The Bell Bandit (2 page)

But no matter how enticing everything in the Crossroads Store looked to her (a squirrel nutcracker! fake mustaches!), Jessie wasn't about to spend thirty dollars. She liked to have money saved. Just in case.

After using the bathroom, she walked over to where Evan was standing, halfway between the deli and the bakery. He was looking at fancy gift bags of candy, all done up with curlicue ribbons.

"Look!" he said, holding up a bag. The label on the bag said "Moose Droppings." "Want some?" he asked, dangling the bag in front of her face.

"That is so gross!" Jessie said. But she loved it. The candy really did look exactly like moose droppings, only smaller. On closer inspection, she saw that it was actually chocolate-covered blueberries. "Are you going to get a bag? We could split one." But Evan had wandered off and wasn't listening to her anymore.

Jessie put the bag back on the shelf and walked over to the corner of the store devoted to jigsaw puzzles. There were a dozen puzzles to choose from, but Jessie's eyes went immediately to the one that was a picture of jellybeans. The brightly colored candies looked like rocks on a pebbly beach, and Jessie knew the puzzle would be hard to do. It had a thousand pieces!

"Jessie, are you ready?" asked her mother, shoving a few dollars back into her wallet after paying for the gas.

"Can we get this? Please?" asked Jessie, pulling the jellybean puzzle down from the shelf. "For Grandma?" Jessie and Grandma always worked on jigsaw puzzles when the family visited, and Jessie often brought a new puzzle for them to try. They had never done a thousand-piece puzzle, though.

Jessie's mom paused, the money still hanging out from her wallet. Jessie knew her mom had to be careful with money, and she tried hard not to ask for things she didn't need. "I have five dollars," said Jessie. "I could chip in."

Mrs. Treski took the puzzle and said, "It's a good idea, Jess. You and Grandma can work on it when she gets home from the hospital."

Jessie smiled, glad she could have the puzzle without spending her own money, and turned to the circular spinning postcard rack that was next to the jigsaw puzzles. There were eight columns of cards, and Jessie liked to make the rack squeak as she turned it slowly. She started at the top and began to work her way straight down one column, and then went back up to the top of the next column. She didn't want to miss a single card.

"Jess, can we go now?" asked her mother, looking through the various compartments of her wallet as if money would magically appear if she looked hard enough.

"No, I'm looking at the cards."

"You must own every card on that rack."

"Sometimes they have a new one," said Jessie.

"Five minutes, okay? Five minutes, I want to be pulling out of the parking lot." Mrs. Treski walked off to the checkout counter to pay for the puzzle.

Why was her mom so impatient? Usually she loved to stop at the Crossroads, but this time it was all about making good time and getting back on the road. Well, Jessie wasn't going to be rushed. She finished looking at the second column of postcards, and then started on the third.

"Ever been there?"

Jessie looked up. An old man with a stubbly beard was squinting through his glasses at a postcard that showed the Olympic Stadium in Lake Placid. Jessie noticed that the glasses sat crooked on his face. "The stadium where they had the Olympics? Ever been there?"

Jessie shook her head. "No."

The man tapped the card. "I was there in 1980
and
1932. Yes, I was. I saw Sonja Henie win the gold medal for figure skating. Do you believe that?" He nodded his head up and down as if he could make Jessie do the same.

Jessie looked closely at the man standing beside her. He started to scratch his face like he had a bad rash. "Were you in the Olympics?" she asked.

"No!" said the man. "But I had dreams." He was nodding his head more vigorously now—nodding and scratching—and his eyes were locked on the far end of the store.

"Hey, Jess, come on," said Evan, grabbing hold of one elbow and pulling her toward the door.

"I'm not done!" she said. But Evan didn't let go of her until they were outside. When Jessie looked back through the window, she saw that the man was still scratching his face and talking, even though no one was near.

"That guy was crazy," Evan said, matter-of-factly.

"How do you know?" asked Jessie, looking up at her big brother.

Evan shrugged and put his headphones back on. "You can just tell."

But Jessie couldn't tell. It hadn't occurred to her that there was anything wrong with the old man. Why did old people get like that? Did something break down inside their heads, the way a shoelace eventually snaps after being tied too many times? And how exactly did Evan know?

As soon as they got back on the highway, it started to snow. At first the flakes were large and wet, sticking for an instant to the windshield like giant white moths before dissolving into quarter-size drops of water. Then the snow became steadier and more fierce, and the ground on either side of the highway turned white and shapeless. It was dusk when they pulled up to the end of Grandma's long, winding driveway and got their first look at the house.

"Oh my," said Mrs. Treski, turning off the ignition and letting the car lights die.

Normally, they would have walked into the house through the back door. But there was no back door. There was hardly even a back wall.

Evan couldn't believe it once they unlocked the front door and made their way through the dark into the kitchen. There was a hole in the back kitchen wall big enough to drive a car through. It looked like someone
had
driven a car straight through it, except that the edges of the hole were as black as coal and the smell of smoke was everywhere. Someone had taped heavy clear plastic to the wall, but one edge had come undone and was flapping in the wind.

"Where's Grandma's stove?" asked Jessie.

"Well,
duh
," said Evan, a little more sharply than he'd meant to. "They had to get rid of it. It was probably melted down to nothing."

