The Gypsy Game Read online

  “ ’Fraid I can’t help,” Ken said. “My mom’s allergic.” He grinned. “She’s allergic to dogs anyway, and I have a feeling that a bear would be just as bad. But maybe Toby could take him in. I’ll bet he could. I know he and his dad used to have a dog a few years ago. Hey, Tobe. Come over here.”

  Toby stopped playing with Marshall and Bear and came over to the shed. “Yeah? What’s up, Kamata?”

  “We were talking about who should take Bear home with them.” Ken grinned at Toby as he went on, “I guess the thing is the Casa Rosada has a strict rule about no bears, so that’s out. And I can’t because of my mom’s allergies. So I guess that kind of leaves you.”

  At first Toby was smiling. “Yeah,” he said, “I probably could. My dad doesn’t mind having a …” But then, all of a sudden, his voice trailed off to nothing. “My dad doesn’t …,” he repeated, and then for several seconds he didn’t say anything at all. And when he did begin to talk, it was only to say, “No. I couldn’t. Not right now. Not until … Well, probably not for a pretty long time.”

  When Toby said he couldn’t take Bear home, it seemed to Melanie that he had a very un-Toby-like expression on his face. And even stranger was what he did when April and Ken started pestering him to tell them why he’d changed his mind. And what was strangest of all was what he didn’t do. Like not getting angry or even wising off. Instead, he just got a faraway look in his eyes, as if he was thinking about something so important he almost didn’t hear them. And whatever he was thinking about wasn’t making him feel very good.

  Afterward April and Melanie remembered that the afternoon when Bear arrived was the first time they began to realize that Toby Alvillar was in some kind of trouble.

  Nine

  THE WAY IT actually turned out, Bear stayed all alone in the Gypsy Camp that night. Nobody liked the idea very much, particularly Marshall and Bear. But after Toby backed out of taking him home, there just wasn’t any other solution. Everyone agreed that it had to be the Gypsy Camp or nothing. Everyone except Marshall, that is. Marshall kept insisting that they should at least ask Mr. Bodler.

  “Maybe he’d say yes,” Marshall kept saying. Mr. Bodler was the janitor at the Casa Rosada, as well as being the landlord’s spy who tattled on anyone who broke the apartment-house rules. Rules like not having a dog. Marshall knew about the no dogs rule, but since he’d never heard of a no bears rule, he kept thinking Mr. Bodler just might say okay.

  “I’m sure there must be a no bears rule too,” Melanie told him, but that didn’t convince Marshall. It wasn’t until April said that she definitely remembered reading a no bears clause in Caroline’s rental contract that Marshall gave up on asking the janitor and agreed to help make the old shed into a temporary bear shelter.

  “Just till we figure out something better,” Melanie told him. “It’s the only way. And you mustn’t tell Mr. Bodler or anyone about him. If you do, they’ll just come and take him away and put him in the pound.”

  “What’s a pound?”

  “It’s a place where they put animals that nobody wants, and after a while if nobody comes for them, they have to kill them.”

  Marshall looked horrified. “I won’t tell,” he agreed. “Not ever.” He patted Bear’s shaggy head. “But what will he eat?”

  “Good question, kid,” April said. “Big question! Enough food for a bear that size is going to be a very big question.” Then she looked around and added, “And the only answer has got to be—money!”

  Immediately everyone looked at Ken. When money was the question, Ken was usually the answer. Sure enough, reaching into his pocket, Ken pulled out a whole fistful of coins and even a dollar bill or two. “Okay. I get the message,” he said. “What should I get, Toby? What did you feed that dog you used to have? Hey, Tobe. I’m talking to you.” Toby seemed to be spacing out again.

  “Dog?” Marshall asked, frowning.

  While Melanie explained to Marshall that bears and dogs eat pretty much the same kinds of things, Ken kept on trying to get Toby’s attention. When he finally did, Toby said his dad used to feed their dog kibble.

  Then, after Ken offered to go buy a bag of kibble, Toby kind of came back to earth and said he’d go along to help. And while they were at it, they could pick up an old baby-crib mattress that was part of his father’s junk collection. A mattress that would be just the right size for a bear’s bed.

