Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls Read online

  I want to tell him everything. I’m actually dying to. But there’s that whole Casey-and-Marissa thing. So I’m quiet.

  Just quiet.

  Then over the phone comes, “I understand. You’re in a rough spot.”

  Maybe it’s the gentleness of his voice. Maybe it’s my conscience. I don’t know, but I finally just blurt out Danny’s name and address and tell him, “You’ll recognize him. He used to be part of our group.”

  “That’s all I need. And don’t worry. I have no idea who you are.”

  I hang up and hold my face in my hands. I feel all tied up in knots. Like I’ve just done something I’m really going to regret.

  “You did the right thing,” Holly says.

  Her voice is quiet, but I still totally jump. “I didn’t know you were there.” I shake my head. “I don’t know why I feel like this.”

  She shrugs. “You don’t want Casey to think you’re a rat.”

  “But Danny’s a full-on criminal. He talks like he’s a pro at hocking stolen property, and he gave the Preacher Man two fractured ribs and a concussion.”

  “Wow.”

  I shake my head again. “I shouldn’t feel like this.”

  “So don’t.”

  I sigh and say, “I’ve got to go,” then grab my candy sack and head for the door. And as she’s letting me out, I ask, “You didn’t tell Meg and Vera anything, did you?”

  Holly shakes her head. “Vera’s asleep and Meg’s been waiting up, watching TV in bed. She doesn’t even know you’re here.”

  “Okay.” Then I step outside and say, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  She holds the door open and kind of stands half in and half out. “How could you not have called, huh?”

  “I just feel like I have this secret from Casey now. And Marissa.”

  “It’s the Casey part.”

  I sigh. “I know.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a secret. You can just tell him.”

  “But they used to be like brothers. What if he thinks I should have told him and given him the chance to have Danny … confess, or whatever.” I look right at her. “Holly, I called the cops.”

  Now, I’m pretty wrapped up in our conversation, so it’s not like I’m paying attention to the cars going by on Broadway. I mean, there are always cars going up and down Broadway. And even though it’s late and traffic’s pretty light, it’s not like I’d interrupt talking to Holly to watch someone cruising up Broadway.

  But out of the corner of my eye I see a car that makes me do a double take.

  It’s mustard colored.

  Deli mustard colored.

  And it’s got a big, flat hood and a big, flat trunk.

  And rust spots.

  And the guy driving it has really pale skin.

  And kinda long black hair.

  I gasp, which makes Holly look, too. And my instinct is to grab her and dive back inside the Pup Parlor, but it’s too late.

  The Vampire has already seen us.

  Instead of diving back inside the Pup Parlor, I grab Holly by the sleeve and say, “Act like we’re trick-or-treating.”

  “At eleven at night?” Holly chokes out. “This is bad. This is very bad.”

  “Don’t look!” I tell her as we hurry down the sidewalk toward the Heavenly Hotel.

  But she looks anyway. “He’s doing a U-turn!”

  “Is he close enough to see us?”

  “Yes!”

  “Good,” I tell her, then yank open the Heavenly’s door.

  The Heavenly Hotel always seems to be open. Maybe that’s because André, the guy who runs the place, got tired of letting his low-life clients in and out all night. Plus, besides being old and run-down, the Heavenly’s not exactly the kind of place to have a buzzer system.

  That’d be much too sophisticated.

  Not to mention high-tech.

  “Hey,” André growls when he sees us. “This is a hotel, not a candy shop. Scram!”

  “Then why’s the light on?” I ask, walking up to the counter.

  “Huh?” He clamps his cigar stub between his front teeth and peels his lips back like an angry camel. “Sammy?”

  “Hi, André.”

  “And that’s Holly?” he says, bugging his eyes at her a little.

  Holly nods. “Hi, André.”

  He laughs. “You two sure aren’t playin’ up your good looks tonight.”

  “Hey, it’s the night of the dead,” I tell him. “We’re keeping with tradition.”

