That would have been a
nice way to end the story—the police read the note, interrogated Richards,
arrested him, and got rid of Blackwell’s crime problems all at once. Well, they read the note, alright. Unfortunately, they didn’t believe it. In fact, the Blackwell Journal-Tribune upped its reward for the capture of the
midget bandits from $500 to $1,000, while the Purple Porcupine reward stayed at
$5,000. Chief Morris personally
apologized to Richards for the crooks’ warped sense of humor.
“I’d like to hope I’ve
done enough for this town to show I’m not a felon,” Richards replied
truthfully, “but I can’t understand why these criminals have it in for me. First, the Purple Porcupine, now—did that bag
have any stickers on it, by any chance?”
“No,” said the chief. “Just the note. We’re almost positive the Porcupine had
nothing to do with the incident.”
“I see,” said Richards,
“so two separate crooks—or gangs, however many there are—are out to get
me. Why?”
The chief shrugged. “Maybe it’s because you’re their opposite,”
he said. “They hate you because you’re
so honest.”
“I’d like to think it’s
that,” said Richards. “I know you’re
doing whatever you can to find them, and you can be sure I’ll help in any way I
can.”
He took quite a different
tone at the theater that evening, when he called all the members of the club
together for a meeting. “Failure is not
an option!” he shouted at them, storming around on stage in the wildest
way. “You may just be children, but
you’ve got more ability than anyone, except me, gives you credit for. I’ve taught you to pull these operations off
seamlessly, without a hitch, and what happens?
A bag of money with my name on it winds up at a stranger’s door! This will not happen again, and even now, I
can assure you, steps are being taken to deal with the offender. There’ll be one less name on my list.”
Jimmy saw the desperation
in his eyes as the psychotic leader scanned the faces in his audience. Richards knew that fewer and fewer club
members still thought he was the Purple Porcupine. Auburn’s sign had worked magic upon the room,
so much so that a few members who didn’t know what was happening wished that
their siblings would get kidnapped, too.
“I think it’s high-time
we watch that film again,” Richards said icily.
Brittany shifted
uncomfortably in her seat. The film was
another of Richards’s methods of persuasion, a video portraying the horror of
his wrath unleashed. She’d often tried
to close her eyes during it, only to be prodded back to attention by Richards,
who demanded the strictest attention.
Reluctantly, wishing she was anywhere but the Rivoli, she was forced to
watch the most terrifying seven minutes of footage that she’d ever seen in her
life. The ghastly message of the film
was this: “The same thing could happen to you if you cross me, and I mean it.”
“Put on your headphones!”
ordered Richards, strolling to the back and putting the lights out. A red light flashed as he hit the play button
on the remote control. The next seven
minutes were almost as torturous for the characters in the auditorium as they’d
certainly been for the character on the screen.
When the lights came back
on, Richards went up to the front of the room.
“Meeting adjourned,” he said.
“Also, I want everyone involved in that Pizza Hut assignment to meet me,
one-by-one before you go.”
Jimmy deliberately made
sure he was last in line. He didn’t want
to seem too eager to get the meeting over with.
When it was finally his turn, he slipped into the office reluctantly,
closing the door behind him.
Richards sat at the desk,
eyes fixed on the Redford kid. “What
happened last night?” he asked.
Jimmy shrugged. “We slipped into Pizza Hut and followed your
plans, according to the letter. It’s not
our fault they didn’t give us the right money.”
“Oh, but they did,”
Richards purred, his eyes drilling holes in Jimmy’s face. “You just gave me the wrong money, didn’t
you?”
Jimmy shrugged. “I wasn’t paying much attention to the bag,”
he said. “Jeremy threw it out the
window. Maybe he switched it. I couldn’t tell.”
“Remember, if you’re
lying,” said Richards, “I have your sister.”
The threat rang emptily
in Jimmy’s brain; he knew better. “Me,
lying?” he asked innocently. “Now, why
would I do that to you?”
