“I don’t know. I’ll try.”
“I’ll explain,” she said. “Nothing was supposed to happen. It was just going to be kind of a game, and then we would move to the Bahamas or something. But now he says getting rid of the dog made it all seem more realistic. The dog, he says. Oh, God, he doesn’t even call her by name.”
Suddenly I saw how stupid I’d been, thinking she was so pitiful. What a crock. She’d been in on the plot right from the start, and still was, too, only the guy had killed off her dog so now she was yelling for justice. Some kind of murderer. Oh, boy.
“But you’re the one that ripped off the insurance company,” I said.
“Dirty money. I don’t want it.”
“So go to the police.”
“Oh, no, Howie. Don’t you see? I couldn’t. I can’t. You don’t know about the police. You don’t know about jails.”
When she was little, she went on breathlessly, her words all kind of stacked up on top of each other, her mother didn’t want her so she’d been put in a foster home where the people treated her real bad, but they had this real nice dog, and when she ran away she took it with her. She had to steal some stuff to eat, and after that they put her in a juvenile jail, which was worse than the foster home. There was more, a lot more, and it was all pretty awful, particularly the part about everybody knocking her around.
“Do you see now, Howie,” she wound up. “Do you see why I’m afraid to go to the police?”
I nodded. I still felt sorry for her, but I was beginning to understand her, too.
She’d lived more years than Mom, maybe, but in her head, she was still a little kid. The dog wasn’t her baby. It was like her whole family.
“Okay,” I said, after a while. “I see why you’re scared to go to the police, but what about the money?”
“Dirty money.” Balling her hands into fists, she held them to her mouth. I couldn’t make out what she said next, but I thought it sounded something like “I feed it to Cassie.”
“Cassie? Who’s Cassie?”
“What?” She looked up. “But that’s not—” She paused, shook her head again, then waved her hand toward the picture of the dog. “Cassie is our friend. Cassandra really. You thought her name was Popeye at first, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, and you never told me different.”
I smiled a little, and then jumped because all at once she banged her fist down on the stove.
“Howie,” she said firmly. “We need a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yes, indeed. A murderer should be brought to justice.” Her hands were on my shoulders, her face close. “You agree, don’t you?”
So she was back on that kick again. “Yeah, I guess.”
“So you’ll tell. Right?”
“Tell who what?”
“Everything. To everybody. You know it all now.”
But of course I didn’t know any more than I had when I first arrived. Besides, it was obvious she’d gone off wandering around in her squirrel cage again.
“That’s a real great plan, ma’am,” I said, suddenly wanting only to get out of there. “Now can I have the money for the paper, please. My mom’s probably waiting dinner on me.”
Her shiny, sad eyes seemed to follow me all the way home.
I didn’t sleep much that night. Somewhere toward morning I heard the doves crying outside, and I found myself wondering if she sometimes sat up all night, petting the gray granite dog and crying.
But then, when I was eating breakfast, I found myself thinking about the reward again. After all, Mrs. Bonner was no kid, and anyway, she was pretty much a crook even if she was sad.
Pouring out the cornflakes, I decided to go tell the police. “Hey, guys,” I’d say. “You want to know how she connects with Popeye. Easy. She’s got this gray granite dog statue and she feeds it the money.”
Yeah, sure.
Leave it alone, Howie, I told myself. Just forget the whole business.
That decision stood for two whole days, but then — well, here’s what happened.
I always went down one side of Oleander Street and up the other, and I wasn’t on Mrs. Bonner’s side when I saw the man. It was still dark out because it was late November and foggy like it gets in the fall. Even so, I could see his gait was unsteady. A drunk maybe.
Or a sailor?
Ducking behind a hedge, I watched the man lurch up to the statue, look all around, then pick up the dog dish, hide it inside his jacket, and stroll away.
So that’s how she gets the money to him, I thought. That business about feeding the money to Cassie wasn’t so crazy after all.
As soon as I finished my route I went down to the police station. They laughed, at first, but after a while they saw what I meant.
That morning I didn’t go to school. I just hung around on Oleander Street waiting to see what would happen, and thinking about how scared she was of the jail and stuff. I really got disgusted with myself.
In fact, I was just about to go warn her when a police car cruised slowly down the street. It stopped at her house. Two guys got out. They went to her door and knocked. She came to the door in her slippery pink bathrobe. She looked as pretty as I’d ever seen her.
The police talked to her for a couple of minutes, then they all went into the house. A few minutes later, they all came back out. She was dressed now, and carrying a small suitcase.
As they headed down the walk to the car, I decided I had to say something. I felt so terrible for turning her in. Jumping out from behind my bush, I ran across the yard.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bonner,” I said. “I had to tell them. Please don’t hate me.”
“Hate you, Howie?” She smiled, and I noticed that her eyes looked softer, less glassy. “Why would I do that? We had a plan. We had to bring the murderer to justice.” The policemen tried to push me away, but she wouldn’t let them. “Let me talk to my friend,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “Look, Howie, would you do me a favor?”
“Anything,” I said.
“Cassie gets so lonesome. Pet her once in a while, just for me.”
The policemen were staring, and I could see Mrs. Fletching standing in her driveway, but I didn’t care.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Don’t you worry. I’ll pet her and bring her food and everything.”
My eyes felt oozy. Not wanting anyone to see, I bent down to pet the gray granite dog. I heard the car door open, then shut. They were gone.
They picked up Popeye the next day. He’d been hiding out down in the Everglades someplace. She told them where to find him, and all about the mail drop they had with the clues in the newspaper and everything.
You see, I had it all wrong. It wasn’t Popeye I saw that morning. Some hungry tramp maybe, but not Popeye. She hadn’t even said she fed the money to Cassie. She’d said, he reads the classifieds.
I mean, I had it all wrong. I told the insurance company when they came around to say I was going to get the reward, but they said, wrong or not, it was on account of what I did that the police caught Popeye.
“Well, Howie,” my mom said a couple of weeks later. “You must be very proud of yourself.”
We’d just put the reward money in the bank and we were having a big ice cream sundae to celebrate. There wasn’t much to celebrate from my standpoint. The reward had turned out to be pretty big, so big in fact that Mom put it all in the bank for college. No stereo, not even a new bike.
“Aw, gee, Mom,” I mumbled. “I don’t know.”
I wanted to tell her the whole story, only I was pretty sure she’d be hurt because I hadn’t told her way back when it all got started.
Besides, I wasn’t proud of myself, not one little bit. It was like that dumb rabbit. I didn’t put it out of its misery and that made me feel awful. Okay, I won’t make that mistake again. So what do I do? I put Mrs. Bonner out of her misery, and that makes me feel even worse.