  André pulls some mint candies from behind the counter. “This is the best I can do, sorry.”

  “Actually,” I tell him as I take a mint, “we’re being followed by a creepy-looking guy in an old deli-mustard car—”

  “What’s a deli-mustard car?” he says, standing up.

  “I mean the color.”

  He starts coming around from behind the counter with a baseball bat, and for a guy who always keeps things to a low growl, he’s moving fast.

  “Wait!” I call after him, because it looks like he’s about to go beat in some windows. “We just want to ditch him. Can we go out the back way? And if he happens to come in looking for us, could you maybe tell him we were just trick-or-treating and went out that way?” I say, pointing to a side door.

  He stops in his tracks and eyes me suspiciously. “Why would he be comin’ in here?”

  “I’m not saying he will. I’m just saying if he does.”

  An eyebrow arches way up as he lowers the bat. “What have you gotten yourselves into this time?”

  I cringe. “Nothing?”

  “Yeah, right,” he grunts as he goes back behind the counter.

  “We’re not exactly sure what,” Holly says.

  I nod. “We were just out trick-or-treating and happened to cut through the graveyard—”

  “Just happened to, huh?” André says, rolling his eyes.

  “—and we wound up using that guy’s car as an escape ramp out of there.”

  He eyes me. “Because of course that was the only way out, right?”

  “It was!” I cringe again. “But we might’ve dented his roof.” I cringe a little harder. “And we definitely bent one of his wipers.”

  André’s back to clamping the cigar between his teeth. “So maybe I should turn you over to him?” But then all of a sudden he says, “Get down!”

  His voice is like a shotgun cocking, and believe me, we do what he says, diving for cover behind a display rack of brochures and free papers. We hold our breath and bug our eyes through the rack as the Heavenly’s door opens.

  A man walks in, but it’s not the Vampire.

  It’s a big man.

  Wearing a ball cap.

  “Can I help you?” André calls, because the guy’s just standing there scoping out the lobby.

  “I’m looking for my girls. They’re late comin’ home. Someone said they saw them trick-or-treating down here. Dressed up as a couple of zombies?”

  Now, there are a lot of big men in ball caps in this world, but the instant we hear his voice Holly and I look at each other like big-eyed mice in a cougar cage. There’s no doubt about it—it’s Shovel Man.

  “Sure,” André says. “They were just here. Went out that way. Probably at Maynard’s Market by now.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  “No problem.”

  He’s already leaving when André says, “You want to leave a number in case you miss them and I see them walkin’ around?”

  “Nah. I’m sure I’ll find them.”

  The minute he’s gone, André says, “Stay low,” then goes across the lobby and does a real sly check of Broadway. After a minute he saunters back to the counter, saying, “Deli mustard is a good description.” He crouches beside us. “I get the feelin’ that fella’s bent about more than his wiper. I don’t know what you two did, and I don’t want to know. Just get home quick and stay there.”

  “Can we go out the back?” I ask him. “I know it’s fenced in, b
ut I’ve climbed it before.”

  “Why am I not surprised.” He snorts. “Have at it.” And as we scurry out the back door he says, “Good thing you don’t look like yourselves or I’d be pretty worried about him trackin’ you down. Once you’re cleaned up you should be okay.”

  “For the record,” I tell him as we’re going outside, “all we did was cut through the graveyard and climb over a car to get out.”

  He rolls the cigar to the side of his mouth. “Then why’s Big Boy there so interested in trackin’ you down?”

  “I have no idea.” Then I turn and tell him, “Thanks, okay? And oh—if you see a guy with black hair and really pale skin—”

  “And crazy weird teeth,” Holly throws in.

  “Right. Don’t tell him anything!”

  André squints at Holly. “Crazy weird teeth?”

  “You’ll know if you see them,” she says.

  He turns his squint on me. “And what makes you think I’d tell anyone anything, huh? Have I ever done that before?”

  I shake my head. “Yeah. Right. Sorry. Just a reflex.”