Richards nearly lost his
temper over that. “Get out!” he barked,
slamming his fist down on the counter.
“You cross me again, and I won’t hesitate to kill!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bang!
Crash!
Bam!
From an old,
long-abandoned hotel building in downtown Blackwell, there came the sound of
screaming. It wasn’t loud enough to be
heard on the road, but it was there, sure enough. Only, it wasn’t screams of terror—it was
screams of joy and mirth.
“Is that as far as you
can throw?” shouted Auburn, on the third-floor hallway of the old
building. “Watch this!”
She reared back her arm,
then with a flick of the wrist, she let an old, possibly valuable antique plate
soar down the hallway, Frisbee-style. No
doubt the throw would have travelled a long way, if the spin had been a little
less. As it was, the plate slipped
through the door of Room 303 and shattered against something inside.
“Hey, can you guys keep
it down up there?” a voice yelled. “I’m
trying to take a nap.”
“This is awesome!” Will Thurston was having the time of his
life. No one had ever handed him a stack
of plates and told him to go ahead and smash them. Now that the opportunity had come, he was
taking full advantage of it, and he let one soar straight at Auburn’s head!
Auburn ducked just in
time. “Will, wait ‘till I get out of the
way!” she protested. “These things can
hurt, you know. We can’t throw them at
anybody.
Even Valerie and Allie
were finding the game quite amusing. The
two of them were sitting at the top of the Hotel Blackwell’s grand staircase,
large stack of china beside them.
Valerie was providing the narration.
“After Inspector
Hawthorne disappeared, Inspector Gregorio was sent to look. He just wanted to find out what happened to
Humpty-Dumpty. But then, like Inspector
Hawthorne before him, like Inspector Smith before him, like Inspector Douglas
before him—”
“Don’t forget Black!”
“Thanks Allie—like
Inspector Black, who was after Douglas and before Smith, like Inspector Allan,
like Inspector—like all those other ones, such as—oh, you remember who they
are…”
Valerie grabbed a bowl
off the stack and rolled it down the stairs.
It bounced a few times, losing little chips, before rolling across the
floor and smashing against the front door.
Allie clapped her hands, watching eagerly.
On the other side of the
door, the man Auburn had met a couple weeks before took his eyes off Fido to
glance warily at the door. He cupped a
hand to his ear and listened for a bit.
Then, shaking his head, he led the dog away, just missing the crash
of—well, whoever the next inspector Allie was sending down was.
Auburn was just coming
down to check on the girls when, suddenly, she heard a loud rapping at the
alley door. She listened until it was
finished, then rushed to the side staircase and plunged her way down. Reaching the bottom, she gave two short raps
back.
The person on the other
side gave a long rap, then two short ones.
Auburn turned the lock and swung the door open.
It was Jimmy. “Mind if I come in?” he asked. “I’d like to see Valerie again.”
“Of course!” said
Auburn. “I hope you won’t mind the
noise. I found a bunch of old plates in
a cabinet in the kitchen, and—well, as you can hear, they’re not faring so
well.”
“You’re letting everybody
break them?” said Jimmy, as the sounds hit his ears. “That sounds like—boy, I wish I could do that
at home!”
“I know, right?” said
Auburn. “These plates aren’t even
needed, that’s the beauty of it. If all
these kids are going to be hiding out in this hotel, we’ve got to keep them
entertained, somehow. Especially if
they’re not going to be around their families.
I’m so glad you’re able to come visit!”
“Wouldn’t miss it for
anything,” said Jimmy. “Val and I have
our little scrapes at home, but I’ve realized these last few days how much I’ve
missed her.”
“It’s hard enough for
me,” said Auburn, “not seeing my parents all day. I can’t imagine never getting to see them,
like these kids. And not getting to go
outside—that’s bad, too! That’s why I’m
doing whatever I can to keep these kids entertained.”
“How long will it take?”
