Nobody's There (18 page)

Irene bent down, leaning against the car door for balance, and looked right into Abbie's eyes. “Don't make the mistake Mrs. Merkel did,” she said. “If you're smart you'll stay out of other people's business. Somebody out there might decide to put a stop to your meddling.”

A
bbie left the neighborhood as quickly as she legally could. She turned on Main Street and drove south, toward the hospital.

When she saw Mrs. Merkel she'd tell her about reading her notebook and about Irene Conley's threat. Or maybe she'd explain about the notebook and not mention the threat. She wasn't really sure it was a threat.

Abbie groaned. She wanted to give Mrs. Merkel a reason for recovery. She wanted to tell her something that would jolt her out of her coma and make her recover enough to take a hand in the arrest.

I'll tell her about her rings
, Abbie thought.

Charlie had said that his aunt hated the rings,
and Mrs. Merkel obviously couldn't stand Charlie, so the news wouldn't upset her. Instead, Abbie hoped it would make her wake up from her coma, wanting to solve the theft.

Abbie thought about what the assistant district attorney had said about a pawnshop on Main as she pulled up to a red light outside a shopping strip. A sign listing the shops on the strip was right on the corner. Among them was the EZ Loan Pawnshop.

Why not?
she thought. She turned right and drove into the lot, parking nearly in front of the pawnshop.

The small window contained a jumble of interesting items—everything from watches to four Waterford goblets to a set of golf clubs. There were a few rings, but none of them looked like the rings Charlie had described.

Abbie had to press a button that buzzed back to let her know the door had been unlocked. She grabbed the knob and entered the store.

“Hi,” she said to the owner, a small, shriveled man, who hunched on a stool behind the counter. “I'm looking for a ring.”

He studied Abbie, then craned to look out the window at her car. “Go away, kid. I got nothing you could afford,” he said.

Indignant, Abbie said, “I wasn't planning to buy a ring with my allowance. My parents will pay for it. It's … it's a birthday present. I want an opal ring … um … maybe an opal with a couple of diamonds … with an unusual setting. Have you got something like that?”

The man quickly threw a black velvet jeweler's cloth over the glass-topped counter. He reached inside the counter and pulled out a thin gold ring with a tiny blue stone. “I'll give you a good price on this,” he said. “We give the best prices in town.”

“That's not an opal,” Abbie said.

“Even better—an aquamarine. Five hundred. I might take four-fifty.”

“But I want an opal, with diamonds.” Abbie looked the man squarely in the eye. “I doesn't matter how much it costs.”

The aquamarine ring was whisked away, but the cloth remained.

“Haven't got one like that.”

“Could I see what's in the counter under the cloth? Maybe I'll find something else that I'll like.”

“No. Nothing here for you. G'wan home, kid. Your mother wants you.”

Abbie left the store discouraged. Nobody was going to pay attention to a teenager. She wasn't even good at spying. Irene Conley had noticed her right away. How could she possibly hope to find out anything about Mrs. Merkel's attacker?

Idly, as she strolled to her car, she glanced into the window of the antiques shop next to the pawnshop. A Tiffany lamp first caught her eye, but under it stood something that immediately caught her attention—a traditional Asian bronze horse on a teak base, one front leg raised.

Abbie gasped. That was what had been missing
from Mrs. Merkel's house! Her bronze horse! The thief must have taken it, too.

Abbie entered the antiques store and went straight to the tall, slender woman who smiled at her.

“At last, a customer,” the woman said pleasantly. “This has been a slow day for business.”

Abbie shrugged. “I'm really not a customer,” she said. “I just want to ask you some questions about the horse you have in your window.”

“Ask what you like,” the woman said. She followed Abbie to the window. “Pick up the horse.”

“I'm not going to buy it.”

“That's all right. Pick it up.”

Abbie reached for the horse, which—like Mrs. Merkel's horse—was a little over a foot long and a foot high, but she had to readjust her grip as she lifted it from the window. “Wow, it's heavy!” she said.

The woman smiled. “I wanted to give you an idea of how much bronze weighs, so you'd understand the cost.” She named a figure, and Abbie whistled.

“A friend of mine has a horse like this,” she said. “Except her horse has eyes of a shiny black stone.”

“Probably onyx,” the woman told her. “I understand that only a few of those horses were made. Those with onyx eyes are very rare … and valuable.” She paused. “I'd like to see that horse. Maybe the owner could bring it in.”

“I'll—I'll tell her,” Abbie said.

As she placed the horse back on its stand in the window, Abbie shifted it in her hands and raised it, balancing the weight. For just an instant the horse's rear legs were up, pointing outward.

Two deep, pronglike puncture wounds.
The realization that the heavy bronze horse could have been the weapon made Abbie start so violently, she almost dropped the horse.

Stumbling over her words, aware that the woman was watching her strangely, Abbie thanked her for her help and fled to her car. She had to get to the hospital quickly. She needed to talk to Mrs. Merkel.

“She's doing well, so she'll be moved to a private room in the morning,” the desk nurse informed Abbie. “She's still in a coma, but talk to her pleasantly. Hearing friendly voices might just help her recovery. You can visit her for ten minutes.”

Abbie nodded. She entered the intensive care unit and sat next to Mrs. Merkel's bed.

“It's me, Abbie,” she said.

