Tangled Thing Called Love (15 page)

Saturday, April 28

Am writing this on a school computer because my laptop’s at home. So mad I can barely type so xcuse the misspellings. If I don’t get this out I’ll xplode!

They think I stole money from Buzzy! A police officer arrived at school this afternoon. He came in and talked to Mr. Henderson, the principal, who’s here on Saturday because of the pageant, and Mr. H called me down to the office. The cop took me in a conference room and started asking me questions.

He said that Bodelle opened the garage safe because she needed to deposit the cash in the bank, but then discovered $2,000 was missing. Bodelle said I was the only person who knew the combo and could have taken the money. The cop asked me what I knew about the missing money. Didn’t come out and ask if I took it, but it was obvious he thought so. I’m a Fanchon, right—so I’m automatically guilty. I told the cop he could search my locker, my truck, my backpack—anyplace he wanted because I never stole one stinking cent!

The cop said he couldn’t search a minor’s property without a parent’s consent unless he first had a warrant or if it involved drugs. By this time I was a complete wreck. I was shaking and crying. Maybe the cop felt sorry for me, because he said I wasn’t under arrest, that they had to get more details of the robbery before they could file charges. He said that I should just try to calm down—tell my parents what had happened—hah!—and that an officer would question me more in the morning.

My eyes were all swollen from crying. I felt so sick I wanted to throw up. I felt dirty. I felt like everyone must know about the stolen money and think I took it. I just wanted to go home. I didn’t care about the pageant anymore. I just wanted to feel my little brothers’ arms around me because they love me no matter what.

So I grabbed the big plastic shopping bag that held all my stuff and started to leave. That’s when a $50 bill fell out of the bag. It had oil blotches, like it was a bill that came from a greasy garage.

I quick dumped out everything in the bag, but there was just the one bill. If the cop had searched my stuff he would have found it. I felt the whole room spinning around me. I thought maybe I really did steal that money but blanked out that I did it. After a while, though, I sort of came back to my senses and started thinking again.

What I thought was: Bodelle. I could see it all in my mind—her calling the police, pretending the money had been stolen, then later today tiptoeing into the locker room and stuffing that greasy bill in my bag to make it look like I took it. I couldn’t believe a grown-up would do something like that! I knew Bodelle wanted her daughter to win—but to do something that could send me to jail?

That’s when I decided I wasn’t going to quit. The other girls were all coming into the locker room then, looking at me funny, and I knew the news had already gotten around. I went into the toilet and tore the fifty into tiny shreds and flushed it. Then I got a couple of ice bags out of the P.E. teacher’s fridge and plastered them over my swollen eyes and sat in a stall for a few minutes, trying to calm down. When I finally came out and went to get dressed I saw what they’d done to my gown.

There were half a dozen splotches of red food coloring on the back of the dress. Like I’d gotten my period and hadn’t used a Tampax. It would have been better if it had been blood, because blood comes out in cold water. Food coloring is forever.

It took me a while, but I finally figured out what to do. They thought all Fanchons were crooks? Okay, fine—I’d put some of my Fanchon light-fingered skill to work. There was this big pot of wilted tulips in the school secretary’s office, left over from Easter. I ripped off the florist’s ribbon—two-inch-wide rose organza. It doesn’t look quite perfect with my dress color, but it’s close enough that it doesn’t look too stupid. I pinned it onto my dress—a big honkin’ butt bow with ribbons dangling down the back to hide the spots.

Those snotty bitches think they spiked me. They thought I’d be too ashamed to go onstage wearing this dress. But I’m not quitting. I’m going to go on that stage and I’m going to
win
. Here’s my response to Bodelle Blumquist, the food coloring queens, and the cayenne pepper princesses:

F U!!!!!!

It was the last thing Fawn had ever written.

“I love this girl,” Mazie said quietly.

“Me too,” Ben said.

“She wrote that last bit on a school computer, right? So how did her flash drive get from school back to her bedroom?”

Ben absentmindedly tapped the iPad against his knee. “She must have put it in that bag, along with her clothes and underwear and stuff. I read a police report today that mentioned a bag of personal items being found in Fawn’s truck.”