  “Won’t your dad care if you take it?” Melanie asked.

  “Naw, he probably won’t even notice. Besides …” Toby stopped talking, and his eyes went unfocused again.

  “Besides …?” April prompted.

  Toby shrugged. “Oh, nothing. I was just going to say that he’s been trying to get rid of some of his junk lately. Taking stuff to the dump, and like that.”

  Melanie was puzzled. There wasn’t anything scary about taking stuff to the dump. Particularly when you had as much of it as Toby’s dad did. But there was definitely something about it that seemed to make Toby look—well, almost frightened.

  So Toby and Ken went off together to get Bear a bed and something to eat, and Melanie went home to get a bunch of old raggedy blankets her mother was getting ready to throw away. Meanwhile April stayed in the storage yard with Marshall and Bear, but she didn’t waste her time. While they waited, she cleaned out the sacred fire pit and made it into a bear-sized drinking bowl.

  After Ken and Toby came staggering back carrying a baby-crib mattress and a huge sack of dog kibble, they all pitched in to help make the one-time Egyptian temple into a kind of international Bear hideout—Egyptian, Greek, American, and Gypsy. The secret hiding place for Egyptian hieroglyphic scrolls under the statue of the Greek goddess Diana became a storage place for a bag of American dog kibble, and the Gypsy caravan mural served as a great extra wall to make the bed more private and shield it from the wind. When they had finished, they stood around and watched Bear eat an amazing amount of kibble, drink from the sacred fire pit, tromp around in a circle on the crib mattress, and then lie down with his big black head resting on his paws. He looked pretty happy and contented right then, but when they all went out and locked the gate, he did whimper a little. And so did Marshall.

  After the gate was locked, they all stood around for a moment and listened to the whimpering. “I sure hope he doesn’t bark and bother the Professor,” Melanie said, and when Marshall asked, “Do bears bark?” everyone kind of sighed and ignored him. It was late by then and getting dark, and nobody had the energy to deal with any more bear versus dog debates.

  They’d started down the alley next to the Casa Rosada when Ken looked at his watch and said, “Sheesh. I didn’t know it was so late. I got to get home. So long, everybody. So long …” He looked around. “Hey, where’s Alvillar?”

  It wasn’t until then that they noticed that Toby was gone. He’d apparently taken off for home as soon as they left the Gypsy Camp without waiting to say good-bye to anybody. Not even Ken. Which was another definitely un-Toby-like action. On the way up the stairs at the Casa Rosada, April wanted to bring up the subject, but Melanie was busy reminding Marshall that he wasn’t to tell anybody about Bear.

  “Not anybody!” she said again pointedly. “At least not yet.”

  Marshall got the message. “Not even Mom and Dad,” he said. “Not yet. Or the pound will get him.…”

  “Right!” Melanie said. They’d reached the door to the Rosses’ apartment by then, and as soon as Marshall disappeared inside, Melanie turned to April and said just what April had been thinking of saying, “What do you suppose is wrong with Toby? He was acting kind of weird today, don’t you think?”

  “That’s just what I was going to ask you,” April said.

  They made a couple of guesses then, like maybe he and his father really were starving, or maybe his father was sick. But neither one seemed too likely.

  “He’d have told us if it was anything like that,” Melanie said. “Or told Ken, anyway. It must be something else.”

 
“Yeah,” April agreed. “Something more …”

  “Mysterious,” they said in unison.

  The next morning April got up early and made her own breakfast. Then, still sitting at the kitchen table, she began to work on the “found” notice for Peterson’s bulletin board. Written on a torn piece of notebook paper, in tiny, almost unreadable handwriting, the notice said: FOUND: One large black shaggy-haired dog. Please call 555-6790. Not that her handwriting was ever the greatest, but this time she had taken special pains to make it illegible. Just as she finished checking to see if it needed any more smears or scribbles, the kitchen door opened and her grandmother came in.

