Fool's Gold (2 page)

“Nothing important,” Rudy said. “Just these two nerds fighting again.”

Murph chuckled. “No. That can't be true. Two such lovely little ladies actually engaging in physical combat? You must have been mistaken.”

Murph was full of it. No one who lived within a block of the M and M's could help but know how much they “engaged in physical combat.” But the “lovely ladies” bit did seem to work on Margot at least, who smiled sheepishly, let go of Moira's T-shirt, and put her hands behind her back.

Not to be outdone, Moira began giving Murph her movie-star special smile. “You're right, Mr. Woodbury. We weren't fighting. At least I wasn't. I was just trying to keep Margot from losing her lunch money.” She edged closer to the porch railing and whispered behind her hand. “She loses tons of money all the time.”

“Is that right?” Murph whispered back. “Tell me about it. How much money would you say your sister has lost this last month?”

Moira shrugged. “Lots. A thousand dollars, maybe.”

“I see.” Murph nodded solemnly. “That's a lot all right. Fancy a little girl like her losing that much money.” He winked at Rudy, which was probably supposed to mean that Moira's wild stories were harmless and amusing, but Murph didn't have to live with them every day. Rudy didn't wink back. Lately the M and M's had been getting on his nerves even more than Murph was.

“Here,” Rudy said, prying the money out of Moira's fist and giving half of it to Margot. “Now, don't lose it. And you guys are supposed to come back here right after lunch. You're only going to stay at Eleanora's in the mornings from now on. That's what I was supposed to tell you. Mom said she told you, but you'd probably forget if I didn't remind you.”

“I remembered,” Moira said.

“I did too,” Margot said. “I remembered it better than she did. I even remembered that Mom said you were going to baby-sit us every afternoon, and read to us and play games too.”

“Right.” Rudy couldn't keep a certain amount of bitterness out of his voice. “Every afternoon I'm good old big-brother Rudy, the baby-sitter. But every morning at”—he glanced at his watch—“nine o'clock I turn into a bloodsucking vampire. So get out—before I start getting hungry.” He jumped at them, doing a fangs and claws bit, but they ignored him and started off down the street still glaring at each other. It wouldn't be long, however, before they'd forget it and be best friends again—until the next declaration of war.

“Natasha working today?” Murph asked.

“Sure. And tomorrow too. Like always.” Natasha worked in Fraser's Antique Store, which, because of the tourist trade in Pyramid Hill, was always open on weekends. It was a lousy job for a mother. In fact, it was a lousy job in a lot of ways and she hated it, but as she was always saying, with three kids to raise all by herself, what was she going to do?

“Well, it's a lousy job,” Murph said, like an echo of Rudy's thoughts. He sighed and shook his head. Murph had always been like a father to Natasha, going out of his way to help her whenever he could. Especially when she'd really needed help, like when she came back to Pyramid Hill pregnant with Rudy, and later when she was married to Art Mumford. Not to mention right after he went off and left her alone with three kids to take care of.

Murph sighed again and then suddenly switched to his usual straggly old grin. “Well now,” he said. “Speaking of getting hungry, I haven't had breakfast yet. How about joining me in an old-fashioned chuck wagon breakfast?” Of course, Rudy had just eaten, but only cold cereal, and Murph was practically famous for his huge cowboy breakfasts just loaded with delicious calories and cholesterol.

Tipping up an imaginary Stetson and squinting his eyes, Rudy became Windy Dayes, one of his most famous impersonations. Windy was a favorite local character, a weather-beaten old cowboy who spent his time hanging around downtown, bending people's ears with long-winded cowboy-type stories. Lots of people tried to imitate Windy, but no one could do it as well as Rudy. So now he hitched up his pants, drawled, “Waal now, pardner, ah don't mahnd if I dew,” and bowlegged it toward Murph's back door.

I
N THE CLUTTERED
old kitchen Rudy sat down at the round oak table while Murph puttered around, putting strips of bacon in the frying pan and cracking some eggs. He was pouring pancake batter on the grill when he started in on the baby-sitting thing.

“So you're going to be spending a lot of time babysitting your sisters this summer? Natasha told me about it. Said you volunteered.”

Rudy shrugged. “Just in the afternoons. Wednesday through Sunday.”

