Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (12 page)

“Sammy?” she says, like, Are you sure that’s your name?

“Right,” I tell her. “Sammy Keyes. Please tell him as soon as he gets here. It’s important.”

She makes a note of it and nods, and I tell the guys, “Come on,” and hightail it out of there.

Trouble is, as we’re going down the steps, someone else is coming up.

Someone who’s totally ticked-off and hostile.

And also the last person on earth I want to see.

At first we all just stop moving and stare. Then Officer Borsch tugs on Danny’s arm and says, “Let’s move it, Urbanski,” and continues up the steps.

“It was
you,
” Danny spits out at Casey. “You narc’d!”

Casey squints at him. “About what?” And then he sees the Preacher Man’s speaker and microphone in Officer Borsch’s meaty hand. “It was
you
?” He shakes his head. “I had nothing to do with you getting caught.”

Danny’s eyes shoot darts at me. “Then it was your snoop-happy girlfriend!”

“Shut up!” Casey says, stepping in his way, and I swear he’s gonna push him. “She had nothing to do with this, either!”

“Move aside,” Officer Borsch barks at Casey as he pulls Danny along by the arm. And as they pass by us Danny snarls, “Narc!” over his shoulder.

“Wow,” Billy says when they’re gone. “I can’t believe they put him in
cuffs.
”

Casey stares after them. “I can’t believe he’s really the one who mugged that guy. And for a cheesy speaker and a microphone?”

“He’s in handcuffs,” Billy murmurs. “Dippin’ Dots Danny. In
handcuffs.
”

I start to say, Dippin’ Dots Danny? but stop myself. I may only know Danny Urbanski as a smooth-talking two-faced jerk, but the nickname paints a completely different picture. A picture that has sunshine.

And water slides.

And laughter.

All of a sudden I feel terrible. Like I made a huge mistake by calling Officer Borsch. I remind myself that Danny beat a guy up, cracked his ribs, stole his stuff, and
bragged
about it, but in the pit of my stomach I’m sick.

Sick, and also scared.

No matter how much sense it made to turn Danny in, if Casey finds out I did it, the pit of his stomach will feel sick, too.

Toward me.

“You okay?”

It’s Casey, and I do know what he asked, but for some reason I just blink at him and go, “Huh?”

He takes my hand and says, “I know,” which makes me feel even worse because he’s obviously thinking that I’m thinking how terrible it is that Dippin’ Dots Danny is now a bona fide juvenile delinquent, when what I’m really worried about is how to get out of the pickle
I’m
in. I mean, if I had told Casey about calling Officer Borsch before we’d run into Danny, that would be one thing. But now that Casey had stuck up for me?

Now that I knew Danny’s nickname?

All I can think is that if Casey finds out I turned Danny in, he’ll never look at me the same.

That it’ll be the beginning of The End.

I kept quiet as we walked along. I wasn’t even sure where we were going, and it didn’t really seem to matter. Billy and Casey talked about Danny, while I frantically tried to sort out what I would not know if I hadn’t called Officer Borsch or eavesdropped from the underbelly of the Urbanskis’ car.

So while Billy was going on about the handcuffs, I couldn’t jump in and say, Well, gee. He fractured the guy’s ribs—what do you expect? because that was something I only knew because I’d called Officer Borsch.

And I couldn’t suggest that Nick or Danny’s other two friends knew he’d be pawning the speaker and microphone today so maybe
that’s
how the police had been tipped off.

Even saying something about pawning would give me away!

I felt like I was walking through a minefield of ill-gotten information, and one false word could set off a relationship-crippling explosion.

So I was quiet.

Mum.

Worried.

Casey kept on holding my hand, and even though we’d walked for blocks, it still wasn’t a lax, easy hold. It was firm. Like he’d let go of part of his past and was latching on to me … but was still feeling a little unsteady.

“You okay?” he asked again, and the way he said it wasn’t like, Hey, how’s it goin’?

