Sally. Always felt you were a girl of excellent character.”
He was trying to butter me up. Trick me into confessing. I looked down at his shoes. They were brown and scuffed with run-down heels. Not like the black ones he had on the other night when he chased me down the alley. And he had on white socks with blue dots on them. Not the pink-and-green argyle ones. But he could not fool me.
“Well, I’m going to ask around the neighborhood about that alarm. Maybe it was a couple of the Latour girls. You two remember what I told you last year about talking to strangers, right?” He stood. Goodness, he was a tall, tall man.
“Why haven’t you found Sara yet?” I blurted out.
“I’m sure she’ll turn up soon and there is nothing in the world to be worried about.” Rasmussen sounded heartbroken when he said that, which only made me feel more disgusted with him. He walked down the last two steps and brushed against my arm, which made me shiver. Then he pointed at the Kroger bag and said very seriously, “You gotta pay back Mrs. Kenfield for those Kleenex, Troo. Remember the Fourth Commandment.”
Troo’s eyes got real big, almost as big as Granny’s thyroid eyes. “Yeah, I was goin’ to do that,” she said, trying to put the bag behind her back like out of sight, out of mind.
“See that you do,” Rasmussen said. “And I’m sorry that your mother is sick. Maybe one of these days, you can come over to my house. Got a new puppy who likes little girls a lot.”
“Thank you, Officer Rasmussen,” Troo said. “The next time we go to see Ethel and Mrs. Galecki, Sally and me will stop by.” She was being what Hall called a little brownnose, like that new guy named Jim who was working up at Shus ter’s.
After Rasmussen started up the block toward the Latours’, Troo laughed and said, “Well, that was a close one.” She rolled over onto the grass and when she did her tummy made this erupting noise. “I’m famished.”
I was still watching Rasmussen. He was talking to Willie O’Hara, who was pointing to his bike tire. Rasmussen knelt down to look at it and said something to Willie, who was nodding. Then Rasmussen stood up and cuffed him on his head. Willie smiled up at him like he was the bee’s knees. Like Daddy always said, the devil can take any form he wishes.
“How ’bout we head over to Granny’s?” I said, feeling safe since I knew Rasmussen would be grilling the Latours for the next half hour. I was hungry, too, and Granny would at least give us a cuppa. That’s what she called cups of tea. And if Uncle Paulie was there, he’d probably just ignore us and work on one of those Popsicle stick houses he was always building. Granny had about a ton of those Popsicle stick houses all over her little house. Everywhere you looked, there was another one. Troo liked Granny, but Uncle Paulie gave her the creeps. Especially when he wanted to play peek-a-boo, which was his very favorite game. Troo said it was just cooties, but I thought I finally understood why she didn’t like him. O’Malley sister mental telepathy. Uncle Paulie reminded Troo of the crash.
Troo said, “I don’t have time to visit with Granny. I gotta start up on my Kleenex flowers.”
In two more days there would be the parade of bicycles and relay races and a picnic and finally, the fireworks over at the lagoon. Fourth of July was the best holiday of the year next to Halloween and Christmas.
“Where you two been?”
Troo and me looked up. Nell was standing above us on the steps. Her hair was brown just like Troo’s grocery bag and came a little lower than her neck and she was now wearing it in something called “the bubble,” which was also what Nell’s figure looked like. That might be a slight exaggeration. Mother said Nell was voluptuous. (This is like lush.)
“Around,” Troo said, searching for a four-leaf clover, which is something she did sometimes when she got around grass.
“I’ve been looking for you all morning,” Nell said. “You wanna go see Mother?”
“What do you mean, do we wanna go see Mother?” Troo asked like she didn’t care at all.
“Eddie’s aunt Margie is a nurse over at St. Joe’s and she said she’d sneak you two in, if you want.” Nell was dressed in clean clothes because she knew how to run the washing machine and the wringer. She looked like a grown-up in her pink pedal pushers and pink blouse. You could see her white bra peeking through the third and fourth buttons. Her bosoms were getting so big! Like all they’d needed was this hot, humid summer to grow as round and ripe as watermelons.
