Fool's Gold (16 page)

There was, of course, one bit of good news that was definitely true. Whatever was, or was not, going to happen at Pritchard's Hole wasn't going to be happening very soon. Nothing to worry about for a week or so, at least.

But that left Rudy with a lot of mornings of fooling around the house or hanging out downtown and maybe a visit or two to the Harmons' swimming pool, where Stephanie Freeman just might be, too, if he was lucky. And afternoons of baby-sitting his sisters. It didn't sound great, perhaps, but it could be worse. A lot worse.

As for the baby-sitting, it was continuing to be a little less boring since he'd begun his research project on the M and Ms' personalities. One of the subjects he was most interested in was what kind of things they fought about and who usually started it. Before his research project he'd never thought much about who started it. There didn't seem to be any point in asking, since they both always claimed the other one had. He'd always assumed that it was mostly Margot's fault, because it was Moira who usually wound up with the most scratches and bites and bruises. But when he started really watching he began to see a kind of pattern to most of their fights.

Like the one, for instance, about the new pink tutu. They'd both wanted the pink one, but Natasha had given it to Margot since it was, it seemed, her turn to have firsties. Moira had claimed that the new tutu was too small around the middle for chubby old Margot, but apparently Natasha hadn't agreed.

The fight began on Friday at the exercise barre when Moira noticed—or said she did, Rudy hadn't been able to see it—a tiny hole in the seam near the back zipper of the pink tutu.

“Margot's torn her tutu,” Moira said.

Rudy looked up from his book. He'd pulled the overstuffed chair into the studio so that he could read and still keep one eye on the girls' dance practice.

“Where?” he said.

“Where? Where? Where?” Margot said, practically tying herself in a knot to see the place on the back of her waist where Moira was pointing.

“Right there,” Moira said. “It's just starting, but it's going to get bigger fast.”

“I don't see any hole.”

“Well, it's there.” Moira's nose was practically touching Margot's back. “It's getting bigger already. Every time you breathe it gets bigger.”

“Ruuudy,” Margot whined, backing up to Rudy's chair. “Is there a hole in my new tutu?”

“I don't see any hole. Forget about it, both of you, and finish your barre.”

So they both went back to the barre, but a minute later Rudy noticed that Moira was whispering a word in between every plié. “Margot's—torn—her—new—tutu.”

“Ruuudy. Make her stop,” Margot said.

So Rudy did some yelling and Moira stopped whispering. But a little later he noticed that Moira was facing Margot as she did her port de bras, and every time she curved her arms and gracefully bent forward her lips clearly formed the word
“fat!”
He was just opening his mouth to yell when Margot went right from a fifth position into a kind of karate kick that knocked Moira's legs out from under her. By the time he got to them they were rolling on the floor, punching and scratching.

That, he was beginning to realize, was the usual pattern. Margot tended to be pretty cheerful and easygoing most of the time, but when she did finally get mad she
really
lost it. And Moira, on the other hand, never really got angry, except at herself. After she'd teased Margot into a major fit she was always mad at herself, but the next time she had a chance she did it again.

“I hate it when she gets mad like that,” Moira told Rudy with tears in her big dark eyes. “I hate it. But then I start teasing her about something and I can't”—she began to sob—“I… just… can't… stop.”

“Why can't you stop?” Rudy asked.

“I… don't… know,” Moira wailed. “I… just… can't… stop.”

Rudy patted her shoulder. “Well, you can stop crying,” he said, “because if you don't stop I'm going to cry too.”

Moira went on crying, but with her eyes open—watching to see what Rudy would do. So he threw himself on the floor and began to screech and sob and pound the floor with both fists. It was fun actually, really letting go like that, even though it was only acting. So he kept it up for a while and when he finally did sit up both Moira and Margot were standing over him staring with big round eyes. When he started laughing it took a second before they caught on and laughed too.

So the M and M research had gotten that far into what they usually fought about. Now, if he could just figure out
why?
And
what would make them stop?

It was in the early evening after Barney had been gone three or four days, that Rudy got a surprise phone call. From Tyler Lewis, of all people.

