The Big Dip (3 page)

I thought of what Skip had said about how valuable the Margaret rose was.

I whistled again and noticed how the whistle echoed in the silence.

The silence…

I stood up so fast that I knocked my chair backward. In this house, silence was the wrong sound.

I zoomed downstairs.

The front door was open, the lock smashed. By closing my door upstairs, I'd blocked out Ellie's chanting—and the sound of someone breaking in.

The hot still air from outside rushed through the door and pressed in on me, smothering my breath.

“ELLIE!” I yelled.

There was no answer. I heard nothing but the buzzing of bees in the rosebush.

Propped just inside the door was the knapsack that Ellie never went anywhere without.

Chapter Four

The hall phone rang. It was buried under a stack of Ellie's
Owl
magazines. I unearthed the receiver just as the call clicked into our message machine.

“
Ellie
,” I said.

“Wrong-oh, Mojo,” hissed a voice. “Not Ellie.”

Trenchcoat, I thought.

The voice went on, “Though little Ellie happens to be my guest.”

My spine turned to ice. “No,” I said. “No!”

There was a rustling sound, and then Ellie's voice drawled over the line. She sounded like she'd just woken up. “Joe?”

“Ellie!” I exclaimed. “Where are you?”

“I'm so tired, Joe,” she sighed.

In the distance, sirens wailed. The police were coming.

“Ellie—!”

The hissy voice came back on. “Want to see her again, Joe? Lemme tell you how to arrange that. Bring the Margaret rose behind the roller coaster tonight at closing time. It'll be dark then.” The voice chuckled. “Dark as my soul. We'll do a trade—
if
you come on your own.
If
you don't bring the cops or anyone else with you.”

“But I—,” I started to protest. I stopped myself.
I don't have the rose.
Trenchcoat thought I had the Margaret rose. And that was my only chance to get Ellie back.

I pulled the front door shut. I didn't want Trenchcoat to hear the sirens.

“Okay,” I got out, through a throat as dry as gravel. “Behind the roller coaster, at closing time.”

“Be there, Joe—or the item I have for trade gets taken off the market… permanently.”

Click.

The phone almost slid out of my sweaty hand. Numbly, I put it down. I couldn't think, couldn't breathe.
He had Ellie
.

Ellie, her braids flying with every cartwheel. Ellie, chanting about the lady with the alligator purse. Ellie, my noisy pest of a kid sister.

Ellie was worth more to me than all the stupid Margaret roses on the planet.

I'd been mean to her before she was kidnapped. I'd been a brute, not a brother.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Then I realized that red lights were flashing through the living-room window. A police car had pulled up. The lights spun around me, making me dizzy, like I was stuck on a merry-go-round.

No cops, he'd said. If I told anyone, Ellie would be… I had to get out of there.

I had to get to VanDusen, to the Margaret rose.

Money
. I needed money for the admission. My wallet was still on the floor at the school.

Mom kept an emergency twenty under the smiling-bear cookie jar in the kitchen. Knocking the bear on his side, I grabbed the twenty.

The police officers were pounding on the front door. I bolted out the back, plowing through the thick blackberry bushes at the end of our yard.

I climbed over the back fence and ran to the street.

I ran without thinking where I was going. I was on automatic pilot. I ended up at one of my haunts, the Britannia Community Centre. Usually I went into the fitness room to work out, but now I needed somewhere to sit and think.

I went into the Britannia Library. Collapsing on a chair, I leaned my head down and clasped my hands over my knees. I breathed deeply, raggedly, not the way my coach had taught me. A woman at one of the computers glanced over curiously.

Clinging to the woman's hand was a little girl, hopping from one foot to the other with impatience.

My eyes swam. I couldn't look at the kid. I thought of how drowsy Ellie had sounded—like she'd been drugged.

Ellie…Little Ellie…

I went over to the drinking fountain and glugged back water. I could get Ellie back, I told myself. I could make this work. Skip had told me I could do anything if I just concentrated.

I sank back onto the chair and shut my eyes, pressing my fingers over them. Against the backs of my lids, Trenchcoat's bulky shaped loomed.

