Turn Left at the Cow Page 15

  But I just kept shaking my head. Maybe it was my fault for writing that stupid note. Maybe it was my father’s fault for robbing that stupid bank. But in that exact moment it all felt like Gram’s fault. She had decided to use her powers for evil instead of for good, and as far as I knew, once grownups went over to the dark side, they could never come back again.

  CHAPTER 23

  Dead man talking. And talking and talking. Not that it did me any good. No matter what I said to Ma, I was still headed straight for the chair, AKA the plane seat that would take me back to California.

  “You’ll have to leave fairly early tomorrow to get to the airport on time. Your grandmother has already agreed to drive you. They’ll have your ticket waiting at the counter.” I’d already heard all this ten times; she just kept saying it over all the arguments I came up with.

  Suddenly I remembered I had one more weapon left, and I pulled out the big gun. “The deputy said I couldn’t leave town. I’m still a suspect.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Travis. Your grandmother warned me about that and gave me his cell number. When I called him and mentioned that my lawyer would be contacting his boss in the morning, he said you were free to leave town immediately.”

  “Ma, please, it’s really, really important for me to stay. Please don’t make me come back yet.”

  “Tomorrow. Early. And it’s late there now. You’d better go pack your things so you’re ready. And if you aren’t at LAX when I get there to pick you up, I’m getting straight on a plane and coming out there to drag you home myself. I think we both know how unhappy that would make me.”

  Yeah, we both knew.

  We were quiet for a long moment and then she said, softer, “Trav, I miss you. Don’t you think it’s time to come home?”

  I pulled out the meanest voice I could manage. “You know that’s not my home.”

  She sighed, bigtime wind coming at me even through the phone line. Then she said the six most heinous words in the English language: “This is for your own good.”

  That was the new Ma for you—I try to tell her something is really important to me, and she reduces it to the equivalent of making me eat my vegetables. She kept talking but I hit the end button. Starting tomorrow, it looked as if I had no choice but to spend the rest of my life arguing with her. No reason to spoil the fun by getting an early start.

  Gram and I had done what we could to finish cleaning up. I admit, I’d been tempted to lock myself away in my room and leave the traitor to deal with the rest of the chaos herself, but I knew that wouldn’t have been right. Maybe I took after my father in that I sometimes made stupid choices, but I wasn’t going to be the kind of dude who walked away afterward and made somebody else handle the aftermath.

  I was cleaning my bedroom—or really, my ghost father’s bedroom, by myself. Gram had made it obvious she wanted to talk some more, but I just couldn’t. The entire rest of my life stretched out in front of me, and I wasn’t ready to take it like a man.

  I hadn’t bothered to tell Ma that there really wasn’t any need for me to pack; the note writer had pretty much destroyed everything of mine in the room. Wherever I went next—and I wasn’t sure yet if it would be back to California or to a galaxy far, far away—I’d be traveling light: the clothes on my back, the cell phone in my pocket, and the Father Box. For some reason the note writer had left it untouched, and I was taking it with me whether Gram liked it or not.

  The only thing I’d have to take with me from Iz was that memory I had folded into my hand after she’d kissed my cheek.

  But she was going to call me after they got home late so we could say good night. I caught my breath. And so we could figure out when we were going to head out to find Crazy Carl.

  Crazy Carl. Who just might know something about the money. The guy that Iz had said knew all the town’s secrets.

  I mean, okay, the guy was clearly wacko. But there’d been that one minute there when, I swear, he knew what he was talking about. And that was when he’d said that he knew what I was looking for, that he knew where it was.

  What if he really did know where the money was? I thought about the card that Deputy Dude had left behind, the one with his cell phone number. I probably should have said something about Carl to him earlier. It wasn’t too late to call him now, but then we’d have to have another six-hour conversation about why he still thought I was the one with the money, and we’d never get around to Carl. If I could just find the money myself and turn it over to Deputy Dude, this whole thing would be over. No more reason for the note writer to keep after me, no more danger. No need for me to have to leave tomorrow. And Carl was old, and ready-to-fall-down sick, and Gram had said harmless. No reason I couldn’t handle finding out what he knew on my own.

