Bad Bones (3 page)

Gabe watched the van drive away down the tree-lined street, a cloud of dark brown exhaust belching out from the back. If Benny ever bothered to get the thing smog tested, which seemed highly unlikely, guaranteed it would not pass.

As the van disappeared round a corner the realization finally sank in that he was screwed. Totally screwed. There was no other way to look at it; no bright side, no ‘glass half full’ to this situation. Benny had made it clear as crystal that he wasn’t in the mood to take no for an answer. In fact his final words had been, “Come on board, do what’s asked, take the money. Or else.” Had the man
really
said ‘or else’, like this was some playground deal? Gabe shook his head in disbelief. What he had ever done to deserve this he did not know.

“Hey…”

Gabe glanced over his shoulder. He saw a girl he’d
only recently become aware of at school… Stella, he was sure that was her name. She was standing a few metres behind him; shoulder-length dark hair, pale skin, not much make-up, wearing skinny jeans and a light blue, v-neck T-shirt. Around her neck Gabe saw she had a thin gold chain with a gold crucifix. Slung over her shoulder she had a black bag, like a camera bag, not the stuffed-to-bursting tote most of the girls hauled round with them.

He remembered thinking when he’d first seen her that she was kind of pretty but he hadn’t done anything about it. Being low on funds didn’t make you a ‘first choice’ kind of guy and he could do without being turned down flat. In fact, having seen her a few times now, he had to admit she was more than quite pretty. Kind of hot, for sure. Although right now she looked puzzled, maybe even a bit angry.

“Yeah?” Gabe assumed this Stella must be lost. “Can I help you?”

“Are you in
sane
?”

“Huh?” Gabe turned to look at the girl properly. “
What
did you say?”

“I said are you out of your mind?” The girl stood
her ground and kept eye contact. “What other reason would there be for hanging round with a moron like Benny Gueterro?”

“What’s it to you who I hang with?”

“I had you down as someone with some smarts, that’s all, Gabriel. Must’ve been wrong about that.”

Gabe could not believe it. Two people in the space of fifteen minutes, both of whom called him Gabriel and thought they had him all figured out! What was he, some kind of open book?

“Now you do look sorta stupid –” Stella cracked a half grin – “with your mouth hanging open like that.”

“Look… I mean, how…?” Gabe stopped, leant his bike up against a tree and took a few steps towards the girl. She didn’t move. “Are you following me?”

“I don’t think so, Gabriel.”

“My friends call me Gabe.”

“So I’m your friend now?”

“I didn’t say that.” Gabe couldn’t work this girl out, none of the signals made any sense. “If you weren’t following me, why’re you here?”

“I was following Benny. You were an added extra.”

Gabe looked away to give himself a moment to think, then he checked his watch to make sure he still had time to get down to Studio City.

“Oh, sorry – am I keeping you?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Wouldn’t want to do that, Gabriel…”

“What
I
don’t get –” Gabe went over to his bike – “is if
I’m
mad for hanging round with Benny, what does that make
you
for following him? Possibly even taking his picture, if that’s a camera bag you’ve got there. If you know a single thing about Benny, it would be that he is no publicity hound.”

“I have my reasons.”

“Yeah? Well, me too.” Gabe shifted his backpack and got on the bike. “Thing is, Stella, I don’t have a lot of choices right now, OK? But I’m not stupid.”

“Oh, good. I’m glad about that.”

Gabe shot a look at the girl; it sounded like she meant what she’d said, wasn’t being ironic, but there was no way he could tell. “Yeah well, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Me?” Stella laughed, but she didn’t smile. “I know
exactly
what I’m doing…”

“Man…” Anton said under his breath, shaking his head and frowning. “What the hell is going down?”

He and Gabe had been friends since forever; they were blood brothers. There were the pictures, and the scars, to prove it. Anton knew Gabe almost better than his own brother, certainly understood him a whole lot more as Milo was an off-the-curve, antisocial dweeb.

He’d had a feeling there was something up with Gabe, if his recent behaviour had been anything to go by, and in Anton’s opinion it definitely was. It was also his opinion that it likely had something to do with Gabe’s dad and his no-work situation, which Gabe just did not want to talk about. Up till now there hadn’t ever been anything they hadn’t talked about, which had made Gabe’s clamming up a tad odd; what he’d just witnessed shot the whole situation up into crisis territory.