  Caroline was dressed for work in one of her boring business suits, and her gray hair was pinned back in its usual neat bun. The way she dressed had been one of the reasons April had been sure her grandmother was going to be a real drag. At least she’d thought that at first, before they’d had a chance to get better acquainted.

  “Hey,” April said, quickly putting the “found” notice in her pocket. “I thought you weren’t working today.”

  “I thought so too,” Caroline said. “But I’m having to fill in on short notice. And I’m running late.” As she hurriedly started the coffee and put some bread in the toaster, she told April that she’d already checked with Mrs. Ross and it would be the usual arrangement for workdays when school was out. The usual arrangement was that April had lunch with the Rosses and during the rest of the day at least checked in with Mrs. Ross from time to time. Which turned out to be pretty automatic anyway, since she and Melanie Ross were generally together.

  “Some toast?” Caroline asked April as she poured the coffee.

  April shook her head. “No thanks. I got up early and fixed my own breakfast.”

  “Oh, did you?” Caroline stopped bustling around long enough to give her a surprised look. “Something special going on in Egypt today?” she asked.

  “Not Egypt,” April said, grinning. “Remember? It’s the Gypsy Camp now.”

  “That’s right, you did tell me. I was forgetting. And you were about to introduce Ken to the change of scene.” She mugged an exaggeratedly anxious face. “Well, how did it go?”

  But April barely got started telling her when she had to rush off to work. “I’ll have to hear all about it tonight,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Yeah,” April called after her, “tonight. I’ll tell you all about it tonight.” And the strange thing was, she probably would. While April cleared off the breakfast dishes and put on her backpack, she was thinking about how it still seemed a little weird to be telling an adult about stuff like the Gypsy Camp. But Caroline was different. You could tell Caroline anything. Well, almost anything, she corrected herself, as she pulled the “found” notice out of her pocket to check it one last time.

  Ten

  NOT LONG AFTER her grandmother left for work, April left the Casa Rosada too, and headed down Orchard Avenue for Peterson’s grocery store. It had seemed strange passing the door to the Rosses’ apartment without stopping to see if Melanie could go too. Particularly since Melanie was the one who’d insisted that they should post a “found” notice in the first place. But Melanie had this thing about being fair, and she just might think it wasn’t fair to post a “found” notice that nobody would ever see. And probably couldn’t read even if they did see it. So for just this once April decided to go alone.

  Peterson’s was a small neighborhood grocery that did a lot of community-type services like delivering food to old people and keeping a bulletin board in the entryway where customers could post notices about things such as rentals and jobs and things for sale. One corner of the board was marked off to be used just for “Lost and Found.” Before pinning up her own note, April inspected the board carefully.

  There were, as usual, two or three missing cats, plus a found cockatiel—and one very large poster about a lost dog. April studied the dog poster carefully before she breathed a sigh of relief. The dog was described as white with black spots and weighing about twenty-five pounds. Definitely not Bear. The other good thing about the lost dog was the size of its notice, which meant that there really wasn’t room for anything new except, of course, directly under some other things. Which would be pretty frustrating if you were desperate to have lots of people read what you’d written, but wasn’t any problem if you weren’t. April smiled smugly as she tacked up her notice—directly under one of the cats and a part of the lost dog. She was just stepping back to see if anything was showing that shouldn’t be when Toby Alvillar came out of the store.

  Toby was carrying a big paper bag and a mop, and he seemed to be in a hurry, but when he saw April, he slid to a stop.

  “Hey, what do you know. It’s February.” He did one of his crazy eye rolls that meant he was about to make a joke. “I thought it was still December, but now here it is February already. How time flies!”

  “Very funny,” April said in a disgusted tone of voice. Then, remembering how Toby had mysteriously disappeared the night before, she asked, “Hey, where’d you go last night, after we left”—she lowered her voice—“the Gypsy Camp? You were there one minute and then you weren’t, and nobody saw you go. Ken was looking for you.”

  Suddenly the stand-up comedian was gone and the worried, spacey look was back on Toby’s face. “Yeah,” he said, “I just had to—get home. I had to find out …” His grin came back, but somehow it didn’t seem real. “I just remembered something I had to find out.”