I sat upright, opening my eyes so that the light blocked out the image of Trenchcoat. Something—an impression, an idea—was knocking at the edges of my brain. Something I'd noticed but hadn't registered. What was it?

Without realizing it, I'd been scowling at the mom and her kid. The mom looked frightened.

I gave her a sheepish grin, but that didn't cut it with her. She was definitely scared. Dragging her kid off to the library counter, she started whispering to one of the clerks.

Huh? What rule had I broken? Couldn't a guy come in and rest for a min— I looked down and saw scratches, deep jagged scratches, several of them spouting blood.

I'd been in such a hurry I hadn't noticed my skin till now. My hands and arms were covered with angry red souvenirs of the blackberry bushes. I could only imagine what my face looked like. It sure felt sore, now that I was paying attention. No wonder the woman was spooked.

I jumped up to go wash off in the bathroom. I passed the computers, where the woman had been reading something onscreen.

It was the
Vancouver Sun
's home page.
What's With The PNE?
the main headline blared.

The story described the burst of crimes at the fair. Aside from the roller-coaster shooting, there had been a break-in at the gallery. A lot of valuables were missing. “What's going on?” a PNE-goer was quoted. “The fair used to be so
wholesome
!”

I didn't stick around to read any more of the PNE's problems. I had enough of my own. With suspicious glances at me, the library clerk was already punching in a phone number. A three-digit one. I didn't have to be top-of-the-class to deduce who she was calling. All the while, the woman and the kid stared with wide, frightened eyes.

I beat it out of there. At the drinking fountain outside, I splashed water over my hands, arms and face. Maybe now I didn't look quite so much like an extra from the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
.

I ran up to Broadway. I didn't have a plan, but I had a mission. I had to get the Margaret rose from VanDusen Gardens. I caught a 99B bus heading west, then grabbed a bus south on Granville.

I could run forever in hot weather but could not sit. On the bus I started pouring off so much sweat that a woman in a business suit took pity on me and passed over a couple of tissues. I wiped them over my face and neck. They were drenched when I was through.

I smiled my thanks at her. I hoped she'd assume my scratches were a new trend in tattoos.

At VanDusen, I hopped out. I handed the cashier the twenty. She took a long time holding it under some kind of lamp. They'd had a problem with people passing counterfeits, she said.

I chewed on my lower lip. There was a long line of tourists behind me, and I could feel their eyes running curiously over my scratches.

Finally the cashier gave me change and let me in. Then—

“Wait,” she called.

My heart thudded sickly into my stomach.

“Your guide to the gardens.” Her eyes twinkled as she handed me a brochure.

The brochure folded out to a map of VanDusen. A red arrow pointed to the greenhouse displaying the rare Margaret rose. After washing my scratches some more in the bathroom, I joined a long line of elderly people fanning themselves in the heat. As the women fanned, their perfume carried back to me. The scent of perfume, combined with the waves of fragrance coming from the flowerbeds, was almost enough to make me keel over.

A couple with English accents chatted in line ahead of me. The wife was prattling about some friend of theirs. “She was so pretty at her wedding, remember, Hugo? So dewy-eyed!”

“Uh-huh,” said Hugo. He lifted his white sunhat to wipe a handkerchief over his forehead.

The line inched forward like a caterpillar with a full stomach. I thought, Will we ever get there? And, What if armed guards are protecting the plant?

“Hardly surprising her marriage didn't work out. She loved someone else,” the woman ahead of me said wisely.

“Uh-huh,” Hugo commented. He was red with the heat. I hoped
he
didn't keel over.

Feeling my gaze, Hugo turned and grinned. He gestured to his wife. “Gardeners! What a fanatical group. We've come all the way from Victoria, just to see a flower.”

“Oh, Hugo,” said his wife. Playfully she tapped him with a brochure.

I grinned back at Hugo. He was a nice guy, I figured, bringing his wife here when the heat got to him so much.

We edged into the greenhouse.
Ooos
and
ahhhs
floated around me. The famed Margaret rose, in a curved stone planter, rested on a round table in the center. The rose was roped off, keeping onlookers about three feet away.