Jimmy asked, “until Richards is stopped?”
“I don’t know,” said
Auburn, “but I’ll keep at it, even if I have to kidnap every last name on that
list!”
“Jimmy!” Valerie screamed,
running down the stairs to greet her brother.
“I thought you wouldn’t get to come again ‘till next week.”
“Chores didn’t take as
long as usual,” said Jimmy, grinning.
“It seems that someone forgot to buy detergent last time they were at
the grocery store.”
A remote control
helicopter flew by in the background, followed closely by Hal Rowan, now a
master of the remote.
Door 206 flew open, and
young Leila Stewart stepped out. She
glowered at the group, just waiting for someone to notice. Auburn finally did, and she hurried over to
see what was the matter.
“It’s too noisy!” Leila
pouted. “I can’t sleep.”
Auburn was
sympathetic. “Maybe you should try a
room at the end of the hall,” she said.
“I don’t want everyone on the first floor, because it’s too easy for
them to be seen from the windows.”
“I just want to go home,”
complained Leila. “The beds are
uncomfortable, the building makes funny noises, and I miss my family.”
“I know you do,” Auburn
said. “Greg’s coming to visit tomorrow—”
“What about Daddy and
Mommy?” asked Leila. “Where are they?”
“They’re still at home,
too,” said Auburn. “Look, Leila, you’ve
got to stay in hiding until Richards is gone.
He wants you out of the way, especially now that your brother doesn’t
have to do what he says. Your parents
think he’s the best man in town, and they’d give him the opportunity to hurt
you. Understand?”
“I guess so,” Leila said,
still frowning. “Why does this have to
happen to me, though? Why can’t Richards
go pick on someone else?”
“Oh, he has, Leila,” said
Auburn. “He has. And I’m not going to stop fighting him until
every one of those people is safe from his grasp.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blackwell’s Brotherhood
Club undertook a number of schemes that week aimed at making a difference in
the community. Not a positive one, but a
difference, nonetheless. Thing is, none
of them seemed to work out.
Take the RCB Bank
Robbery, for instance. Last month,
members of the Brotherhood Club had sponsored a car wash in the bank’s parking
lot, to raise money to restore the city park and also to get the bank some
advertising. Richards had used the
opportunity of meeting with the bank’s leadership to find out the password to
the bank’s vault room. His four club
members had descended upon the closed bank bearing that information, but an
alarm had still gone off when they tried to enter the room. No one remembered who’d typed in the code,
but Greg Stewart had been on the job.
Or the Maxwell Field assignment. Yes, Richards finally went through with one
of his most dastardly deeds. Four club
members were sent to Blackwell’s historic baseball field, home of the town’s
high school and semipro teams. Local
entertainment was not on Richards’s agenda—smoke and disaster were. The members showed up at the field at
midnight with four cans of kerosene.
They doused the outer walls of the building with the stuff, then one lit
a match and dropped it on the liquid.
The match fizzled out. It seems
that the liquid in the kerosene containers wasn’t flammable—in fact, it was a
whole lot more similar to distilled water than it was to paraffin. No one could say who’d refilled the bottles,
but Brittany McPherson had picked up four gallon containers at Dollar General
after work that day—and they hadn’t been full of milk.
Speaking of Dollar
General, that almost got knocked off by four youths late one night, but the
fire alarm went off. Unbeknownst to
Richards, security cameras caught one of the gang yanking one of those “fire”
boxes on the side of the store. A mask
made it impossible to tell who it was, but Penny Thurston had been on that job.
Richards’s easy, carefree
manner was now a thing of the past. He
swore repeatedly in the office, cursing fate, luck, chance, and anything else
he could think of. His remarks to parents
were brief, and he always needed to be running along. The mechanic that fixed his car circulated a
story, which no one believed, about how he’d been cussed out by Richards over a
bill.
Tempers don’t stay
dormant forever, yet Richards wasn’t stupid.