Coming out of school late, Anton had seen Gabe disappearing round a corner, walking with some tall, long-haired guy with a major beard he thought he recognized; Gabe’s body language said he was
not so happy about the situation so Anton made the snap decision to follow his friend. Sure, he
could
be poking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted, but Gabe
might
need some backup. If nothing happened, Gabe need never know.

Staying well back, but keeping the pair in sight, Anton had just caught a glimpse of the tall dude waving Gabe into the back of some skanky old van, then staying outside with the bike. And then the penny dropped. What the hell was Gabe doing hanging with Benny Gueterro?

Anton knew all about the creep from Milo, who had attended Morrison High the same time as Benny did and had been the occasional target of his harassment. Now Benny was the go-to guy for all the stuff you were supposed to just say no to, and he was not someone you wanted to be seen with. And there was Gabe, in his freaking
van
! Could things really be that bad for his friend?

Walking past on the other side of the street, Anton made like he was deep in conversation on his cell. Some way from the van he finally managed to find somewhere he could keep watch on the situation without being seen himself. When Gabe reappeared
and the van drove off, Anton had been about to call out to his friend when the girl appeared from out of nowhere. Stella Grainger. Cute girl.

She was new to Morrison, kind of an unknown quantity. Anton did a couple of the same classes as Stella, but all he had gathered was that she mostly kept herself to herself and some of the other girls thought she was kind of stuck up. So was Gabe hooking up with her? Was this something else he hadn’t been talking about?

Watching out for Gabe when he could have been in trouble was a whole different ball game to watching him while he talked to a girl. That felt bad. Anton slipped away. The last thing he wanted was to be seen and have to explain to his friend why he was spying on him. Because that’s what it felt like he was doing. He had to trust that Gabe would eventually tell him what was going on. It was all about trust.

Gabe rode almost on autopilot. There was so much to think about, so many things happening all at once. Why did life have to be so damn complicated? He felt as if everything was beginning to spiral out
of control. It had been hard enough to juggle the home and school situations without Benny walking in and acting like he had the right to make demands. Although, if the man was telling the truth and all he really wanted was an errand boy, then the money might help ease the pressure at home. And if the gold bracelet he’d found was worth something, and there was more like it to be dug up, that would be even better. But the overriding feeling he had was that at any moment he was about to fumble and drop something.

To top it all he now had this girl, Stella, sticking her nose in where it really wasn’t wanted. Why did people assume they could do that? He thought about Stella for a moment, about how sure of herself she’d been, like she knew so much more than he did. He briefly wondered what
her
story was.

But he had way too much on his plate already for that kind of stuff right now, including the whole owl and coyote thing. Thinking that he had animals following him didn’t help matters much, either. It was weird, but the dreams had been
way
weirder. Did it all mean anything? Who the hell knew, certainly not him. Unlike Stella, he wasn’t sure of anything.

Gabe dropped a gear and sped up. He just hoped whoever owned the antique store didn’t give him the runaround.

The store looked closed – lights on, but no one home – although the sign on the door clearly stated that its opening hours were 10.30am to 6pm, and it was only 5.05. Gabe looked back at his bike, chained to a bench, just checking again that he’d done what he already knew for sure he had, then pressed the entry buzzer. Nothing happened. He was about to press the button again when there was a loud
click
, which meant some unseen person was letting him in. Pushing the door open, Gabe glanced up and saw a small CCTV camera staring back at him. He obviously did not look dangerous.

As the door swung to and locked behind him, he noticed there were at least two more cameras pointing his way, and for a second he wondered if he was now trapped, unable to get out unless he was let out. He stood in the shop, unsure of what to do next, and waited, listening to clocks ticking out of
synch with each other.

The place didn’t appear to specialize in anything particular; there was silverware on show, pieces of overly ornate furniture, items of jewellery and some paintings in heavy gilt frames. Gabe didn’t know if the stuff was seriously valuable, but on the other hand it didn’t feel like he was standing in a thrift store surrounded by junk.

“Can I help you, young man?”

Gabe jerked round and saw a man had come out from the back of the shop and was standing behind a glass-topped counter. He was tall, perma-tanned and turning jowly, his thinning, very black hair cut short and spiky. He was wearing a dark suit and a strawberry pink shirt, with shot cuffs but no tie. It was a look, but Gabe hadn’t a clue what it was trying to achieve.

