Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [71]
“How? The hinges are on the inside.”
“Oh … yeah. I guess it’s going to remain a mystery.”
At least Jack hoped so.
“The other mystery is who’d do something so crummacious to Carson.”
Jack shrugged. “Someone who doesn’t like him, I guess.”
“Well, duh. Thanks for the news flash.”
Shaking his head and grumbling, he stalked off toward his first class.
Jack turned back toward the locker and found himself face-to-face with Weezy.
“‘Easy’ who?” he whispered.
She nodded. “You were right.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “You?”
Oh, crap.
He gave her an are-you-kidding? look. “What? A lowly frosh like me messing with Carson Toliver? I’d have to be crazy.”
Her gaze bored into him. “I suspected you were behind it. In fact I was almost sure you were behind it. It’s the kind of thing you’d be so into.”
She knew him. God, how she knew him.
“Well, yeah, it’s exactly the thing I’d have loved to do. You know, give the creep his comeuppance. But…” He shrugged. “You know.”
“I was watching you,” she said. “If there was anything in the locker, I wanted to see your reaction. If you’d known what was coming, I’d have been able to tell.” She glanced back at the dead possum on the floor. “But you looked as shocked as everyone else.”
True—but his shock was because of the hair band. Where in all of creation had it come from and how had it got around the possum’s neck?
“Well, I was. Too bad I canceled my bet with Eddie.”
“Yeah. You’d have earned an easy five.” She looked at him. “Just as well it wasn’t you, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Because then I’d have to consider you my knight in shining armor.”
Whoa. Not that that would be terrible or anything, but … whoa.
“Again, why?”
“Because if it was you, you’d have done it for me, right?”
“Uh, right.”
“And that would have changed things between us.”
Jack swallowed. “I kind of like things the way they are.”
She smiled. “Me too.” She looked at the locker again. “I still can’t figure out how anyone got past that lock without cutting it off or boring into the locker, and neither happened. What gives? I can’t imagine.”
Jack could.
The solution had been so simple he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it earlier.
“Only the Mystery Marauder knows.”
She was staring at him. “You’ve got this funny look on your face. Are you sure you had nothing to do with—?”
The bell for first period rang.
“Gotta move,” he said, giving her a little wave as he moved off.
Talk about being saved by the bell.
Instead of heading for class, he detoured toward the boys’ room to lock the window for the last time. As he entered he sensed someone following him. He turned and found Levi Coffin staring at him with wonder in his mismatched eyes.
“You got a talent,” he said, pointing a long, spidery finger. “Ain’t no doubt about it. I thought maybe you could think a lock open, but—”
“Think?”
“Yeah. You know, just think about pushin’ the innards around so’s everything’s lined up and bang, it’s open.”
“I wish.”
What was he talking about? Magic?
“But ain’t no amount of thinking was gonna open a lock with all that glue gunkin’ up its innards. So how’d you do it? What’s your talent?”
“I don’t have any talent. I swear.”
Levi stared at him. “Maybe you just don’t know about it yet, but you got one.”
Maybe he’s right, Jack thought.
Maybe it was simply not quitting. Maybe it was just hanging in there and looking at a problem every which way until he found a solution. Maybe his talent was seeing a solution where other people didn’t.
Like Toliver’s lock. The simplest thing, in hindsight. He’d removed it by sawing through the shackle, just as he’d done on the test locks at home. After putting the roadkill inside—on the way to the school he’d kept an eye out for a suitable specimen and hadn’t been disappointed—he resecured the locker with the leftover identical padlock he’d bought at Spurlin’s. Then he’d tacked it and glued it just as Toliver had. The result was indistinguishable from