labrador retrievers are just born happy. The onl
y time they are even happier than usual is when there is a bowl of food nearby.

  We went in the back door and found Grandma Em in the kitchen, where the aromas told me that she was slow cooking baby back ribs that I knew she would finish on the grill later. A big pot of collards was simmering on the stove, and I saw that she had also made tomato pie and corn bread. There was so much food on the counter that it looked like she was having a party rather than cooking for just herself and Bee . . . and maybe me.

  She turned around, saw me, and came over to give me a big hug. “We are so excited that you will be staying with us.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She straightened her arms and held me out at arm’s length so she could look me in the eyes. “You know that you are going to stay right here in this house just as long as it takes. You are part of this family, and you will always be part of this family.”

  The next morning Bee and I woke up early, and after we went down to the barn and fed and watered the horses, we walked over to Felony Bay to watch the police remove the crate Uncle Charlie and Bubba Simmons had buried. They had brought a much bigger backhoe than the one Bubba Simmons had used, and they dug a much bigger hole, so they could get the crate out in one piece without doing any damage.

  As the crate came out of the ground and the dirt dropped away, we could see a little bit of red fuzz on the bottom that must have come from the straps Uncle Charlie and Bubba used to lower it in place. That made me feel good, because Daddy always said a person could never, ever have too much proof when they were trying to win a case.

  But for Bee and me, the huge surprise came when the backhoe operator got ready to fill in the hole. We were standing alone near the edge just watching, and both of us caught sight of it almost at the same time. Along one side of the hole it looked like the backhoe bucket had scraped some other object, and whatever it was had partly crumbled into the hole.

  Bee and I could see that it wasn’t dirt or rock, but more as if the backhoe had sheared off what looked like a couple rotten boards. They must have been so soft and crumbly that they had made no noise, and unless a person was standing right where we were, they were invisible. It wasn’t the rotten boards but rather what had been behind them that made our eyes go wide.

  Bee sucked in a deep breath. I knew she was about to shout something out to the backhoe operator, but I grabbed her arm.

  She turned and looked at me like I was crazy, but I shook my head. A second later she totally got it and nodded.

  We backed up, and both of us watched in silence as the backhoe quickly filled the hole. I marked the location exactly in my brain, and once the police left, I paced it off and wrote down the exact number of paces from the cabin and from a nearby pine tree.

  Daddy would be exonerated. Uncle Charlie, Bubba Simmons, Ruth, and Mr. Barrett were going to jail, where they belonged. But there was one more job left to do. And I was finally going to do it, just the way Daddy would have wanted.

  Thirty

  It is early morning, mid-August. Seventh-grade classes at Miss Walker’s begin tomorrow, and even though it’s the hottest time of the year, for Bee and me summer is coming to an end. I am leaning against the fence watching Clem and Lem and Timmy and Bee’s new pony, Buck, graze in the pasture. Mist is rising off the grass; the air is humid as a shower stall and already heavy with heat. The sky is the deep blue that comes just after sunrise as the color slowly comes into the world.

  In a few minutes the sun will be over the live oaks, and the sky will be the same hard blue as a robin’s egg. This is the perfect time of day to wonder how it would be possible to live anywhere as good as Leadenwah Island.

  When I look back, I can see Bee following slowly out the plantation drive. There is no longer even a trace of a limp when she moves, and the doctor has told her she can play on the middle school tennis team this fall. She is rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, but at least she is awake. Bee definitely likes to sleep more than I do, but I am trying to make her understand how great it is to be up before the rest of the world. This morning at least I have succeeded.

  “Last day of summer vacation. What are we going to do?” she asks as she comes up to me.

  I hold up my hand and pop up my fingers as I list off the ideas. “First we ride, then we swim, then we make eggs and bacon,” I say, knowing Grandma Em still won’t be in the kitchen when we finish our swim.

  Bee nods. “What about eggs first?”

  “Forget your stomach. We have to ride before it gets too hot.”

  Grandma Em says Bee is going through another growth spurt. I think it may be true, because I think she is even taller than she was a month ago. In any case, all Bee can think about other than sleeping is getting more food in her stomach. I’m just hoping that one of these days I go through a growth spurt, too.

  Of course, that’s not the only thing I’m hoping for. Daddy is still in his coma, but I haven’t lost hope—well, at least I haven’t lost hope too many times. The doctors have told me that if he does wake up—they don’t understand that he is going to wake up—he’s not going to just jump out of bed and be his old normal self. Doctors are smart people, but they’re not right on everything.

