Hostage, Page 2

  “The TV’s gone,” I said as I moved into the lighted kitchen area where the uniformed officer and Dad were holding my brother by the arms as he struggled to stand up. “Those guys in the truck must have stolen it! What happened to Jeff?”

  “They hit me over the head. From behind,” Jeff said painfully. “Knocked me out for a few minutes, I guess.”

  “I thought you were going to be careful,” I said.

  “I thought I was being careful,” he told me. “Let me sit down a minute, Dad.”

  They lowered him onto a kitchen chair, where he felt around on the top of his head, wincing. “I sneaked up on the back of the house and peeked into a window, but I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch-black in here, so I thought they must be working upstairs, where Kaci and I saw the lights moving around. I decided I’d go back home and call the police, and I had the license number of that truck parked out front. . . .” He drew his fingers away from his head and looked at them, tinged with red. He scowled. “The minute I got to the front corner of the house, somebody lunged out of the shrubbery and hit me with something hard. Real hard.”

  “You shouldn’t have come over here by yourself in the first place,” Dad told him. “The police are equipped to handle burglars.”

  The cop was looking at me. “You said the TV was gone. Are you familiar enough with the house to tell me what else might be missing?”

  I hesitated. “Maybe. Jeff spends more time over here than I do.”

  “Would you mind walking through the house with me to see what else is missing? Both of you?”

  So we did. Mom and Dad came along, and we all noticed empty spaces where items had been taken. Three TVs, a computer and a printer, a microwave, silverware.

  “It makes me feel as if I’m the intruder,” Mom said ruefully when she pulled out the drawer where the real silver was kept. “But I’ve been here at parties and seen where they keep this stuff. And, sure enough, it’s gone. Oh, my, Ruby’s going to be so upset. That was her grandmother’s silver. Do you think there’s any chance of getting it back?”

  “We’ll try,” the cop said, but from the look on his face I didn’t think he had much hope of it.

  By the time we came back downstairs, Jeff was ready to sit down again. “Oh, boy. How am I going to tell them what a lousy job I did of taking care of their house? The fool dogs didn’t even bark, and if it hadn’t been for Kaci noticing there was someone over here, we wouldn’t have a clue anything had been taken. How did the thieves know the place was empty and they could just walk in and help themselves?”

  Dad’s tone was wry. “The fact that they were taking this big trip to Boston was in the newspaper, remember? Advertising, pure and simple.”

  The cop nodded, putting away the notebook in which he’d been taking notes. “Had one couple of weeks ago. Somebody cleaned out the household of a prominent family while they were at a well-publicized funeral for the lady’s father. Isolated house, and they knew there wouldn’t be anybody there for at least a couple of hours, so they backed up their truck.”

  Mom was appalled. “Did you recover any of their belongings?”

  “No, ma’am. Not so far. You may be asked to come down to the station and answer a few more questions tomorrow, verify that license number. If you can locate the name of the hotel where the Andersons are staying, it would be helpful.”

  “I have it written down, I think,” Jeff said. He couldn’t seem to keep from touching the lump on his head.

  “I think we’d better go clean up that cut,” Mom said. “Make sure it doesn’t need sutures.” Anybody else would have said “stitches,” but she works in a medical office.

  “First I want to check on the dogs. See if they’re okay. I don’t understand why they didn’t bark.”

  I went with him to the kennel in the back of the lot, and that’s when we found out the dogs had been drugged.

  I was more indignant about that than about the burglary. The Andersons might get their stuff back, and they carried insurance against thefts, but they’d be devastated if their dogs died.

  “They’re still breathing,” Jeff stated, kneeling beside Mickey, the big collie. “I hope it was just something to put them to sleep, not to kill them. The thieves probably threw them some drugged meat. I wonder if we can get a vet to look at them this time of night?”

