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 Kleenex at the Five and Dime.”
“Sally?”
I looked down into the street below the curb. There was a Popsicle stick, so I picked it up and would give it later to Uncle Paulie.
“I know what a bad time you and your family are going through,” he said so kindly. “I really do.”
No, he did not! Was his mother dying? Was his stepfather mean drunk all the time? Did he have a dead father he’d made promises to and a little sister to keep safe and an older sister who was being a complete moony love dope? For a second, I thought, Go ahead, just steal me, molest me, murder me. Just get it over with. And it scared me to think like that. That kind of thinking did not show the kind of stick-to-itiveness that Daddy expected from me.
“You need to tell me the truth, Sally. It’s important.”
“I pulled the fire alarm. Troo found the shoe underneath the big willow tree at the lagoon.”
His mouth turned down on the edges. “That’s all I needed to know.”
He stood up and reached into his back pocket to take out his wallet. He flipped it open and got out a card. It said: David Rasmussen. Precinct 6. Badge number 343. And a phone number. “If you should think of anything else you want to tell me, give me a call here.” He pointed down at the phone number. His fingernails had dirt beneath them. Probably from burying Sara. “Or if it’s a real emergency, you know you can come to my house and tell me.” He said kind of shyly, “I’ve got a garden. I hear you like to garden.”
How’d he know that?
I stood up and Rasmussen handed me that card with his name and number on it. Taped to the back was a five-dollar bill. And that was pretty strange. But not half as strange as the pictures I saw in his wallet. One of them was of me in my school uniform taken last year. And in the plastic area where you can put other pictures, there was Junie Piaskowski in her First Holy Communion dress, smiling her head off. She had no idea what was coming.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When I got back into the car, Eddie said, “What’d he want?”
“He was just askin’ me some questions.”
“About what?” Nell asked, rubbing on Eddie’s arm.
“Sara Heinemann.”
Eddie said, “That missing kid?”
I didn’t show them Rasmussen’s card. And I didn’t tell them about the pictures of me and Junie Piaskowski that I’d seen in his wallet. Why bother.
“I found this in the street.” I gave Nell the five dollars Rasmussen had given me to buy my silence because he suspected that I knew he was the murderer and molester. Like in that movie Troo and me’d seen. I couldn’t remember the name of it but it had to do with blackmail, which meant that somebody gave somebody else money to keep their big mouths shut or else. That’s what that five bucks was. Blood money.
When Eddie pulled away from the curb I said, “I don’t want to go to the hospital anymore.”
I wanted to see Mother and let her know about Daddy forgiving her and maybe lie down with her a bit and tell her that Rasmussen had a picture of me and a dead girl in his wallet. And I hoped that she’d believe me, but she wouldn’t. And that just made me feel sadder than being shipwrecked on a deserted island without my man Friday.
“Cool.” Eddie snatched the five bucks out of Nell’s hand as he pulled away from the curb. “Let’s go to The Milky Way.”
Nell seemed fine with us not visiting Mother, but she seemed fine with just about anything Eddie wanted to do. I stuck my head out the window so the air would run across my face. As we cruised down North Avenue we passed Mar sha’s Dance Studio and the abandoned tire building that Mary Lane had accidentally set on fire. I swear I could still smell burnt rubber.
“Sally?” Nell stuck her head out the window.
“Yeah?” I pulled my head back into the car so she did, too.
“Are you and Troo okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You know about Hall, right?”
She meant about him gettin’ some from Rosie Ruggins, the cocktail waitress who had a beauty mark in the corner of her lip that made her look like she’d just eaten a piece of fudge. We’d just passed Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl. Hall’s station wagon was sitting right out front. He shoulda been at work selling shoes at Shuster’s.
Nell lifted her head off Eddie’s shoulder. Her Brillo pad hairdo made her look like she wasn’t related to me at all. One day Mother showed me a picture of her and Nell’s father sitting on the fender of a car, and sure enough, Nell had her father’s chin, which was sort of squarish, and that kind of nose that was popular called a ski-jump nose.
She turned around in her seat and said in a kind voice, which really made me start to worry, “The doctor says Mother doesn’t look so good. You gotta be prepared.”
Eddie said, “Hey, you two, quit talkin’ about this dyin’ stuff. It’s a drag.” He’d stopped in the middle of North Avenue and turned on his blinker to turn left into The Milky Way. I had heard of it but had never been. There were boys in leather jackets and ducktails and girls with ponytails standing around and laughing and leaning on their cars and looking around to see who was looking. The rock ’n’ roll music was loud and they were all trying to get the attention of girls on roller skates who were bringing food out to the cars on red trays with legs.
Eddie pulled into an empty spot and stuck something to his window that had a speaker in it and said, “Hello?”
“Welcome to the Milky Way… our food is outta this world,” a tinny voice said, but it didn’t sound like she really meant it.
“Hey, Aunt Nancy, it’s me, Eddie.”
The speaker buzzed.
“Whadda ya want, Eddie?”
“Gimme four cheeseburgers, no onions, four fries and four triple Mars shakes.”
That’s when I figured out why the place was called The Milky Way, because it had all these red and blue planets and some moons and stars hanging from these poles. And the skating girls were dressed up in silver skirts and on their heads they wore something that looked like antenna that bobbed to the left and to the right as they glided in between the cars.
“When you gonna get around to changing my oil?” Aunt Nancy said through the speaker.
“Aww… quit busting my hump, already. I said I’d get around to it and I will.”
The speaker buzzed again and then Aunt Nancy yelled, “Four Galaxy burgers, hold the onions, four fries and four chocolate shakes. Two fifty-seven.” And then she said, “Get to that oil tomorrow, Eddie, or I’ll tell your ma what I saw in the trunk of your car when I was lookin’ for my flashlight.”