The Gypsy Game Read online

  “They were—the visitors were …,” Ken said, but then he shook his head. “I can’t talk about it. I promised Toby I wouldn’t tell anyone about them.”

  And that was absolutely all Ken would say. Except that he’d called Toby that morning, and his father had answered. “He sounded kind of frantic,” Ken said, “but he didn’t say Toby had disappeared or anything. Not then, anyway. Just that he wasn’t there. He said he’d tell Tobe to call me as soon as he found him. But I could tell by his voice that something was wrong. I mean really wrong. And just now when he called, he said that Toby had—disappeared.”

  That was all they could get Ken to say. When they tried again to bring up the subject of the Alvillars’ visitors, he just shook his head.

  “I guess you guys might as well go on home,” he said. “I’ve got to go to my dad’s office. I’ve got to tell them about Toby. I mean, I don’t know what else to do. Maybe they’ll think of something.”

  So April, Melanie, Marshall, and Bear, of course, started back to the Gypsy Camp. On the way they walked quietly and fast, glancing behind trash containers and down side streets as if they expected something dangerous to be lying in wait just out of sight. The kind of danger that might make someone go to bed at night and disappear before morning.

  Nothing unusual happened on the way, but they’d only been back in the Gypsy Camp for a few minutes when something scary did happen. Bear had gone back to his bed behind the painting of the caravan and the rest of them were sitting along the edge of the shed floor talking softly when someone or something started trying to get in.

  When the Professor had the new lock put on the gate to the storage yard, he’d also added a dead-bolt latch on the inside so that people who belonged inside could keep uninvited people from coming in. It hadn’t been used much—up until now. But as soon as they had entered the yard, Melanie had quickly and firmly closed the latch. And now, suddenly, it started to jiggle.

  Except for one short, soft woofing noise from Bear, no one said a thing. Absolutely silent and motionless, they watched and listened while the rattling went on and on and then …

  “Melanie,” a soft voice said. “April. Are you in there?” April poked Melanie’s arm and managed a slightly wobbly smile. They should have known. It was only Elizabeth. Melanie ran to open the latch.

  “Hi, Bethy,” Melanie said weakly. Elizabeth was wearing a new quilted jacket, her hair was tied back in the style that made her into a Queen Nefertiti look-alike, and she was smiling happily.

  “Hi, everybody. We just got home from San Francisco. Hi, Melanie. Your mom said you were here, so I came right on—” She stopped in midsentence, gasped, and whispered, “What’s wrong?”

  Melanie gave April a warning look. A look that reminded her how sensitive Elizabeth was and how she could come completely unglued over things that were a lot less serious than whatever it was that had happened to Toby. April got the message. But while they were still thinking of the best way to put it, Elizabeth gasped again. Gasped and pointed at the back of the shed where Bear was emerging from behind the Gypsy caravan. “What’s—what’s that?”

  Marshall jumped up and threw his arms around Bear’s neck. “He’s Bear,” he said. “My Bear.”

  For once April didn’t mind the interruption. Explaining Bear was a lot easier than explaining—some other things. She did the short version. Just the part about how Bear had showed up and how Marshall had recognized him immediately as his Bear and how they hadn’t told any non-Gypsies about him yet. Not until they’d had time to figure out how to keep him from being sent to the pound. And how, meanwhile, he was going to stay in the Gypsy Camp. Then Elizabeth, who was usually a little afraid of large animals, came over timidly to say hello. And Bear, who seemed to understand the situation immediately, greeted her gently with only a small bounce or two and a few friendly licks. Elizabeth was obviously thrilled to death.

  “He’s so big. But he’s not a bit scary,” she said. “And he smells so good.”

  April and Melanie would have cracked up if it weren’t for their other news. “But there’s something else we have to tell you,” April said reluctantly. “It’s about Toby.”

  Telling Elizabeth that Toby had disappeared wasn’t easy. She started sobbing almost immediately, and when they finally finished, it took another ten minutes to calm her down from positively hysterical to occasional sniffles and hiccups.

