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Authors: Richard Peck
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the motive.”
“We’ve already got to the motive,” I said, trying to get the upper hand. “I can give it to you in a nutshell. You remember the next day, when you took after him in the cafeteria about not delivering?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you remember how he acted. Like he
wanted
you to call him every name you could think of. Like, maybe, if you started slapping him around, he wouldn’t have minded that, either.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the way he is,” Flip said, kind of ashamed-sounding.
“And that’s the way he’s always been—long as I can remember—always wanting attention, always wanting to hang around with some gang or other. Nobody’d ever have him. Listen, in the middle of that whole thing in the cafeteria, he called you
old buddy
— OLD BUDDY —get it? He doesn’t care what he has to do to get in with us—you, especially.”
“Good luck to him on that.”
“Good luck nothing! According to you, we’re going to be nice to him now. We’ll be stuck with him till high school graduation. Maybe longer. Just so you can find out what we already know. You better realize, when we start being nice to him, it’s not going to be easy to get rid of him.”
“When did you take up practicing psychiatry?” Flip wanted to know. “You’ll be charging thirty-five, forty dollars an hour to shrink people’s brains before we know it.”
“Yeah, and you’ll want to go into partnership with me, so we’ll be broke all the time same as now.”
“Well, I’m not saying you’re wrong. But you’re overlooking a few points.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what we found in the tennis clubhouse. And what we found carved into the concrete roller coaster thing.
And
what we found by the bridge, which is hanging up on my closet door and is authentic.”
He had me there. I’d have gladly forgotten thoseNazi souvenirs. “What’s that got to do with Elvan?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe something. We’ve got to find out, don’t we? We’ve got to get into his confidence. Then if we find out he didn’t have anything to do with that part of things, well, then we’ll have to turn our investigation in a new direction.”
“Instead of turning our investigations in new directions and spending the rest of our lives with Elvan Helligrew and all those fun things, I got another idea,” I said. “We could forget the whole thing.”
“Could we?” Flip said.
Nine
If it’d been left up to me, all I’d have done was just go up to Elvan and say, hey, we might as well be friends. To start the ball rolling, what could be easier? He’d have jumped at it. Of course if it
had
been left up to me, I’d never have gone near him. But since it was Flip who was managing things—as usual—it had to be elaborate. And, as Miss Klimer would say, “preoccupied with the grotesque.”
He was still carrying around
A Centennial History of the City of Dunthorpe, Black Hawk County, and
Environs.
He kept renewing it at the library, even though we didn’t have much time to continue on our local history kick. The librarian must have been overjoyed to have old Estella Winkler Bates off her shelves all spring.
So one day, while we were making the deliveries, he started carrying on about the Municipal Art Museum—not one of our regular hangouts. He must have been reading up on it in study hall. “Built as a palatial residence by Marius Benderman, drainpipe and ceramic tile tycoon, in 1878,” he quoted, more or less from memory.
“No kidding,” I said.
“An eclectic structure, basically Italianate, with the popular Gothic embellishments of the period. Wagonloads of tourists came to watch the construction which took three and a half years.”
“Do tell,” I said.
“The central staircase—entirely black walnut—was handcarved by Bavarians and rises from the reception hall, connecting with a conventional box staircase to the central tower.”
“Think of that,” I said.
“There’s a statue of Diana
“We’ve already got to the motive,” I said, trying to get the upper hand. “I can give it to you in a nutshell. You remember the next day, when you took after him in the cafeteria about not delivering?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you remember how he acted. Like he
wanted
you to call him every name you could think of. Like, maybe, if you started slapping him around, he wouldn’t have minded that, either.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the way he is,” Flip said, kind of ashamed-sounding.
“And that’s the way he’s always been—long as I can remember—always wanting attention, always wanting to hang around with some gang or other. Nobody’d ever have him. Listen, in the middle of that whole thing in the cafeteria, he called you
old buddy
— OLD BUDDY —get it? He doesn’t care what he has to do to get in with us—you, especially.”
“Good luck to him on that.”
“Good luck nothing! According to you, we’re going to be nice to him now. We’ll be stuck with him till high school graduation. Maybe longer. Just so you can find out what we already know. You better realize, when we start being nice to him, it’s not going to be easy to get rid of him.”
“When did you take up practicing psychiatry?” Flip wanted to know. “You’ll be charging thirty-five, forty dollars an hour to shrink people’s brains before we know it.”
“Yeah, and you’ll want to go into partnership with me, so we’ll be broke all the time same as now.”
“Well, I’m not saying you’re wrong. But you’re overlooking a few points.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what we found in the tennis clubhouse. And what we found carved into the concrete roller coaster thing.
And
what we found by the bridge, which is hanging up on my closet door and is authentic.”
He had me there. I’d have gladly forgotten thoseNazi souvenirs. “What’s that got to do with Elvan?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe something. We’ve got to find out, don’t we? We’ve got to get into his confidence. Then if we find out he didn’t have anything to do with that part of things, well, then we’ll have to turn our investigation in a new direction.”
“Instead of turning our investigations in new directions and spending the rest of our lives with Elvan Helligrew and all those fun things, I got another idea,” I said. “We could forget the whole thing.”
“Could we?” Flip said.
Nine
If it’d been left up to me, all I’d have done was just go up to Elvan and say, hey, we might as well be friends. To start the ball rolling, what could be easier? He’d have jumped at it. Of course if it
had
been left up to me, I’d never have gone near him. But since it was Flip who was managing things—as usual—it had to be elaborate. And, as Miss Klimer would say, “preoccupied with the grotesque.”
He was still carrying around
A Centennial History of the City of Dunthorpe, Black Hawk County, and
Environs.
He kept renewing it at the library, even though we didn’t have much time to continue on our local history kick. The librarian must have been overjoyed to have old Estella Winkler Bates off her shelves all spring.
So one day, while we were making the deliveries, he started carrying on about the Municipal Art Museum—not one of our regular hangouts. He must have been reading up on it in study hall. “Built as a palatial residence by Marius Benderman, drainpipe and ceramic tile tycoon, in 1878,” he quoted, more or less from memory.
“No kidding,” I said.
“An eclectic structure, basically Italianate, with the popular Gothic embellishments of the period. Wagonloads of tourists came to watch the construction which took three and a half years.”
“Do tell,” I said.
“The central staircase—entirely black walnut—was handcarved by Bavarians and rises from the reception hall, connecting with a conventional box staircase to the central tower.”
“Think of that,” I said.
“There’s a statue of Diana
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