Pumpkin Roll (29 page)

“I will,” Pete said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. You too.”

She returned to the living room window, staring at Mrs. Wapple’s house as she tapped the phone against her chin.

Her eyes drifted to the corner house, and she allowed her thoughts to move away from Pete and settle on something different. Mr. Forsberk’s dog had been run over two weeks ago; well, fifteen days to be exact, but Mrs. Wapple had been attacked on the two-week anniversary of the dog’s accident.

Without wasting another minute, Sadie headed outside—locking the door behind her—and crossed the street, walked down the sidewalk, and went through the gate in front of Mr. Forsberk’s house. She could see his TV through the missing slats of the mini-blinds that covered his front window as she marched up the front steps and knocked sharply on the door—ready for . . . something. Preferably not a fight, but if it came to that, she was ready.

She felt the vibrations of his footsteps on the wooden porch before she heard his approach, and moments later the door was pulled open. Mr. Forsberk was tall, but his shoulders curled inward, making him look reduced. He had a receding hairline that amplified his already prominent forehead, but the hair he had left was scruffy and unkempt, a dull brown-gray color. His glasses were rimless, and his lips were too full for his face and the fact that he had no chin. “Hello?”

“Mr. Forsberk,” Sadie said. “My name is Sadie Hoffmiller. I’ve been staying with the Cunningham children across the street, and I’d like to talk to you for a minute if I could.”

Chapter 25

Mr. Forsberk invited her inside, but it was obvious he wasn’t entirely comfortable having her there. The house was sparse and dusty and without a lick of femininity anywhere. The air smelled like coffee and bacon. The TV she’d seen through the window was paused on a tire commercial. No family photos or smiling couple portraits stared at her from the shelves of his mammoth entertainment center. The only thing on his wall was a poster of the original
Star Wars
movie. What ever happened to the actor who played Luke Skywalker, anyway?

There were all kinds of wires and things on the kitchen table, and bundles of cords and miscellaneous gadgetry covered all but one of the kitchen chairs. All those details added together meant that Mr. Forsberk was single and lived alone.

He didn’t invite her to sit on the gray-black velvet couch, a throwback to the early 1990s, so she simply stood in the middle of the cluttered living room. He looked nervous, which, if he had nothing to hide, would make no sense.

“I’m sorry about your dog,” she said to get things started, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat and rocking back on her heels.

His eyes widened behind his glasses and his big lips parted before he looked down at his beat-up sneakers. “Thank you.”

“Did you have him, or her, for very long?”

“Him. Yes. Eight years.”

Sadie frowned. “What a difficult loss.”

He nodded and scuffed his shoe on the carpet as though rubbing something into the floor.

“You were outside late last night,” Sadie said, fast-forwarding to the reason she was here. “What for?”

His head snapped up and he blinked at her. She could fairly hear the gears in his head spinning as he tried to make up a lie. She smiled again—a warm, soft, trust-me smile. “I’m not trying to get you in trouble, Mr. Forsberk, but after the police drove around the corner last night, I saw you come out of hiding behind the car. I just want to understand the context of you being out so late and ask if you saw anyone else while you were out, that’s all.”

“Um, it musta been someone else, I don’t—”

Sadie cut through his halfhearted response. “It was late and raining and cold—so your reason must have been important.”

He didn’t say anything, and she took that as a good sign even as she held him tightly in her no-nonsense-stare-with-a-smile that had sent many a second-grader into sniveling confessions for a variety of petty elementary crimes. “I already told you that I’m not trying to get you in trouble, I’m really not, but some strange things have been happening at the Cunningham house these last few nights. Last night those events sent us to a hotel. If you were outside, maybe you saw something or someone that will help me get to the bottom of the situation we find ourselves in.” She was careful not to accuse him of the strange events; she didn’t need him to be any more defensive than he already was.

He simply blinked at her again, but he looked scared, which meant he was hiding something. Her stare was working its magic; she could feel his resolve to play dumb crumbling as the seconds ticked by.

“What kind of strange things have been happening?”

Sadie hadn’t expected that question, and it took her a moment to come up with an answer and determine there was no reason not to share it. “Well, um, lights going on and off, doors slamming, kitchen utensils laid out on the kitchen floor—someone’s been getting into the house.”

“Um.” Mr. Forsberk pulled back and looked at his clasped hands. He mumbled something Sadie couldn’t hear.

“Excuse me? I didn’t catch that.” She glanced at the clock on his DVD player, noting that he had a nice TV, extra speakers, and several game consoles.

He cleared his throat and spoke more clearly. “She’s a witch. She can make things like that happen.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Forsberk, and despite my sincere regrets about your dog, I don’t believe that. Mrs. Wapple may have problems, but a supernatural power isn’t one of them.”

“She wanders around in the middle of the night. She killed Bark.”

“You think she cast a spell on your dog and caused it to be hit by a car?” Her tone pleaded with him to listen to how crazy that sounded.

He didn’t take the opportunity for reflection. “We were across the street when Bark suddenly started whimpering and running circles, like he was hurt. I tried to calm him down but as soon as I let go of the leash to pick him up, he ran right into the street.” He paused and looked at the wall behind Sadie’s head, his eyes far away and full of pain. His non-chin trembled. “It was awful.”