“The police reports didn’t mention the flash drive?”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t think anyone looked closely enough at the pendant to notice it was a flash drive. Those devices weren’t in general use thirteen or fourteen years ago. Probably the investigators would have been more interested in checking Fawn’s clothing, looking for signs of blood or semen. If it had been a murder case everything would probably have been scrutinized more thoroughly, but Fawn was considered a possible runaway.”

“So we may be the only ones who ever saw Fawn’s diary,” Mazie said. “Do we have to turn it in to the police?”

“Tough question. I’m not up to dealing with it right now.” Ben powered off his iPad, leaned in, kissed the side of Mazie’s mouth, and murmured, “I’m up for something else, though.” He pulled her against him, making it clear exactly what he was up for, his eyes dark, hot, hungry.

Oh, but she was so up for it too! His hands on the small of her back and her shoulders were warm and rough and Mazie realized how desperately she’d missed the feeling of those hands on her body. His mouth found hers and it felt like coming home. This was where she belonged—locked in the solidness of Ben Labeck’s arms. Giving in to the desire that was sending electric tingles all over her body, Mazie slid her hand inside Ben’s shirt and stroked his chest. His body was hard, taut, responsive to the slightest touch. His breath became ragged and when he moved his hand beneath her skirt and up her thighs, she didn’t try to stop him. If sexual arousal could have been measured in amps, they could have powered the entire electrical grid of southwest Wisconsin. She moved her hand lower and his breath caught in his throat.

“Aunt Mazie?”

They jumped violently apart. Joey was peering at them from the hallway.

Labeck cursed under his breath.

“What’re you guys doing?” Joey asked.

“Uhh … Aunt Mazie had a mosquito bite where she couldn’t reach,” Ben said.
“I was just helping her scratch the itch.”

“Oh,” Joey said. Then, “I don’t feel so good.”

“Where don’t you feel good?” Mazie asked.

“Stomach.” He walked over to the sofa. Then he threw up. Kids: the most effective form of birth control ever invented.

Chapter Seventeen

Mazie cleaned up Joey and put him back to bed. Shortly afterward Sam threw up. The upchucking seemed to be a result of the strawberry concoctions rather than stomach flu, but whatever it was came in Technicolor and 3-D. Scully slept through the whole thing, so it was Ben and Mazie who pressed cool towels to foreheads, fetched glasses of water, and changed sheets.

Ben was much more patient with the boys than Mazie would have believed. She’d never found him sexier or more masculine than now. Watching him crouched beside the boys’ beds, rubbing their backs and talking in a low, soothing murmur, she felt something inside her melt. Telling herself she was over Ben? What a piece of fiction. She was never going to be over this man.

But the romantic moment, the magic that Fawn’s diary had woven over both of them, had passed, and when the boys finally dropped off to sleep, Ben and Mazie crashed too. In their own separate beds.

When Mazie staggered grumpily to the kitchen the next morning, it was to discover Sam and Joey already up, having breakfast, looking fully recovered.

“Is your dad up?” Mazie asked, setting coffee on to perk.

“Outside, doing chores,” Joey said.

“Are you guys better?” she asked.

“No prob,” Sam said. Mazie felt his forehead. Cool. Ditto for Sam. Both of them were bright-eyed and were eating enough for ten sets of twins. Definitely well enough to go to school, she decided.

Upstairs, the shower began running. Ben was up. Picturing him under a shower made her smile. Every glorious bit of him exposed and wet, and she loved the way his hair looked when it was damp, and if the twins got off to school and Gran went to town for groceries, she and Ben might be able to resume where they’d been interrupted last night.

“Can I have coffee?” Sam asked.

“What?” she asked, shaking her head to clear the image of a naked, wet Labeck.
Deep breath.
Focus
.

“Can I have coffee?” Sam repeated.

“No.”

“Mom lets us drink coffee.”

“Sure she does,” Mazie said. “Because otherwise you wouldn’t be hyperactive enough.”

The boys giggled.

“Was Muffin out yet this morning?”

The boys shook their heads.

