Beth. Let me know if you have any questions.”
The woman asked about our selection of Little House books. “We have the full set,” I told her. “In hardcover and paperback. Let me show—”
Someone tugged on my sleeve. “Mrs. Kennedy?”
I turned and gasped. “Paoze! What happened?”
Chapter 9
Paoze’s formerly white shirt was streaked with grime and had a large gash down one sleeve. One bony knee was exposed where his dark blue dress pants had ripped, and blood oozed out of a scrape on his cheek.
“My—my bicycle,” he stammered. “It is—is gone.”
“Oh, no.” I waved Marcia over and asked her to help the customers. “Come with me,” I told Paoze, and practically dragged him back to my office. “Sit.” I pushed him toward a chair.
“I must—”
“Sit!”
We kept a first-aid kit in the cupboard above the teapot and, after pushing around mugs and cheap flower vases and ancient ketchup packets, I found the white plastic box. Inside were all the medical supplies a mother could want. I flipped past adhesive bandages, white tape, and gauze, and found the antiseptic wipes.
“Hold still. This might sting a little.” I held his chin steady with one hand and dabbed his cheek with the other. “The scrape isn’t deep, just messy. But it needs to be cleaned up so it doesn’t get infected.” The wipe was turning pink with blood. Inside the medical kit was a small box of latex gloves; in a perfect world I would have remembered about those before I started playing EMT.
“What happened?” I dabbed at his wound. Dirt and small bits of gravel were embedded in his skin. If I couldn’t get them out, I’d need to take him to an emergency room. And Paoze didn’t have health insurance, so I’d have to pay the bill myself. I dabbed a little harder.
“Each time I lock my bicycle. Each time.”
His jaw muscles flexed against my efforts. “I know you do. You’re very careful.” He was so careful that Lois had taken to calling him the oldest young man in Wisconsin.
“My father teaches me these things. I purchased the lock the same day I purchased the bicycle.” He pronounced it as two separate words. By. Cycle. “The lock I use each time.” His voice cracked. “Each time,” he repeated.
I didn’t know what to say. You do the right thing; you try to protect yourself, but life has a way of beating you up no matter what. “How did you get this?” I indicated his scrape and his torn clothing.
He put his fingers through the hole in his sleeve and fidgeted with the frayed edges. “My bicycle is locked in back.”
I nodded. The storefronts of downtown Rynwood had alleys for shipping and receiving. Lucky buildings had Bilco-type doors that went straight to basements. Buildings like mine had back doors that got propped open with a wedge of wood during deliveries.
“I always lock the bicycle to the fence. Always.”
His forceful insistence bounced him half out of the chair. “I know you do. Now sit down and stay down. You’re still bleeding.” I opened another wipe. “You looked at the fence and saw the bike was gone. What did you do then?”
“My eyes must be wrong, I think. I rubbed them”—he demonstrated—“but the bicycle is still not there. I look around but see nothing. Then I hear.” He tipped his head to the right, affecting a listening pose, and messing up my medical administrations. Florence Nightingale probably never had problems like this.
Paoze went on. “Someone is laughing on the other side of the fence. Two boys, I think, laughing and trying not to be heard.”
“Oh, Paoze,” I said, dismayed. “You didn’t.” The fence he spoke of was eight feet high and wooden, old and full of splinters and rusty nails. It had been built long ago to keep people from tossing garbage into an empty lot.
“I jumped high and grabbed on to the top. Put my leg over”—he indicated the pant leg with the torn-out knee—“and dropped to the ground. But I could see no one.” He bit his lower lip. “No one is there, and my bicycle is gone.”
To most people, a stolen bicycle was annoying, and a violation of sorts, but not more than that. For Paoze, it was nearly a tragedy. The boy didn’t have a driver’s license, and he depended on his ancient bike for transportation to work. If it rained, he brought a change of clothes in his backpack. When I’d asked him about what he’d do in winter, he’d given me that smile and said, “I will be on time every day.” And I’d believed him.
I studied the woebegone look on his face. Never once had I heard him complain about anything. Never once had he been less than cheerful. To see him like this made my heart ache. I picked up the phone and dialed. “Lois? Are you busy?”
Fifteen minutes later, Lois was ensconced behind the cash register, Marcia was helping customers, and I was pushing Paoze out the front door. “It’ll be fine,” I said. “What are you worried about?”
“I am not worried,” he said, but we both knew it was a lie. Unworried people don’t frown hard enough to crease their foreheads, nor do they constantly push down their cuticles with their thumbnails. More than once I yanked Paoze toward the middle of the sidewalk, out of harm’s way of people or lampposts because he was so engrossed in the ends of his fingers.
“Hello, Cindy,” I said, greeting the woman on her hands and knees in front of the brick building. She was weeding the mums, though it was hard to believe many weeds were growing in mid-October. I hoped the city wasn’t paying her by the hour.
The uniformed man behind the long counter greeted us. His dark blue pants and long-sleeved shirt were crisp, and his badge gleamed bright. “Hi, Mrs. Kennedy. Not another murder, I hope.”
“Not today,” I said. “I know it’s Saturday, but is Gus here?”
“Where else would I be?” Gus stood in the doorway of his office and beckoned us in. “Winnie is off touring the county on the last good garage sales weekend of the year, and I’d rather finish up the paperwork on the school breaking and entering than paint the living room ceiling.” He winked, and we all settled into chairs. “So. How can I help?”
I bumped Paoze with my elbow, but he kept his head down and didn’t say a word. I bumped him again. Still nothing. Well, maybe he’d join in on the chorus. “Paoze here just had his bike stolen.”
“I’m sorry, son,” Gus said. Not where was it stolen, or when, or how old was it, or was it locked—no, Gus’s first comment was one of sympathy. I could have kissed him.
“Thank you, sir,” Paoze said to his knees. “It is not nice to have something stolen.”
“No, it isn’t.” Gus opened a drawer, pulled out a form, and uncapped a pen. As he wrote down Paoze’s hushed answers, I tried to remember if I’d ever had anything stolen. My brother’s playing keep-away with my Barbie doll probably didn’t count.
“Sir?” Paoze lifted his head and looked at Gus. “Will my bicycle come back?”
Gus capped the pen and folded his hands on his desk. “I won’t lie to you, son. We don’t recover many stolen bicycles.”
Paoze’s perfect posture slumped into a curve. “Yes, sir,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
“Most bikes are stolen for parts. Stripped down and sold, bit by bit. Your bike . . . Well, I doubt there’s much of a market for parts to a twenty-year-old department store ride.”
I squinted at Gus. “Do you know who took it?”
“Let’s just say the chances of recovering this particular bike are slightly better than average.” Gus smiled, but it wasn’t the kind smile he’d shown earlier. “Don’t get your hopes up, Paoze, but there’s a slim chance you and your bike will be reunited.”
Paoze bit his lip. “Thank you, sir.”