Sadie didn’t doubt that. She reached out and touched his arm, which startled him. “But a spell, Mr. Forsberk?”

“Something made Bark run into the street like that,” he said, and even though his timid voice wasn’t strong, clearly his convictions were. “He was always calm and well-behaved. He didn’t even bark when the postman came to the door. Something done happened.”

“And he’d never behaved that way before?”

Mr. Forsberk shook his head, but then stopped and seemed to reconsider. “Well, actually, he’d whimpered when we passed her house the day before. I thought he was upset by the argument I’d had with her at that same spot. He was sensitive like that; he’d have remembered. Once we were a couple of houses away, he was fine. But that was different than what happened the day she killed him.”

Sadie nodded, but something was tapping at the back of her mind—something she remembered from years gone by when her friend Gayle’s son had raised hunting dogs. She gave Mr. Forsberk a sincere look of regret. “I’m so very sorry for your loss,” she said.

Tears welled up in his eyes, and he looked away, trying to hide his emotion. He nodded quickly, embarrassed, and folded his arms across his chest. “Thank ya,” he said. He sounded so much like a little boy that Sadie wanted to bake him something.

“Other than the situation with your dog, which is really horrible, have you had any other issues with Mrs. Wapple?”

“She stole my mail. She didn’t usually come out in the daytime, but I saw her stuffing envelopes in her coat and I yelled at her. Blake, next to your place, said he caught her stealing his mail too.”

“When did she take your mail?” Sadie asked, thinking of the piles of envelopes and magazines she’d knocked over yesterday afternoon. She hadn’t thought to see who the mail belonged to.

“Right after she moved in. Two months back.”

“But it only happened that one time?”

“That I saw,” he clarified. “I’ve had a few more things that never seemed to come, so a few weeks ago I took down the mailbox and asked the postman to use the mail slot.” He nodded toward the front door, and Sadie glanced back to see the mail slot about three feet up from the bottom of the door. “I ain’t had any problems since then.”

“That’s good,” Sadie said. “So, what were you doing out last night?” she asked, getting back to why she’d come.

He didn’t meet her eyes and shrugged one shoulder.

“If you saw anything, I’d really like to know.” Sadie smiled softly at him.

“I had to go out,” he said. “That’s all.”

“In the cold rain?”

He shrugged. Sadie waited, but after a few seconds she realized he wasn’t going to tell her. Not right now. She didn’t have any baked goods; how could she think he would roll over so easily when she was so poorly prepared?

“I gotta go to work,” Mr. Forsberk said.

He was dressed in jeans, an old Red Sox sweatshirt, and tennis shoes. Maybe he was one of those eccentric computer programmers who went to space cadet conventions on the weekends. “Where do you work?”

“I clean carpets,” he said, but without pride, which Sadie felt was a shame. There was nothing about hard work to be embarrassed about. She waved toward the mass of cables and wires on the table. “Then what’s all this?”

He looked around and shrugged one shoulder again. “Just a hobby. I . . . build things.” There was always so much more to people than first met the eye.

“What kind of things?”

“I like to take apart electronic things and rebuild them a little different.”

Sadie didn’t get it. Why would you want something to be different? “Like making a toaster toast faster?” she asked.

“Kind of,” he said, his cheeks red. “I used to work at Radio Shack.” He said it as though that was all Sadie needed to know to understand his hobby. He looked at his watch, reminding her that he had to get to work.

“Can I write down my phone number for you?” Sadie asked quickly. “You could call me later if you think of anything about last night.” In the meantime she’d find some excuse to come back after he’d had some time to think about things.

He went into the kitchen and retrieved a pen and an old envelope.

“One last question,” Sadie asked after writing down her number. “Do you like chocolate?”

“Chocolate?” he repeated, his eyes squinching up behind his glasses.

“You’re from Philadelphia, right?”

His eyes got big. “Sorta,” he said. “Harrisburg, actually.”

Sadie beamed for having guessed the basic area correctly. She’d been playing a game with Pete when they watched TV the last few months, trying to peg certain accents. “Maybe you’re more of a vanilla kind of guy?”

“Um, I like chocolate.”

Sadie smiled. “Of course you do,” she said with a nod. “And what time do you get off today?”

“Um, my last house is at two o’clock. I should be home by four thirty,” he answered. “Why?”

“Well, the other day I took cookies around to the neighbors but I didn’t have enough to go around, and now that I’ve met you I feel just terrible for not having made more of an effort to bring you a plateful. I’ll come back tonight with something special.”

He blinked. “Oh. Okay.”

Practically an invitation to return! “Wonderful.” He’d have worked hard for six hours and would be hungry, not to mention tired from his excursion last night. It was a perfect setup for a full confession. By five o’clock this afternoon, she was certain she’d know exactly why he’d been out so late.

She said good-bye and hurried down the block toward Jared and Heather’s house while pulling her phone out of her pocket and hitting speed dial number six.

“Gayle,” Sadie said as she looked both ways and crossed the street. She didn’t want to be hit by a car like Bark had been, but then if her theory was correct, there was little chance of that.

“Sadie, sweetie, how are you?” It was early in Garrison—7:00—but Gayle was a morning person.