  Dad did. He even carried Mickey out to our van while Jeff brought Henry, the little beagle, who was so limp, I began to pray that he wouldn’t die. Mom inspected the bump on Jeff’s head before she decided it wasn’t all that serious and he could go along to the vet’s. When I wanted to go, too, she frowned, but finally agreed that I could. She knew I was scared for the dogs.

  The vet said the dogs had probably been poisoned rather than just drugged to keep them quiet. He told us he’d have to keep them overnight and he might not know until morning whether they’d pull through or not, so we went home feeling pretty glum about the whole thing. I didn’t envy Jeff having to report to the Andersons that not only had their house been robbed but that their dogs were dead.

  That was definitely something worth praying about. I did, all the way home.

  • • •

  Jeff called the vet first thing in the morning and was told that both dogs were doing better and that the vet thought they’d be all right. I didn’t know if my prayers had helped, but I thought they must have; both Mickey and Henry had looked as if they were already dead when we’d delivered them to the veterinary hospital.

  Sometimes I’d wished that we were home schooled, like the Anderson kids, so that we could take vacations any time of year. Now I was glad they were still in Boston, so we didn’t have to face them immediately. At least by the time they got home their pets would be perfectly all right again.

  • • •

  We weren’t going to get any vacation this summer, it seemed, when our school was finally over. Some people think that school principals have long vacations from their work, with nothing to do. That sure wasn’t true of Dad. He had so many things to attend to at school, even when it wasn’t in session, that we didn’t see him much more than during the school year. There were committees to meet with, new teachers to be interviewed and hired, supervising of maintenance of the grounds and buildings, and working with the group trying to persuade the public that we needed to pass a bond issue for a new science lab.

  And this year we had to get ready to move, too. The people who bought our house didn’t need it until fall. Even so, when my parents signed the papers to buy the new house, Mom had hoped we’d be able to move in long before school started again. But things kept happening to put off the moving date.

  Even when the house seemed finished, there were problems. First the contractor couldn’t seem to get all the interior painting finished. Everybody agreed that it would be much more difficult to do with our furniture moved in, so we had to wait on that. Then the carpet Mom wanted in the living room was out of stock in the color she’d asked for. So we had to wait for that. Then the man who was supposed to install the appliances was in a car accident and broke several bones. They couldn’t find anyone else in his company to replace him, so we waited most of the rest of the summer for his bones to heal.

  Dad didn’t care much one way or the other when we moved, as long as nobody bothered him to do anything about it. Mom said it would be much easier if we got in and settled before school opened, and she was frustrated when people kept promising things would be ready at a certain time and then they weren’t.

  We were all ready to move. I was eager to go because I hated sharing a room with Jodie. I’d have a room to myself in the new house, and Mom had let me select my own colors.

  Jodie is the beauty of the family. She is fussy about everything around her being beautiful, too. Three of my aunts had gone together to get her the bedspreads and curtains and everything that went with them for her ninth birthday. Unfortunately, I got to “enjoy” them, too. Ruffled pink and white checks, with embroidered rosebuds. I felt
as out of place in that room as a kumquat in a bouquet of roses.

  Jodie, of course, looked perfect in that delicate setting. And she kept the room perfectly in order. Everything I did was wrong, from leaving my orange sweater lying where it clashed with the pink and white checks to piling books on the elegant white dresser or nightstand. And instead of a decent reading lamp, I had this cute little deal that wouldn’t take more than a sixty-watt bulb, with a ruffled pink-and-white-checked shade.

  So I was ecstatic about the prospect of privacy, bookcases that held books instead of Barbies and stuffed toys, and a cool blue-and-white room without ruffles.

  We each had to pack our own things to move, and some of my stuff had been in boxes most of the summer. But there was still plenty to do when we finally got the word that we could start moving in the following weekend, the one just after school started.

  My friend Nancy came over to help me. But before we started pulling things out of the closet, she had something to tell me. “Didn’t you say the truck that hauled away the Andersons’ stuff was plain white, kind of small?”

