Crooked

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1 - KEEPING THE LOCKS LOCKED

  2 - TUMS

  3 - EGYPTIANS

  4 - PRUSSIANS

  5 - THE NAKED AMOS

  6 - A FRIEND LIKE CROOKSHANK

  7 - THIEVING

  8 - SNOW PEOPLE

  9 - GOING

  10 - DREAMLAND

  11 - RENDEZVOUS

  12 - AN APOLOGY

  13 - ENDANGERED SPECIES

  14 - CHINESE CHECKERS

  15 - SWALLOWED BY A WHALE

  16 - SUFFER NO FOOLS

  17 - AN EMPTY HOUSE

  18 - LOST

  19 - LO SIENTO

  20 - MORE SNOW

  21 - CONTACT

  22 - A SHORT VISIT FROM DETECTIVE O’HEARN

  23 - DISCONNECTION

  24 - BETRAYAL

  25 - AMOS ACCOSTED

  26 - HEARSAY

  27 - ALL THE LITTLE DETAILS

  28 - THE DREADS

  29 - LONG DISTANCE

  30 - WOULD-BE BOYFRIENDS

  31 - PRIVATE INVESTIGATION

  32 - IMPERSONATIONS

  33 - ANOTHER NOTE FROM THE GREAT DEVOID

  34 - TRUTHS AND LIES

  35 - INTRODUCING TRENT DEMILLE

  36 - OTHER POSSIBILITIES

  37 - PARTY OF ONE

  38 - THE PRISONER

  39 - TWO CONVERSATIONS

  40 - A BLUES BROTHER’S BROTHER

  41 - SETTING OFF IN THE DARK

  42 - THE WAITING ROOM

  43 - SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT

  44 - BIG SUIT

  45 - IN CLARA’S ATTIC

  46 - THE APPOINTMENT

  47 - IN WHICH A SHOT IS FIRED

  48 - MOPPING UP

  49 - THE LAST CHAPTER

  50 - EPILOGUE

  ALSO BY LAURA AND TOM MCNEAL

  ALSO BY LAURA AND TOM MCNEAL - THE DECODING OF LANA MORRIS

  Copyright Page

  For Sam

  If there are obstacles, the shortest line between two points may be the crooked one.

  —Bertolt Brecht, from The Life of Galileo

  There was a crooked man,

  And he walked a crooked mile.

  He found a crooked sixpence

  Against a crooked stile;

  He bought a crooked cat,

  Which caught a crooked mouse,

  And they all lived together

  In a little crooked house.

  1

  KEEPING THE LOCKS LOCKED

  Before everything stopped being normal, the thing that Clara Wilson worried most about was her nose. It wasn’t straight. The bridge began in a good downwardly vertical line, and then it just swooped off to the left. It was crooked even in her baby pictures. It looked as if someone—a doctor? a nurse? God in a mean mood?—had laid a finger at the side of her nose and pushed the straightness right out of it. The problem was, a crooked nose could make a whole face look crooked. Even when she was in a good mood and smiling, some little part of Clara was observing herself. She smiled a crooked smile, she would think. She grinned a crooked grin. She walked a crooked mile.

  Her best friend, Gerri, whose nose was perfect, said Clara’s nose wasn’t that bad, but if it bothered her so much, why didn’t she just get a nose job and forget about it?

  That was Thursday lunch. Clara and Gerri were sitting alone at the farthest end of the cafeteria, at a table positioned under a big blue and black sign that read:

  MELVILLE WHALERS

  “WE GO GALE FORCE”

  Gerri hated this table, but Clara liked it. It was away from all the din that carried from the more popular tables, which Gerri habitually watched over Clara’s shoulder. It reminded Clara of how her father couldn’t keep from sneaking glances at a televised football game in a restaurant. Clara said, “So how much does a nose job cost, innyhoo?”

  Gerri shrugged. “Who knows? Just ask your dad for it.” What things might cost was never a question Gerri had to worry about. She pulled out a file and began working her nails.

  Clara had known Gerri for seven years, all the way back to second grade. Gerri’s parents were definitely loaded. Clara’s were definitely not. “I guess I could save up for it myself,” she said, but her voice trailed off.

