The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

'A crumpled paper towel and a crushed beer can.'

'Wait.' Caroline moved her pencil back to #6 and added a word. 'Severe Alcoholism,' it said now. 'Do you think I should put 'inhuman strength'? Because of the crushed beer can?'

J.P. opened his eyes and gave her a disgusted look. 'Anybody can crush a beer can, Caroline. A small baby could crush a beer can.'

Caroline shrugged. 'What else? What's in those other two envelopes?'

He closed his eyes once more. 'Under the sink—write this down, Caroline: rubber gloves.'

Caroline sat there with her pencil poised. 'What's wrong with rubber gloves?' she asked. 'Mom has rubber gloves.'

'These are pink,' said J.P., his eyes still closed.

'So?'

'So a man would never buy pink rubber gloves. No man in his right mind would buy pink rubber gloves—not unless he needed them for sinister reasons.

That made sense to Caroline. 'Oh,' she said. 'Fingerprint-proof gloves,' she wrote. 'Evidence #7.'

'I took one of the gloves,' J.P. said. 'It's in the second envelope.'

'What about the third?'

J.P. grinned without opening his eyes. 'We're still under the sink. Ivory Liquid. SOS pads. Ajax.'

'Ajax is a white powder. Could it be arsenic too?'

J.P. shook his head. 'It really smelled like Ajax. Anyway, there wouldn't be any way to get it into the can. You'd have to put it in through all the little holes.'

'What's in the third envelope, J.P.?'

He paused dramatically. 'The corpus,' he said.

'The what?'

J.P. grinned again and opened his eyes. 'You said we needed a corpus? So I found us a corpus. Dead mouse, still in the trap!'

Caroline jumped up from her chair and looked at the third bulky envelope. 'Yuck!' she said. 'Did you have to bring it home?'

'What good is evidence if you don't have it? And it's kind of cute. It has a pink nose.'

'Evidence #8, corpus,' wrote Caroline, making a face.

J.P. opened his eyes and reached for the last piece of chicken. 'This chicken sucks,' he said. 'It's ice cold.'

***

After they had dumped the remains of the TV dinners in the trash and eaten some ice cream, Caroline looked again at the envelopes of evidence. 'What are we going to do with this stuff, J.P.?'

'Save it to show the police. They'll have to analyze it in their lab.'

'But where can we keep it? Tomorrow's cleaning day. I suppose I have some secret places in my room, but I don't want the corpus in my room—it'll smell.'

'How about the freezer?'

'Mom would see it.'

'What about inside that big vase on the table by the front door?'

Caroline eyed the vase and shook her head. 'Every now and then she washes that. Maybe she'll decide to wash it tomorrow.'

'I could fit it inside the back of the TV, I think. But when the TV's on, it gets warm in there. We might end up with roasted corpus,' said J.P.

'Yuck. Wait,' said Caroline. 'I have an idea. Let me see if they're still there.' She went to the closet by the front door and pushed through the winter coats. She shoved the vacuum cleaner aside. 'Here they are! This'll be perfect!'

She pulled them out and held them up triumphantly: two galoshes, huge, with flapping buckles.

'Where did those come from?' asked J.P., looking at them with disdain.

'That guy left them here. The one who was the Scrabble expert. Mom was going to give them to Goodwill, but she never did. Every time she gets out the vacuum cleaner, she says, 'I ought to get rid of those awful things.' But then she forgets about them again. Put the evidence in one of these and I'll stick them way back in the farthest corner of the closet.'

J.P. gave it some thought, nodded finally, and deposited the three envelopes in one of the galoshes. He buckled it all the way up, and Caroline carried it between two fingers back to the closet.

'There,' she said. 'Arsenic, killer's glove, and a corpus with a pink nose. Safely stashed.' She closed the closet door.

'Nine o'clock,' she said, looking at her watch. 'I'm going to watch 'Movie of the Week'—it's a dinosaur picture. Hollywood makes such disgusting dinosaurs. They can't tell a Brachiosaurus from an Iguanodon, those jerks.'

'Oh, no, you're not,' said J.P., leaping toward the television. 'I'm watching a special on another channel. Mom promised me I could.'

'Liar! You never even asked her! I've been planning all week to watch that dinosaur movie!' Caroline tried to grab his hand away from the channel selector. But J.P. was stronger than she. He had his hand locked in place. 'No fair, you beastly creep!'

When Joanna Tate arrived home at ten, Caroline and J.P. were still locked in warfare. They had flicked the channels back and forth so often that the picture on the screen was just a maze of zigzag lines, and the sound was a staticky buzz. J.P.'s shirt was torn where Caroline had wrenched at his arm, and his sneakers were lying in separate corners of the living room; he had thrown them at her.

'Well,' said their mother, 'it's another placid evening at the civilized Tate residence.'

'I brought you something,' Mrs. Tate said, after she had taken off her jacket, 'and you don't deserve it, either one of you, since you've wrecked the television once again—'

'I can fix it, Mom,' J.P. muttered angrily.

'What did you bring us?' asked Caroline.

'Actually it wasn't me. It was Fred. He felt bad that you guys were home all alone—he said we should have taken you with us for dinner. I didn't explain to him that you tend to behave like a couple of prehistoric beasts —'

'Mom,' warned Caroline, 'watch what you say about prehistoric—'

'Sorry, I lost my head. Anyway, just as we were leaving the restaurant, he said, 'Wait a minute,' and he went back and got you these. Here. You don't deserve them. But here they are anyway. Cannolis.'

She put a paper bag on the coffee table. Neither Caroline nor J.P. moved.

'Well?' said their mother. 'I know you love cannolis. Maybe some sweets will soothe your rotten tempers.'

Caroline opened the top of the bag, using her fingers fastidiously, like tweezers. Suspiciously she lifted out the two thick pastries dusted with sugar. She looked at her brother meaningfully. J.P. leaned over and sniffed the powdery coating.

'Smells like sugar,' he murmured.

'Of course it smells like sugar,' said Joanna Tate. 'It is sugar. Your dental bills will be higher than usual. But what the heck; it was nice of him to think of you. Dig in.'

'Mom,' asked Caroline, 'did you say he went back in and got these? After you had already left the restaurant?'

'Yes. Why?'

'Well, ah, did you go back in with him? Or did you wait outside? Did you see the restaurant people putting these in the bag?'

Her mother looked at her, puzzled. 'I waited outside. I was reading the menu pasted on the window. I was wondering if I should have ordered the spaghetti with clam sauce. I liked the spaghetti with sausage and mushrooms, but the clam sauce looked so good. The people at the next table had it. Next time, I