  It was the longest of total long shots, but without it I was left high and dry. Good thing Gram was one of those early-to-bed people. I tuned my ears up to bat frequency, waiting to hear the sounds of her settling in for the night. That way I’d know when it was safe for me to sneak out.

  And I almost jumped through the ceiling when this huge series of booms exploded outside my window. It sounded like a sail-by shooting.

  I’d forgotten about Fourth of July fireworks. It was clear Gram wasn’t going to sleep until they were over.

  I had plenty of time to sit there and maybe change my mind.

  At first I was tempted to just wait until Iz and Kenny got home, to see if they’d go with me. But it seemed like there were a lot of holes in that plan. Iz had said they would be late, and I didn’t have any time to waste. What if Crazy Carl wasn’t at the dump? What if I had to chase all over the countryside looking for him? I couldn’t afford to wait any longer than necessary to get started. Besides, Iz had said Kenny was already in line to be sentenced to some hard time; if he got caught sneaking out, it wouldn’t help his case any. My decisions had already ruined Gram’s day; no reason I needed to bring more trouble on anybody else’s head.

  It was probably better if I just handled it on my own. If this whole Crazy Carl thing turned out to be a dead end, nobody even had to know I’d gone to see him. But the longer I sat there and thought about it, the more sense it made that it wouldn’t be a dead end.

  Why hadn’t it occurred to me before that I’d seen Crazy Carl all over town the day King Svengrud had found the bait money? I’d even seen him slapping down a bankroll of bills at the Big Store. Sure, Gram had given him some money at the dump, but I didn’t think it had been that much. All the townspeople had been so quick to decide I had the bank cash that they hadn’t bothered to remember who else was in the stores spending money that morning.

  But if Crazy Carl knew how to get his hands on all that green, why had he waited until now to spend it?

  Maybe if he was the accomplice—and I still wasn’t sure if I believed that—he had wanted to put some time between the bank break-in and when he started spreading the money around. The FBI had handed out those bait-money lists to all the local stores. Maybe Carl had known about that and had wanted to hang low for a while. And then he went crazy and kind of forgot how the whole money thing worked and didn’t even understand he was sitting on enough stolen pesos to buy the dump for himself if he wanted to.

  Or maybe he hadn’t waited until I’d turned up in town to start spending it. Maybe he’d been spending the money all these years, a little at a time, but nobody had ever bothered to check the bait-money list until I’d showed up to play Pin the Crime on the New Kid.

  Or like I said, maybe he wasn’t the accomplice at all; he was just a guy who’d stumbled across somebody else’s high-priced secret.

  I thought I was going to go crazy myself, having to sit there and wait to find out what Carl knew.

  Then there was this one last giant boom, and everything quieted down. I waited a while longer until I was sure it was safe and then creaked my door open, listening until I heard these little popping snorts Gram makes while she’s sleeping.

  She’d shown me where
she kept a big flashlight in the kitchen for when the lights went out in storms and stuff; I didn’t remember seeing it broken like most of the dishes from the cupboard, but I kept my fingers crossed anyway. I heaved a sigh of relief when the flashlight clicked on with no problem. Making the trip along that rutted-up road on a bike at night was going to be bad enough, let alone without any kind of light.

  Once I got outside, I looked over at Kenny’s house—totally dark, and no van in the driveway. They weren’t home yet.

  I set out, thinking through the route Gram had taken when we’d gone to the dump with the garbage from the freezer chest. Holy crap—was it really possible that had been only a few days ago?

  I turned the flashlight off when I got to town, not wanting to call any attention to myself just in case anybody was wandering around in a post-fireworks daze. But it was quiet, with no sounds other than a car somewhere off in the distance and a hum coming from the back of the grocery store. Maybe that was where Crazy Carl’s aliens parked their spaceship.