  “Look, don’t worry about it,” Melanie told Elizabeth as they climbed up the front steps at the Casa Rosada. “I think Toby probably just had a fight with his father and ran away. He’ll probably show up tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” April said. “That’s probably all it is.”

  “Ran away,” Elizabeth said, and started to cry all over again.

  So they sat down on the steps and waited, and after a while Elizabeth stopped sobbing enough to ask, “Can I tell my mom?”

  April and Melanie consulted each other with a look and then both nodded. “Sure,” April said. “We’re going to tell our folks about it. I’ve got a feeling that even if we didn’t, they’d be hearing about it real soon anyhow.”

  April was right about that. It wasn’t long before practically everybody had heard about Toby’s disappearance. The first ones to hear were Caroline and the Rosses and Mrs. Chung and right after that the telephoning started. The Rosses called Caroline, and Mrs. Chung called the Rosses, and apparently almost everybody called the Kamatas. So it wasn’t until the adults finally got off the phone that April was able to talk to Melanie again.

  “Hi,” April began. “What’s happening? Your phone’s been busy for hours. Did your folks find out anything? Have they found Toby yet?”

  “No. I guess not,” Melanie said. “Not yet. All I know is that everybody is really worried. And my folks tried to call Toby’s dad, but he won’t talk to anybody. He said he wants to keep the line open in case Toby calls. But my dad thinks he just doesn’t want to answer too many questions.”

  So a lot of people knew about Toby’s disappearance before they went to bed that night, and a lot more heard about it for the first time from the principal at school the next day. There was the usual back-to-school assembly where Mr. Adams, the principal, welcomed everyone back from their holiday vacation. But this time, as soon as he’d done the welcoming, Mr. Adams told the whole school that Toby Alvillar was missing. He didn’t give any details. Just that Toby Alvillar was gone, and if anyone knew anything about where he might be, they were to come to the office immediately. Mr. Adams also said, “If you are one of Toby’s special friends, you might be called in later, even if you don’t think you know anything, just to have a little talk with me and some other people.” Other people who, according to rumor, were probably the police.

  At the first recess April and Melanie talked about what might happen. Everyone knew that Ken and Toby were best friends, so Ken would certainly be called in. But since the Egypt and Gypsy Games had always been pretty much of a secret, at least at school, Ken might be the only one.

  “I sure hope they don’t call me in,” Melanie said.

  “Me too,” April agreed. But in a way, she almost wished they would. She really wanted to find out what the police knew. If they called her into the principal’s office, a lot of questions were going to be asked, and she was planning to do some of the asking. Back in the sixth-grade classroom she was still thinking about the things she wanted to bring up when the speaker buzzed and Mr. Adams’s voice asked for Ken Kamata to be sent to the office.

  Ken went out looking nervous and self-conscious, and in exactly fifteen minutes and ten seconds—April was timing him—he came back looking pretty much the same. April was craning her neck trying to get a look at Ken’s face when the buzzer went off again. This time the call was for April Hall.

  It took her a split second to sort through excitement, curiosity, and apprehension and come up with her famous deadpan, before she walked out of the room, carefully not noticing how many people were staring after her. />
  Actually, the people in the principal’s office were kind of a disappointment. Not that she’d been expecting Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson exactly, but when it turned out to be just Mr. Adams and two ordinary-looking, middle-aged women, it was kind of a letdown. Particularly when all they asked about was the mood Toby had seemed to be in when she’d seen him at Peterson’s grocery store. But April made the best of it, especially when she got back to the classroom and everyone started asking her questions.

  Thirteen

  “HOW MANY?” April repeated when people asked her how many detectives had been waiting in the principal’s office. “Well, there were just these three people in there. I’m not sure how many of them were detectives.” And when they asked her what the third degree was like, all she said was, “It was pretty scary, but I can’t talk about it now. They made me promise I wouldn’t.” That was absolutely the truth, at least the part about promising not to talk. The two women, who might have been school psychologists, hadn’t been particularly scary. The only scary part had been how worried all three of them seemed to be about what might have happened to Toby.

