CRIME NUMBER TWO
Approaching the school, Justin saw only Kate and Chip on the playground. When Luther emerged from behind a hibiscus bush, he breathed a sigh of relief. The only unusual thing was that Luther wasn’t wearing a shirt, and clutched a large bundle to his chest.
Kate opened the car door for Lily, and with a quick wave at Justin, took the little girl by the hand and hurried off. Chip and Luther squeezed into the passenger seat together.
“Buckle up,” Justin snapped. He didn’t need to ask what Luther had bundled in his T-shirt. There was a big white ear poking through the neck hole. “And put that thing down on the floor out of sight.”
As they drove past the scene of the crime, Justin saw the maroon station wagon parked out front. “Did you get out of there without anyone seeing you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Chip and Luther answered in unison, and giggled.
“For sure? Grimsted didn’t see you?”
“No, no!” Now the boys were laughing like lunatics.
Justin felt like giggling, too, out of sheer relief. Then he glanced in the rearview mirror. What he saw almost caused him to have a heart attack. A police cruiser was coming up behind them.
Ahead, the light turned red. Justin had no choice but to stop.
“There’s a police car behind us. Quit laughing!” Justin said to the two boys. “Just try to act normal.”
Chip and Luther sat up in the seat and looked straight ahead.
The cruiser pulled up behind them.
Justin felt a trickle of sweat run down his forehead. The light turned green and he eased out into the intersection, shifting smoothly like his dad had taught him.
As soon as they were halfway down the next block, the police car whipped past them and sped on ahead.
“Oh, man.” Justin let out the breath he’d been holding. “That was close.”
Justin left Chip, Luther, and the rabbit at the Old Place. Then he returned his dad’s car. The poker game was still going strong. Charlie barely looked up when Justin handed him the keys. All he said was, “Glad you made it back okay. Tell your sister I’ll be by after a while to take her to the movies.”
Justin stopped at Brad’s house to check on the mockingbird eggs, which hadn’t hatched yet. He hung around awhile, then biked home.
As soon as he got to the house, he went into Kate’s room and asked, “What happened at Grimsted’s after I left?”
“He came home and—”
“He saw you?”
“No. He—Look, Dad’s here. I’ll tell you later!” Kate promised, and dashed out the door.
Justin asked Chip but he just shrugged and said nothing happened. Chip could be the blabbiest kid on the block when you wanted him to keep a secret, but if it was something he didn’t want to talk about, there was no way to get it out of him. All Chip wanted to talk about was the rabbit.
“What did you do with him?” Justin asked.
“We let him go,” Chip said.
“You let him go? You risked getting caught to rescue the stupid rabbit, and then you let him go?”
“We put him in the pen with Little Billy,” Chip explained. “But he found a hole and hopped out. Then he hopped back in again. He doesn’t really need a cage, you know. Wild rabbits don’t have cages.”
“They need food and water.”
“He can drink Little Billy’s water. And there’s lots of grass. He likes the feed we gave Little Billy. You know how when goats eat they move their chin like this?” Chip jerked his chin up and down to show how goats eat, as if Justin hadn’t seen their own goats eat a million times. “When they do that, they drop some. The rabbit ate all the grain Little Billy dropped.”
Chip rolled over on his bed and was quiet for a while. Then he added, “I think all that time Little Billy and the rabbit were in that dark garage together, they got to be friends.”
Chip was asleep when Kate came home, but Justin was still awake. He was trying, without much success, to keep his mind on a math problem that he had read over about four times and still didn’t get. He heard Kate stop in the living room to talk to Mom, who was watching TV.
“Hi, honey. How was the movie?”
“Okay, I guess. It was a cop show, one with lots of car chases. That’s Dad’s main thing, you know. Fast cars.”
“That’s true,” Mom said.
“I wish he’d ask me what movie I’d like to see sometime,” Kate said.
“You could suggest one.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kate said, starting down the hall to her bedroom. “I’m just glad he wants to take me places. And I liked the Chinese restaurant we went to for supper.”
Justin knew it bothered Mom that her work schedule didn’t allow her to spend much time with them. Kate should have realized that mentioning that Dad did have time to take her to the movies would make Mom feel worse. But he didn’t get a chance to point out to Kate how she had probably hurt Mom’s feelings. As soon as Kate saw he was awake, she crept into his room like she had a big secret to impart.
“Guess what?” she whispered.
“What?”
She glanced over at the twin bed in the corner, and seeing that Chip was sound asleep, started talking in a low voice. It sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “When we got to the movies, Dad came around to open the car door for me, like he always does, and—”
“Ah, come on, Kate, I don’t want to hear about your dumb Dad date. Tell me—”
“No, listen, Justin.” Kate couldn’t hold back a giggle. “Dad saw these little black things rolling around in the floor of the car. He said, ‘Looks like somebody spilled chocolate-covered raisins.’”
“Oh no!” Justin put his head down on his desk in despair. So much for the perfect crime. It was just the sort of clue criminals always leave behind that allows the police to catch them.
Kate was still giggling. “He picked up a handful, and you should have seen his face! ‘Rabbit poop?’ he said, like he couldn’t believe his eyes. I said, ‘Come on, Dad. We’ll be late for the movie.’ He threw it away, but all the way to the theater he kept muttering, ‘How did rabbit poop get in my car?’”
“Evidence!” Justin groaned.
“He didn’t mention it after the movie. I think he forgot about it.”
“I hope so,” Justin said, wondering how he could possibly explain leaving rabbit poop in his dad’s car. “Now tell me what happened at Grimsted’s after I left.”
Kate picked up Justin’s hairbrush and started working the tangles out of her hair, which was all windblown from riding in the convertible with the top down. “Chip and Luther wouldn’t listen to me,” she told Justin. “They insisted on going back for the rabbit, and said if I didn’t help them they’d do it by themselves. That would’ve taken forever because they’re not tall enough to reach the window. Grimsted would have caught them inside for sure. The crates we used for steps were still inside the garage, so I boosted Chip up so he could climb in. He handed the rabbit out to me, and I passed it to Luther, who was on the other side of the fence. Then Chip climbed out. There wasn’t time to run, so we just scrambled over the fence and hid in the weeds.”
“Grimsted’s station wagon was there when I came back,” Justin interrupted. “Are you sure he didn’t see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean, you don’t think so? Did he or didn’t he?”
Chip turned over in his bed with a loud sigh. Justin and Kate froze. When their brother settled down again, his breathing slow and regular, they stepped out into the hall to finish their conversation.
“Well?” asked Justin.
“We heard him drive up. He started unlocking the garage door, but by then we were all on the other side of the fence.” Kate’s blue eyes sparkled as she remembered their narrow escape. “If he’d seen us, he would have come after us, don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
“When he saw that Little Billy and the rabbit were gone, he started swearing like, well, you wouldn’t believe what bad words he used. Then I guess he saw the milk crates—they were still inside. He flung one out the window, so hard it sailed all the way across the alley and crashed against the fence right on the other side of where we were hiding! The poor rabbit was SO scared.” Kate shivered. “So was I. All Grimsted had to do was look behind that fence.”
“It has gaps in it,” Justin remembered.
“I know. We waited until he went into his house, and then we took off …”
“He must’ve called the police,” Justin muttered.
“Probably,” Kate agreed. “But no one came by while we were at the playground. Just in case, though, I had Luther hide in the bushes with the rabbit until we saw you coming.”
“We were lucky,” Justin said. “Two crimes in one day was really pushing it!”