It was like he could tell something was wrong, and he really
cared
.

Which made me feel even worse.

And made my hand start sweating.

I pulled away and wiped my hand on my jeans. “Sorry!”

He laughed. “You think I care?” then held on tight again.

And that’s when the very thing that had me running scared the night before came to my rescue. “Look!” Billy says, pointing toward the back of the Bosley-Moore Funeral Home, and there’s the Deli-Mustard Car, parked mostly out of view.

We all just stare for a minute because something about it being there is really … creepy.

“Good thing Marissa’s not here,” I finally say. “She’d be freaking out about him sucking blood out of dead people.”

Casey does an exaggerated chin rub. “I thought we decided that vampires don’t drink cold blood.”

“Apparently they will in a pinch,” Billy says with an oh-so-serious nod.

I scowl at him. “Like I said, Marissa’s not here.”

Billy shrugs. “So what do
you
think he’s doing here?”

“Uh … maybe he’s a funeral director?”

It’s weird—the switch from talking about Danny to talking about dead people seems to have
lightened
the mood. A mischievous look crosses Billy’s face as he says, “So you think he’s a cadaver conductor?” and Casey
“So you think he’s a cadaver conductor?” and Casey throws in, “A posthumous priest?” and Billy shoots back, “A deacon of the dead?” which makes Casey cry, “A cardinal of corpses!” and Billy come back with, “A minister of … memorials?”

“Stop!” I laugh. “I don’t know
what
funeral directors are. I just heard my grandmother talk about them. I’ve never actually been inside a funeral home.”

“
Parlor
, if you please,” Billy says, pointing to the
PARLOR AND CHAPEL
sign that’s right below the main
BOSLEY-MOORE FUNERAL HOME
sign.

“Fine. I’ve never been inside a funeral
parlor.
”

Casey eyes the front door, where a steady stream of people are filing in. “We could fix that, you know.”

I look down at my jeans and thrashed high-tops. “Don’t parlors require, you know, lace gloves and shiny shoes?”

“There’s a guy in jeans,” Casey says, nodding toward the entrance.

“Yeah, one.”

But I
am
curious. I mean, there are lots of cars parked in the front lot, but it’s not full or anything, so the only reason the Vampire’s car would be parked around back is if he worked there. Or had some, you know,
business
being there. But even if he was in the mortuary business, that didn’t explain why he was cruising through the cemetery at night in his Deli Mobile, or why he and Shovel Man were stalking us to get those skulls.

Obviously I wasn’t going to get any answers by standing
on the sidewalk, so when Casey says, “There’s another guy in jeans,” and starts toward the entrance, I pull him back and say, “If we’re going to do this, we need to split up.”

He looks at me. “And then … ?”

Through my mind flashes something Holly had told me about the way she dealt with things when she was homeless. “And then we attach ourselves to our own little group of adults as we go in. We look solemn, avoid eye contact, and once we’re inside, we don’t hang out together or act like we know each other.”

Casey thinks a minute. “I can do that.”

I eye Billy. “I don’t know if
he
can.”

“Hey!” Billy says. “I can be as solemn as the next guy. I can be
more
solemn than the next guy! No, wait! I can be as solemn as the
dead
guy.”

I look at Casey and say, “That’s pretty solemn,” and Casey agrees. “Very solemn.”

So we watch the people filing into the funeral home for a minute, and then Casey says, “It was my idea, so I guess I’m going first.”

He’s quick, sly, and never looks back.

“Okay,” I tell Billy. “My turn.”

I sidle up behind a middle-aged couple helping along an old lady. It’s slow going, but I hold back a little, trying to seem like I’m just patiently walking with Grandma to a sad, sad day at the funeral parlor.

But as we’re approaching the doorway, the middle-aged woman looks back at me and says, “You can go ahead.”

“No, no. I’m fine,” I tell her, and I back off a little until they’re right up to the door.