  Gerri looked up from her fingernails. “Except you’re already saving for that retardate horse camp.”

  Clara lowered her eyes. The horse camp wasn’t for retardates. It was for girls who liked horses. And if Clara got to go to horse camp, Gerri had agreed to go, too, as long as Clara promised not to tell anybody. Though it was looking less and less like Clara would get to go. Her parents had said she would have to pay half. She’d saved $112 from her paper route, but half cost over $400.

  “We’re going skiing this weekend,” Gerri said, without looking up from her fingernails. Gerri’s family was always going somewhere weekends, and Gerri always invited Clara along. But today was slightly different. Today Gerri hesitated one long beat before saying, “You wanna come?”

  Clara did want to come, in the worst way. But she hated asking her parents again for money. Lately, whenever Clara asked if she could go someplace with Gerri’s family, her parents would glance at one another like something was wrong, and then her father would say, “Okay, but this is the last time for a while.”

  “Stowe or Killington?” Clara asked.

  Gerri was working intently on a cuticle. “Stowe.”

  Stowe was the most expensive ski resort within five hundred miles.

  Gerri glanced up. “You don’t have to come or anything. I’m not begging.”

  Clara said, “No, I want to go, but...”

  “But what?”

  But I can’t afford it, Clara thought. And so, without wanting to say it, Clara said she guessed she’d better not go this weekend because she had a World Cultures project due, and besides, she had her paper route. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that Gerri looked almost relieved.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” she said, staring past her to one of the popular tables. “We’ll probably go again in a couple of weeks, and you can come with us then.”

  That night, while she was doing her homework, Clara suddenly changed her mind. She would spend some horse camp money for the ski weekend. But when she called Gerri to tell her the good news, Gerri said flatly, “What about your World Cultures project?”

  “I got that mixed up. It’s not due for another week.”

  There was an awkward silence, which Gerri finally ended. “Well, the thing is, when I thought you couldn’t go, I asked somebody else,” she said.

  “Oh,” Clara said. “Oh, that’s okay. It’s no big deal.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Gerri said. “Next time for sure. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  The next day at school, Clara heard through Lisa Bates, who’d heard through Melinda Sipp, that Gerri had asked Sands Mandeville to go in her place. Sands Mandeville, who began life as Sandra Ann, became Sandy by fifth grade, turned into Sondra by seventh, and now was simply Sands. Sands, who’d been a princess in the Color Day Court, who played on the girls’ tennis team, and who had the lead in the school play.

  Friday afternoon, when Gerri was supposed to be at Clara’s locker, she wasn’t. Instead she’d wedged a folded note into the vents on the locker door. Call ya 2nite from Stowesville, it said.

  I’ll bet this is colder than Stowe, Clara thought as she threw The Jemison Star that afternoon. Jemison was one of the minor towns in wind-bitten, snow-buried upstate New York, and the bitter February gusts made Clara’s ears ache. Clara wore a green canvas apron that slung over her shoulders, and Ham, her stout black Labrador mix, carried a double-slung pouch of papers over hi
s back. She’d chosen Ham at the animal shelter on her tenth birthday, and he’d been helping her walk her paper route ever since. Ham always seemed to like the cold, whereas Clara did not. The first thing she did when she came in on this Friday night was go upstairs to her room, take off her clothes, and ease herself into a tub of hot water. She read TV Guide and kept adding hot water to keep the bath warm until her mother came home, just before six.

  “Clara?” she called from downstairs. “It’s me! I’m home!”

  It was her mother’s good-mood voice, which, Clara thought, was nice to hear for a change. When Clara dressed and went downstairs, she found her mother busy and humming to herself. “Tonight’s the night, sweetie!” her mother said. Clara’s father had been in Chicago on business all week, but was flying into Buffalo that night. He traveled all the time, but Clara’s mother, to her surprise, was pulling out all the stops tonight for his homecoming. Over the next hour, Clara watched as her mother neatly filled a brand-new picnic basket with expensive deli food (including a bottle of fancy red wine), put on her silky black dinner-party pants, and spritzed on her best perfume (Chanel No. 5).

  “These?” her mother asked, turning to Clara and holding up a long, dangly glass earring to one ear and then holding up a pearl earring to the other, “ . . . or these?”