His rage didn’t blind him to the fact that people on the list were
disappearing, right and left, before his very eyes. It was like the Purple Porcupine had a copy,
but that was impossible, wasn’t it?
“Do I remember what,
boss?” Hardaway asked Richards at a meeting the following Wednesday.
“That day we chased
somebody up the stairs,” said Richards.
“Remember? We were just coming
back in the building, and we saw the door swinging shut. Did you ever see the person?”
“Nope, I didn’t.”
“Are you sure?!” Richards
stared at Hardaway intently, desperately, realizing his criminal empire was in
jeopardy. “You didn’t see anyone on the
street, running away?”
“I was too busy trying to
follow him,” said Hardaway. “By the time
I checked out the street, it was too late.
It could’ve been anybody.”
“That’s what I was afraid
of,” said Richards. “So, the Purple
Porcupine does have the list. Very
clever. Very clever, indeed—but not clever
enough. I’ve got a plan that’ll draw the
porcupine to us like cheese in a mousetrap, and when our crook takes the
bait—no more Porcupine!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Reynolds’s face bore
a look of utter contempt, and his arms were stretched forward in a most
awkward-looking manner. He struggled
around the room like a man bearing a great load, desperately trying to keep
from stumbling.
On the living room sofa,
Auburn and Mrs. Reynolds stared at him questioningly.
“Atlas?” Mrs. Reynolds
asked. Mr. Reynolds shook his head.
“Hercules?” Auburn
asked. Mr. Reynolds’s frown grew, and he
shook his hand, lifting up one arm to point at his mouth.
“Hungry Man?” tried
Auburn. Again, she was wrong.
“King Kong?” Mrs.
Reynolds suggested. “I don’t know, dear;
you’d better tell us. I’m never going to
figure it out.”
Mr. Reynolds shook his
head and pointed to the hourglass, staring at his daughter imploringly. Auburn merely stared at her watch. Five…four…three…two…one…
“Aw, shoot!” said Mr.
Reynolds. “Scrooge! Ebenezer Scrooge, that’s who it was. Couldn’t you see me staggering under the
weight of the moneybags?”
“Oh, Scrooge,” said Mrs.
Reynolds, sarcastically. “Who else could
it have been?”
Mr. Reynolds wasn’t any
good at charades. Nor was his wife. The only one with any talent for that sort of
thing was Auburn, for reasons not entirely clear to herself. She wondered if it was because she was so
good at keeping secrets, like the fact that she was really the Purple
Porcupine…
“Who goes next?” Mr.
Reynolds asked. “You, dear?”
“I thought it was
Auburn’s turn.”
“No, it’s yours, Mom,”
said Auburn. “I was a pufferfish right
before Dad, remember?”
“I don’t know; I’ve got
things to do,” said Mrs. Reynolds, yawning.
“You two can keep playing if you want.”
“Janna, it’s more fun
with three people!”
“We’ve had our fun,
though. Besides—” Mrs. Reynolds was
interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.
She went to go answer it while Mr. Reynolds stared dejectedly at his
daughter.
“Just when I’m getting
warmed up,” he said, “your mother always remembers she has better things for
you to—”
“Auburn, it’s for you!”
“Me!” said Auburn. “Who is it?”
“That girl from in Kansas
City you used to be friends with,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “Chelsea Coronado.”
“Her?” said Auburn, a
look of puzzlement on her face. “Hello,
Chelsea?” she said into the receiver, even as she knew the voice on the other
end would belong to someone else.
“Brittany, actually,”
whispered Auburn’s friend into the receiver.
“Isn’t it a little late
for you to be calling?” Auburn asked.
“It’s after nine.”
“I know, but I’ve got to
talk to you,” said Brittany. “I don’t
have much time—listen carefully.
Richards just gave me another—project,” she said, spitting out the last
word. “He wants four of us to break into
the courthouse.”
“Uh-huh,” said
Auburn. “Go on!”
