Lois Lowry: The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

Mr. DeVito's violin had cost four thousand dollars, and they had insurance on it. Mrs. DeVito had told Caroline once that she wished her husband's violin would be stolen; then the insurance company would pay them four thousand dollars, and they could buy a new living room set, and Mr. DeVito could get a job in the post office or something, like a normal person.

She didn't really mean that, though. She liked it that Billy's father played the violin in the Little Hungary Café. Some nights he brought home leftover food and they would light candles and pretend they were eating in a restaurant themselves, and he would play "Night and Day" on his violin, just for her. Someone who worked in the post office could never do that for his wife.

Caroline walked on down to the Laundromat on the corner. She loaded three machines, added detergent, put three quarters into each machine, and turned them on. The gray and white cat jumped down from the top of the drier where he'd been sleeping, and rubbed against her leg, purring.

"Hi, Cheery," said Caroline and scratched behind his ears.

No one knew whom the cat belonged to, or who fed him, or what his name really was. But the people who did their laundry at the Laundromat all called him Cheery, because he liked to roll in the little piles of spilled detergent on the floor; then he would jump on top of the drier and clean the detergent out of his whiskers and sneeze.

He didn't care what kind of detergent he rolled in. But it would have sounded stupid to call him All or Tide. So everybody called him New Blue Cheer. Cheery, for short.

Caroline glanced around to see who else was in the place this morning.

"Hello, Mrs. Kokolis," she called. "Are you starting to pack yet?"

Mrs. Kokolis smiled and kept on knitting. She was such a good knitter that she could talk and make complicated sweaters at the same time.

"Not yet," she said. "Soon, though."

Mr. and Mrs. Kokolis used to own the Greek restaurant across the street. They had come to the United States from Greece thirty years ago and had been saving, ever since their children grew up, to go back to Greece for a visit. Then Mr. Kokolis had died one day, very suddenly. He had been making stuffed grape leaves—his specialty—when he looked up, Mrs. Kokolis had told Caroline, and said, "Well. My goodness." Then he fell over and was dead, of a heart attack.

So Mrs. Kokolis was going to go back to Greece all alone. At least she said she was. But she never quite got around to doing it. She kept canceling her airline reservations.

"Soon, though," she kept saying.

"In June," she said, today. "June for certain."

Caroline smiled at Mrs. Kokolis. She watched a man putting his clothes into a drier. She giggled to herself. An Apatosaurus, she thought. He looks like an Apatosaurus.

It was true. He wasn't as large as an Apatosaurus, of course, because a real Apatosaurus would have filled two Laundromats and still had to stick its head out through a window.

But he was very tall, with a long neck and a nose that looked too high on his face. He had buck teeth and a stupid look.

Caroline giggled again, remembering something. The Apatosaurus had two brains, both very small; so he wasn't at all smart. But his second brain was located in his bottom, right where his tail began.

The man putting his clothes into the drier didn't have a tail, of course. And Caroline was fairly certain that he didn't have a second brain in his behind. But he sure looked like an Apatosaurus.

It was surprising, the number of people who resembled dinosaurs.

No one else was in the laundry this morning except for a couple of teen-age girls reading magazines. Caroline checked to make sure that her laundry was going around in the washers. Then she sat down and took Frederick Fiske's mail out of her pocket.

She felt a little guilty, beginning to read it. But it was open, after all, and it had been in the wastebasket.

Anyway, investigators had to use any method possible to find out stuff. Stacy had reminded her of that often.

The first letter was simply boring. It was a note from the public library, reminding him politely that a book he'd checked out, Forensic Toxicology, was a month overdue. Caroline didn't know what "forensic toxicology" meant; it didn't sound very interesting. She stuffed that letter back into her pocket.

Then she read the second letter, and her head began to whirl, the way her laundry was whirling now in the washing machine.

Fred, [the letter began]:

The woman's terrific. But the kids, frankly, seem more and more of a problem. Eliminate the kids. You can figure out a way.

Call me, and we'll have lunch and talk it over.

Carl

That was all. Caroline turned the envelope over and looked at the return address. Carl Broderick was the man's name, and he lived on East 52nd Street.

Why would a man on East 52nd Street be telling Frederick Fiske to murder some children?

3

Caroline dialed Stacy's number as soon as the laundry was folded and put away.

"Guess what, Stace?" she said.

" You guess what," said Stacy Baurichter. "Harrison Ledyard is having an affair."

"How do you know?"

"I looked through his trash. It was down in the basement of our building, because the superintendent hadn't put it outside yet. And there were cigarette butts with lipstick on them, and—"

"Stacy. Maybe his mother came to visit. Maybe his mother smokes. Or his sister. Or his cleaning lady. You have to verify your evidence, Stacy."

"That's not all. Wait'll you hear." Stacy paused ominously. "There was something else. A bra."

"In his trash? "

"Ripped."

"A ripped bra?"

"Torn in a passionate frenzy. Honest. Now don't try to make me believe that was his mother!"

"No," said Caroline, "I guess not. Was it black lace?"

"Pink. No lace, but some embroidery. Thirty-four B."

"That's not very big," said Caroline. "I think for a passionate frenzy you really need a thirty-eight D at least."

But Stacy assumed her investigative reporter's voice. "Research indicates that ever since Brooke Shields became so popular, small boobs are in."

"Stacy, in is one thing. Passionate frenzy is something else."

"Well. Anyway. It's the first interesting thing I've found out about Harrison Ledyard in all these months. Can you imagine? He looks so quiet and intellectual and Pulitzer Prize-winning. And now it turns out that in his spare time he's grabbing and ripping and tearing the clothes off of innocent women. I made a lot of notes. The bra's a Maidenform. And the lipstick is Misty Coral, I think. The cigarettes are Benson and Hedges menthol."

"Stacy, for a minute I almost forgot what I wanted to tell you. It's even better than Harrison Ledyard's sex life."

"What could be better than that ?"

Caroline looked around to be certain no one could overhear her. She had taken the telephone into the bathroom, but the door wouldn't close tight over the cord. J.P. was in his bedroom, probably working on an electrical project. Her mother was washing the kitchen floor, and the radio was on in the kitchen. She eased the door closed again as far as it would go and spoke in a low voice.

"Frederick Fiske," she whispered into the telephone.

"The guy upstairs? He's having an affair, too?"

"Yes. But worse than that."

"BAURICHTER DEMANDS DETAILS," said Stacy. When she was excited about something, she often spoke in headlines. It was part of her journalistic training.

"He's a murderer," announced Caroline.

"A what ? How do you know? Did you find body parts in his trash?"

"The murder hasn't taken place yet," Caroline explained. "But I found a letter. He's going to commit a murder. And guess what kind?"