Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [46]
What I need is some kinda proof that Greasy Al was about to break in and murder Troo.
I slide on my tummy to the end of the bed, tiptoe through the kitchen and out the back door. I’m trembling so hard that I can barely keep a hold of my under-the-covers reading flashlight when I take baby steps around the corner of the house. I need to make sure. I promised to keep Troo safe.
The bedroom window screen does look like somebody used their fingernails on it, but that’s not enough to convince Dave to call in the troops. I search harder. Lift up branches and run my hands over the grass, but I don’t come up with a pizza cutter or anything else sharp that Greasy Al coulda used to slice open our screen and Troo’s neck.
When I inch back around the corner of the house, worried that Molinari could still be lurking around, that’s when I see my sister. She’s not out here looking for me. She didn’t even notice I wasn’t lying next to her anymore. Sometimes in the night, she starts missing Daddy too much and thinks too long about how he’d still be here if she hadn’t accidentally killed him, so she’ll come out to the glider in the backyard and smoke a cigarette and rock really fast. I can’t let her know that I’m watching. I want to rush over and tell her that accidents happen, but the last time I tried that she shoved me down on the ground and kicked me. She didn’t mean to hurt me. She just can’t stand it if anybody sees her not pretending to be brave, not whistling in the dark. But tonight, Troo isn’t gliding and puffing away like usual. She’s lying on her tummy next to the vegetable garden, breathing in the dirt smell that Daddy always had on his overalls after a hard day in the field. I can hear some cursing mixed in with her crying. I want so bad to put my arms around her, but she’d hate it if I did. All I can do is slink back to our room on still shaky legs and wait.
By the time Troo comes back to bed, I think hours musta gone by. I wasn’t worried because I was sure she fell asleep out in the yard the way she does sometimes. But when she spoons me, she smells like something else besides baby powder and grass. I can’t put my finger on it. I know I’ve smelled it before, I just can’t remember where or when. It has a rusty odor.
I bolt up and ask her where she went, but she laughs and says, “What are you talkin’ about, numnuts? I been here the whole time. Go back to sleep.”
I wouldn’t even if I could. I’m sure that after she cried herself out in the backyard over Daddy’s being gone, she decided to believe me about pepperoni-reeking Greasy Al being outside our bedroom window. I bet she flew into the night, tryin’ to sniff him out. She might even try again. That’s why I’m gonna stay on my toes until I hear Mother wake up with the clanking of the milkman’s bottles to put on her face.
At the breakfast table, freshly shaved and smelling like starch, Dave tells me over crispy bacon and scrambled eggs, “Good news, Sally! Alfred Molinari was spotted in a park yesterday afternoon by the Racine police.”
“I . . .” I desperately want to tell my father that those cops should get their eyes tested. Let him know that if I hadn’t woken up last night, Molinari would’ve slid over our windowsill, stuffed Troo under his arm and took off to someplace where he could torture her in private before I was able to scream bloody murder. But in this sunny kitchen with the smell of just-cut grass coming through the window and the birds singing their hearts out and coffee percolating, I keep my lips zipped. Troo’d never talk to me again if I give Dave a clue to Molinari’s recent whereabouts. My sister doesn’t want Detective Rasmussen to be the one to catch Greasy Al. She needs to be the one who hangs him by his thumbs.
Dave flaps open the Milwaukee Sentinel and sticks his nose in the sports section, his favorite part. “Big game tonight,” he says.
He doesn’t mean that the Braves are playing out at County Stadium. He