“I’m supposed to steal a
computer out of the mayor’s office,” Brittany said. “Someone else is supposed to steal his
secretary’s, someone else is supposed to steal the registrar’s, and someone
else is supposed to steal the judge’s.
Here’s the problem,” said Brittany.
“The four people assigned to that job are me, Jimmy, Penny, and Billy
Leffler.”
“Billy!” said
Auburn. “He’s the only one—”
“Yes, I know,” said
Brittany. “Richards met with him for ten
minutes while we were all waiting. He
only took two to give the rest of us our assignments. I think he’s going to have Billy tell on us
if we deliberately muff our jobs.”
“I see,” said
Auburn. “In other words, you need—”
“You got it,” said
Brittany. “Tonight. Please tell me you can do it tonight.”
“That’s doable,” Auburn
kept her eyes towards the wall, doubting she’d be able to keep a straight face
if she saw her parents at the moment.
“Billy doesn’t live that
far away from me,” Brittany went on.
“His house has a big fence around it, but there’s no gate in the
driveway. You’ll have an easy time
getting up to it. Better yet, my dad
told me that Billy’s dad has a key under the flowerpot on the back porch.”
“Oooh, that’ll come in
handy,” said Auburn. “Thanks for telling
me!”
“No, thank you,” said
Brittany. “I’ll be praying that it
works. Gotta go. Bye!”
“I didn’t know you and
Chelsea still kept in touch, Auburn,” Mr. Reynolds observed, as his daughter
hung up the phone.
“What—oh, well, we don’t
really,” said Auburn. “I mean, we do,
but not that regularly. I think this is
the first time she’s called me since I moved.”
“What’s going to ‘come in
handy’?” Mrs. Reynolds asked.
“Oh, that? It was kind of a joke, really,” Auburn
laughed. “Chelsea was saying a key always
comes in handy when you’re opening a locked door.”
“Hey, not bad,” said Mr.
Reynolds, chuckling to himself. “Just
like, ‘Water always comes in handy to a fish.’
Good stuff.”
“I think you two need to
go to bed,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “Your
humor’s getting tired.”
“I guess you’re right,
Mom,” smiled Auburn. “It’s good to be as
well-rested as possible, in case anything important comes up.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The streets of Blackwell
were definitely getting more crowded at night, and the increase was entirely
due to police officers. They were all
over the neighborhoods, beaming their searchlights in an attempt to spot (or at
least scare) the Purple Porcupine. No
street was left unpatrolled—you could even spot cars coming off the gravel
driveways that led to abandoned buildings.
Chief Morris wanted every square inch of Blackwell’s roads patrolled.
Auburn noticed the
increase, but it didn’t bother her. She
kept to the shadows, avoiding the edges of roads. If she spotted a cruiser coming, she lay down
flat next to a bush, not perfectly hidden, but inobtrusive enough for any
prying eyes to miss her.
She glanced again at the
sheet of paper in her hand. 1302 Kori
Avenue. This was quite a ways south of
where Auburn lived. Not very far, but
the farthest she’d had to go yet in carrying out her mission. The residence was several blocks south of the
hotel, and she hoped her new friend wouldn’t get spotted.
Oh yes, Billy’s sister was
on the list. Pollyanna Leffler. A
strange name, Auburn had thought when she’d read it—never mind that her own
name wasn’t too common. Pollyanna had
friends in town, though. Auburn had
heard Allie mention her several times—at first, she thought Brittany’s sister
was referencing a movie. No, it was
Billy’s sister, and the two were great friends.
Valerie didn’t know her as well, but the girls were acquainted.
Hopefully, this would
mean that Pollyanna would feel right at home at the Larkin Hotel. Auburn was getting worried about the amount
of children boarded there. It was big
enough to house them all easily, but the more people involved, the greater the
likelihood of something going wrong with her scheme. If one of them ever went outside—but Auburn
couldn’t do anything about that now, so she shoved the thought from her mind.