  Clara said the pearl.

  “That’s you, Clara,” her mother said, beaming out a smile that wrapped around Clara and pulled her in. “Class over flash.”

  Clara leaned down and gave Ham a two-handed scratch behind both ears. “Is that what I am, Hambone? Class over flash?” Ham seemed to smile back.

  “You are also,” her mother said cheerily, “a gal who likes to have the last word.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I think you’re right,” Clara said, in part playing along and in part because she really did like having the last word, whenever it was available.

  Downstairs, after her mother had pulled on her long wool coat and checked her purse for keys, she invited Clara to come along to the airport, but only halfheartedly. And Clara said no, there was a movie on TV that she wanted to see, so she’d just stay home if that was okay.

  Her mother winked and picked up the picnic basket. “Well,” she said, doing a slow full turn. “How do I look?”

  “Extremely deluxe,” Clara said. This was something she’d heard Sands Mandeville say in the food court after a hunky lacrosse player had passed by. For this, Sands Mandeville had gotten a laugh from the circle of girls who always surrounded her, a circle that would never in a million years include Clara, with her crooked nose, but which might now include her best friend, Gerri.

  “Clara?”

  Clara blinked and refocused on her mother. “What?”

  “I said keep the locks locked and don’t wait up.”

  “Keep the locks locked” was what her mother always said when she was leaving Clara alone in the house. Her father always said, “Batten the hatches.”

  “I’ve got Ham to protect me,” Clara said, which was what she always said on these occasions, and as she watched her mother walk off into the dark winter night, Clara knelt down and curled an arm around the Labrador’s massive black head.

  Clara Wilson lived with her mother and father in an old two-story house, loose-jointed and creaky. Usually she knew the whereabouts of others just by listening, and now, as she stood alone and still, the house seemed unnaturally quiet, as if it were holding its breath. Clara quickly went to the family room and turned on the TV. She ran through the channels, then wandered into the kitchen. She made popcorn, a bowl for herself and a bowl for Ham. She tried to read a book. To Ham, out loud, she said, “I wish I was in Stowe with Gerri.”

  Ham let his tail sweep the linoleum floor.

  “Money,” Clara said, and Ham lifted and cocked his head.

  “Moola moola,” she said, and Ham cocked his head the other way.

  The telephone rang, but it wasn’t Gerri. It was her father, wanting to know if her mother had left yet. His voice was edgy, a bad sign.

  Clara said she had, ages ago. “Where are you? Is anything wrong?”

  “Nothing serious. Just another communication glitch between your mother and me.” Then, in a softer voice, he said, “But it’s nothing for you to worry about, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you all right, Polkadot?”

  “Sure.”

  “And Hambone, too?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine, too, Dad.”

  “Okay, well, I better try to reach your mother at the airport. Have you battened the hatches?”

  “Yeah,” Clara said. And then, to make it easier for her father to get off the phone, she said, “And don’t forget I have Ham for protection.”

  The minutes crept by: 7:43; 8:30; 9:12. Clara thumbed through her mother’s Vanity Fair, glanced at the clock, then skimmed through a Glamour. She picked up and put down a Good Housekeeping. She got up and stared into the freezer. She had a bowl of her father’s MochaHubba ice cream. She looked again at the clock.

  10:15.

  “Guess Gerri’s not going to call,” she said, and Ham, lying in the middle of the kitchen linoleum with his chin outstretched on his paws, rolled his eyes her way.

  Clara went into the bathroom, pushed her nose straight, and held it there. She closed her eyes, counted to a hundred, then for good measure counted out another hundred, and then, when she released her hold, watched her nose default back to its swoop.

  10:24.

  Clara wandered up to her mother’s room, which looked like some kind of neatness-free zone. Scarves and underwear and blouses were strewn everywhere. Since no one was home, Clara started snooping around the mess. In the drawer of her mother’s nightstand, she found a book called Saucy Monogamy. Clara looked at the chapter headings. “Lotions & Notions.” “32 Flavors.” “Undressing for the Occasion.” It made Clara a little queasy. She turned to a chapter called “The Heartpopping Homecoming,” which suggested, among other things, taking a long oiled bath, putting on lacy underthings, and greeting the returning husband at the airport “in a slinky dress with an extravagant bottle of wine and a prepaid room key for a nearby Hilton.”

