He could see Ben outside, talking to Cass by the bush with the creamsicle orange roses. Cass had one skinny leg twisted around the other. Ben wore a stupid grin.
Justin had already scuffed down the road with a big wet spot on his shirt.
Cody flumped down on the couch. He needed to think, but there was that book, open again. He hesitated, then closed the book about killing birds.
What had just happened? It was like one second he wasn’t even thinking and the next second—tingle!—he’d opened his mouth and blurted out, “She’s coming!” He opened and closed his mouth now to see if the hat would make him talk again, but it didn’t.
Dad always said there was a logical explanation for everything. Maybe Uncle Paul, who was a real person, not a hat, was behind the tingly messages.
That would be sort of logical.
Cody pushed the hat back on his forehead and walked into the kitchen.
The refrigerator hummed hello, but he wasn’t looking for a snack. Instead, he studied the picture on the front of the postcard stuck to the refrigerator door with a smiley magnet. It still looked like a platter with a lid—and for sure fried chicken underneath.
“Detective Dobbs,” he whispered. A good detective wouldn’t be distracted by a platter of fried chicken.
When he tugged on it, the smiley magnet fell and rolled under the refrigerator. But the postcard stayed where it was. Stuck. He had to peel it off. It’d been hanging there so long, it was used to the spot.
When he turned it over, the message on the back was in pencil. Faded bad. The handwriting? Seemed as if he’d seen it before—but lots of people wrote sloppy.
He struggled to read the words. “Some…good stuff…happening out…here.” The letters slanted back. Maybe his uncle was left-handed like him. “Think I’m…finally on the…right track! More details soon.”
In the very bottom corner it said, “Hang in there, Shotgun!”
“Who’s Shotgun?” Cody whispered. “And how come you never sent the details?”
He shoved the postcard under the hatband, put the hat on, and opened the fridge. He had to think, but he needed a snack first.
“Most moms wouldn’t let a kid wear a hat inside the house,” Mom said when she walked into the kitchen. But she didn’t make him take it off.
“All right, Cody,” she said as she cooked supper. “No moms would let a son wear that hat at the dinner table. Put it back in the closet before Dad gets home.”
Instead he snuck it up the stairs to his room—no hats at the table, that was the main thing. He hung it on one of the carved pineapple bedposts—his bed had been Mom’s when she was a kid.
“Wait here,” he told the hat.
Dad came home, took off his coveralls, and scrubbed the grease off his arms at the kitchen sink. They ate supper. Watched TV.
The hat was waiting for Cody when he went up to bed. “Hi, hat.”
He pulled off his shirt and practiced a superhero pose in the mirror. “Wait!” He put on the hat carefully and did it again. “Super detective!” He sucked his stomach in until his ribs stuck out.
Suddenly, he was sure his uncle was skinny too. Not regular skinny, but skinny-bone-skinny. Totally not like Dad, the Big Beluga.
Was the hat showing him his uncle, or was he remembering stuff from before he was three years old? Seemed like the uncle in his head was walking down their driveway get-out-of-here fast, and someone was yelling at him.
Cody opened his eyes in the dark of the hat, his heart pounding.
He took the hat off, put on his pj’s, and dove into bed.
He was still seeing the uncle in his head when a voice boomed, “Good night, Sport!”
“Aaaah!” Cody sat straight up in bed.
Dad filled the door. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He drummed his palms on the door frame, then stopped. Looking at the hat, he sighed. “Look what you’ve got.” He came into the room and lifted the hat off the bedpost.
Cody pulled his knees up so Dad would sit, but he didn’t. “That’s Uncle Paul’s hat.”
“Yup.” Dad turned the hat in his hands. “I see you have the postcard too. Be careful with it, okay? It’s all we’ve got, at least till he sends another one.”
“I will.”
Dad knuckle-rubbed the top of Cody’s head. “You two share a birthday, you know.”
“And a name. Only backwards.” Cody pointed at his own chest—“Cody Paul”—then at the hat—“Paul Cody. We’re exact opposites.”
Dad shook his head. “Thank God for that. Two Paul Codys in one family? Disaster.”
Cody rested his chin on his knees. “Is Uncle Paul left-handed, like me?”
“Sure is.” Dad gazed at the loaded shelf over Cody’s bed. “And you both like comic books.”
“Manga!”
Dad turned the hat in his hands. “Your uncle picked this up at the Goodwill on Mabry, wore it to a job interview I got for him.” One corner of his mouth perked up in a sort-of smile. “I could’ve killed him. Who hires a long-haired guy in a Goodwill hat?”
“He didn’t get the job, huh?”
“Believe it or not, he did. He lasted two whole days, then hit the road.”
The image of his skinny uncle walking fast down the driveway flashed in Cody’s head. Was Dad the one doing the yelling?
Dad pulled the postcard from the hatband and read the scribbled writing: “…finally on the right track.” The bedsprings chirped as Dad sat down. “You wouldn’t know the right track if it bit you.” Now Dad was talking to the hat too. “I tried so hard to keep you out of trouble.”
“Like Ben keeps me out of trouble?”
Dad snorted. “With you two it’ll be the other way around.”
“Ben’s responsible.”
“Like when he almost got both of you killed over Christmas break?”
“He wasn’t trying to get us killed. The boat just ran out of gas and it got dark and the wind was blowing the wrong direction.”
Dad shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder if having Ben watch you this summer is a good idea.”
“Yeah, I can pretty much take care of myself.”
Dad slapped his knees. “Question is, who’ll look out for Ben?”
“All right!” Dad gave Cody a quick hug, then stood. “You’re in charge.” He jammed the card back into the hatband and tossed the hat at the bedpost. It caught, spun, and then wobbled to a stop. “Check in, Paulie,” Dad said, pointing at the hat. He turned off the light and left the door open a crack like always, so light from the hall could sneak in.
Cody lay back. What if Ben disappeared like Uncle Paul? Ben always said he wanted to go someplace.
Cody turned and knocked on the wall, thump, thump. Two knocks was how the brothers said good night, and how Cody got Ben’s attention when he had a nightmare. Ben wasn’t in bed yet; Cody could hear him in his room, messing around.
Ben didn’t thump back.
Cody knocked again, louder.
“Aren’t you getting a little old for this?” Ben called.
“I’m only six.”
“For seven—make that six—more days.” Ben knocked twice. “Go to sleep now, little bro.”
Cody flopped onto his back and looked up. A giant vampire bat was swooping across the ceiling!
He almost yelled. Good thing he didn’t. It was just a hat shadow from the light coming in from the hall.
But it looked like a bat.
He knocked softly, one last time.
“We already did that!” Ben called.
“Just double-checking!” Cody closed his eyes.
The bat on the ceiling hovered over him all night long.