As Pops pulled into our driveway, my mother twisted in her seat to look at me. “Go inside, Howard,” she said. “And go to your room.”
Unbuckling my seatbelt, I headed into the house. Once my coat was hung up and bag dispatched on the floor, I went up the stairs to my room and shut the door. I waited a couple of minutes before creeping out onto the landing. I wasn’t an idiot. They were obviously going to discuss phase two of my punishment, and I needed all the information I could get before I mounted my counterargument.
The acoustics in the hallway were not ideal. I shimmied forward to the top step. Better, but not perfect.
Snatches of conversation volleyed up the stairs. I could hear enough to know the discussion had morphed into a fight. My mother said they’d “played along long enough” and I “didn’t live in reality.” My work took me to the seedy underbelly of Grantleyville Middle School. If that wasn’t reality, I didn’t know what was.
The back door slammed: Eileen was home. I heard her walk toward the living room, but she detoured for the stairs, redirected by the sounds of our parents’ argument. Spotting me on the top step, she grimaced.
“I’m assuming this is your fault.”
“I could make a case for it being Mr. Vannick’s,” I said.
She joined me at my post and ground a knuckle into my shoulder. “What did you do?” she asked.
“Got picked up doing a little B&E for a client.”
“Ugh,” she said. “Mom and Dad had better ground you good this time. You get away with murder around here.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face and huffed out a breath. “They’re deciding my fate as we speak.”
“I don’t know why I’m the only one who thought this was inevitable,” Eileen said. “Maybe this will get it through your head. You’re a kid, Howard, not a detective.”
“Artistflower461,” I said.
“Excuse me?” Eileen went still.
“The password for your computer. Don’t tell me I’m not a private detective.” Her face went white and then a very interesting shade of red.
“Oh, and I added Michael Anjemi’s cell phone number to your contacts list since you love him so much.”
“You. Are. The. Worst.” Eileen grabbed my head and stuffed it down between my knees before she stomped off to her room . . . presumably to change her password, not that it mattered.
I was the worst. I was the best. It all depended on your perspective.
I returned to my listening and was met with silence. I dove back into my room, not a minute too late. “Howard,” Pops called from the bottom of the stairs. “Please come down here.”
Taking my time going down the stairs, I ran through the possibilities. A grounding for sure—the folks couldn’t let a suspension go unanswered. No TV—I could live with that. Probably yard work; Pops hated it and passed it off at any opportunity. Sitting through a lecture was a given.
My parents sat on the couch in the living room. Fixing on my very best remorseful look, I hopped on to the loveseat facing them.
“Howard,” my mother said. “What happened today was very serious. Your father and I have discussed what further action needs to be taken here at home.”
Pops cleared his throat. “And what we’ve decided, your mother and I, is that you are no longer to do investigative work of any kind.”
I froze as shock rocketed through me. “You’re joking.”
“No, Howard,” my mother said. “We’re very serious. Your behavior has been unacceptable.”
Ignoring her, I turned to my father: Brutus Wallace. “You love my investigations. We talk about my cases all the time.”
He sighed. “I encouraged you when I believed it was a healthy outlet. You were so miserable this summer, with Noah moving and Miles—”
“Stop bringing him into it.” This was all excuses and double-talk. I thought my father knew that being a P.I. was more than a means to an end.
“We were happy to see you actively interested in something.”
“And now you want to take that away.” I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I swallowed down hard on the bile rising in my throat. They had no idea what they were doing to me.
“You behaved in a completely inappropriate and disrespectful manner today,” my mother said. “You have lost the right to be out playing detective.”
“I never played,” I snapped. “And I didn’t do anything Philip Marlowe wouldn’t have done.”
“Howard.” My father’s sharp tone made me jerk in my seat. “Philip Marlowe is not real. You are not in a story. Your actions have consequences.”
“I know that”—better than either of them.
“You’re almost thirteen. Today you behaved like an irresponsible child. You’ve given us no choice but to treat you like one.”
My mother reached beside her and pulled something brown on to her lap.
My coat.
“We’re getting rid of this,” she said and sniffed. “After I wash it.”
“So, that’s it. No discussion. No negotiation.” The rank taste of betrayal filled my mouth. Of all people, I thought my father understood my work. Understood me.
“You didn’t give us any choice, Howard,” he said. “You went straight to breaking and entering.”
“It wasn’t locked.”
“The fact that you’re still arguing that point proves we’ve made the right choice,” he said. Right choice for them. From my end, it was six shades of wrong.
“Where was Ivy during all of this?” my mother asked. “Should we be calling her parents?”
Ivy. The last thing she needed was more black marks on her record. Her father brought her to Grantleyville for a fresh start, and I’d provided a detour. So far, I’d managed to keep her out of hot water. If my parents bought my song and dance, maybe she could keep her new beginning.
“No,” I said. “Ivy had nothing to do with it. I already told Mrs. Rodriguez, I did this by myself.”
My mother was primed for further interrogation when my father gently set one hand over hers. “We’ll take your word for it,” he said. “Go back up to your room. We’ll call you for dinner.”
I took the stairs up at a snail’s pace. No use expending energy on speed. I had nowhere to be. The last few hours felt like a terrible chapter out of someone else’s life. One wrong turn had destroyed everything.
The phone rang, and my father picked it up. “Oh, hello, Ivy,” he said. I paused on the step.
“No, he can’t come to the phone right now. He’s grounded. Yes, you can call tomorrow. Maybe he’ll earn time off for good behavior. Bye-bye.” He hung up the phone and waved me upstairs. My stomach lurched. Now I had to figure out how to tell my partner she was out of a job.