“Yo, dude,” the all-too-familiar voice said. “Whatcha doing?”

“Styler?” Rudy said, not trusting his own ears.

“You got it. It's the real thing, the stylin' man. I asked you—whatcha doing?”

“Nothing much, actually. Reading a book.”

“Reading.” Tyler made a snorting noise. “Why don't you come down to Marybelle's. I'm treating. Rotgut for everybody—or whatever.”

Marybelle's was the old-fashioned soda fountain on the corner of Main and Nugget. They served great malts and shakes and root beer floats. No rotgut.

“You're treating?”

“Sure. Come join the crowd.”

There wasn't any crowd. When Rudy got to the soda fountain Tyler was sitting alone at one of the pink tables. Except for a couple of tourists with some little kids, there was no one else in sight. Tyler was wearing an L.A. Rams football jacket, his usual buckshot jeans, and a pair of pump-up Nikes without any shoelaces. He was drinking a strawberry milk shake and there was another one across the table from him. Rudy sat down and began to drink.

“So,” he said after a minute. “What have you been up to lately?”

Ty slurped noisily on his straw. “Not much. Barney's out of town.”

“Yeah,” Rudy said. “I
know.”
He emphasized the
know
to make it say that he didn't need Styler to tell him what Barney was doing.

Tyler's cocky grin said he knew he'd bugged Rudy and he wasn't exactly sorry about it. But after a minute the grin faded, and to Rudy's surprise it was replaced by a weird gloomy expression. At least it looked weird on Styler's face. It suddenly occurred to Rudy that finding out what made Tyler Lewis tick might be another interesting research project—for somebody with a tough skin and a strong stomach, anyway.

“What the hell is there to do in this hick town in the summertime?” Tyler said in a whiny voice. “Nobody's around and there's nothing going on.”

“How about Matt and Sky, or Will maybe?”

“Nah,” Ty said. “Sky's out of town, too, and Matt and Will are too busy, or something.”

Rudy grinned inwardly. Old Styler didn't seem to notice that he had just let it slip that Rudy hadn't just been his second choice as a companion. More like fourth or fifth. Or maybe twentieth, if Styler could think of that many people who might be able to stand his company for a few hours. It didn't bother Rudy much. If you came right down to it, Styler wouldn't have been even his twentieth choice. Besides, he was getting a free milk shake out of it, not to mention a chance to do some research on a particularly peculiar specimen. For one thing, it had occurred to him to wonder why Tyler was so determined to risk his neck finding gold when, as he was always pointing out, his parents were so filthy rich. The answer might be very enlightening.

“So, Styler.” Rudy took a big sip of milk shake, wiped off a strawberry-flavored mustache, and started over. “So, what are you planning to do with your part of the loot? You know, from the Pritchard's Hole thing.”

Tyler gave him a suspicious look, as if he thought Rudy might be being sarcastic. Rudy did a sincerely interested number that seemed to work, because finally Tyler shrugged and said, “I dunno. Buy some stuff I guess, and put some of it in the bank. Why?”

“Oh, I don't know. I just wondered because, well, it always seems like you can get all the money you want from your parents.”

“True.” Tyler looked pleased. He always enjoyed a chance to talk about his folks' money. “But, as my dad always says, you can't have too much money. And besides, this will be
my
money, so I'll always have something to fall back on—just in case.”

“Just in case?”

“Yeah. In case my dad goes broke again.” Tyler suddenly clamped his mouth shut and frowned at Rudy as if he'd said something he hadn't meant to and he was blaming Rudy for it. Rudy tried to look interested but not too interested, and in a minute Tyler went on. “Yeah, my old man, the wheeler-dealer, does that a lot. That's the way it is with real estate. One day you're rich and the next you're”—Tyler paused, shrugged, and then went on—“practically homeless. You ever been practically homeless, Chickie-baby?”

Rudy ignored the “Chickie-baby” and said he guessed not but that he'd like to hear what it was like, and after another suspicious frown Tyler said, “Okay, I'll tell you. But let's get out of here. You about done with that thing?”

