The Gypsy Game (11 page)

After a frozen moment April said, “Come on. Let’s go. Hurry!” And they did. Since it was Mr. Ross’s day to take care of Marshall, they didn’t have to stop at the day-care center, but even with almost nonstop running they didn’t beat Ken on his bicycle. When, breathless and exhausted, they turned into the Professor’s driveway, Ken was already there. But he wasn’t the only one.

A dusty gray car was parked halfway down the Professor’s driveway, and two strange men in sinister-looking business suits were standing beside it. One of the men was holding the handlebars of Ken’s bicycle as if to keep him from escaping. Ken was talking, that much was obvious. But just how much he was saying, how much he was giving away, it was impossible to tell.

April grabbed Elizabeth and Melanie and tried to pull them back out of sight, but it was too late. They’d been seen.

“Girls!” one of the men shouted. “Come here! We need to talk to you.”

April’s mind said “run,” but her body decided against it.
She was too tired to run another step. Slowly and reluctantly, the three girls moved forward.

“Policemen?” Melanie gasped breathlessly, and April nodded.

“Probably,” she whispered back, trying not to listen to the crazy voice in the back of her mind that added, “or hit men.”

THE TWO MEN were both dressed in scruffy, colorless suits, but in other ways they were very different. One was short and bald with a bulldog scowl and a lopsided nose. The other was tall and bony with eyes and lips that kept twitching, as if he were about to start laughing. As if he thought scaring a bunch of kids to death was lots of fun.

“Well, well,” the crooked-nosed one said. “You girls are a bit out of breath. What was the big hurry?”

Out of breath. That was it. Pretending she was too breathless to talk, April clutched her throat and shook her head, and Melanie and Elizabeth did the same thing. It didn’t take much acting. Running all that way, then the shock of seeing poor old Ken in the clutches of two strange men.… April gasped and staggered, as if she were about to pass out.

“Okay, take five,” the tall man said. “Catch your breath.” But then, long before five minutes had passed, he went on, “All right. Ready to talk now? We understand you kids know something about this fenced area. Just tell us how we get in here. Apparently there’s a locked dead bolt on the other side of the gate. Which would seem to mean there’s someone in there, wouldn’t it? So, who is it?” He looked at Melanie.

Melanie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

The men looked at Ken. “Nobody,” he said defiantly. “Nobody’s in there.”

And then it was April’s turn, and with sudden inspiration she said, “Our dog. That’s where we keep our dog.”

The other man, the one with the bald head and the bashed-in nose, gave a sneering laugh. “And I suppose this superintelligent dog closes the dead bolt behind you after you go out?”

“Uh, not exactly. But sometimes he just jiggles the door”—she pawed the air, imitating a dog pawing on a door—“and I guess it sort of locks itself.”

“Is that right?” The tall man was obviously amused again. The short one with the beat-up nose smirked.

“Oh, is that so?” he said. “Here, Mac, give me a leg up. Think I’ll try a little bolt jiggling myself.” Stepping in his partner’s linked hands, he grabbed the top of the gate and pulled himself up until he could reach over and open the dead bolt. After he’d dropped back down, he grinned and rubbed his hands together like a cartoon villain who just can’t wait to do something mean and nasty. “Okay,” he said with more hand rubbing. “Let’s just see this talented dog of yours.” He swaggered to the gate, pushed it open, stepped inside, and a split second later jumped back out, slamming the gate behind him.

“There
is
a dog in there,” he admitted, smiling sheepishly. “A big one.”

The tall man grinned as if something was really funny. Maybe as if he knew that Crooked Nose had some kind of a special problem where dogs were concerned. “Here, let me,” he said, and pushed the gate open.

Of course Bear greeted him with his usual friendly enthusiasm, jumping around and wagging his stub of a tail. As he bounced happily around the two men, Melanie gave April a disgusted look that said something like, “Some watchdog.” April nodded. Bear would probably do the same thing if Frankenstein’s monster dropped in for a visit.

But if Bear wasn’t very good at recognizing an enemy, he did seem to be able to tune in on how his friends were feeling. As soon as the four kids entered the yard, he seemed to sense that something was wrong. Pausing suddenly in midprance, he sniffed mournfully at each of them, tucked his tail, and crept off to disappear behind the Gypsy caravan mural.