Then in we go.

There’s a little sign on a post with movable white letters that spell out
CHAPEL
with an arrow pointing to the left, and
VIEWING
with an arrow pointing to the right. And standing beside the sign is a short, pear-shaped woman wearing a dark purple dress and a dark green and purple hat. To me she looks like a giant, smiling eggplant.

“Cynthia! Roscoe!” she says to the people I’m with. “And Mrs. Kennedy! Thank you so much for coming.”

There’s a bunch of people milling around, blocking the entrance to the chapel, so before she can even think about saying something like, “And who is this darling ragamuffin?” I ditch it to the right.

Now, I’m trying to remind myself that the whole reason we’re infiltrating a funeral parlor is to find out more about the Vampire. Stuff like, does he work there? And if he does, what does he do? Maybe it’s his job to check out the gravesite for a next-day burial. Maybe he’s really just a normal guy with a rundown car and unfortunate teeth.

But as I’m looking around for the Vampire, I keep getting distracted by the whole
parlor
part of the place. Seriously, there’s a main room with a fireplace that’s all decked out like an old Victorian living room. It has little flowered couches and oval-framed pictures on the wall and an Oriental rug under a sideboard with a silver tea service and a plate of crunchy-looking cookies. And really, it looks more like a fancy tea parlor than anything to do with death.

I try to mosey through the people like I belong, which isn’t easy because I sure don’t feel like I belong. The jeans I’m wearing are bad enough, but my shoes? I feel like I’m
wearing muddy army boots to a prom. And even though the adults don’t seem to notice me, there are a few other kids, and they do. Especially this one girl with a perfect little blond bob. She’s about ten and she’s wearing a blue velvet dress over black tights, and her shoes are definitely shiny.

I try to ignore her as I move around, casually looking inside a room that has a little conference table, and another room that’s obviously an office, and then a kind of oversized closet that has display cases of urns and a wall filled with coffin samples. They’re each about six inches deep and a foot across, and there are dozens of them mounted in a giant grid on the wall. It’s like coffin corners as
art
.

There are more rooms farther back, and I’m thinking about taking a quick little tour through them, but no one else is even as far back as the coffin room. Plus when I look over my shoulder, there’s that girl again, glaring at me.

So I move back into the “parlor” room, and I try smiling at Little Miss Nosy Bob, but she just keeps on glaring. It crosses my mind that maybe I should snag a cookie and deliver it to her, but she’s definitely not the kind of girl who’d take cookies from a stranger. So instead, I start to mosey on back to the chapel side of things. But the Oversized Eggplant is coming toward me, and when I look over my shoulder, I see that Little Miss Nosy Bob has gotten her mother’s attention and is pointing right at me.

So to ditch all of them I take a quick right turn through two open French doors into another room.

Trouble is, the room happens to have a big, open rosewood
coffin perched on a thick, wide pedestal, and standing looking in the coffin are Billy and Casey.

“What are you
doing
?” I whisper as I hurry up to them. “You’re supposed to stay separated!”

“And who, pray tell, are you?” Billy asks, looking at me like he’s never seen me before.

“Knock it off!” Then I ask, “Did you see him?”

“Who?” Billy asks.

“The Vampire!”

“No … but it looks like he’s been here,” Billy says, wiggling his eyebrows at the coffin.

So okay. I can’t help it. I look. And there, laid out in a dark blue suit, is … some old dead guy.

I shiver, because, well, even though I don’t know him, and even though he
is
old, he’s also
dead
.

Plus, he looks pasty.

Sort of … 
waxed
.

“Did they put makeup on him?” I ask, leaning in a little.

“Too much rouge, if you ask me,” Billy says.

“I think we should get out of here,” Casey says, looking over his shoulder. “I don’t know where the Vampire is, but I did find out he’s not the funeral director.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I heard someone in the chapel ask who the funeral director was and the person they pointed to was a normal-looking guy in a suit.”