Curiosity was getting the best of me after seeing the police cars at Broderick’s. I tried to push it aside and concentrate on picking out a movie but in the end I just went along with one Dad suggested. It didn’t matter anyway, since I couldn’t keep my mind on it once we were back home and it was playing.
When the phone rang halfway through the movie I jumped up to get it.
“Never mind stopping the show,” I told Dad as I saw him reach for the remote control, “I’ll just catch up when I get back.” The truth was I had only a vague idea of the story line anyway. I grabbed the phone on the third ring, hoping it might be Betts calling to tell me the latest local news. Instead, it was Greg’s voice that I heard after I’d said “Hello.”
“I’m at work,” he told me quickly. “The gas bar was held up a little while ago and the police have taken Amber to the station to get a statement from her. Mr. Broderick wanted to go down there too, so he asked me to come in.”
“Held up? You mean it was robbed?” I was shocked. We’ve had a few break and enters in Little River, but this was the first time I’d ever heard of a business being robbed. “What happened?”
“Amber was working tonight when someone came in wearing a mask. He held a gun to her and demanded all the cash. I don’t know much more than that about it.”
“A gun!” I could hardly believe it. “That’s horrible. She must have been scared out of her mind.”
“Probably. She was already gone when I got here so I haven’t talked to her. Mr. Broderick was anxious to get to the station and just gave me a quick rundown of what had happened.”
“Poor Mr. Broderick,” I thought aloud. “He’s such a nice old guy. Who would do something like that to him?”
“I don’t think that thieves are generally all that interested in whether the person they rob is nice or not.”
“I suppose not. Still, Mr. Broderick is well loved in this town. Maybe it was someone passing through, someone who didn’t know him.”
“Could be. But he said the person was on foot. That makes it sound like a local did it.”
“Or the getaway car was parked out of sight so the license plate number couldn’t be taken.”
“That’s possible. But there are ways to hide a license plate.” Greg seemed distracted all of a sudden. “And walking really increases the chance of being caught before you get away. Look, I’ve got to go now. There’s a customer coming in.”
We said goodbye and I went to fill Mom and Dad in on the latest news. They were as surprised as I’d been to learn that the police we’d seen earlier had been responding to a robbery. Mom laid aside her counted cross-stitch work and told Dad she was going to see Mrs. Broderick.
“I don’t think she should be alone right now,” she explained. “She’s probably feeling a bit scared and unsettled by this whole thing. I’ll go over and stay with her until her husband gets back from the police station.”
Mom is like that. Most people who might think of going over to the Broderick’s house at a time like that would only be doing it to see what they could find out. Not Mom. She was genuinely worried about the older woman and wanted to make sure she was okay.
Shortly after that there was a knock at the door and I found Betts standing there, her eyes all lit up with excitement.
“Did you hear?” she gasped rushing into the kitchen. “Broderick’s gas station was robbed a while ago.”
She was clearly disappointed when I told her that I already knew about the robbery. Betts likes to be the first one to know about things. I guess it makes her feel important to tell news to someone who hasn’t heard it yet. I’m not sure why that is, but it explains why it’s so hard for most folks to keep a secret. Mom always says that if you can’t keep a secret yourself, it shouldn’t surprise you if the person you told it to can’t keep it either.
I learned the truth in that a few years ago. I learned it the hard way, too.
One of our teachers at school had given us an assignment to teach us about being entrepreneurs. We had to come up with our own moneymaking projects, carry them out, and then write up a financial report.
Everyone had different ideas of what to do. Some kids organized car washes and yard sales and stuff like that. Others sold tickets on different things. Mine was a ticket draw too, but a bit different from the ones where you just put all the slips of paper in a bag and haul one out.
What I did was fill a big old jar that Mom found for me with all sorts of candies. It took a lot to fill it, and I had to count them, which took forever because I kept losing track and had to start over. Anyway, when I was done, I sold tickets where people guessed how many candies there were in the jar. The winner would be the person who came closest to the actual number.
Well, Betts wasn’t going to buy a guess, because we figured it would look suspicious if she happened to win, seeing as she’s my best friend and all. And because of that, she kept pestering me to tell her how many candies the jar held.
I finally gave in and told her, then swore her not to tell a soul. The very next day, when I had my display set up outside the cafeteria, Molly, who was a friend of ours, came along and bought a ticket. Her guess was the exact number in the jar.
I was suspicious right away, because I knew she’d been over to Betts’s house the night before. I cornered Betts and after a bit of badgering she admitted that she’d told Molly.
When I asked her why she did it, she just said that Molly had insisted that she wasn’t interested in buying a ticket, so it had seemed safe to tell her.
As cross as I was with Betts, I had to admit that none of it would have happened if I hadn’t told her in the first place. The whole thing was a big mess then, because I couldn’t give it to Molly even though she had the right number. I talked it over with Dad and he suggested I toss in a few more candies so that her answer wouldn’t be right. That seemed almost like cheating, but I reminded myself she’d cheated too. I put in some more jellybeans, and when the tickets were all sold there was another answer closer to the new total.
You’d think that a person who’d done what Molly did wouldn’t have anything to say about it, but she was furious. She came to my locker after school and demanded to know why she hadn’t won. I asked her what made her so sure her guess was right, and after stammering and stuttering she walked away. That was pretty much the end of our friendship.
Now when I’m tempted to tell anyone something I don’t want spread around, I remind myself of the candy jar and I keep it to myself.
Of course, that’s not the same thing as news like the holdup at Broderick’s. A story like that will fly around with lightning speed.
It was the turn the story took that was the real surprise.