“That's going to help Natasha a lot. Save her quite a bit of money too. Right noble offer on your part.”

Rudy shrugged again and said nothing. He wasn't going to be drawn into explaining why he'd volunteered his services. It was one question that nosy old Murphy Woodbury would just have to guess about.

After a few moments of silence Murph went on about the M and M's. “So, this time the battling ballerinas were fighting about money,” he said. “It's always something, isn't it?”

“Some ballerinas,” Rudy said. As far as he could see neither of his sisters had much natural talent, but they'd been taking ballet almost since they started walking and they were always tearing around the yard in ratty tutus and doing clutzy jetés and arabesques up and down the veranda. But Natasha seemed to think they were really talented.

The thing was that Natasha—whose real first name had been Linda before she changed it—had been a ballet dancer before she started having kids and had to give it up. But she kept her hand in by practicing almost every day, not to mention naming her kids after famous dancers. She also taught some, but since there wasn't too much interest in ballet in Pyramid Hill, she mostly just taught her own kids. Including Rudy at one time, until he found out how some people in Pyramid felt about boys taking ballet.

“I don't see why Natasha doesn't just forget about the whole ballet thing,” Rudy said. “It's just a waste of everybody's time.”

“Well now, I wouldn't say that. Not at all. I think your mother has been very brave to hang on to her dream that way even though she's had such a hard time and—”

Rudy laughed. “Okay, okay, I take it back.” He knew better than to criticize Natasha even a little when Murph was around. “But I still think trying to make ballerinas out of the M and M's is a waste of time.”

Murph chuckled. “Oh, well. It gives them something to do, doesn't it?”

“Not to mention something else to fight about,” Rudy said, with more bitterness than usual. “It's the truth. Every time they practice it turns into a big blowup. You know—about who's wearing whose leotards, or hogging too much room at the barre, or who just pirouetted into somebody else's space.”

Murph chuckled again, but after he put the plates on the table and sat down, he looked at Rudy and stopped smiling.

“Hmm,” he said. “A bit downcast and melancholy at the moment, aren't we, Rudy Drummond? Particularly when one considers that this very morning marks the arrival of summer vacation and three months of relative freedom.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Summer vacation. Great! I'm all excited.”

Murph poured some cream in his coffee, stirred it, and then sipped without taking his eyes off Rudy. Finally he asked, “Could all this uncharacteristic lack of good cheer have something to do with Barnaby Crookshank?”

For a crazy moment Rudy thought Murph actually knew. His mind racing, he took a big bite of pancake and pretended to be too busy chewing to say anything. It was true that Murph sometimes seemed to be able to tune in on things that most people would miss, but that didn't mean he could really read minds. And if you ruled out actual mind reading—just how much could he possibly know?

“Ahem.” Murph cleared his throat and Rudy swallowed hard and came back to the question.

“No,” Rudy said. “No. Why should the fact that I'm not exactly flipping over school's being out have anything to do with Barney? It's just that… It's just that… Well, it's too hot in Pyramid in the summertime. And too many tourists. And there's practically nothing for guys my age to do in this one-horse town in the summertime. I don't know. Maybe I'm just bored.”

Murph's smile said that he knew Rudy was talking nonsense. And it was true, of course. Nobody knew better than Murph just how good Rudy had always been at thinking up things to do, or to build, or to do research on. Murph had been particularly involved in the research projects—like tracing the roots of some of the Pyramid Hill families who went back to the gold rush, or the biography of Will Rogers, or the one on snake charmers in India. And, of course, the research on the lives of other talented or famous people who had been illegitimate. Murph had been especially helpful with the Famous Bastards project.

So it
was
nonsense to pretend the problem was simple boredom, and Rudy was about to admit it by shrugging sheepishly when Murph's smile suddenly turned into a quizzical expression that said, “So come on, tell me what's really bothering you.” And that was none of his business.

“Look, Murph,” Rudy said. “Stop bugging me. Nothing's wrong. All right?”

“Sure thing,” Murph said. He got up and puttered around the stove for a while, chatting about the pancakes and whether they were up to his usual standard, as if he'd forgotten all about giving Rudy the third degree. But as soon as he sat down again he said, right out of the blue, “So, who is this Lewis kid? Ty, I think they call him. The one with the spiky hair.” Sometimes it really did seem like Murph Woodbury was a mind reader.