Ty paid up and led the way outside, and while they walked down Main Street he told Rudy all about it. It seemed that Ty's dad had invested in a big new shopping center in L.A., but his partner turned out to be crooked and gypped him out of all the money.

“I mean, all of it,” Ty said. “All my old man got was a bunch of tax debts. He even had to sell our house and car to keep from going to jail.”

“And you were really… homeless?” Rudy asked.

“Well, almost. We lived with my grandmother for a while and then she kicked us out and we moved to this ratty little apartment. And we were just about to get kicked out of that, too, when my dad won this suit against old Vernon—that was his partner's name, Vernon—and we were rich again. But for a long time my dad didn't think we were going to win and if we hadn't it would have been, like, tent city.”

“Yeah, well that sounds pretty tough, all right,” Rudy said. He meant it too. His family had always been poor, but at least their beat-up old house had been in the family for practically forever, so they'd never had to worry about a place to live. Or about having enemies who were out to get them either, which is what he'd heard about Mr. Lewis. “And then your dad came up here to start his new business because some people back in L.A. were out to get even with him—maybe his old partner, for instance?”

“Well, yeah. Maybe that was a part of it.” Ty had a strange look on his face—half embarrassed and half cocky. He was, Rudy could tell, trying to decide whether or not to tell something, so Rudy did his “not-too-interested” bit to keep him from bogging down.

“The other part was because of me. I never told anybody up here because my dad said he'd drill me if I did, but I was in some trouble too. You know—with the man.”

“The man?” Rudy said.

“Yeah. You know. The
police.
I got picked up for tagging a couple of times.”

“For tagging?”

“You know tagging, don't you?” Ty rolled his eyes in a “I'm being unbelievably patient with this dumb hick” number. “Putting your ‘tag' on buses and stuff with spray paint. And then there was this little joyriding thing with a couple of older dudes. Anyway, it's like, one more bust and it's the slammer for old Styler.”

Rudy couldn't help gulping a little. “Jail?” he asked.

“Well, juvie, anyway. Juvenile hall. Yeah. One more time, the man said, and it's curtains for Tyler J. Lewis the Third.” Ty curled up one side of his mouth in his cocky grin. “Doesn't bother me all that much, but it scares the hell out of my old man.” But watching his eyes, Rudy figured that old Styler was a little bit scared too.

That night Rudy went to bed thinking about Ty Lewis and then for a while about Moira and the teasing problem. The whole Pritchard's Hole question, and the claustrophobia research project as well, had pretty much faded to the back of his mind. At least his more or less conscious mind. But it obviously was still there somewhere, because sometime in the middle of the night he had another nightmare. And not a minor-league one either.

This nightmare was big-time—one of the absolute worst. Afterward he realized that if he had told Natasha about it when she came running into the room again, it wouldn't have sounded so horrible. What was so horrible was how clear and plain and real it seemed, and how absolutely panic-stricken he was when he woke up.

The dream was just about being in a room. A small dark room that smelled of dirt. He was sitting in the middle of the room near a smallish table or maybe just a big box. He was feeling kind of good. Kind of big, maybe, and important. And then the noise started, a kind of sliding, scrunching rumble and someone shouting, “Run, Rudy, run.” After that there was nothing except a heavy feeling and the smell and taste of dirt and this awful smashing, smothering, endless fear.

But what he told Natasha was that he'd dreamed about the end of the world.

T
HE NEXT FEW
days were more of the same, except that on Tuesday morning Rudy called up Charlie and arranged for Heather to have another riding lesson—with Rudy as the one and only teacher. They rode mostly in the arena, and near the end of the hour Charlie came out and watched and told Heather she was doing “mighty well.” Heather was thrilled. She said that getting a compliment on your horsemanship from Charlie Crookshank was like being told you were a good artist by Michelangelo.

Afternoons, of course, were mostly spent with Moira and Margot, and the only interesting development was a new game the girls were playing. A doll game. Not that their playing dolls was anything new. It was just that Rudy had never noticed them playing this kind of doll game before.