Mrs. Merkel, her face still pinched with unhappiness, lay motionless.

“I'm trying to do what you would do—find out who attacked you,” Abbie said. “But I'm having trouble. They arrested Jose Morales, but I don't think he did it. I mean, even if his fingerprints were on your coffee cup … Well, that isn't
important to tell you. You'd know who you served coffee to.”

Abbie reached under the light blanket and took hold of Mrs. Merkel's left hand. Mrs. Merkel's fingers were cool and quiet, lying still in Abbie's palm.

“You were hit from behind, so maybe you didn't see who hit you,” Abbie said. “I think you were hit with your bronze horse. Did you know it's rare and worth a lot of money? Very few of the Asian horses have onyx eyes. That's what the woman in the antiques shop told me. She said she'd like to meet you. She wants to see your horse. I think she might like to buy it. If your husband gave it to you, you probably don't like it either. So you might be interested in selling it—if we can find it.”

She paused. Her conversation wasn't going right. She'd try something else. “I went to the pawnshop looking for your rings. Charlie said someone stole them. Frankly, I think Charlie did. He didn't get to your house until after Officer Martin and I had looked around for anything that might be missing. I may be wrong, but I think Charlie took the rings while he went upstairs with Officer Martin and me. Charlie's big and broad and kind of hard to see around, so he blocked our view for a few minutes. But after all, how much time does it take to grab two small rings and slip them into your pockets?”

Barely—just barely—with the slightest of movements, Abbie felt Mrs. Merkel's fingers tighten around her own.

“I don't know how to be a private investigator,” Abbie said. “I wish I knew what to do next. I think I'd better go over all our notes and take them to the police.”

This time Mrs. Merkel's fingers quivered, then held fast.

“Please wake up, Mrs. Merkel,” Abbie said. “I know I'm not doing a good job. When I stopped in front of Irene Conley's house to get a good look, she came out and told me to back off and stay out of her business. Was she in your house? Could she have been the one who hit you?”

A nurse walked up silently in her crepe-soled shoes and tapped Abbie on the shoulder. “Time to go,” she said.

Abbie pried her hand away from Mrs. Merkel's, smoothed the sheet and blanket, and stood up. To the nurse she said, “She squeezed my hand. She knows what I told her.”

The nurse smiled and answered, “That's nice, dear.”

“Shouldn't you tell the doctor?”

“The doctor is fully aware of Mrs. Merkel's condition. Frequently friends or family members imagine that the patient is communicating, they're so eager for it to happen.”

Abbie looked down at Mrs. Merkel. “Do you see what I'm going through?” she asked. “It's not only my dad who thinks I'm a nobody. If you want answers to who stole your things and who hit you, then you're going to have to wake up and help me.”

Mrs. Merkel's nose twitched, and Abbie said to the nurse, “There! Did you see that?”

The nurse put a firm hand on Abbie's arm. “Come along, dear, and please be quiet. You don't want to disturb the other patients.”

What do I do now?
Abbie thought, and the answer came:
Talk to Davy.
Maybe if they put their notebooks together and compared what they'd found, they'd know what to do.

Davy was eager to help, and he was excited about seeing Mrs. Merkel's notebook. Their mother wasn't due home for at least an hour, so Abbie and Davy sat at the kitchen table, reading each other's notebooks. Finally Davy raised his head. “Irene Conley was stealing money from the bank where she worked. Maybe the bank president found out.”

“I know,” Abbie said. “The facts are in these notebooks. It's not hard to put them together. Irene had not inherited money from her parents. She got it from some other source and over a period of time. Was it the Gulf East Savings and Loan where she worked? Did Mr. Hastings discover Irene was embezzling?”

Abbie rested her head in her hands. “She might not be guilty only of embezzlement. She might have murdered Mr. Hastings. I think Irene was aware of Mrs. Merkel's suspicions. Mrs. Merkel liked to confront crooks with what she knew about them.”

“We need another notebook,” Davy said, “or at least a sheet of paper.” As he tore a sheet from the back page of his own notebook, he accidentally ripped it at the top.

“Darn,” he said, and jumped up to get a roll of clear tape from the kitchen drawer. He repaired the tear, picked up a pen, and said, “How do you spell
Jose
?”

“
J-O-S-E.
What are you doing?”

“Making a list of motives.” He wrote for a few minutes, then said, “Okay. Listen up. Jose—to keep Mrs. Merkel from snitching to the INS. The roofers—to get even. The guy stealing cell phone numbers—to get rid of a witness. Irene—to stop Mrs. Merkel from telling what she had found out. Charlie—to get money from his aunt.”

Davy put down his pen and looked at Abbie. “I've been thinking about Charlie stealing the rings,” he said. “If he's so stupid that he'd describe the actual rings to the police and then try to sell them, he'd be just as stupid about trying to get rid of his aunt.”

Abbie sat up and reached for the telephone. “I'm going to call Officer Martin. She might be able to give us some information about some of those suspects.”

To Abbie's surprise, Officer Martin was in the station house and available. When Abbie explained what she wanted, Officer Martin put her on hold for a moment, then came back to the phone.

“Is she there?” Davy asked. He tore off a couple of strips of the clear sticky tape and played with them, twining them together.

“She's there. She's finding something.” Something nudged Abbie's memory. “Davy, that clear tape—”