Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer [61]
‘Right, missy,’ he said, trying for the same impatient tone that Murt had used. Trying but not succeeding. Mr Devereux sounded a note below terrified. ‘After Sergeant Hourihan has finished with you, provided you are not in a jail cell somewhere…’
April cupped her mouth. ‘Hello, Earth calling Father,’ she said, brazenly. ‘I’m a minor, remember.’
This latest cheek gave April’s dad courage. ‘Well, good, we won’t have the jail problem, then. Which is just as well, because you’ll be away. On holidays. For a month.’
April’s brazen look fell away. ‘Where?’
Mr Devereux squared his shoulders resolutely. ‘Your grandmother’s.’
April screamed long and shrill. ‘Granny’s! The farm! But they give me chores! There’s no TV or Internet!’
‘Good,’ said Mr Devereux, a bit shakily.
I felt the sooner April got on that bus the better, before her dad lost his resolve. ‘You don’t mind if April misses some school, do you, principal?’
Mrs Quinn seemed preoccupied. ‘Now I’ll have to change those boys’ pictures in their files. April’s too. I had her down as a little angel, but that was all wrong. I’ve never had to change a picture before.’
‘I’ll take that as a no.’
Mercedes patted April’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll chair the meetings. And I’ll tape Question Time for you.’
April slapped away her friend’s hand.
‘I am the president. Nobody chairs the meetings but me.’ She stood, straightening her pink corduroy skirt. ‘I’m just going to leave now. You grown-ups need a while to think about your decision.’
Mr Devereux’s nostrils flared. ‘You are going nowhere. I’m putting my foot down this time.
April walked off the patio. ‘Of course you are, like the last million times.’
‘You get back here,’ shouted Mr Devereux, with a hint of desperation in his voice. ‘You are not in control here, April!’
Murt was losing patience fast. ‘I have somewhere else to be, sir. So either you control your little girl or I will.’
The adults followed April around the side of the house to where the cars were parked. Red and I crept out from behind the decking to watch the action.
April had climbed into the family car and locked the door behind her. Her little face was wrinkled with determined fury.
Her father rapped on the window.
‘Open the door, April. Right now!’
April wrapped her thin fingers round the wheel. ‘I’m going home, Daddy. You can come when you’ve calmed down.’
This statement did nothing to calm Daddy down.
‘You’re what? In my car? You don’t even know how to drive! I swear if you put so much as a fingerprint on my baby, you’ll spend the next year at my mother’s.’
Obviously the car was Mr Devereux’s weak spot.
April was not impressed.
‘Oh, grow up, Daddy. It’s just a hunk of metal.’
‘But you don’t know how to drive!’ shouted Mr Devereux, the tendons taut in his neck.
‘How hard can it be?’ said April, turning the key which her father had thoughtfully left in the ignition. ‘I’ve watched you a thousand times.’
‘April! Turn off the engine!’
Murt thought all of this was hilarious, until he noticed the squad car was directly in April’s path.
‘Now listen here, missy,’ he said sternly.
But April couldn’t see or hear him. The engine noise smothered his words. April wrestled the automatic gear stick to ‘drive’ and let off the handbrake. Two seconds later, the Devereux four-wheel drive rolled into Murt’s squad car at ten miles an hour. Plenty fast enough to do almost twelve thousand euro worth of damage.
April had just enough time to see the looks on the adults’ faces before the airbag wrapped itself around her.
THE PROMISE
We returned to Chez Sharkey flushed with victory. Though Red may have been flushed from carrying me on the back of his bike all day. Genie was at my computer again, downloading songs from an Internet pirate site.
‘That’s illegal,’ I said.
‘So are you,’ she said. A good point.
‘Where’s Papa?’ asked Red, a little nervously. He had himself all psyched up to talk about the promise he had made to his mother.
Genie slipped a recordable CD into the drive. ‘He’s out. Working.’
‘Where?’
‘I can’t talk in front of