To keep her safe, I needed to make my scheme come true. I was going over to Rasmussen’s house and look around a little to see if I could find Sara’s other tennis shoe or Junie’s St. Christopher medal she got for her First Holy Communion, which Fast Susie Fazio said had never been found. And then I would come right back to the house and wake up Mr. Gary and he would take the shoe and the medal and drive them over to the police station and then the cops would come to get Rasmussen and electrocute him ASAP.
I wanted to ask Ethel for help, but I didn’t. Because I knew she really liked Rasmussen. She even did charitable things for him. Like watering his garden if it had been a hot day and he couldn’t come home from the police station. Or if he had to leave very early, Ethel would bring his milk and butter in from the chute and put it in his refrigerator.
One night, I asked Ethel while we were playing go fish why she liked Rasmussen so much. She leaned forward, quickly plucked three cards out of her hand and placed them facedown in front of me. The first card she flipped over was the jack of hearts. “See that?” she said. “Let’s say that’s Dave Rasmussen.” Then she flipped over the middle card. “And then let’s say”-she tapped the queen of hearts-“let’s say that’s…” She almost said a name, but caught herself. I slit my eyes at her. Ethel had her no-how-no-way look on her face, so I knew there was no use asking who had just been sitting on the tip of her tongue.
“You know why that jack of hearts has such a sad-lookin’ face?” Ethel asked.
I studied the card. “Because he has to wear those dumb-lookin’ clothes?”
Ethel snorted. “ ’Sides that.”
I am usually very good at guessing games because of my imagination, but for the life of me I couldn’t come up with anything. “I don’t know, Ethel. Why’s he look so sad?” He really did look awful.
“Well, it’s all because of this here queen.” Ethel picked the card up and waved it at me. “She was deep in love and wanted to marry this jack.” She put the cards together like a couple walking down an aisle. “But this jack”-she put it right up to my face-“even though he was deep in love, too, he told the queen he couldn’t marry her.” She tsked… tsked… tsked. “So the queen done went off and married someone else.” She turned over the last card. It was the king of diamonds. “So now the poor ole jack has got a permanent fracture of the heart.”
Sometimes I had to pay very close attention to Ethel and her stories. They could be as confusing as one of those soap opera stories she listened to on her kitchen radio while she was ironing.
“Ethel, are you tellin’ me that Rasmussen loved a woman with all his heart and soul and all the stars in the sky and starfish in the sea and she married somebody else?”
“That’s ’xactly what I’m tellin’ you, Miss Sally,” she said. “Truth be told”-she leaned in so close I could see the hairs in her nose-“that queen got married to somebody ’sides that jack more’n once.” And I could tell by the wrinkle that came between her eyebrows that the whole story had made Ethel, who was a real romantic woman, feel just terrible for Rasmussen.
Oh, poor Miss Ethel Jenkins from Calhoun County, Mississippi. Rasmussen had even fooled the smartest woman I knew. But he couldn’t fool me. I pulled carefully on the creaky screen door that led out of the porch so it didn’t wake Troo. Then I walked out of Mrs. Galecki’s yard into the alley because a white picket fence full of sleeping yellow roses separated the two yards and I didn’t want to come back later all scratched up. That would make Ethel suspicious in the morning. I held my breath and looked around. Nothin’ seemed like it shouldn’t, so I walked around Rasmussen’s garage and tried to peek in. I bet when he stole girls he brought them here to molest them. Because those girls were both taken right off the sidewalk. Sara had been on her way to get that milk for her mother and Junie, I heard, had been on the way to her dance class at Marsha’s Dance Studio, where they had children’s tap and ballet lessons. And they weren’t found right away after they disappeared. So Rasmussen had to have brought them somewhere after he grabbed them. He probably had a car like Mr. Gary. Hardly anybody had one around here. Most people took the bus or walked to where they had to go every morning, like to the Feelin’ Good Cookie Factory or to church or to the Kroger.
I snuck into Rasmussen’s backyard, slowly, slowly closing the gate but leaving it unlatched in case I had to make a fast getaway. I couldn’t believe my eyes! There was the garden Rasmussen had told me about. Oh, it was a sight. There was a birdbath with water and a little birdhouse on a stick. And carrots and tomatoes and radishes in rows. And small green beans growing on large poles that looked like a tepee. And so many different kinds of flowers, some I’d never seen before. It was truly a Garden of Eden. Mrs. Goldman would just go crazy for this garden. So would Daddy.
I walked on the grass real quietly up to the house. I leaned against his back door waiting for my heart to stop fluttering like a kite on a windy day. Then I crossed myself and slowly pulled the handle down. And it was then that the whole backyard lit up like daytime. A car was pulling into Rasmussen’s garage. I dropped down and belly-crawled as fast as I could toward the garden because that was about the only place to hide. It seemed like forever until Rasmussen pulled that garage door down with a clickety clickety clickety. I could hear his footsteps, but I couldn’t see him. I’d gotten inside the green bean tepee to wait for him to go into his house, to hear the slam of the door, but nothing happened. After a few minutes or so, I peeked. I shouldn’t have. They always tell you not to do that when you’re hiding from someone, but I had to know where Rasmussen was because he was tall enough to look over his fence and there would be Troo sleeping in the screen porch. Easy pickin’s, as Ethel would say. I held my breath and looked through the green bean leaves. And in the light of the moon, right next to the yellow roses, Rasmussen was sitting in his glider, rockin’ slowly back and forth. Crying his eyes out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When that puppy of his began barking from inside the house, Rasmussen blew his nose into a handkerchief and said, “Okay, okay, hold your horses, Lizzie, I’m comin’.”
After I heard the door clank shut, I sat in that green bean tepee counting up to sixty Mississippi until I thought it was safe to come out. A smart thing to do would’ve been to go back to Mrs. Galecki’s and get back under that sheet with Troo, but I guess I really wasn’t that smart like Nell always said because I didn’t do that. I had a scheme and I was sticking to it.
I looked around the yard for something to stand on so I could peep in on him. Next to the back door was an orangish flowerpot like the one on the front porch that was full of red geraniums, which I had noticed because they were Mother’s favorite flower. But this pot was empty so I kinda dragged it over to the side of his house, right below a window. I crouched up on it and straightened a little at a time. I could see right into Rasmussen’s house! There he was opening a can of something that must’ve been dog food because that puppy was jumping all over his leg like Butchy used to do when I’d feed him. All I could see was the kitchen. I needed to see more of what Rasmussen was doing, how a murderer and molester got ready for bed. Maybe he would take Sara’s shoe or Junie’s St. Christopher medal out of their hiding place.