“Tyler Lewis?” Rudy said. “What's he got to do with it?”

“I don't know. I'm asking you. I've just seen him around a lot lately. Sometimes with you and Barney and sometimes just with Barney.”

“Yeah,” Rudy said. “Well, he's just this dude from Southern California. L.A., I think. His folks moved up here last summer to start a new real estate business. He's in some classes with Barney and me. He's… What can I tell you about Ty Lewis?” Rudy's laugh felt a little bit forced. “Well, to put it in Ty-wanese… he's a rude dude.”

“Ty-wanese?” Murph asked.

“That's what Barney and I call the way Ty talks. Ty uses a lot of slang. I mean, when Ty first started hanging out with Barney and me, half the time we couldn't figure out what he was talking about. So we started saying he spoke ‘Ty-wanese.' Get it?”

Murph nodded. “Got it. So this new kid speaks a language all his own. And he's rude?”

Rudy laughed. “Rude means great. In Ty-wanese, that is. Great. Awesome. Like, you say ‘Hey, that is one really rude jacket'—or whatever. And ‘dude.' Well, everyone is ‘dude' to Ty. Even girls.”

“I see,” Murph said in the supersolemn way that looked like he was taking something extraseriously but really meant just the opposite.

They ate in silence for a few minutes before Rudy asked again, “Why'd you bring Ty up? What's he got to do with anything?”

Murph shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe I'm way off base, but it's just that you and Barney have been close for so long, and now this new kid comes along. Thought maybe the two of them have been ganging up on you, or something.”

Rudy made a surprised face and asked, “What makes you think that?”

“Well, partly something I overheard the other day, I guess,” Murph said. “When the three of you were sitting on your veranda. Sounded to me like this Ty kid was trying to put you down, and maybe Barney was going along with it, at least a little.”

“Aha!” Rudy said, shaking his finger at Murph. “You've been ‘studying humanity' again. Where were you this time? At a keyhole? Or peeking through the curtains?”

Murph grinned. “Don't recall. But there
was
some teasing going on, wasn't there?”

“Nothing important, I guess. I can't remember.” Rudy tried to look unconcerned even though a small dark cloud of worry had suddenly floated into the back of his mind.

“Er—what was it exactly that you heard?”

“I don't recall the exact words but”—Murph paused while he poked at the last of the hash brown potatoes on his plate—“the Lewis kid seemed to be carrying on about you objecting to something they were planning to do.”

The small dark cloud suddenly mushroomed. “Planning?” Rudy asked.

“Um.” Murph nodded. “Some sort of a money-making project, I gathered. Didn't hear what exactly.” The cloud dwindled. “The Ty kid started jumping around flapping his elbows. Made it harder to make out what he was saying.”

“Yeah.” Rudy shrugged. “That was supposed to be me.”

Murph looked puzzled. “The flapping elbows meant you? Why's that?”

Sometimes Murph was unbelievably out of it. “A chicken.” Rudy explained with exaggerated patience. “When you do this”—Rudy flapped his elbows—“that's supposed to mean chicken, Murph. That's me, according to Ty. He gets on my case a little sometimes. But I get on his too. It's no big deal.”

“Well, why was he calling you chicken? If I'm not being too curious.”

Rudy shrugged. “Yeah, you're being too curious. But then, what else is new? Murphy P. Woodbury is famous for being too curious. Right?”

“Guilty as charged,” Murph said, grinning. “But with extenuating circumstances. Authors should be allowed to plead curiosity, like a madman pleads insanity. Same sort of situation. Can't help themselves. So I'll ask again. What was it this Ty was pestering you to do that you didn't want to?”

Rudy shrugged and filled his mouth with pancake again. While he chewed he thought about Murph's question and possible good answers. There weren't any actually, at least not any that were true. On the one hand there was a part of his mind that could almost wish that Murph had overheard what Barney and Ty were planning, but since he hadn't that was the end of it. He, Rudy Drummond, wasn't going to turn into a fink at this stage of the game, particularly not when finking would mean getting Barney in trouble.