Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer [80]
I heard something. The sharp smack of metal striking wood. The noise came again and again. Increasing in intensity until a rhythm was established.
The pressure on my shoulders eased slightly.
‘May,’ whispered Devereux.
I realized what the noise was. Dancing shoes. May was dancing. With tears streaming down her cheeks, May Devereux was performing her competition routine to distract her own father.
Devereux was instantly transfixed. The real world was forgotten. The current crisis took a back seat to the talent competition.
‘Come on, honey,’ he said. ‘Head up, back straight.’
May danced like she had never done before, somehow finding coordination in her flashing feet. The noise of her hard shoes silenced the crowd as they realized that something special was happening.
Devereux’s head bobbed along with the routine. ‘Two three four five six seven, and heel toe. Fingers crossed now, honey.’
Devereux held his breath. The click kick was coming. May had never managed this in her life. Tonight she did. Her legs flashed straight as rulers one metre straight up, heels smacking together on the descent. She finished with a deep bow.
Gregor Devereux ran across the stage, dragging me with him. He glared at the judges seated in the first row.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
Sister Julie B. Winters, the chief judge, looked to her co-judges for support. When none came, she spoke haltingly. ‘Good… I mean excellent presentation. Nice technique and form. Impressive click kick. I would say, definitely, first place. First, no doubt about it.’
Devereux’s face cracked with relief. A mountain of stress lifted from his shoulders. ‘You won, honey. We won. It was all worth it. All the practice. All the… everything.’ He turned back to the judges. ‘Where’s the trophy? Isn’t there a trophy?’
Sister Julie picked up the marble trophy at her feet, passing it into the waiting hands of Gregor Devereux.
Gregor Devereux’s hands were empty and waiting to receive it because he had put me aside.
Cassidy should have had him, or any one of a hundred adults in the wings, but they didn’t because my mother never gave them the chance. The text of my presence had reached her mobile phone from one of the mothers’ circle. She had immediately jumped into the car and driven to the hall. At the exact moment Gregor dropped me she was barging through the crowds in the wings. When Mam found out what was going on, she pulled a curtain-rail sampler from her shoulder bag and charged Gregor Devereux, who had a twenty-centimetre and thirty-kilo advantage over her.
Devereux was in the act of hoisting May’s trophy when a thirty-centimetre length of cherry wood struck him on the temple, swung with the strength of motherhood. Devereux pirouetted once, then dropped like a sack of potatoes.
May flung herself on his chest, sobbing.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the only girl who had ever liked me. ‘It was the only way.’
May raised her head long enough to say the words that have haunted my dreams since that night.
‘What my daddy did was bad,’ she said, her bleary eyes like dark stones under water. ‘But what you did tonight was worse.’
Maybe I could have persuaded her otherwise, but my mother smothered me in her arms and the moment was lost.
Now it is too late. Now May hates me for life. Join the queue.
EPILOGUE
My name is Moon. Fletcher Moon. And I’m not sure if I want to be a detective any more.
It has been almost a month since the talent competition fiasco. It was big news for a while, thanks to over a hundred amateur video and phone recordings. I even made the national news. So much for undercover work. Not that it mattered. I was finished with investigative work. May was hurt. Wounded. I never wanted to do that to someone again. Her mother had left her and now, in a way, her father was gone too. Gregor Devereux was no longer the shining knight that every dad should be. All because of me.
My parents read me the riot act and watched me so closely that I couldn’t take on any cases even if I wanted to. Mam checked my room a dozen times a night to make sure that I was still here.