  That’s what April told Melanie on their way home from school that afternoon. They’d stopped at the day-care center to pick up Marshall, and at the moment he was walking a few feet ahead of them, talking with Elizabeth. That is, Marshall was talking, about Bear probably, and Elizabeth was listening, which made it easier for April and Melanie to talk about the Toby thing without anybody getting hysterical.

  April had told Melanie all about the interview in the principal’s office. That didn’t count as breaking her promise, April explained, because nobody, not even school psychologists, expected a person to keep secrets from her best friend. “They said Toby probably just ran away, but they seemed awfully worried. Like maybe they didn’t want to tell me what they really think.” Melanie nodded, looking worried and frightened. Not hysterical. Melanie didn’t get hysterical. But definitely frightened.

  When they got to the Gypsy Camp, Ken was already there waiting. He started to talk about Toby right away, but Melanie shook her head and pointed to Marshall.

  “Why?” Ken asked. “He was there yesterday, in the laundry room. So he knows about it.”

  Melanie nodded. “Right. He knows. But he doesn’t always remember about it. Like right now, for instance.” She pointed to where Bear and Marshall were bouncing around the yard.

  “Yeah. I see what you mean,” Ken said.

  They all stood around for a few minutes and watched Bear and Marshall play tug-of-war with the rope leash before Melanie said, “We can’t stay long. If we’re late getting home today, it will be nine-one-one time.” She made a frantic face and pretended to punch phone buttons.

  “Yeah, me too.” Ken looked disgusted. “Everybody’s hitting the panic button again.”

  They all nodded. They knew what Ken meant by that “again.” That all the adults were remembering Mr. Schmitt’s cousin and what had almost happened to April back in November. They all looked at April. “Yeah,” she said, trying not to sound pleased with the extra attention. “But that’s dumb because—”

  “Right. Real dumb,” Ken interrupted. April glared at him, but he went right on, “because that red-haired guy is locked up now, and besides the police don’t really suspect foul play.” Ken was looking even more self-important than usual.

  “Did the police tell you that when you were in the office?” April asked.

  “The police?” Ken said. “Those two women in Mr. Adams’s office weren’t police. One of them was a psychologist, and I don’t know who the other one was. The one who kept taking notes. And what they told me was that they think Tobe probably just—”

  “Ran away,” April interrupted. “That’s what they told me, too. But maybe that’s not what they really believe. I’ll bet they’re just telling us kids that so we won’t panic. Anyway I asked them lots of questions, and they said they think he just decided to run away.”

  “Do you think Toby ran away?” Elizabeth asked Ken. “Why would he do that?”

  Ken shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think he was mad at his father?” Melanie asked.

  “Yeah,” April agreed, “I was wondering that, too. I mean, Toby’s dad doesn’t exactly seem like your typical ideal father figure. Like, maybe he kind of takes it out on Toby because nobody wants to buy his weird piles of junk.”

  “No.” Ken shook his head harder. “I don’t think that was the reason.”

  “Then how about those visitors?” Melanie asked. “You know, you said there were some visitors the afternoon before Toby disappeared. Could they have something to do with it?”

  “I told you.” Ken glared at Melanie. “I promised I wouldn’t talk about them.”

  Ken was still frowning and shaking his head when a familiar voice, which seemed to be coming from someplace very near, said, “That’s all right, Ken. You can tell them now.”

  For a split second everyone looked around frantically, checking to see if everyone else had heard it too, or if it had only been their own private hallucination. Then they all turned back to where—to where Toby Alvillar was strolling nonchalantly out from behind the Gypsy caravan mural.

  “Hi, guys,” Toby said. “What’s up?”

  A moment’s stunned surprise—and they all pounced on him. Ken was pounding him on the back, and everybody was pounding him with questions. Questions like, “Where have you been?” “Why did you run away?” and “What do you think you’re doing, Alvillar, scaring everybody half to death?” And “Sheesh, Tobe. You weren’t kidnapped, were you? Some people thought you were kidnapped.”