  “Well, reflex your way outta here. You’re hurtin’ my ulcer.”

  “You’ve got an ulcer?”

  “Scram!”

  So we scram, all right, through a swamp of monster weeds and trash to the shaky chain-link fence.

  “What is Shovel Man doing with the Vampire?” I ask. “And what do they want?”

  “I think André’s right—it can’t be about the windshield wiper.”

  “Then what?”

  “I have no idea.” She trips on something and picks herself back up. “What is this place? It’s like a big cage of junk.”

  “I don’t know, but let’s hurry, okay?” I scurry up the fence. “You’ve got a key to your back door on you, right?”

  “Yeah. Luckily it’s the same as the front door.” Holly starts climbing up as I work my way down the other side, but when we’re at about the same level, she stops and says, “I just thought of something.”

  “What?” I ask her through the fence.

  “The front door’s unlocked. It may not even be shut.”

  I stare at her. “But … he saw us leave. You don’t think he’d just walk in, do you?”

  “He might if he didn’t buy our act. Did you see the way he was looking around the lobby?”

  My skin creeps a little. “Yeah. He was pretty intense.”

  “And obviously no one’s going to cover for us at Maynard’s.”

  “Good point.”

  We start moving again, and when we’re both safely on the other side, we check around, then sneak over to the back door of the Pup Parlor.

  “Please don’t go home,” Holly whispers as she slips the key in. “Call your grandmother and tell her you’re spending the night. Vera and Meg are both really heavy sleepers and there’s no way I want to be here alone.”

  I tell her, “Okay,” because besides seeing that Holly’s scared, I’m also not wild about having to go home. See, I have to sneak up five flights of fire escape stairs to get into my building because I’m not supposed to be living with my grams. It’s actually, like, a federal offense or something that I am since the Senior Highrise is “government subsidized” and for seniors only. So if people find out I’m living there, Grams will be kicked out and she can’t exactly afford to live anywhere else. And since sneaking up the fire escape is tricky enough when nobody’s on the lookout for you, I sure don’t want to risk it now that somebody is.

  Anyway, as we step through the Pup Parlor’s back door we look around for something to defend ourselves with. Holly grabs a broom, but all I can find is a toilet plunger. I hoist it like a softball bat and whisper, “Let’s go.”

  We make our way past stacks of towels and pet carriers to the main part of the Pup Parlor, tiptoeing along with our eyes peeled and our ears perked. We don’t see anyone, but the front door is open a crack.

  Holly shuts and locks it, but that’s not really making me feel any safer. “What if he’s upstairs?” I whisper.

  She looks at me all bug-eyed—like she hadn’t even considered the possibility. And before I can say, “You want me to call Officer Borsch?” she’s racing up the steps.

  “Wait!” I whisper, but she’s already halfway up. So I chase after her and once we’re inside the apartment, she hoists her broom again and I do the same with the plunger, ready to knock the, you know, intestinal stuffing out of someone.

  And then all of a sudden we hear footsteps coming down the hallway.

  Holly yanks me around the corner into the kitchen, and we hold our breath and shake in our shoes as we watch a shadow creep forward across the floor.

  It’s a big person’s shadow.

  And there’s something in their hand.

  Something long.

  Raised high.

  And my heart practically explodes when I realize what it is.

  I mouth, “That’s a shovel!”

  Now, there’s no way I want to take on Shovel Man with a toilet plunger—even with a broom backing me up. So we cower back into the kitchen and I know Holly’s thinking what I’m thinking: What if he’s already killed Meg and Vera?

  And just as I’m looking over my shoulder for a real weapon, like a butcher knife or something, Shovel Man pounces.

  “AAAAAH!” Holly and I cry.

  Only it’s not Shovel Man.

  It’s Meg in a puffy bathrobe holding a vacuum cleaner attachment.

  “What are you girls doing?” she gasps, holding her heart.

  “Uh, we heard a noise?” I tell her.

