It wasn’t easy, and it was boring. The three boys worked hard for two hours, sitting at a long table in the C.W. Willson Public Library and poring over area telephone books. Finally, Terry kneaded his forehead. “My eyes are sore, I’m getting a headache, and I’m sick of staring at numbers.”
Casey looked at his friends. For them to give up even five minutes of their Friday night fun was a real sacrifice. It showed they really did care, just as much as he did, that the Hate Cell thugs got caught. “Let’s give it half an hour more. If we don’t find it by then, we’ll quit.”
Kevin yawned and stretched his arms. “And head to the Rec Hall for something to eat and drink, right?”
“Right,” Terry agreed, and Casey nodded.
They had figured out a few things. The number didn’t belong to Fraserville or its suburbs — each area had its own first three digits, and each town had its own first three digits, but things were different in the farm areas, and that was where this number must be. Before they had started, Casey had called the number from the library payphone and gotten voice mail that gave the phone number and “Leave your message after the beep” in a man’s flat voice.
At the end of half an hour Terry and Kevin put on their jackets.
“I’ll be right along,” Casey told them. “I’m going to ask Mrs. Phipps if she has any ideas.”
When he told the librarian what he was looking for, she said, “Well, it could be an unlisted number — that’s the most likely thing. Or you boys might have missed it. How important is it that you find this number?”
“Very, very important, Mrs. Phipps.”
“Well, I can’t let you into the library computer, but if you tell me why you need the number, I’ll scan down the list of people with library cards. There are about two-hundred and fifty names.”
“It has to do with who almost killed Mr. Deverell,” Casey said.
“Oh, I see. That was such a terrible thing. And those other incidents! The whole town’s boiling. Stay around for a few minutes after closing time and I’ll have a look.”
Casey went back to the phone books. He found a number that was exactly the same except for the last digit and called it on the payphone. There was no answer.
“No luck, Casey,” Mrs. Phipps said after the library closed.
“Thanks so much for trying,” he told her. “I’ll keep you posted.”
It was twenty-five after nine by the time Casey left the library. He didn’t feel like going to the Rec Hall. Instead he wanted to go home. Casey had thought it would be a breeze to find the number, but it hadn’t been. So now what?
As soon as Casey got home, he went up to his room. When he passed Hank’s bedroom, he heard his brother yelling at the computer. He was sure Hank could find who belonged to the phone number. His brother could unearth just about anything. But again Casey hesitated. Letting Hank in on what he was up to might freeze him out of the investigation, especially since his brother was doing research for the police. He would have to take a chance, though. Casey made himself a cheese sandwich, took out a can of cola, went back upstairs, flopped into a chair near Hank, and offered his brother half of the sandwich.
Hank took the sandwich and wolfed it down. “You’re back early. I’m just on my way out.”
“Stay, Hank. I need some help.”
“What kind?”
“Computer kind. If all I have is a rural Alberta phone number, how can I find whose it is and where they live?”
Hank shot Casey a knowing look. “Is this something to do with that letter? She writes you from Edmonton, but she lives around here, right?”
“You’re so smart. Can you do it?”
“Not legally.”
Casey wrote down the number. “When has that ever stopped you before?”
“What’s in it for me?”
Casey thought for a moment. “I’ll clear the supper table and do the dishes by myself every day for a month. And very soon I’ll tell you all about who she is and how come she and I are working together.”
“You’re on!”
“Only one thing,” Casey added, “you might find yourself in a sort of conflict-of-interest situation.”
“I’ll worry about that when it happens. Now go away. I’ll call when I’ve got it, and I’d like another cheese sandwich, please, but this time with tomatoes, lettuce, and mayo.”
Casey went downstairs, made another sandwich, brought it up to Hank, then returned to the living room, where his parents were watching television. His parents waved at him but didn’t say anything. They were too wrapped up in the movie they were watching. In no time at all, though, Hank was shouting for him, and he rushed back upstairs.
As it turned out, the number belonged to an Alfred W. Sorum. Hank wrote out the site and rural route numbers for Casey on a slip of paper and gave it to him.
“Thanks a lot, Hank!”
“It was easy as pie,” Hank said. “And real soon I get told everything about that girl, right?”
Casey nodded.
Hank put on his jacket and headed off for other challenges at the Ducks and Drakes. Casey heard him rev up his motorcycle and roar away.
On Tuesday of the next week Casey finally got a chance to tell Hank part of what was going on and to persuade him to make the phone call to Millie Anne Brighton in White Rock. This time he had to agree to make Hank’s bed until Christmas and pay for the long-distance call when Hank got his cell phone bill. He gave Hank the number, and his brother punched it out on the phone.
“Why don’t you go do something, Casey?” Hank said. “I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
Casey left his brother’s bedroom, went to his own room, and flopped onto the bed. He thought about how costly this investigation was getting, how he was paying dearly in services for Hank, to say nothing of the time and money he was spending on various leads. A few minutes later Hank called him back into his bedroom.
“Well?” Casey asked, sitting on a chair.
“The woman thought I was absolutely nuts. When I finally convinced her that it was her duty as a good citizen to try to help, she said, ‘How am I supposed to remember one sale of six brass screws someone bought all that time ago?’ So I asked her, ‘Have you got a computer? I could send you her picture by email.’ That seemed to make her think this wasn’t some kind of stupid joke. So she said, ‘Yeah, I have a computer,’ and she gave me her email address. So I’m going to send her the sketch of Elsie Tavich and we’ll see what happens.”
Hank scanned the sketch and emailed it to Millie. About half an hour later they got an answer. Millie Anne Brighton didn’t remember seeing the woman in the sketch, and try as she might, she couldn’t recall selling anybody six long brass screws. Dead end, or so it seemed.