Behind the mural, where Toby must be too! Where Toby had to be! There was absolutely nothing else in the shed or yard big enough to hide something the size of a kid. April hoped she hadn’t been staring at the caravan, but maybe she had been, because suddenly Crooked Nose was, too.

“What’s with the work of art?” he said, pointing at the mural.

“It’s a picture of a Gypsy caravan.” April gulped. Her heart was still pounding, but her breath was a little more under control now. “It’s—it’s for a project on Gypsies we’re doing.” The hit men looked faintly interested, particularly the tall one.

“A project?” he asked.

“Yes,” April went on desperately, “a school project. We’ve been getting it ready out here in the shed because we don’t want anybody to see it until—until …” She was running out of ideas—looking around frantically at the other kids, asking them to help. To come to her rescue and
think up more things to keep the policemen or hired guns or whatever talking instead of looking around. Instead of looking behind the mural, where a terror-stricken Toby must be crouching on Bear’s bed, waiting to be caught. Nobody picked up the ball, so she struggled on. “See, there’s going to be this big contest to see who can make the best …” But Crooked Nose had stopped listening and was moving toward the shed. “The best project,” April limped on. Crooked Nose walked to the back of the shed and looked behind the mural. Looked—stared—and then came back to where his partner was waiting.

“Nobody there,” he said. “Except for the dog.”

The two men turned to look from one kid to the other. Long, hard, accusing looks.

Ken made a swallowing noise before he said, “Yeah. That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. Nobody—except for the dog.”

Silence. For a long moment no one said anything while the two men checked out the storage yard again. The almost-empty yard with its tall, sturdy board fence topped by two strands of barbed wire. Then the tall guy said, “Okay, kids. The Alvillar boy isn’t here—at the moment. But I think we all know that you kids know a lot more about his disappearance than you’re saying. And if you do, you’d better come clean. For your own sakes as well as for Alvillar’s.” He looked at all their faces, one at a time, and stopped at—tiny little fourth-grade Elizabeth. Going over to her, he bent down to her level, and making his voice soft and gentle, he said, “You look like a nice little girl. Not the kind of kid who would want a friend of yours to be in a lot
of danger. And a lot of danger is just what Tobias Alvillar is going to be in if he doesn’t give himself up and get back home where he belongs. So why don’t you just tell me …”

Elizabeth began to cry. “I don’t know where he is.” She sobbed wildly. “I don’t know how …”

“Leave her alone!” Melanie didn’t get angry often, but when she did, look out! Pushing in front of the tall man, she put her arms around Elizabeth and pulled her away. Then while Elizabeth sobbed on her shoulder, she turned back to glare fiercely at both of the men. “Now look what you’ve done,” she said. “You—you big goons!”

The two men stared at Melanie, whispered together for a minute or two, and headed for the gate. Just before they went out the tall one stopped long enough to say, “Okay. Okay. But if you kids—if any one of you kids—change your mind about talking, just call this number.” Taking a card out of his pocket, he came back and shoved it into the pocket of Ken’s jacket. Then he went on out and closed the gate behind him.

Inside the Gypsy Camp no one said anything until they heard a car motor starting up and then the fading sound of tires on gravel. Ken whacked Melanie on the back.

“Hey, you were great,” he said. “You really cooled those bums.”

“Who were those guys, anyway?” April asked.

“They’re the detectives I told you about. You know, the ones who were in the principal’s office. The ones who asked me about a kids’ hangout behind a store on Orchard Avenue. Like somebody had ratted or something.” He
looked around accusingly, but everyone quickly shook their heads. “That’s why I told you we had to get Toby out before they showed up here.”

“How do you know they’re really police detectives?” April asked suspiciously.

“Well, that’s what Mr. Adams said they were. And they had badges. At least the tall one did. When they first drove up, he showed it to me.”

“
Hummph
.” April made a noise that meant “If you want to believe that.” Out loud she said, “It’s easy to get a phony badge. I got one once in a box of cereal. So, how do we know they weren’t really hit men, like Toby said?”