  “So did I!” She looks at Holly. “I thought you said you were going to bed. I thought you were sound asleep!”

  “I was planning to but—”

  She looks at me, so I tell Meg, “I got scared going home and … and I was hoping I could spend the night?”

  Meg blinks at us both for a minute, still holding her heart. Finally she says, “Is that all right with your grandmother?”

  “Can I call her?”

  “You haven’t?” She points to the phone in the living room. “Go! Call! Now!”

  So while I call Grams and get permission and another mini-lecture about making her worry, Holly brings me a towel, a blanket, and a change of clothes, and Meg goes back to bed.

  And while Holly’s taking a shower first, I peek through the curtains, down to the traffic on Broadway, wondering if the Vampire and Shovel Man are out there in the Deli-Mustard Car looking for us.

  And if they are, why they are.

  It felt like we were in real trouble.

  Way more than we knew.

  It felt great to take a shower and get into some clean pajamas, but I still didn’t sleep very well. It wasn’t the couch—I’m used to couches. It was because for some reason I kept looking out the window. Kept checking Broadway for the Vampire and Shovel Man and the Deli-Mustard Car.

  Which was stupid. I mean, it’s not like we’d dented a Mercedes, or stolen something.

  But still, I kept looking out the window.

  Meg and Vera may go to bed early, but they’re also always up early. Holly says they like to squeeze in a little life before the poodles and schnauzers start showing up for grooming, and I can’t blame them. They work really hard, including on Saturdays, and are always busy, sometimes clear to eight at night.

  But when you’ve been up half the night looking for vampires and shovel men and deli-mustard cars, 5:45 is a little early in the morning to rise and shine for biscuits and gravy. And since the family room runs right into the kitchen, there was really no avoiding the noise or the light or the smell.

  “Just go sleep on the floor in Holly’s room,” Meg told me when she saw me hide my head under a pillow. “You’ve got young bones, you’ll be fine.”

  So I dragged myself into Holly’s room and crashed on the rug. And I did close my eyes and try, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. Maybe it was what Meg had said about my bones, or maybe it was just left
over images from Halloween, but I kept picturing myself as a skeleton on Holly’s floor.

  One with a stupid, laughing skull.

  “You awake?” Holly whispers.

  I open my eyes, and there she is, looking over the edge of the bed, her little poodle, Lucy, peeking out from under her arm. “Yeah. I can’t get back to sleep.”

  “What a night, huh?”

  “No kidding.”

  “You still worried about those guys finding us?”

  I sit up cross-legged. “You know, André’s right—even if they do see us, they won’t recognize us.”

  “What I don’t get,” she says, sitting up, “is what the big deal was.”

  Now, for as long as I’ve known Meg and Vera, they’ve only owned one dog, and that’s Lucy. Lucy rarely barks, she doesn’t fuss, and the instant Holly walked through the Pup Parlor door, Lucy decided Holly was her girl.

  Something that can make a big difference to someone who’s been living homeless.

  Anyhow, Lucy immediately curls up in Holly’s lap and cocks her head at me like, Why are you here?

  I give her a little scratch on the head and kind of start thinking out loud. “Everyone agrees that trespassing in the graveyard is not that big of a deal. I mean, we didn’t hurt anything, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And denting the roof of a rust-bucket car or bending an ancient windshield wiper … ?”

  She strokes Lucy’s fur. “Not worth tracking someone down.”

  I nod. “But …”

  “But what?” Holly asks, because she can see that the wheels in my head are gaining some traction.

  “But we weren’t the only ones chased through the graveyard last night.”

  “El Zarape?”

  “Right.”

  “Didn’t we decide that Shovel Man had chased him from the haunted house to get those skulls back?”

  I give her a little squint. “Did that ever make sense to you?”

  She shakes her head. “Not really.”

  “Plus if the Vampire and Shovel Man are both roaming through a graveyard at night and then cruising the streets of Santa Martina together, they must know each other. And at least one of them must have a key to the graveyard gate.”