“Nell, your bosoms are huge,” Troo said, reading my mind. “They’re practically blocking out the sun. What the hell you doin’ to ’em?”
Nell snorted. She knew Troo was nothing but jealous. Ever since Fast Susie had shown us her bosoms, Troo would lift up her shirt every morning at the mirror behind our bedroom door, and if she stood just right, her bosoms did look slightly bigger, but I thought that was because there was a wave in the mirror.
Nell crossed her arms across her chest. Barely. “You wanna go see Mother or not?”
Troo plucked a blade of grass from the lawn and stuck it in her mouth. She shut her eyes. She was thinking.
I jumped up and said, “I’ll go.” Since I couldn’t find the money for a stamp for my letter, I needed to tell Mother in person what Daddy had told me before he died. That he forgave her. Because if she really was dying, she’d want to know that happy news when they saw each other in Heaven.
“You comin’?” I asked Troo.
“Naw.” She picked up her bag of Kleenex and walked toward the backyard.
That got me worried. Troo, who was braver and prettier and smarter and more outgoing than me, thought it might not be a good idea to see her dying mother. That gave me second thoughts and I almost went after her.
But then Eddie Callahan pulled up in his Chevy car. It was turquoise and white and had fins so if you should accidentally drive it into the lagoon that would be okay. Nell had told me Eddie got a really good deal on this Chevy car because the old owner was in big trouble with the bookies. I was pretty sure that had something to do with the Finney Library. Maybe the old Chevy owner didn’t pay his dues, which could really get Mrs. Kambowski riled up, and that was why the bookies had to sell the car to Eddie. To pay her off? I’d ask Troo later. She’d been spending a lot of time at the library lately. Probably doing some more cheatin’ on the Bookworm Ladder.
“W hat’s cookin’, good-lookin’?” Eddie said to Nell’s bosoms, which it seemed he was not able to take his eyes off of. I couldn’t blame him. They sorta stuck out of Nell’s chest like the headlights on his car.
I got into the backseat and Eddie turned up the radio real loud and we headed down Vliet Street toward the hospital listening to “Love Potion #9.” When we were stopped at the corner of North and Lisbon, Eddie said, “Damn, was I speeding?” He was looking into his rearview mirror around the fuzzy dice.
I turned in my seat and looked out the back window and there was Rasmussen, his gumball flashing.
Eddie pulled over to the curb and blew his breath into his hand, which was very thoughtful since you should never have bad breath when you’re talking to a cop. Suddenly Rasmussen was at Eddie’s car window. He leaned his head in and looked directly at me and said, “Sally, could you get out of the car?”
Eddie, being so glad that he wasn’t getting a speeding ticket, reached back and pulled me over to the front seat and shoved me out the door.
Rasmussen sat down on the curb a little ways away and called over to me, “Sit down, please.” He took off his hat and I thought again what nice full hair he had, even though there was a rim around it from the hatband. The top half being darker with sweat and the bottom half more the color of sweet corn from the farm when it was ready to get picked.
“I just got done talking with Fire Chief Bailey,” Rasmussen said after I sat down a few feet away from him. “Do you know the firemen found a shoe over near the lagoon and that it looks just like one that Sara Heinemann was wearing the night she disappeared?”
Glad that I’d been right, I began to pick at a scab on the cut I got from the Kenfields’ prickly bushes the night I was running away from Rasmussen in the alley.
“Sally?”
Rasmussen smelled extra good. Not like Aqua Velva like Daddy, but something else that smelled like an orange does the second you take off the peel. “You won’t get in trouble. Just tell me the truth. Did you find that shoe?”
I looked back at the Chevy. Nell and Eddie were not even looking my way. If he was quick, Rasmussen could grab me and stick me into the trunk of his car and when people asked later about Sally O’Malley, he would say, “Gosh, the last time I saw her she was heading down North Avenue. I think she said she had to pick up some
