‘Cheerful,’ I say, struggling to keep my voice controlled. ‘Could be appropriate, in the circumstances.
Think Mr Barry’s doing a little advertising?’ Ryan, already getting out of the car, grimaces at my lame attempt at humour. ‘See anything that looks like the preacher’s residence?’ I shake my head, take a steadying breath. ‘But it could be around the back.’ We split up going through the small car park out front; Ryan heading right towards the church, me heading left towards the church hall.
About five minutes later, Ryan gives a piercing whistle.
Like the manse at the Paradise First Presbyterian Church, Laurence Barry’s place is a modest, brick, one- storey building. But it’s actually located inside the church grounds, and this time there’s some kind of external entry point at the rear of the house that’s covered over by a double-padlocked trapdoor made of rusting steel.
Ryan hurries back to the car for his rucksack as I take a closer look.
Confident Laurence Barry’s still back at the rehearsal where I left him, I crouch down and bang on the trapdoor with the heel of my hand. ‘Hello?’ I call out. ‘Lauren?’ Though I strain to hear anything, anything at all, there’s nothing but the wind stirring tree branches, a bird taking wing at the disturbance.
‘Jennifer?’ Still no sound. But there could be plenty of reasons for that, all bad. I sit back on my haunches.
Ryan falls to his knees on the ground beside me, hands me the torch, and claws through his pack for a boltcutter. ‘This is the place, I know it,’ he says, breathing unevenly. ‘Everything fits.’ Privately, I have to agree; there’s something about the way the complex is set up, where the car park is, the church. The physical layout seems to corroborate eerily with Ryan’s impressionistic dream.
He snaps one padlock swiftly, then the second, stuffs the boltcutter back into his bag. He swings the trapdoor open and I hand him back the torch, wondering what we are about to find. There are concrete stairs leading down into the darkness. We look at each other with wide eyes.
This could be it.
I want to hold his hand so badly, I have to jam both of mine under my armpits.
Ryan shrugs his rucksack back on and puts a foot on the first step.
But then we hear the rumble of a car pulling up the narrow driveway that loops past the church, continuing onwards to the private residence we are in the process of breaking into. We freeze for an instant, before scrambling clumsily to close the trapdoor together without a sound.
It’s close. In his panic, Ryan almost loses his grip on the door, and Carmen’s got as much lifting power as a ten year old. I almost crush her fingers as the edge of the door drops shut with an audible clang. I rearrange the broken padlocks hastily so that from a distance they look untampered with.
We crouch in the long grass by the cellar door, and I hear a familiar snatch of Mahler whistled close by. The front screen door of the little house opens just metres away. Someone drops keys, grunts heavily before fishing them up and trying the door again. In the cool breeze, Ryan and I are perspiring heavily. The front door finally closes. Bolts are drawn home.
‘ Now,’ Ryan hisses, and we run low and quietly down the side of the house, back around the far side of the church hall, in the direction of Ryan’s car, hoping we haven’t been seen.
‘Tonight,’ Ryan vows as he restarts his car engine, his hands shaking a little. ‘We’ll get them out tonight.’ Ryan drops me back at Paradise High on the promise that we’ll meet up again at his place after tonight’s choir rehearsal.
I grin. ‘Just listen out for the dogs.’ His answering smile is quizzical. ‘When this is all over, I’ll have a few questions for you,’ he says, tipping me a wave as he drives off.
When this is all over, I think a little self-pityingly, you’ll be lucky if Carmen remembers who you are.
Chapter 21
I insinuate myself into last period’s chemistry class, squeezing in beside Tiffany just to give her a rise. I know she’s going to ask, and, for once in her life, Carmen Zappacosta is not going to spill her guts just for a little measly attention. Not on my watch, anyway.
Tiffany manages to look both hurt and scandalised as I calmly open my borrowed textbook. ‘Where have you been?’ she snaps. ‘Everybody saw you. Colluding with a virtual murderer. Your disappearance didn’t exactly go unnoticed, you know. Mr Masson’s pretty pissed, he was looking for you everywhere. And Miss Fellows is about to have you suspended — indefinitely.’ When I don’t reply, leaning forward as if the discussion on migrating electrolytes has to be the most fascinating thing I’ve ever encountered, Tiffany snipes, ‘You’ll be interested to know that your little vanishing act this morning is already yesterday’s news anyway. A killer’s on the loose. If I were you, I wouldn’t jump into bed with just anyone.’
‘Who says we did anything in a bed?’ I reply casually.
It’s enough to shut her up for the rest of the class, though I can feel her practically vibrating with rage beside me.
At four o’clock, Tiffany and I still aren’t talking, but we’re sitting next to each other in the rehearsal hall as if we’re joined at the hip. In frosty silence, we watch the kids bussed in from Little Falls and Port Marie unenthusiastically straggle into the rehearsal space for the second serve of the day, the last of the week.
Paul Stenborg flirts easily with Miss Fellows and the old battleaxe almost smiles, though her gaze turns flinty when it meets mine, signalling bad things in Carmen’s future. Miss Dustin stands by wordlessly, looking a little flushed as Paul says something to her before his eyes flick briefly to me and Tiffany, then away.
As Mr Masson picks up his baton and tries feebly to call us to order — his eyes locating my seated figure with almost comical relief — I catch Laurence Barry staring at me steadily from across the room.
I stare back, so long and unblinkingly that the man finally breaks eye contact. I wonder for one uneasy moment whether he saw Ryan and me running away from his house earlier today. But he doesn’t look at me again, and I grow calmer as the session gets underway, although part of me is edgy with the knowledge that I will need to confirm the old man’s involvement at rehearsal’s end. Via the usual methods.
For the next two hours, I dutifully play Carmen to the hilt, and she’s never sounded better. Even Miss Fellows ceases frowning across the hall, because Carmen cannot be faulted. People are leaning forward to get a look at Carmen, some people up the back are even half-standing, because Carmen’s voice has inspired some kind of general resurgence. Whole phrases of the piece are really starting to come together. It’s a win-win for everybody except Tiffany — who’s furious.
Carmen’s incredible voice cuts through Tiffany’s best efforts to drown us out. There is no contest and suddenly I understand why Tiffany always tries to keep Carmen close, even though she probably hates the girl like poison.
‘You think you’re so good,’ she snipes under cover of the increasingly frantic orchestra.
I shrug.
Beyond that, I’m deaf to anything Tiffany or the others have to say. I’m thinking about Ryan, and wondering what he’s doing, and yelling at myself for even thinking that when I should be focused on Lauren, on Jennifer, and how to get them out.
We finish at six-fifteen, and I look around for Laurence Barry. I’m shocked to discover he’s no longer in the room, and when I ask around, I find that no one’s seen him in the last half-hour. He’s already left. Does he have some idea that Ryan and I are onto him?
I dodge Miss Fellows — who’s actively searching me out like a heat-seeking missile — by hiding in the girls’ toilets until I’m sure she’s gone, along with just about everyone else. I know that when she finally tracks Carmen down next week, it won’t be pretty. Maybe the Lord will be kind; maybe I’ll be gone by then. I mean, Carmen’s going to have to learn to take care of herself sooner or later.
The hallway is empty when I finally emerge from the toilets, and many of the fluorescents in the classrooms have been turned off. The assembly hall is one of the only remaining oases of light in the entire school complex. I’m about to head back to the Daleys’ place when I notice Tiffany’s brassy head of hair through the doorway. She’s one of the last of the stragglers, loitering with intent — making a beeline for Paul Stenborg by the battered old upright piano near the podium.
The troublemaker in me decides to cut in on her dance, just for the fun of it. Hey, there’s got to be a first
