“Are you okay?” My brother Rob.
“I’m fine.” Cousin Horace. Sounding very far from fine.
“Yeah, right,” Rob said. Evidently he agreed with my diagnosis. “Come on, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Darlene,” Horace said.
“Your girlfriend?”
“Not anymore,” he said.
“Bummer,” Rob said. “When did she dump you?”
“She didn’t dump me,” Horace said, somewhat indignantly. “I dumped her. She sold my suit!”
“Your gorilla suit?”
No answer, but I assumed Horace had nodded because Rob let out a long breath and then said, “Man, that stinks.”
Although they couldn’t see me, I nodded. No one in the family quite understood why Horace insisted on wearing his battered gorilla suit on every possible occasion, but we all knew how important it was to him. Recently, he’d discovered that he wasn’t the only person in the world with this hobby, and had begun attending occasional conventions of people dressed in animal costumes. I had no idea what else they did at these conventions, but they made Horace happy, which was more than I could say for Darlene. Unfortunately, he had met Darlene at a Fraternal Order of Police social, not one of his furry conventions.
“I took it off because I was working,” Horace went on, “and gave it to Darlene for safekeeping, and she sold it.”
“Well, ask her who she sold it to.”
“I did,” he said. “She won’t tell me.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. Much as I disliked Darlene, I understood how she felt. And the idea of never having to look at Horace’s threadbare old gorilla suit again was appealing. But dammit, that wasn’t her decision or mine to make.
And how had she sold it so fast, with the yard sale still closed?
“Damn,” Rob said. Then, after a pause, he added. “I bet Meg could get her to tell.”
“You think so?” Horace asked.
I was torn between wanting to kick Rob for putting something else on my plate and agreeing that yes, Darlene would tell me. And I might even enjoy making her do it.
Of course, if I was going to interrogate Darlene, I had to get out of the basement one of these years.
I left Rob to commiserate with Horace and began slowly hauling myself up again. Back to the bedroom. I’d lose the advantage of surprise in my battle against Mother’s unilateral decoration schemes, but at least I wouldn’t embarrass Horace or get in trouble with Chief Burke.
All this hauling up and down was getting exhausting. Maybe we should put in an electric motor for the dumbwaiter.
But then, perhaps mechanization was overkill. After all, I wouldn’t normally be using the thing for transportation, and a couple of well-placed locks would prevent any visiting urchins from doing the same. If only Michael weren’t so charmed by it, I could see removing the dumbwaiter and turning the shaft into a laundry chute.
Luckily, by the time I hauled myself up two stories, Mother and Michael had vanished. Though Mother had probably gone off to buy chintz, I thought gloomily.
“Hey, Meg!”
I looked out the window and saw Cousin Everett peering in. Standing on the platform of his boom lift, presumably.
“Come on,” he said. “They’ve all been looking for you outside.”
As busy as Everett had been, I figured this might be my only chance for a ride in the boom lift, so I crawled out the window onto the platform.
“Hang on,” Everett said. I grabbed the railings and looked down. And then I started when I saw Eric down on the ground, standing beside the boom lift controls.
“You’re not letting Eric drive this thing,” I gasped.
“Of course not,” Everett said. “I’m running it—see?”
I looked over and saw that the platform did contain a complete duplicate control panel.
“Oh,” I said, as we began moving. “I didn’t know you could drive it from up here.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Uh … yeah,” I said. Instead of merely lowering me to the ground in the front yard, Everett lifted the platform up to its full forty-foot height, then rotated it ninety degrees so we were facing the backyard before lowering it again. The crowds on the ground looked like ants, and even relatives mending the roof looked doll-sized. Very cool, unless you happened to be slightly afraid of heights, which I hadn’t realized I was until we hit the thirty-foot level.
“Thanks a million,” I said, when Everett finally deposited me just outside the yard sale entrance.
“Any time,” Everett said.
I stepped off into chaos.
“Meg!” Sammy exclaimed. “There you are! We need your fingerprints!”