  “Find out?” April prompted. Toby didn’t take the bait, so she tried another question. “Hey, what’s with the big mop?”

  “Yeah”—Toby seemed glad to change the subject—“some mop, isn’t it. First one we’ve had in about six years. I wore out the last one when I was in kindergarten.”

  That sounded like another of Toby’s tall tales. “Gimme a break,” April said. “I’ll bet you never mopped a floor in your life.”

  Toby laughed. “Not mopping,” he said. “You know, riding the range.” He straddled the mop handle and started galloping in circles, yelling, “Ride ’em, cowboy!”

  April was trying to keep from laughing when Toby’s mop-headed mustang tripped and he dropped his paper bag, scattering all sorts of cleaning stuff across the sidewalk. As she helped gather up S.O.S. pads, cleanser, scrub brushes, and several kinds of soaps and disinfectants, she said, “Looks like somebody’s going to be doing some housecleaning.” Remembering what the Alvillar attic looked like, she thought of adding that it was about time, but she managed to control herself. Instead, she said, “Hey, you guys going to have a party or something? Bet you’re getting ready for a big New Year’s Eve party.”

  But Toby’s tense, anxious expression had come back. “No party,” he started to say, shaking his head slowly. Then suddenly he was the old Toby again. “Yeah, that’s it. A party. My dad’s having this big blast tonight for a bunch of his friends. So we’ve got to shine the old place up a little.”

  April wanted to ask some more questions about the party, but everything was back in the bag by then, and suddenly Toby took off running. Clutching the bag and mop, he disappeared around the corner toward University Avenue, without even waiting to say good-bye. April watched until he was out of sight before she started home.

  April was back on Orchard Avenue and still wondering about Toby when, just as she passed the A–Z Store, she happened to see the Professor. She had been noticing the store’s clean windows at the time and the artistic way the junk and antiques were arranged now that Elizabeth’s mom was working there. The windows were so clean, in fact, that she could see the Professor himself, sitting at his desk at the rear of the store. On the spur of the moment she decided it would be a good idea to talk to him. Partly just for a visit, but also to find out if the Professor might have seen anything strange in his storage yard last night. Or heard any unusual noises, like a barking dog, for instance. If there had been a problem, she decided, it would be best if she and Melanie found out about it before the
Professor did something drastic, like calling the police, or maybe the pound.

  The Professor was working on his account books, but when April came in, he seemed really glad to see her. Dr. Julian Huddleston—the Professor’s real name—was as thin and bent as ever, and his dark, deep-set eyes still looked a bit mysterious. But now, instead of being blank and empty, they had a lively, curious gleam. Curious, in particular, about anything April had to say.

  “Well, good morning, Miss Hall,” he said. “And what new enterprise are you pursuing on this beautiful last day of the year?” Even though the Professor’s rating had gone way up on the friendliness scale, his conversation still tended to be a little bit on the stuffy side. April said she was fine and wished him a Happy New Year. They went on chatting about whether the beautiful weather was going to last for New Year’s Day before she got around to mentioning the storage yard and the Land of Egypt. She didn’t call it the Gypsy Camp because she really didn’t have time to go into the reasons for the change right at the moment. And besides, she certainly didn’t want to make the Professor think that he’d see anything new and interesting if he looked out his rear window. Like something new and interesting and covered with shaggy black hair, for instance.

  Instead, she just said that no one had been spending much time in Egypt because of all the holiday trips and visits, but that they all had been there again just yesterday. “All of us,” she told him. “Did you hear us yesterday? There wasn’t too much noise, was there, like in the evening?”

  The Professor said he hadn’t heard any unusual noises the evening before, which was a big relief. After visiting for a few more minutes, April asked if she could look around before she went home, “Just to see if you have any new ancient things,” she said. But what she really wanted to see was how easy it would be for the Professor to see through the window in his back room nowadays, the window that looked right into what had once been his storage yard, before it became the Land of Egypt, and was at present the Gypsy Camp. Not to mention, and she certainly didn’t intend to, the temporary home of a large, shaggy animal.