Mazie opened the screen door and Muffin dashed out. Glancing outside, she noticed something in the shadows of the pine windbreak that edged the lawn.

“Omigosh—is that a
wild turkey
?” she said.

The twins gave
big deal
shrugs, but Mazie was excited. There had never been wild turkeys around when she’d been a kid.

“I wouldn’t go near that thing if I was you,” Joey said.

“I won’t scare it,” Mazie explained. “I just want to take its picture.”

The twins shook their heads in an it’s-your-funeral manner.

Snatching Ben’s camera from the counter, Mazie scurried outside, being careful not to slam the screen door. She wanted to get as close as possible to the turkey before it ran away. The turkey seemed to be interested in the spilled seed beneath the bird feeder. It was about four feet tall, with a vulturelike neck, a red wattle slung jauntily under its beak, and a shiny dark gray body. Its tail was drab—nothing like the rainbow extravaganzas kids make for refrigerator art every Thanksgiving. It cocked its head, watching Mazie with alert, black eyes.

Another turkey stepped out of the pine trees, closely followed by a third. Mazie couldn’t believe her luck! Three wild turkeys—how utterly, incredibly cool! Slowly she raised the camera. Turkey number one began to move toward her, bobbing its head up and down, making a kind of gargling noise. There was something predatory in the way it darted forward on its long legs, giving Mazie a chilling image of the raptors in
Jurassic Park
. Weren’t birds actually related to dinosaurs?

If she hadn’t known better, she would have said the bird was stalking her.

It was! Now it was darting toward her, angrily gobbling, with turkeys two and three close behind it.

“Shoo!” Mazie waved her arms. Wild animals were supposed to be afraid of humans!

Suddenly the largest turkey flew up into her face, buffeting her upper body with its powerful wings and raking her with spurred claws. Mazie shrieked, dropped the camera, and ran, the thug turkeys scuttling after her. She’d never make it back to the house before they caught her, Mazie realized, abruptly changing direction and sprinting for Labeck’s car. Wrenching open the door, she jumped in and slammed the door just as the birds launched an attack, pecking viciously at their own reflections in the chrome wheel rims and flying up to pummel the car with their wings. She knew they couldn’t get through the glass, but it was still terrifying. Honking the horn only sent the turkeys into new frenzies of aggression.

Suddenly a small, whirling dervish flew at them, snarling and snapping. Muffin! The turkeys whirled around and turned on him. But Muffin, who lacked the mental capacity for fear, charged into the turkeys like a small, furry bolt of lightning, wanting only to sink his teeth into those warty necks.

Those spurs could slit him open like a surgeon’s knife! Mazie flung open the car door to rescue Muffin, but Ben was suddenly there, swinging a snow shovel and bellowing at the top of his lungs. Scully ran up too, waving a pitchfork like a demented villager in a
Frankenstein
movie. The turkeys turned tail and fled, Muffin in hot pursuit.

“Yeah, run, Hitler, you little coward,” Scully yelled. Ben chased down Muffin and scooped him up. He was snarling, working his jaws, and his feet were still going even though he was no longer on the ground.

“Hitler?”
Mazie asked.

“Yeah. I already used Saddam Hussein and Genghis Khan on the barn cats.” Scully pointed to his sister’s scratched thigh. “Get that disinfected right away. No telling where Hitler’s feet have been.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Labeck ducked into the car and took out the first-aid kit he kept under the front seat. Taking Mazie by the hand, he led her toward the back porch, spread a rug on the top step, and had her sit down.

Unwrapping a disinfectant pad, he began cleaning the turkey claw gouges in her left
thigh, seeming to enjoy the job. Overwhelmed by the erotic sensation of his hands on her thighs, Mazie barely noticed the disinfectant’s sting.

“I dropped your camera,” Mazie said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it.” Ben had complete disregard for his clothing and didn’t mind his car getting dinged, but he treated his photography equipment as though it were lifesaving antivirus serum.

“You can make it up to me.” He gazed at her, his eyes the color of root beer in the morning light, knowing exactly the effect he was having on her. “I have something I want to ask you.”