There were no guards in sight.

I thought if I leaned over the rope, I could reach the plant and grab it.

“So lovely,” cooed Hugo's wife. The rose's creamy outer petals haloed the rich purple, closed petals at the center. “Like a painting, or a piece of porcelain.”

“Or like a vanilla-grape ice-cream bar,” I said, wisecracking because I was nervous.

Hugo tipped his head back and laughed. His wife didn't know what to say.

They both moved forward. So did I. Now I was right beside the plant. This was my chance. I stretched out my hands.

Chapter Five

And then…I couldn't do it. I couldn't steal the Margaret rose. I kept thinking of Hugo bringing his wife all the way from Victoria. I thought of all these other oldsters, so happy to be here.

It was like there was a force field around the rose, stopping me from reaching any farther. I pulled back.

Behind me, an old woman whispered, “I've had the same impulse myself. It would be fun to break off a petal, wouldn't it? But imagine the trouble we'd be in!” She giggled.

I shook my head. I didn't have to imagine trouble. I already had it. I had nothing to give Trenchcoat. I'd blown it.

I wiped sweat off my forehead with the back of my arm.

“You all right, dear?” asked the old lady.

I turned to say, “I'm fine, ma'am”—and saw, over the old lady's snowy white hair, the stocky woman from the roller coaster.

The stocky woman smiled, showing those pointy teeth I'd noticed before. “Hi, Joe,” she said. “Remember me?”

“You're the nurse,” I said, staring at her. I couldn't believe it. “This is some coincidence, both of us being here.”

She smiled wider. “My name's Babs Beesley, Joe. We should talk about last night.”

“Sure,” I said. “I'd like to know what you saw. Did you talk to the police?”

Babs Beesley glanced down at the old woman, whose eyes had lit with interest at the word
police
. “We'll talk in the gift shop, Joe. Not here.”

In the gift shop, people crowded around display cases and shelves. Nobody was leaving the shop, so it was getting more and more crammed. “They need a traffic monitor,” someone grumbled. I heard Hugo politely ask someone not to step on his foot.

I squeezed into an alcove called the Children's Corner, with shelves holding coloring books, crayons, beads and tubes of glitter.

Babs Beesley struggled through the crowd behind me. She held her big purse up like a battering ram, forcing people aside. As she got close to me, her pointy-toothed smile spread wide.

I didn't like that smile. It wasn't friendly. It was hungry.

Alligator hungry.

And Ellie's jumping rhyme came back to me.

Call for the doctor, call for the nurse,

Call for the lady with the alligator purse.

Well, this wasn't an alligator purse. More like cheap fake-leather plastic. Still, I studied the purse as Babs Beesley heaved it through the crowd toward me.

I'd thought before that the purse was big enough to hold a gun, that the stocky woman might have shot Jake. But the woman had claimed to be a nurse. She had tried to help Jake.

Tried to help him…
or tried to force
dying-breath information out of him?

“Almost there, Joe,” Babs wheezed from behind her purse.

I remembered someone else who wheezed and puffed at physical exertion. Trenchcoat, in the school basement.

Trenchcoat wasn't a guy. Trenchcoat was…Babs Beesley.

“Okay, Joe,” Babs panted. “Time for a little chat.” She cracked her purse open and plunged her hand in.

The idea I'd put aside jumped back into my brain in grisly Technicolor. Babs Beesley was Jake's murderer. She'd shot Jake with a gun she'd pulled out of her purse.

The gun she was pulling out now…

I grabbed a mega-size tube of gold glitter off the shelf. Peeling off the cap, I squirted it into her tiny black eyes and all over her big, pasty face. She brayed like a mule.

The purse fell, exposing the black gun she clenched. We'd already attracted attention with the glitter. Some had missed Babs and sprayed other people. Now, at the sight of the gun, screams filled the shop.

“Grab the gun,” shouted Hugo. He sprang at Babs and started wrestling it away from her.

Babs may have been out of shape, but she was strong. In spite of the glitter I was dousing her with, she kept gripping the gun. Hugo slowly bent her arm backward. Though braying with pain, she didn't release her hold.