“Want to come up to Edmonton tomorrow, Casey?” his dad asked when Casey stopped by his parents’ bedroom to say good-night the next Friday. “I thought we’d call Jake and Billy, try for some Oilers hockey tickets, and look for a TV for your bedroom. I agree it’s a better use of money than some fancy window covers. We’ll be leaving about nine in the morning tomorrow and we’ll be back pretty late if we get the tickets to the game. If we don’t, we’ll probably be back by six.”
Casey gave his mother a thumbs-up. “I’d love a TV, Dad. But I’ll trust you to choose one for me. I’ve got a couple of things I want to do here tomorrow. But say hello to the guys for me.”
His parents glanced at each other in surprise. This wasn’t like Casey. He had never turned down a chance to go to an Oilers game before.
“Well, all right,” his mother said. “Hank will be in charge.” She clicked off the television in the bedroom. “And there’s plenty to eat. We should say goodbye now in case you’re not up by the time we leave.”
“He’ll be up,” his dad declared.
“I will,” Casey promised.
But he almost wasn’t. He stayed up late, going over area maps he had gotten from his dad’s study. By two o’clock Casey knew exactly where Alfred Sorum’s place was and how to get there. He would phone Kevin and Jeff in the morning and set it all up. Casey wasn’t sure what he would do when they found the place. Maybe there would be no one there. And if people were there, how could he ever find out if they were part of the gang that had attacked Mr. Deverell?
Even though he had a few qualms about the whole business, he still figured things were going well, so he hunched the duvet over his shoulders, yawned, and fell fast asleep.
As expected, Hank wasn’t up when Casey’s parents left for Edmonton the next morning. Casey wondered for the umpteenth time why Hank always got to sleep in while he had to be up to wave goodbye to the old folks. Of course, Casey knew the answer to that. Long ago he had figured out why his dad paid so much attention to him. For the growing up of his other three sons, Chief Inspector Templeton had been very busy or away. For Casey he was now on the spot. Every day. Always. Casey had to be perfect or else. He sighed, knowing how far from perfect he was or ever would be. Still, today he was glad he had to get up, because that meant he had the house to himself to call Kevin.
“Jeff can’t get the car until around three this afternoon,” Kevin told him on the phone. “Like you said to, he told our folks your dad approved of where we’re going. But Jeff wants to know how long you figure to be gone and who’s going to pay for the gas. He’s spent ages figuring out routes and distances.”
Casey did some quick calculations. It was a good forty kilometres to the Sorum place. That would take over half an hour. Add the return trip with a stopover to check out the place — a minimum hour and a half. He told that to Kevin and that he would pay for the gas.
“Just a minute,” Kevin said. “I’ll check with Jeff.”
Casey waited. This meant he would have to go to the Old Willson Place on his own to measure the window, but there was little danger that his parents would return to Richford before he did even if they didn’t get the hockey tickets and arrived home by six. He should be back from the Sorum place well before that.
Kevin came back on the phone. “Jeff says okay. Be here at a quarter to three.”
“I’ll be there. Say thanks to Jeff.”
As Casey put on extra socks under his boots and pulled on a second sweater, he figured he would go to the Old Willson Place the same way he had that first night, and he would take his father’s metal tape measure. Then it occurred to him that the police might have locked up the house. If that was the case, he would have to measure the window from the outside, and he knew the window was too high for him to reach. What could he bring to stand on? The only thing light enough to haul all that way was the leather seat on a walking stick his dad carried in his golf bag — something called a shooting stick.
Soon he was well on his way to the Old Willson Place. This time he noticed there were a lot of new houses going up on the north edge of town. Even on Saturday trucks of all sorts lined the roads. With the new mall and all the house construction, Richford was truly booming. Casey was glad his parents had decided to buy right in the middle of Old Richford. He didn’t like the idea of everything being new with no big trees or high hedges. Then again he figured these new fancy houses probably had more than one bathroom. Oh, well, when his dad finally finished the basement guest room, at least they would have two.
Walking across the frozen field was no easier than it had been the last time, but now it was daytime and it wasn’t snowing, so he could see his way fine. And he could also drink in the spectacle of the woods on each side of the field covered in deep hoar-frost that sparkled in the sunlight under the bright blue sky. When he finally made it to the Willson gate, he paused for a moment, remembering his fall and the awful discovery of poor Mr. Deverell. For the thousandth time he wondered what his teacher had been doing here.
After verifying that the house was indeed locked up, Casey leaned the shooting stick under the building’s big front window and lifted one foot onto it. When he tried to step up with the other foot, the seat collapsed and so did Casey. He tried kneeling on the stick, but he needed both hands to balance himself against the house. Circling the yard, he spotted an old hand plough resting against an outbuilding. Casey figured he could dig the blade of the plough into the dirt under the front window and stand with one foot on each handle. However, when he tried to move the plough, it wouldn’t budge.
He went back and stood under the window, thinking he could make a pretty close estimate of the width of the window by placing the tape measure along the ground under it. When he did that, he discovered that the window was within a centimetre of what Sarah had told him the width should be. Should he let it go at that? It had to be this window. But Sarah had told him to be sure, and it would be crazy to go all the way out to the Sorum place if he wasn’t certain Mr. Sorum or someone there had ordered the drapes.
Casey pulled out a length of the measuring tape and slid it against the house parallel to the window. The tape arched back over him. He tried again. Now he had the end of the tape at exactly the top of the window. Keeping his eyes on where the bottom ledge of the window came on the tape, he lowered the tape and checked. There was absolutely no doubt now — this was the window!