  The giant bullhead rose up in the dark like some kind of prehistoric monster. It wasn’t the night-light dark you get in a real city; the two streetlights splashed only small pools of yellow into the blackness. No help from above, either: it was that dying kind of moon, the sliver-thin scythe carried by the Grim Reaper.

  I kept my eyes peeled as best I could in case Crazy Carl was hanging out somewhere in town, but there was no sign of him. I turned down the road I was pretty sure led to the dump, and within a few feet the darkness swallowed me up again. As soon as I clicked my flashlight back on, a pair of red-hot eyes glowed out at me from a ditch. Whoever owned the eyes vanished too fast for me to tell, but I sure hoped it was one of Gram’s partying raccoons rather than something with longer fangs.

  I pedaled faster. Fortunately the road tunneled straight ahead through the dark, so I could focus all intensely on the road surface itself and avoid the worst of the holes. I was also trying to work out how I was going to get the sane person inside of Crazy Carl’s head to come out and talk to me, when suddenly my cell started jingling and I just about steered into the ditch.

  Had Gram figured out I’d gone AWOL? Had Ma called back with another set of marching orders? I pulled to a stop, fished my phone out of my pocket, and looked at the screen. It was coming from Kenny’s house. How could I have forgotten Iz was going to call me?

  I hit answer. “Hey. I guess you’re home. Did you have fun at Kenny’s grandma’s?”

  “What’s wrong? Your voice sounds funny.”

  “Uh . . . long story. Listen, I’m not going to be able to meet you tonight.” For some reason, I wanted to keep my little joy ride on the DL. Maybe it felt like asking for bad luck to say anything about what I was doing until I made sure I was right about Crazy Carl.

  There was a long pause and finally she said, “Okay,” but in this kind of voice where I knew right away her feelings were hurt.

  “Look,” I said hurriedly. Forget luck—I didn’t need luck when I had evidence, and the guy clearly knew something. “I really wish I could. But the truth isI’m not there. I’m on my way to the dump to find Carl.”

  “You’re going to the dump tonight? Trav, are you crazy?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “But listen—my mom found out everything and she’s ordered me home. First thing tomorrow. For my own good, she said. I’ve got to get Carl to tell me where the money is. I mean, I’ve been thinking it all through—he could even be the accomplice, right? And then when that’s cleared up, I can talk Ma into letting me stay after all.”

  I was talking too fast and Iz probably couldn’t make sense of half of it, but this little jump of panic kept frogging up in my throat, and I knew I had to get moving again soon or I’d chicken out and turn back, wasting my last chance.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to the dump on your own in the middle of the night to talk to some crazy guy you think might be a bank robber,” she said. “Trav, think about what happened today to your grandma’s house. Somebody out there is really ticked at you. I think you’re being stupid again.”

  I guess a couple little near kisses weren’t powerful enough to make the evil fairy vanish in a poof of smoke.

  “Look, this is the only way I can stay in Minnesota. That’s what you want too, right?” I said.

  “I want you to stay, but mostly I want you not dead,” she said. “Boys are always such idiots, with all that macho crap. How could you do this on your own?”

  “Look, I’ll be fine, really. You’re blowing this way out of proportion. I’m pretty sure I’m most of the way there already, and Gram says she’s never known Carl to hurt a flea. I’ll talk to him real quick and come home, and by morning this will all be worked out, okay? I’ll get to stay, and we can just focus on having some fun for a change.”

  “All I’m saying is that maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world that your mom wants you home with her,” she said.

  Even through the phone I could tell that the Ice Age had returned. There was no way I could answer that comment directly without the risk of being turned into a freezer pop, so I said, “Don’t worry so much, okay? It’s really no big deal.”

  “Fine. Don’t listen to me. It’s not like I’ve been right about anything else.” I could hear Iz slam the phone down.

  I guess she wasn’t buying my “no big deal.”

  To tell the truth, I wasn’t either. Right about then, my whole little midnight ride of Paul Revere was starting to feel like a very big deal. Or maybe like another very big mistake on my part.