  “Yes, why?” I looked up from the sweater in my hands, trying to decide whether it was worth keeping or if I should put it in the bag for the Salvation Army.

  “Well, on the way over here I saw a truck that sort of looked like you’d described. Only it had a logo painted on the side and the back. A symbol of a couple of tall trees, pines or something. And it said, ‘Evergreen Industries,’ and had a phone number. I wondered if it could be the same truck. I mean, they could have painted on the other stuff after they left here if they wanted to keep on using it.”

  “Jeff gave the license number to the police,” I reminded her. “Seems like in the last couple of months they’d have spotted it if it were still around.”

  “Ever hear of changing plates?” Nancy asked. “It’s only over on Statler Street. You want to go take a look at it?”

  It didn’t seem likely that the same truck would be in use in broad daylight for the same purpose, I thought, but what the heck. It wouldn’t hurt to check it out. I decided the sweater was too tight for me, and it wasn’t pink so Jodie wouldn’t like it, so I dropped it in the giveaway bag. “Let’s go,” I said.

  Approaching the parked truck from the front, it did look pretty much like the one that had driven off with the Andersons’ stuff. It gave me a creepy feeling. But when we got close enough to read the license number, it wasn’t the one Jeff had memorized. “I’m sure it didn’t have anything painted on the sides, either,” I told Nancy. “Otherwise, it could be it.”

  Across the street a birthday party was in progress. There were a couple of dozen little kids with balloons, and they were being entertained by a clown doing acrobatics. They were eating ice cream and cake off paper plates, and as we watched, one little girl allowed her plate to tilt. The ice cream slid off and landed in the lap of a small boy sitting near her feet, and he let out a howl.

  One of the mothers came with a washcloth and some more ice cream, and somebody else stepped in what had been spilled on the grass, and for a few minutes we were distracted, seeing how it would all come out.

  And then we walked alongside the white truck, and Nancy said, “It looks like it was just freshly painted, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. “And hastily, too. See where they didn’t quite get that corner?” I glanced toward the house in front of which it was parked, but nobody seemed to be watching us. “I think I’ll write down this license number and give it to Dad. Maybe the police can look it up. In case it’s been changed, they could check on this one.”

  We turned around and returned to my house, followed by shrieks of laughter from the birthday party. When we looked back from the corner, there was the clown doing cartwheels for the little kids.

  “You ever have a party with a clown to entertain?” I asked, and Nancy shook her head.

  “I only ever had two parties in my whole life,” she told me. “I had to beg for those, and Mom said it was too much work to do anything fancy.”

  Nobody else was around when we got home except for Jeff, who was practicing. He practices at least four hours a day, which means he almost never has to do any chores like the rest of us. He’s as good as anyone I ever saw on TV. He was in the middle of the really fast and difficult piece he was going to play in the competition in October, so I knew he wouldn’t want to be interrupted. We went on past the living room and upstairs.

  Nancy was looking dreamy. “He plays like an angel, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he’s pretty good. But grumpy if we distract him.”

  “I guess geniuses are entitled to have their eccentricities,” Nancy excused him.

  “Geniuses are a pain to live with sometimes,” I retorted. “Here, I’ve nearly filled this box. Let’s put all my shorts and jeans in that one, and I’ll carry everything on hangers just the way they are, in the back of the van.”

  • • •

  When Dad came home, I gave him the slip with the license number on it. “I just thought it might be worth checking on,” I told him. “In case it’s the same truck.”

  He looked at it and nodded. “Good thinking. I’ll pass it along to the police. Might not do much good, it’s been so long, but it can’t hurt. I’ve got some paperwork, so I’ll be in the den. Would you be a good sport and get me something cold to drink, Kaci? Oh, hi, Nancy, how’s everything at your house?”

  “Dull,” Nancy said. “Same as always. Nobody in our family ever has an adventure.”