“I saw your sign…”

“Good,” the man cleared his throat and looked at his polished fingernails. “That was its purpose.”

“The one saying you did valuations?”

“Ah,
that
sign.”

“And I have something…” Gabe swung off his backpack, careful not to knock anything over – this
was definitely a ‘You break it, you buy it’ place – and knelt down to unzip one of the pockets.

“Is this a family heirloom? Does it belong to you?” The man raised his eyebrows, head slightly on one side.

“No… I mean, yes…” Gabe stood up, unfolding the old duster he’d wrapped round the bracelet and kicking himself for not thinking he might be asked where he’d got it from. “It isn’t a family thing, but, yeah … you know … it, um, it belongs to me.”

“May I?” The man beckoned Gabe over to the counter.

Gabe didn’t move. Actually, he couldn’t move and he had no idea why. He was here in this shop for one reason only: to find out how much the bracelet was worth. And to do that he had to let this man see it…

“Do you want a valuation, or not?”

Gabe looked at the man, feeling the tension building in his shoulders. He nodded. “Yes … yes, I do…”

“Well –” the man sniffed and gave a swift, humourless smile – “I don’t have all day.”

“Sure…” Gabe pushed away the urge to leave and held out his hand, feeling a strange sensation of betrayal as he did so.

The man took the bracelet from him in a way that made it appear as if he wasn’t at all sure whether it was clean or not. He then switched on a lamp and got a small jeweller’s magnifying glass out of a drawer. “Now, let me see…”

Gabe watched the man get the feel of the weight in his hand and saw his eyebrows do the little jump that happens when you prove yourself wrong. The man had thought he was being given a piece of cheap garbage, and now he was thinking otherwise. Gabe became aware that he was breathing in an almost panicky way, that he didn’t like watching someone else with the bracelet.
His
bracelet… He shook his head and tried to overcome the feeling, but it wouldn’t let go.

The man bent forward, eyeglass jammed to his face, closely examining the bracelet from every possible angle. It seemed to take forever but finally he put it down on the counter top. “Excuse me
just
one second…”

“Sure, OK.”

Gabe watched the man disappear into the back of the shop and quickly picked up the bracelet, an unexpected sense of relief flooding through him as
he closed his fingers round it. He’d got the distinct impression the man was if not excited then extremely interested, and he wondered what would happen next. What would he do if the man wanted to buy it right there and then?

Instead of trying to figure out the answer to that question, he looked down at the velvet-lined trays under the glass. One had a display of old watches, hands all set to exactly ten minutes past ten, another displayed ranks of sparkling diamond rings, and a third contained various lockets and chains. Everything here had been brand new once, each piece probably somebody’s prized possession; he wondered about the different paths they’d taken to all end up here, in a cabinet, at the back of some shop in Studio City. The slight cough of someone clearing their throat made Gabe look up. The man was back.

“It’s nice… It’s, ah, very nice, in its way. I just, ah –” the man gestured towards the rear of the shop, smiling and nodding – “I just checked and I’d say it was worth, oh, I don’t know, maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty bucks. Or so? Around that.”

Gabe was shocked; the man was treating him like a kid and hadn’t even bothered to
try
and lie like he meant it.

“Oh, and yes … I was wondering…” the man frowned, looking down at the spot on the counter where he’d left the bracelet. “You have it?”

Gabe nodded.

“Yes, well, as I say, I was wondering whether there was … whether you had anything else like this? By any chance?”

“No.” Gabe slowly moved the hand holding the bracelet behind his back. “No, I don’t. And thanks for the ‘valuation’. I’ll think about it.”

“Look, I’m sorry if you didn’t like the price – why don’t you let me take another look? Maybe I can do better…”

“I have to go.” Gabe put the bracelet in his pocket. “But thanks anyway.”

“Look, this is, how shall I say, a
bargaining
situation. It’s what we do in the antiques business! It’s a trade, like in a souk, if you know what I mean? I say a price, you say a price, we dance a little?” The man actually performed some weird little dance movement. “And then, what we end up doing, we
come to an agreement everyone’s happy with. That is what we do – how we do business…”

“Well, I don’t have the time to do that today, mister—”

“LeBarron, Mr LeBarron,” the man interrupted, reaching into his breast pocket and bringing out a business card, which he offered to Gabe. “Call me if you change your mind.”