  Even Marshall had a question. “Why were you sleeping in Bear’s bed?”

  Toby sat down on the edge of the shed floor, and Bear came over and put his head in his lap. Scratching behind Bear’s ears, Toby looked around at all the staring eyes, grinned, nodded, and answered Marshall’s question first. “What was I doing in Bear’s bed? Well, actually I was sleeping, till you guys barged in and woke me up. First sleep I’ve had in three days.”

  Marshall nodded thoughtfully and wandered off to disappear behind the mural, and Toby began to answer the other questions. “No, I wasn’t kidnapped. Not exactly. But I would have been if I hadn’t run away.”

  Somebody gasped, probably Elizabeth.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Toby went on. “I ran away to keep from being kidnapped.”

  Everyone asked questions at once. “By whom?” Melanie’s voice was tense and quick, but April’s was cool and suspicious. “Who would want to kidnap you, Alvillar?”

  Toby stopped scratching Bear’s ears and began scratching his own ankles. Both of them. “Fleas,” he explained. “I’m afraid our Gypsy Bear has fleas.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Plain old American dog fleas, as far as I can tell.”

  “We just bathed him yesterday,” April said indignantly.

  “Yeah, I could tell”— Toby grinned—“and was I ever glad. He smells great now. Even his fleas smell great.”

  “But about the kidnappers,” Ken insisted. “What about them?”

  “Oh yeah. Well, see …” Toby paused and thought before he went on, “see, a month or so ago these people showed up at our place and said they were my grandparents and …”

  “Hey,” Ken said. “You told me not to tell about that. You made me promise on my word of honor not to mention—”

  “I know, and you were great. You were really hanging in there about not telling. But the thing is, I’ve decided now that I’d better come clean. I mean, let you guys in on the big secret. See, it’s kind of a long story, but …” Toby paused again, sighed, and began: “The thing is, it turned out these people, who said they were my mother’s parents—”

  “Wait a minute!” April interrupted. “You said you never had a mother. Like you just came out of a test tube, or something.”

  Then Toby told April if she’d just be still and listen, it would all become clear, and he
went on. “See, these people probably aren’t really my grandparents. But the thing is, they just found out that I—” There was a long pause, a long, suspicious pause, April thought, long enough for Toby to cook up the next part of the story. “—that I have royal blood. Like, maybe I could be the next king of the Gypsies when I get to be eighteen years old.”

  “King of the Gypsies. Wow!” Elizabeth said.

  April didn’t say anything, but what she thought of saying was, “Sure you could. And how about an alien from outer space, while you’re at it?” Ken and Melanie didn’t say anything, but April could tell that they weren’t exactly buying Toby’s story either.

  “But why’d these guys want to kidnap you?” Ken asked.

  Toby looked at Ken as though he couldn’t believe his best friend was asking such a dumb question. “So they could be—like, the power behind the throne. You know, like being the Royal Grandparents. That sort of thing. Anyway, what they did was threaten my father because he said he wouldn’t let me go with them.”

  “Threaten?” Melanie asked.

  “Yeah.” Toby drew a finger across his throat and made a gruesome gurgling noise. “They’re really desperate people, I guess.”

  Ken looked puzzled and worried. “But all you told me was that your grandparents had shown up, and you didn’t want anybody else to know about them because they were so boring.”

  “Right. That’s all I knew about them at first. The boring part. But then, when I found out what they were really up to, I knew I had to get out of there. So I packed up some stuff, and when it was almost morning, I split. I spent last night under the bridge down by the railroad track, but there were some other guys there.” Toby’s eyes dropped, but before they did, for just a second, Melanie thought she saw something strange in them. Something like terror. “Some pretty weird characters sleep under that bridge. So then this morning I came here.” He grinned. “And since then I’ve been sharing Bear’s blankets and mattress.” He scratched again and grinned. “Not to mention his fleas.”