  But if it was, it was a mistake even Iz couldn’t stop me from making.

  CHAPTER 24

  After Iz hung up on me, I just sat there for a long time, wondering if I had completely blown it with her. Even if everything worked out and I got to stay in Minnesota, was she going to give me anything but the cold shoulder?

  And even if I did track down Crazy Carl, who was to say I’d be able to make any sense out of his Looney Tunes alien talk?

  And even if he did admit to being the accomplice, what if I still couldn’t put my hands on the money? There was no telling if he’d repeat the same story tomorrow morning for anybody else. Who would believe he’d confessed about the bank heist to me? The townsfolk would probably see the whole thing as my pitiful attempt to lay the blame on somebody too crazy to defend himself. Go pick on somebody your own mental-health status, Bank-Robber Boy!

  But really, I had to be close to the dump. What did I have to lose at that point, other than a little of my life’s blood to a random wandering vampire and/or the swarm of mosquitoes trying to suck me dry?

  I kicked off on my bike and kept going. It seemed to take forever, but finally I could tell I was almost there; the rotting-zombies smell slithered into my nostrils. When I pulled to a stop at the gate, the smell tried to smother me from the inside. Once I was done dry heaving, I leaned my bike against the fence. The thick air and my own nerves had me sweating like a roomful of American Idol wannabes.

  The gate was pulled closed with a padlock and chain; just on the off chance they were rusted out, I tested the gate to make sure it was actually locked. The dark shape of the trailer loomed up inside. Was Crazy Carl nestled all snugly in there with his buddies, the cockroaches?

  “Hey! Carl. I gotta talk to you. Come on out here and let me in!”

  Nothing.

  “Carl!” I rattled the gate. Finally I just hauled myself up and over the chainlink fence and dropped down onto the other side.

  I climbed the steps of the trailer and banged on the door. “Yo! Carl.”

  Something clattered behind me and I whipped around. I couldn’t see anyone. I ran the flashlight beam up and down a mound of garbage. It caught the long tails of two scurrying shapes.

  Rats! Literally.

  But no Crazy Carl.

  I tried the trailer door handle and it pushed open under my hand. It was so small inside that I didn’t even have to leave the doorway to see everything. I ran
my light across a beat-up old desk and file cabinet, a chair with broken slats, and an empty mattress on the floor. A rusted-out toilet sat in a back corner.

  There was no sign of the whacked-out possible felon who was my only hope.

  I pulled the door shut behind me. I wandered a few feet farther along the road that wound through the dump, straight into the pits of hell. Plastic garbage bags were mounded on all sides. They glinted in the flashlight beam like butcher knives in the hands of psycho killers. I spied something red and wet and glistening. I made myself keep moving.

  The misshapen mounds of trash cast creepy shadows ahead of me. I raised the flashlight higher. I was surrounded by mountains of slime. That first day Gram and I had been out here, I’d watched Carl scramble his way over the piles of garbage. He could be anywhere in that wilderness of waste.

  I searched among a million or so bags, but finally I stopped. For all I knew, I was circling the same mound over and over. I was never going to find Crazy Carl like this. The question was, should I keep searching there at the dump, or was he somewhere else?

  I was debating my options when I heard a car coming down the road. My gut clenched. I didn’t think Crazy Carl had wheels, but I also couldn’t figure out who else would be visiting the dump at that time of night. I flicked off my light and scurried behind one of the piles.

  I heard a car door slam shut.

  “Hey! Kid! I know you’re here. The bike’s a dead giveaway. Get on out here.”

  It was Deputy Dude. How had he tracked me down? Had Iz turned me in?

  I was plenty ticked at the thought, but maybe in the end it would save some time. I’d tell him what Crazy Carl had said at the parade and all the stuff I’d figured out about Carl spending money in town. Then I’d point out that it was his deputy duty to help me nail the bank-robbery accomplice. I should have just called him before.