Лори Касс - Cat With A Clue

Of course, there was one person I’d recently wanted to impress but upon whom I’d totally failed to make a positive impression. And I was uneasily certain the consequences were going to last a long time. Ash was still saying that his mom liked me just fine, but he was wrong about that; he just didn’t realize it yet.

“Seriously wrong,” I said out loud.

“Are you sure?”

I stopped my slow pedaling, squinted, and looked around. Had I really heard someone say something?

“Is ‘seriously wrong’ a proper term?”

It was a young voice, it sounded familiar, and it sounded like it was coming from the sky, which made no sense. I looked left and right and finally focused on where I was. Right in front of the oh-so-symmetrical house in which the prodigy Dana Coburn lived. Only where was he? She?

“Are there degrees of wrong?” Dana continued. “Or is modifying ‘wrong’ as nonsensical as modifying the word ‘unique’?”

“There’s no modifying ‘unique.’” I slid off the seat, straddled the bike, and looked up into a large maple tree.

“Glad to hear that.” Dana slid backward on a large branch until he—she—came up against the massive tree trunk. Sitting up, the child asked, “Is it always going to be painful to listen to people assault the English language? My mom says I’ll get used to it.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

Dana scrambled down the tree. “That’s not a satisfying answer.”

“No, but it’s an honest one.”

Two small feet hit the ground with a light and very Eddie-like thump . Dana ignored the dirt and bits of tree bark clinging to shirt and pants and faced me. “Explain, please.”

“Sure.” I leaned forward, putting my elbows on my handlebars. “You’ll grow accustomed to some things people say, maybe even most, but there will always be a few things that drive you batty.”

Dana nodded. “I understand. It makes me sad to hear anyone say ‘ain’t,’ but I attribute that to poor education. Hearing people say ‘kind of unique,’ however, makes me want to tear out their hair in large clumps.”

“You’re not alone,” I said.

“You’re not like my mom.” Dana grinned. “You don’t talk to me like I’m a little kid.”

“Well, you’re not mine. That makes it easier.”

“Mom’s always after me to comb my hair and wash my hands.” Dana looked down at the former tree parts still clinging to shirt and pants. “She wants me to wear dresses to Sunday dinner.”

“Moms will do that,” I said, wondering why, now that I had a solid answer to the female or male question, I was so satisfied. It was very possible that I put too much importance on gender. Did it matter so much to attach a pronoun to someone?

“I wish she wouldn’t do so much of it.” Dana kicked at the bottom of the tree. “All she wants to do is change me.”

It was a feeling I understood well, but I also knew that Dana’s mom was doing her best. Which meant it was best that I divert the conversation immediately.

“So I talked to Rianne Howe the other day,” I said. “Have you ever been in the back office of Benton’s?”

Dana’s face lit up. “You’ve been there? I’ve only read about it. Is the ship’s wheel still there?”

For once, she sounded like a normal kid. “I bet Rianne would let you give it a spin, if you asked. Especially since you know so much about her family.”

“No, that’s okay.” Dana’s expression went suddenly still. “I don’t like . . . I mean . . . I don’t go . . .”

Her voice trailed off and her words rose into the treetop and wafted away. Clearly, I’d wandered into territory where I didn’t belong. “Anyway,” I said easily, “the wheel is still there. And there are model ships all over the place. Maps of the lakes, too.”

Dana, who had been studying the tops of her shoes, looked up at me. “Charts. Navigation maps are charts. Are they recent or old ones?”

“No idea,” I said. “Why?”

“The older the chart, the more valuable it is as a collectible.”

I squinted, trying to remember, but gave up quickly as to not tax my limited mental faculties. “They looked very chartlike is all I can say.”

Dana shoved her hands into her pockets. “It would be unlikely that they’re old, given the circumstances.”

“What circumstances are those?”

The kid tipped her head to one side. “Perhaps I didn’t tell you. My mother came into the room before I could completely finish describing the last few years of Talia DeKeyser. Mom says this part is gossip, anyway.”

Before she could go all ethical on me, I jumped in. “Talia’s great-niece was killed. A store has been broken into, along with the library and the bookmobile. Any information might be helpful.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Dana glanced toward her house, then back at me. “As you know, Talia DeKeyser spent the last few months of her life at the nursing home.”

I nodded.

“One of the reasons Talia DeKeyser’s children had her moved to the home was”—Dana looked at the house again—“that she was giving everything away.”

I didn’t grasp why anyone would care what Talia did with her possessions. Then I clued in. “Everything? Heirlooms, you mean?”

Dana nodded. “They weren’t valuable things, just family items. It was when she tried to give the mail carrier a vase that their great-grandmother DeKeyser had brought over from Europe that the daughters caught wind of what their mother was doing.”

“Alzheimer’s,” I murmured, and Dana agreed.

“From my research, I gather that it can be hard to detect when it is late onset, which Talia DeKeyser’s obviously was. I can imagine that it’s easy to attribute forgetfulness to age instead of to consider more dire implications.”

Though I’d already grown accustomed to hearing an adult vocabulary and sentence structure come out of a child, it was a jolt to hear her understand the reluctance to diagnose an elderly parent with a difficult and devastating disease. Not only was the kid bizarrely intelligent, but she also had empathy.

I looked at Dana, wondering if she’d been born this way or if something had already happened in her short life that had instilled that difficult emotion. It was hard to be empathetic; sympathy and pity you could assuage with a check to an appropriate nonprofit foundation. Empathy, though. That could spur you to acts of—

“Minnie? Hi!” Jenny Coburn came out of the house and down the center of the front steps. “How nice to see you. Dana, did you want to invite Ms. Hamilton inside? It’s getting dark; the mosquitoes will be out soon. If you’d like to keep talking, why don’t you come in?”

Dana and I shared a look. I wouldn’t have minded getting to know my young new friend a little better, and I had the feeling she felt the same about me, but doing so under the watchful eye of Mom would be difficult.

“That would be nice,” I said, “but I have to get going. Things to do, socks to wash. All that.”

“Okay. See you later.” Dana walked off to the house, going up the steps the same way her mother had come down them: exactly in the center.

Jenny looked after her, frowning a little, then turned back to me and smiled brightly. “It’s hard to remember what time it is, the sunset is so late up here this time of year. I’m sure she didn’t mean to be rude; she’s just tired.”

I blinked. I hadn’t thought anything about Dana’s abrupt departure and didn’t know what to say. Happily, Jenny kept talking, and I didn’t have to say anything.

“It’s so nice that you’re making friends with Dana. That’s the one thing about this neighborhood; no children.”

I glanced around at the stately homes, most owned by the same families for generations. “Aren’t there grandchildren running around all summer?”