"I thought you said it was a little fire," said Jessie.

"I thought it was," said Mrs. Treski.

"And why's it so cold?"

"I guess the heat isn't working?" answered their mom. "I didn't realize..."

Evan had never seen his mom so surprised. Usually, she handled just about anything that came her way: bats in the basement, a squirrel trapped in the chimney flue, the time that Jessie got her head stuck between the railings on the stairs. No matter what, you could count on their mom to solve pretty much any problem. But now she just stared at the hole in the wall and didn't move.

Evan reached under the sink and found the heavy Maglite that Grandma always kept there. He flashed the beam across the walls, looking for something—
anything
—that looked the way it was supposed to.

"What's that?" asked Jessie. Evan shone the flashlight where Jessie was pointing.

"Wow," said Evan.

"That's a hole," said Mrs. Treski. There was a two-foot-wide hole that went straight through the kitchen ceiling, which meant there was a hole in the floor upstairs. "What room are we under?"

Evan thought about how the rooms upstairs were laid out, but it was hard to piece it together. Was it Grandma's bedroom? Or Mom's old room? Jessie came up with the answer first. She was good with maps.

"It's Evan's room."

Oh, great,
thought Evan.

All three of them trooped upstairs, Evan leading the way with the flashlight. Sure enough, all the doors to the upstairs rooms were open except for the one that led to Grandma's office, which doubled as Evan's bedroom when he visited. That door was shut tight with a layer of thick plastic taped over it. When they pushed it open, they found the hole in the floor. Both windows were shattered, the glass lying in shards scattered across the room. Again, someone had taped plastic around the edges, but the wind had teased its way in. When it blew outside, handfuls of snow gusted into the room and landed on the floor.

"You can't sleep in here, Evan," said his mom. "I don't even want the two of you coming into this room at all. I'll clean up the glass tomorrow."

"Where am I going to sleep?" Evan asked. Ever since he was out of a crib, this had been his room at Grandma's house. He couldn't imagine sleeping anywhere else.

"Well, for tonight, why don't you sleep in Grandma's room?"

"No way," said Evan. There was something just not right about sleeping in his grandmother's bed. It was hers. "I'll sleep on the couch in the living room."

"Okay. It's probably going to be the warmest room in the house." The living room had a wood-burning stove that heated the whole downstairs. "I'll get the fire going, while you two unpack the car. Is it a plan?"

That sounded like the mother Evan was used to. He headed back out into the dark yard to start hauling in the suitcases and bags of groceries.

"This is weird," said Jessie, grabbing the handle of the biggest suitcase in the car.

"You can't carry that," said Evan. His sister was small for her age and weighed less than fifty pounds, but for some reason she always thought she could lift heavy stuff. "Let me do it. You take that one." He threw his weight into pulling the suitcase out of the trunk. It landed on the ground with a loud
ca-thunk.
"What's weird?" he asked.

"Everything," said Jessie. "Nothing is the way it's supposed to be."

"Well, relax. Grandma will be here tomorrow, and Mom said she already hired some guy to fix the wall. Anyway, we're not staying long. Maybe just three days. And it's still Grandma's house. How weird can it be?" But he knew exactly what Jessie meant.

Evan dragged the suitcase into the house, then walked back out to the car to get the food. Three days of sleeping on the couch. Three days with no room of his own. Three days without his friends.

Evan couldn't wait to go home.

As he pulled the last grocery bag out of the back seat, Evan heard a car coming up the long driveway. Night had fallen. Evan felt a moment of panic, the sudden feeling that he should protect the house and his mother and sister from whatever was coming toward them. For a second, he thought about running inside and locking the door, but then he remembered the hole in the kitchen wall. There was no way to keep an intruder out. Headlights rounded the bend and flashed on the house. Evan decided to stand his ground.

A gray pickup truck rattled to a stop right behind the Treskis' car, and a man stepped out. He was tall and rail thin, with a scraggly, pointy beard. He was wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt under a down vest, jeans, and heavy work boots, and he had a pair of headphones dangling loosely around his neck.

"Hey," said the man. "Is your mom around?"

Evan stood there looking at the man, trying to figure him out. Was he dangerous? Who was he?

The man stopped walking and stood in front of Evan. Then he stuck his hand out. "I'm Pete. I'm the one doing the work on your grandma's house."

Evan relaxed and shook Pete's hand. Up close, he could see that the guy wasn't that old. He looked about the same age as Adam's brother who was in college.

"So, is your mom around, or did you drive here by yourself?"

Evan smiled. "Yeah, right," he said. "She's inside. Mom! Mom!" He ran into the house and found his mother in the living room, closing the little door of the wood stove. A fire burned brightly inside, but the house was still as cold as a skating rink.

Pete introduced himself to Mrs. Treski and then went down to the basement to turn the electricity on. When he came back up, he walked her through the damage. The sink in the kitchen didn't have running water, and the electricity on the first floor had been knocked out. "I rigged up a couple of bypasses, but you're going to have to get a plumber and an electrician to do the real repair work," said Pete. "It's going to take a few weeks, maybe a month, before the house is really whole again. Are you staying here tonight?"

Mrs. Treski nodded.

"It'll be cold," said Pete, "even with the stove." He turned to Evan. "You need to keep that fire going all night. Can you do that?"