Flowering Judas(89)

“Dez?” Haydee said, moving through the hall toward the smell of coffee.

Desiree looked up. “Shh,” she said. “You don’t want to wake my mother up.”

Haydee went down the rest of the hall and through the living room and sat down on the built-in bench behind the kitchen table. All these trailers were, in fact, exactly alike. The bedrooms were all the same. The living rooms were all the same. There were the same built-in tables and built-in benches.

Desiree was making bacon. She kept turning it over and over and over in the frying pan, using a fork instead of a spatula.

“I didn’t actually tell her you were staying here last night,” Desiree said. “I mean, she was close to passed out anyway, and I didn’t want to cause any trouble. She doesn’t like you staying here.”

“She doesn’t like Mike coming over and busting up the place,” Haydee said. “Mike didn’t know where I went. Doesn’t know where I am. You know.”

“He could guess,” Desiree said reasonably. “You always come over here, Haydee. He knows that. I’m surprised he didn’t land in our laps in the middle of the night. He was mad enough yesterday afternoon. Do you think he found your money?”

“Nope,” Haydee said. “He can’t find my money. It isn’t around anymore.”

“You mean you spent it? Did you buy a car?”

“I didn’t spend it and I didn’t buy a car, because I don’t have enough money to buy a car yet. I put it in the credit union  .”

“The Mattatuck–Harvey Credit union  ? That one? I don’t get it. Did you get a credit card?”

“No,” Haydee said. She took a strip of bacon from the paper plate where Desiree was letting them pile up. She took one of the ones that had been there the longest, so that it had the least grease. “As it turns out,” she said, “a credit union   is sort of the same thing as a bank, except that it’s supposed to be owned by the people who have accounts there instead of some big corporation. Okay, I’m not sure I get that quite yet. But what it comes down to is that you can have an account there and they don’t charge you money the way a regular bank does. So I can keep my money there where Mike can’t get it and it doesn’t cost me anything. Kenny told me about it.”

“Kenny,” Desiree said. Then she giggled. “Does he have a place to go? Because I really can’t see you doing it over there with Mike hanging around to watch.”

“We’re not doing it,” Haydee said. “We’re not even sort of doing it. He hasn’t even kissed me good-bye. He told me about the credit union  , though, and he took me over there, and now when I get paid at the Quik-Go I can walk to the credit union   and deposit the check, and there won’t be any money around for Mike to find.”

“Yeah, well,” Desiree said. “You’ve got to worry about that, don’t you? He’s going to beat you to a pulp someday if he can’t find it. I still can’t believe you found someplace to hide it where he wouldn’t look.”

“Don’t you know where I hid it?”

“No, I don’t. And maybe you shouldn’t tell me. Maybe you’re going to want to hide money there again. I don’t do too well when people are threatening me.”

“I hid it over in the ghost trailer.”

“What?”

“Oh, I didn’t go all the way in,” Haydee said. “I mean, I did, sort of. I went through the door and into the vestibule, you know, but I didn’t go any farther than that. The place was full of dust and it smelled weird. I just put the money in a little roll in a space where there was a crack in the wall of the front closet. There were bugs there, but I didn’t see why I should mind. It’s not like bugs eat money.”

“But I thought that trailer was locked.”

“Please,” Haydee said. “Anybody could get past one of these locks. And Mike wasn’t going to go over there and look, because he thinks the place is haunted. Really haunted. The man’s an idiot.”

“Does your mother think it’s haunted, too?”

Haydee shrugged. “I have no idea. She hates the place. She wasn’t going to go looking around in it anymore than Mike was. Which is odd, now that I come to think of it.”

“Why?” Desiree asked. “I wouldn’t want to go into that thing. Maybe the ghost of Chester Morton is in there somewhere, just waiting to pounce on the first person who walks in.”

“And do what?” Haydee said. “Don’t be ridiculous. And Chester Morton didn’t die there anyway. He didn’t die twelve years ago at all. But, you know, it’s like I said. It’s a little strange.”