10
NAME OF THE GAME
“Open it, open it!” Herculean said.
“I will. Give me a chance.”
Meat opened the wallet and peered inside.
“Get under the streetlight!”
Herculeah pushed him closer to the streetlight and peered over his shoulder.
“Can you make out the name?”
“Marcie ... Marcie Mullet.” Meat gave the words a ghostly reading. “Marcie Mullet.” Then he added, “Oh!” as if he had been stung.
“What?”
“One of the students didn’t show up.”
“If she was dead, she couldn’t.”
“I’m trying to remember what he said—just that it was a very funny person.” Meat shuddered.
“Address?” Herculeah asked briskly, getting back to business.
“Thirteen twenty-nine Broadview.”
“Broadview! Meat, you know where that is, don’t you? It’s just two streets over. Come on.”
“Where?”
“To Broadview! To Marcie Mullet‘s!”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t think I could stand to see a dead body one more time tonight.”
“But, don’t you get it? We go there to return the wallet. We knock at the door and ask for Marcie Mullet. If she comes to the door, she’s not dead. If she doesn’t come to the door ... well, we’ll worry about that when it happens. Come on.”
Meat followed Herculeah, but with such lack of enthusiasm that she had to turn around twice to say, “Come on. Listen, Meat, I’ve got to get home. My mother only let me go out to turn in the film, because I kept bugging her. Then I had to promise I’d go straight there.”
“You broke your promise.”
“I did not. I went straight there. It’s on the way home that I’m going a few blocks out of the way.”
As they turned onto Broadview, Herculeah began calling out the numbers. “Eleven-thirty ...
“Is it that late?” Meat asked, alarmed.
“No, that’s the number of the house. It’s going to be on the other side of the street—two blocks down.”
“Eleven ... twelve ... thirteen—this is the right block.”
Herculeah began walking even faster. She was so far ahead of Meat now that he just stopped and watched tiredly. He leaned against a lamppost for support.
Broadview didn’t live up to its name. The houses were close together; the street, narrow. The houses went up two and three stories with attics above, but now there were extra mailboxes on the porches to show multiple occupancy.
Herculeah danced her way down the block. Suddenly she stopped and turned to beckon to him. Meat walked slowly forward and stopped beside her. They looked up at the house together.
There were eight mailboxes on this porch, so the house must have been divided into eight small apartments.
“Come on,” she said.
She went up the stairs and peered at the nameplates on the mailboxes. “Marcie Mullet,” Herculeah read. “She’s number seven.” Herculeah flipped up the lid of the mailbox. “No mail.”
She tried the front door. When it opened, she turned her delighted face to Meat and signaled him to come on. He followed her into a small, dingy lobby. Perhaps it had once been the front parlor of the house. There were eight plastic buttons on the wall beside a desk. Herculeah punched number seven.
They could hear a buzzer sound upstairs, but nobody came down.
“Let’s go,” Meat said impatiently.
A man unfolded himself from a lean-back chair and peered at them. “Who’re you looking for?”
Meat gasped with fright, but Herculeah, again, seemed pleased.
“We’re looking for Marcie Mullet,” Herculeah told him. “Apartment seven. We’ve got something of hers we need to return.”
“Not in,” he answered.
“What time does she usually get in?”
“No telling.”
“Do you happen to know where she went tonight?”
The man thought about it. “Seems like she said she was going to some restaurant. What was the name of it? It’ll come to me.”
Herculeah couldn’t wait for him to remember. “Funny Bonz?”
Meat’s heart was in his throat as he waited for the answer.
The man smiled. “That’s it. Funny Bonz.”
Herculeah and Meat looked at each other. Neither had anything to say.
“If you want to leave something for Miss Mullet, I’ll see she get’s it.”
“No,” Herculeah said. “We need to see her. It’s sort of important.”
When they were on the street again, heading for home, Herculeah added, “It’s real important. In the morning first thing, we’ll come back to Broadview and—” She broke off. “No, first thing I’m going to pick up my photos. Meat, for some reason, those nineteen exposures are almost as much a mystery to me as Marcie Mullet. Anyway, after I see my photos, we’re off to Broadview.”
Meat said, “In the morning, first thing, we ought to call your dad.”
“ And tell him what? That you thought you saw a dead body? On April Fool’s Day?” She sighed with frustration. “If we had the body, I would already have called.”
“We have the wallet.”
“But what does that prove?”
Meat was silent.
“You know how my dad feels about my playing detective.”
“But that’s what you are doing.”
“Well, I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll call him, maybe I won’t. Satisfied?”
Meat was not satisfied at all, but he nodded.
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Right.”
It was a morning Meat did not look forward to. But then, he told himself, remembering the events of the evening, mornings are usually better than nights.
A small voice reminded him, Not always.