“A map to the stars,” Elder Bent said. “Keep it with you. We’ll be going there soon. We wouldn’t want you to get lost.”
They moved away across the lawn, gathered around Andropov and singing in their sweet, harmless, senseless voices. As they slipped one by one into the house next door, their music faded and another sound took its place—a loud, steely clack, like someone cocking a gun. Only it wasn’t a gun. It came again and again. It was a manual typewriter.
I turned and looked at the open bay door to Ursula’s garage. From where I stood, I could see only darkness within.
I crossed the street, worn down from the heat and the walk and fighting evil. Except that wasn’t it. What had tired me out the most was thinking about all the hours I’d spent in that garage, seeing everything and observing nothing.
Templeton stood at his daddy’s workbench, feet planted on a big white plastic tub of rock salt so he could reach the keys of the antique typewriter.
“Hey there, Templeton,” I said.
“Hello, Honeysuckle,” he said without looking up.
“Where’s your mom, kiddo?”
“Inside. Lying down. Or maybe on her computer. She spends a lot of time on her computer watching the weather.”
I settled in behind him, ruffled his hair. “Hey, Temp? Remember when you told me you go flying every night to look for your daddy in the clouds? Is that something you do in your dreams?”
“No,” he said. “I go with Mommy. In the crop duster. I pretend I’m a bat.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. My gaze drifted to the framed Ph.D. hung above the workbench. I’d never wondered what Templeton’s father had a Ph.D. in but wasn’t surprised to see that his field of study had been applied chemical engineering. I wondered if the company that had fired him still had offices somewhere in the United States or if they’d completely relocated to Georgia. Yolanda had told me that Mr. Blake’s company had moved down south—a natural mix-up. When you heard that someone was moving to Georgia, you didn’t think they meant Russia.
“Can I see something, Templeton?” I said. “Jump down for a moment, will you?”
He obediently hopped down off the white plastic tub of rock salt. I pried off the lid and looked in at glittering silver dust. At a glance a person might’ve imagined it was salt, but when I stuck a finger in, it pricked my finger like a pile of broken glass. I wiped my hand on my hip and stood up.
Templeton had backed a few steps away, ceding his place at the typewriter. I cranked the silver carriage-release lever to start a new line and began to type. Little steel hammers fell, bang, bang, bang . . . all except for the h and e, which wouldn’t fire. I wrote “onysuck” and quit. I thought about the letter in the paper, “Alla” with no h, the word “bodies” spelled “bodys” to avoid the e.
“What’chu writing, Hemingway?” someone said from behind me, a male voice.
I spun, my heart banging like the keys of Templeton’s typewriter.
Marc DeSpot had crept to the entrance of the garage and stood peering in at me, tall, rangy, muscular son of a bitch in a white straw cowboy hat, blue denim shirt buttoned only at the collar so it flapped open to show the ornate X on his chest.
“Marc!” I cried. “Why are you here?” Not that I cared. I’d never been so happy to see a friendly face.
He wandered into the dim garage. It was increasingly looking like twilight outside. “Why you think I’m here? I’m looking for you.”
“Here? How’d you know to find me here?”
“You told me, Sherlock. ’Member? You said if you weren’t in the big white house across the street to look in the butter-colored ranch. You got anything to drink? I’ve walked half the day to bring this back to you, and I’ve worked up a considerable thirst in the process.” He pulled a rectangle of slick black glass out of his back pocket.
“My phone! How is it you have my phone?”
He thumbed his hat back on his brow. “Well, I caught up to the lady that took it from you and asked nice. The trick is to use the magic word, which is ‘please.’ It works ’specially well if you’re holdin’ ’em upside down by the ankles at the time.”
“Let me have it.”
“Catch,” he said.
He gave it a soft underhanded lob, and it rapped me in the chest and fell into my hands, and I had it for an instant and it slipped through my butter fingers and struck the concrete with a crack. As a finishing touch, I kicked it and heard it skid under the worktable.
“Oh, crickets!” I shouted. “Give me your phone.”
“It died six hours ago. Where’s the fire?”
I got down on all fours and scrambled into the dark beneath the worktable, a space that stank of mice, dust, and rust.
“I’ve got to talk to people. FBI maybe,” I said. “See that typewriter? There’s no e on it. And no h either!”
“And you want the FBI to investigate? I don’t think crimes against the alphabet fall under their jurisdiction.”
I put my face through a cobweb and snatched it off my nose. I set my palm down on the blade of a rusty screwdriver and hissed. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“I can help you look,” Templeton said, getting down on all fours and scrambling in under the worktable with me.
“Here,” Ursula said. “I’ve got a flashlight. Maybe this will help.”
“Thanks, Ursula,” I said automatically, for a half an instant forgetting who I was calling the FBI about.
Then my insides throbbed with a kind of cold ache, and I went still. She’d heard us talking and slipped into the garage just as I was scrambling under the table. I turned in a circle and peered out at her and Marc.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Marc DeSpot, taking the flashlight from her, pointing it under the worktable, and switching it on. I opened my mouth to scream but couldn’t get any air. My lungs wouldn’t fill. Marc hadn’t seen what was in her other hand. He bent over and looked under the table at me. “But listen, girl, if you’ve got someone to call, you aren’t going to be able to do it with that phone either. That’s out of charge, too. It’s like a law of nature. The more you need something, the more likely it is the damn thing is just going to drop dead on you.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Ursula said, and hit him in the back with the machete.
It sounded like someone swatting a carpet with a broom. His legs wobbled, and his knees knocked. She yanked back with both hands and all her strength to free the blade. Marc dropped the flashlight, and it rolled a little to the right, pointing its beam out the garage door and leaving Temp and me in shadows. As the machete came out from between his shoulder blades, he toppled backward, pulled off his feet. He fell to the floor with a weak cry.
I scuttled all the way back under the table.
“Templeton,” Ursula said, leaning forward, her face as serene and calm as if she hadn’t just nearly cut someone in half. “Come on out, Templeton. Come to Mama.” She held out her left hand for him, gripping the machete in her right.
Templeton didn’t move, paralyzed with shock. I put my arm around his neck and stuck the blade of that rusty screwdriver under his eye.