Ken reached into his pocket and pulled out the tall guy’s card. “See, it says right here, ‘Detective James Arnold. Precinct 7.’ ”

April snatched the card, read it, and handed it back. “Well, okay, if you want to believe everything you read. I’ll bet a lot of people carry phony ID cards. You don’t really think hit men go around handing out real business cards, do you? You know, like ‘Enemies bumped off. While you wait.’ ”

Melanie was still patting Elizabeth’s back and whispering in her ear. Elizabeth’s sobs had quieted, and now she caught her breath, gulped, and said, “Maybe what that man said is true. Maybe Toby is in danger.” Wiping her eyes, she looked around the yard. “Where is he?” She looked at Ken. “Where did he go?”

Ken looked around, too. Then he ran to the back of the shed and disappeared behind the mural. A second later he came out shaking his head.

“Good move, Kamata,” April said sarcastically. “I mean,
just in case that guy overlooked him or something? Like, he might have been hiding under a blanket or behind the dog dish?”

Ken gave her a blank stare. “Yeah,” he said. “Or he might have left a clue. Like a note or at least some of his stuff. Like his flashlight or backpack. But he didn’t. All his stuff is gone, except for a couple of torn-up bags.”

They all went to look then, but Ken was right. Except for the bags, there was no sign of Toby’s ever having been there.

“That probably means he must have left earlier,” Melanie said. “Before any of us got here, because he wouldn’t have had time to gather everything up if he had to leave in a hurry.”

Ken stared at her for a moment before he slowly shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. When I first got here, the dead bolt was locked, so I knocked on the gate, and I’m sure, well, almost sure, I heard Toby say, ‘Who is it?’ And I said, ‘It’s Ken.’ But just then those guys drove up, and after that I didn’t hear anything more.”

“Maybe what you heard was Bear,” April said. Every one glared at her as if they thought she was trying to make a joke when it was obviously no time to be funny. “No,” she explained impatiently, “I didn’t mean Bear said, ‘Who is it?’ I just meant maybe he made a whining noise that sounded like someone talking. Dogs can do that sometimes.”

Ken was still shaking his head. “No. It didn’t sound like that. I guess I must have imagined it. I think Toby must have split a long time ago. Like while we were still at school, maybe.”

They were all agreeing, until suddenly a small weepy voice said, “But what about the bolt?”

They all turned to stare at Elizabeth and then at the dead bolt, which had definitely been closed when the two men arrived only a few minutes before.

“How …?” someone said, and they all nodded.

“Hey,” April said, “I’ll bet he went out earlier through the gate, and then he got a box or something to stand on and reached back over the top to shut it. Like that other guy did.”

“No. No way,” Ken said. “It would have to have been a really humongous box for him to reach that far. I mean, too big for him to carry all by himself.”

So that was out. Melanie suggested a ladder, but no one could think of a place where Toby might have found a ladder without being seen by someone who would probably have recognized him. And besides, why would he want to do that? Why would he want to go out and then go to all the trouble to leave the gate locked from the inside?

“But he could have climbed
out
over the gate and left it locked,” Melanie suggested. “If he carried something over to the gate to climb up on, it would …” She stopped to stare at the objects in the shed that might have served that purpose, the birdbath and the old box that had been Set’s altar, and April finished the sentence for her, “… it would still be sitting there by the gate.”

Melanie sighed and said, “Well, I guess it’s just another mystery.” Which was exactly what April was thinking too. Just one more mystery to add to the main one about why Toby ran away in the first place. April was about to ask Ken and Elizabeth if they were thinking the same thing when
Bear barked, ran to the gate, and cocked his head as if he was listening.

And then they heard it too. Footsteps. Gravel-crunching footsteps coming down the driveway and approaching the gate.

“Oh no!” Elizabeth’s voice quavered. “They’re coming back.”

“Or else maybe …,” April said, “maybe it’s Toby?”

Ken was grinning eagerly. “Yeah, I’ll bet it is.” He raised his voice to a loud whisper. “Come on in, Alvillar. The gate’s unlatched.”

When the gate opened, it was Alvillar, all right. But it wasn’t Toby.

WHEN KEN YELLED, “Come on in, Alvillar,” the guy who walked into the Gypsy Camp was a full-grown man. The weird-looking, bushy-haired full-grown man who happened to be Toby’s father. Closing the gate behind him, Andre Alvillar ignored Bear’s bouncing greeting and looked around the yard. His Toby-like eyes, dark but speckled with flecks of light, moved quickly from place to place and person to person.