  “Count your blessings,” he said, as we’d heard her say this so many times, and she had to laugh.

  While we got Dad a tall iced tea, we each got ourself a can of pop, and I picked up a box of those fancy crackers we keep on hand for Grandma Beth when she comes over. “To tide us over until supper,” I said, handing the crackers to Nancy.

  Dad was hanging up the phone when we delivered his tea. “Looks like your suspicions might have been worth something,” he said. “That license number belongs to a truck that was stolen two days ago on the other side of town, and it wasn’t a white truck. I told them where you saw it, and they’re checking it out.”

  But by the time the police got there, the truck was gone. The birthday party was over, and nobody nearby had noticed who had driven the truck away.

  Dad sighed after talking to the police a second time, just as we were having dinner. “Maybe Mom is right. Maybe it is time to get out of this neighborhood. I hate to see anyplace in this town not safe for families to live in, but I guess it’s reality today. Crime is up everywhere.”

  Mom didn’t say, “I told you so.” She felt bad about it, too. We had lots of friends in the few blocks around our old house, and of course we knew someone else was moving into it with a family. “It almost makes me feel guilty,” she confessed as she was testing the spaghetti. “If it isn’t safe for us, it isn’t any safer for anyone else.”

  “Do you think the people with the stolen truck are the same ones who robbed the Andersons, since it was the same kind of truck?” I asked at dinner.

  Nobody knew, of course. The Andersons had been horrified about the loss of their TVs and computer equipment, and even more upset about the poisoning of their dogs. They didn’t blame Jeff, though, and they paid him the agreed-upon sum, which made him feel guilty. Not enough so that he didn’t take the money, though. They hoped to get at least the antique silverware back. But so far nothing had turned up.

  Jodie had just come home from dancing lessons and was still in her pretty pink outfit. Her blond curls jiggled when she moved her head. Even I had to admit she was charming to look at. I happened to know she had a tendency to pinch when nobody was looking, and to snitch whatever I’d hidden for my snacks, and to close my library books so I had to look for my place. “At least the insurance paid for all the things that were stolen, didn’t it, Daddy?”

  “Yes. But it’s not like anybody’s getting off free, you know. The reason insurance costs so much is that the
insurance company has to pay out claims for losses. In the end, it means we all have to pay more for everything we insure. Wally, watch what you’re doing, son. You just dragged your sleeve through your gravy.”

  Wally swiped at himself with a napkin. “Did I tell you our team is playing the Wildcats Friday night, Dad? Can you come watch?”

  “I hope so, son. I’ll try to see most of the game before my meeting, all right? But remember we’re moving this weekend.”

  Jodie didn’t like the attention to be drawn away from her. “On Saturday I’m in the dance recital. Everybody’s coming to that, aren’t they?”

  “Of course,” Mom said, “moving or not, we’re coming.” She looked at Dad. He didn’t announce another conflict, but asked her, “Whose idea was it for us to have four kids?”

  She laughed. “Yours, I think. Listen up, kids. Every spare moment you have, pack up all your belongings so we’ll be all ready to go. That means you, too, Jodie. I’m glad that Bethany is your best friend, but moving comes first, so plan to do your share. Okay?”

  Chapter Three

  We hadn’t made it before school started, so that first week I still got to walk to school with Nancy. It was kind of bittersweet, knowing we were doing it for the last times. We were both in middle school. In elementary we had been the oldest class, but now in sixth grade we were the babies, practically.

  “The eighth graders are so arrogant!” I told Nancy. “As if they run the whole school!”

  “Oh, well,” she said. “Wait until next year. When they move up to senior high, they’ll be the infants.”

  So much of my stuff was packed that it was hard to find anything to put on, and of course everybody else was wearing their best at the beginning of school. Most of them had something new during the first week, but Mom said we didn’t have time to shop until after we got settled into the new house, so I felt self-conscious in my old stuff that everybody had seen a million times.