  In the barn we put some oats into two buckets, then walk into the pasture and catch our ponies. We saddle them fast and take a fairly short ride, not wanting to get them overheated in the August sun. On our way to the barn we take a detour out to the township road, where we grab the morning paper from the mailbox. Back in the barn we bathe both ponies, put their fly coats back on, and leave them in their stalls, where it will be cooler than out in the hot sun of the pasture.

  “Last one in the water has to do the dishes,” Bee says. She is closer to the barn door than me, and she takes off as fast as she can. I start about twenty yards behind, but even though Bee’s legs are longer, I start to gain on her right away. My lungs are burning after the first few hundred yards, but neither one of us wants to clean up egg yuck from the dishes, so we keep running.

  Rufus has been hunting in the soybeans across the drive from the barn, and when he hears us running, he gives a happy bark and comes racing after us.

  All three of us are basically in a tie when we reach the dock. Bee and I tear off our jeans and shirts as fast as we can because we’ve got our suits on underneath, while Rufus barks and turns happy circles because he knows we’re going swimming. We race down the dock, and I can feel a big splinter go into my right foot, but I don’t care. I jump and manage to hit the water just a half second before Bee, but we both come up laughing. Rufus stands above us still on the dock, wagging his tail like crazy and finally jumping between us to make a huge splash.

  Back in the kitchen of the big house a little while later, I crack the eggs into a bowl and stir them up and afterward toast some bread and then smear on butter. Bee cooks the bacon, which takes the longest time, and that gives me time to read the paper. Grandma Em says that Bee and I have become “news junkies” over the past month or two.

  The reason is that Tom Blackford, the reporter at the Post and Courier I went to visit a couple months ago, has once again taken a big interest in everything that happened with Daddy and Uncle Charlie and Mr. Barrett and Miss Jenkins’s gold. He has been out here a bunch of times to interview Bee and Grandma Em and me, as well as Mrs. Middleton and Skoogie. He has also gone to the jail and interviewed Uncle Charlie and Ruth, who have basically been blabbing pretty hard to try to get their jail sentences reduced when they come to trial, even though Mr. Barrett has refused to talk.

  Over the past month and a half Tom Blackford has written a bunch of articles about what he now calls “The Mystery of Felony Bay.” Obviously Bee and I knew a lot of those facts already, but there are some things both of us wondered about but had never been able to explain. First off, according to what Uncle Charlie and Ruth told Tom Blackford, Mr. Barrett was the one who put the whole plot together after he managed to get the combination to Miss Jenkins’s safe. The whole question of how he’d go
tten that combination really bothered me, because I didn’t think Daddy would ever have told anyone, and I also knew he was way too careful to let it slip out in some careless mistake.

  Mr. Barrett hasn’t admitted a single thing so far, but Tom Blackford interviewed Martha, Daddy’s legal secretary, and she said she was pretty sure she knew exactly how it happened. She told Tom Blackford that just a few weeks before the robbery and Daddy’s “accident,” Mr. Barrett had gone into Daddy’s office one day with a very sad expression. Mr. Barrett had closed the office door, but Martha sat right outside the office, and she had overheard Mr. Barrett tell Daddy that he’d just found out he had cancer. He said he hoped it was treatable, but that just in case he got really sick, really fast, he and Daddy needed to share the passwords to their computers “just in case.” That way, no matter what happened, either one of them would be able to take care of the other partner’s clients.

  When I read that in Tom Blackford’s column, I knew right away that had to be exactly how Mr. Barrett got the combination. Daddy lost my mother to cancer, and when he heard that his law partner had the same terrible disease, he would have been too upset to even consider turning down Mr. Barrett’s suggestion. Once he had the computer password, it would have been a piece of cake for Mr. Barrett to stay late one night and then go into Daddy’s office after the last people had gone home for the night and snoop the combination off the computer. Daddy would have been so worried about Mr. Barrett’s health, he would never have suspected that anything like that might happen.

  Martha told Tom Blackford that she had wondered about Mr. Barrett’s cancer ever since she’d overheard that conversation, but that he’d never mentioned it again and pretty much acted as healthy as the day he’d been born. She said she’d tried to figure out if he was having cancer treatments like radiation or chemo that usually leave somebody feeling sick and very tired, but she was pretty sure he wasn’t. She also said she’d kept her questions to herself because by that time Daddy was in a coma, and with Mr. Barrett running the firm, there wasn’t really anybody else she could talk to.