The town was looking less
and less familiar, a sure sign she was getting close. An old railbed aided Auburn’s quest for
secrecy; the tracks south of the railyard had been torn up a few years
ago. Their old right-of-way was still in
place, but it was flanked by trees, creating the perfect secret transport
system. The only difficulty was figuring
out where to get off, but Auburn had studied a map before leaving, and she
ventured out every now and then to check street names. When she saw Coolidge Avenue, she knew she
was getting close.
So
patriotic, she thought. If only our politicians today drew the same
amount of respect they did back then.
A dog barked at her, but
she ignored it. Dogs had been common
enough in Kansas, and it didn’t take much to set them off. A stranger, a squirrel, their own shadow—you
name it, they’d bark at it. As long as
it wasn’t a new one, its owners would be used to it. Good thing Auburn didn’t jump at each little
sound—
Somewhere, in the
distance, a horn honked. Auburn jumped,
until she realized the car wasn’t coming down the street.
Mustn’t
be seen, she thought. Absolute secrecy.
Going in her favor was
the fact that the Porcupine hadn’t struck this far south yet. If Blackwell’s cops were good, they’d be
expecting her in a different part of town.
This area shouldn’t be quite as well patrolled—
The moon emerged from
behind a cloud. “Kori Lane” read the
street sign in front of Auburn. Beyond
this sat the house she was looking for.
It was big, two stories
tall, but wide enough to make it one of the larger houses in Blackwell. Brittany hadn’t been kidding about the
fence—it had to be at least ten feet high, screening in the entire backyard. The residence looked less than ten years old;
Auburn guessed its first floor windows would be locked.
Standing on the corner,
she snuck a look at her list, then stared back at the house. Richards had a plan to get rid of Pollyanna,
but it didn’t involve the bedroom window.
It involved the swimming pool, just like the Marty Allanson scheme. Let the poolside stereo accidentally fall
into the water while plugged in, and no more Pollyanna—a clever murder, but it
didn’t give Auburn any ideas about kidnapping.
As Brittany had said, the
fence only went around the backyard. The
driveway yawned in front of Auburn, open and leading all the way to the edge of
the fence. It would be so easy to walk
up it and check the front windows—
But something about it
held Auburn back. Hardly any trees stood
in the yard itself, and a streetlight out in front of the house bathed the
thoroughfare in bright orange. If anyone
happened by the place while Auburn was in the driveway, they wouldn’t be able
to miss seeing her. With all the police
out, that was a chance she couldn’t take.
Over
the fence, she thought to herself. But
how? That was easy enough,
actually. Trees from next door overhung
the yard, providing an easy drop into the Leffler residence. One magnolia—at least, that’s what Auburn
thought it was—featured plenty of low branches, exactly what you’d want in a
climbing tree.
Here
goes,
she thought to herself, wriggling her way through the neighbor’s yard. Lord,
please don’t let me have a dizzy spell…
Auburn glanced around for
dogs, but these neighbors had no pets.
“Meow!” OK, one pet, but it
wasn’t going to bark or chase the girl.
Gripping the first
branch, Auburn began to yank herself up.
It had been a while since she climbed trees, and she felt rusty. Not too rusty, though, to remember how to do
it. In less than two minutes, she was at
least eleven feet up.
Guess
the yard’s that way, she thought. It was pretty difficult to see through the
leaves, but there was a slight breeze.
Every now and then, Auburn caught a glimpse of the house in front of
her.
Stealthily, trying to be
as seamless as possible, she worked her way around the trunk and along a
branch, leading over the wall and into the yard. Her eyes scanned the ground, as she looked
for a way down…
Suddenly, she bumped into
something! It was soft, and warm—very
warm—somewhere in the neighborhood of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit—
A
man! Someone else was in the tree!
Auburn screamed.
Aw, rats! Another cliffhanger!
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