  Clara flipped to the cover. Just below Saucy Monogamy it read, 101 Ways to Put the Sass Back in the Married State. How come her parents needed sass, anyway?

  All of a sudden the sound of her mother’s telephone went shooting through her. For one crazy moment, Clara felt as if she’d been caught at something. She let the phone ring twice.

  “Hello?”

  “Cómo está, Senorita Clarita?” It was Gerri’s wooden Spanish. This was her customary greeting, only now she was whispering.

  Clara laughed and said what she always said: “Estoy okay.”

  “Really? Everything’s okay?” This was Gerri’s gentle voice, the nice one that made her feel like a good best friend.

  “Yeah,” Clara said, and was suddenly overcome with the need to make her evening sound interesting. “You should’ve seen my mom getting ready to pick up my dad at the airport. It was totally weird. It was like watching your own mother go off on a date or something. She was wearing black silk tap pants. And just a minute ago I figured out she’s been reading this very scary book called Saucy Monogamy.”

  “Adult human beings,” Gerri said conclusively after Clara had read off some of Saucy Monogamy’s juicier chapter titles. Whenever Gerri wanted to point out the complete weirdness of everyone over twenty-one, she used this phrase: Adult human beings.

  But what had struck Clara was how strangely unadult and unmotherlike her mother had seemed tonight. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s pretty weird watching your own mother get ready for a heartpopping homecoming with your own father.”

  Gerri made a muffled laugh.

  Clara took a deep breath and said, “So how’s Sands, innyhoo?”

  If Gerri thought this was a tender subject, she didn’t show it. “Sands is unbelievable,” she
said. “She’s an industrial-strength hunk magnet. We walked into this ski lodge tonight and the minute my folks turned the corner, guys were all over us.”

  Clara sat on the side of her parents’ bed stroking Ham with her stocking feet and trying to imagine Gerri and Sands Mandeville surrounded by hunky guys. She knew she ought to say something nice, but all she could come up with was, “Well, Sands is that type.”

  Gerri took this as a compliment. “Yeah,” she said, “and you can’t believe the things guys have said to her on dates. Three different guys have asked her to marry them. And somebody she said I know offered her two hundred dollars for oral sex.”

  Clara didn’t know what to say, so she said, “That seems like a lot of money.”

  Gerri laughed, and in a low, all-knowing voice that didn’t sound like the old Gerri, she said, “Not enough, let me tell ya.”

  There was a short silence. Clara wondered where Sands Mandeville was while this telephone call was going on. “So where are you calling from, innyhoo?”

  “The hotel. It’s a cool hotel. Except I guess it’s really a B and B. I’m in the bathroom. They’ve got a telephone in the bathroom and a cool itty-bitty color TV.”

  Clara was beginning to feel like she was about three squares behind. She didn’t know what a B and B was, and she didn’t want to ask. “So where’s Sands now, innyhoo?”

  There was a stiff pause. “She’s sleeping in the next room. We’re in twin beds.” Another pause, then: “She kind of snores.”

  Clara had to laugh. “Sands Mandeville snores?” Clara said this with real gusto, but it became quickly clear that a little snoring wasn’t something Gerri was willing to hold against her new friend Sands.

  “Yeah, a little, but not much,” Gerri said. “It’s not that loud.” Then, after a second, she said, “Hey, Clara, don’t stick that innyhoo at the end of your sentences anymore, okay? It’s kind of dinky and gets on my nerves.”

  Clara’s body stiffened as if she’d been slapped. How many times had she said it? For a moment, she was actually incapable of speech. Then, when she could speak, she said, “Yeah, okay.” A moment or two passed. “I guess sometimes I don’t even know I’m doing it.”

  Neither of them said anything for a while. Because it was the worst phone call they’d ever had, it also seemed to Clara like the most important call they’d ever had. She didn’t want it to end like this, but she also didn’t know what to say. She was suddenly afraid of saying something Gerri wouldn’t approve of. So she didn’t say anything at all.