“Looking at her books.”
“Oh, sure.”
“I didn’t even know you were gone.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.”
“Go to hell.”
Laughing, he patted me on the back.
“Hands off,” I said.
He took his hand away. His smile sliding sideways, he said, “Seriously, you’re not gonna tell Slim about any of this, right?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“You guess not? C’mon, man! I’ve never told on you.”
“I know,” I said, and went a little sick inside at the reminder of all the things Rusty knew about me. “I won’t tell. I promise.”
“Okay. Good deal. It’s just between you and me.”
“Right.”
“Shake on it.”
I looked around. There were houses on both sides of the street and a few people nearby, but nobody seemed to be watching us. So I shook hands with Rusty. His hand was bigger than mine, and very sweaty. He didn’t pull any funny stuff, so I guess he was being sincere.
“If anything comes up,” he said, “we didn’t even go in Slim’s house today.”
“What if somebody saw us?”
“We’ll claim it wasn’t us.”
“Sure thing.”
“We just stick to our story, no matter what.”
“But if somebody saw us ... somebody who knows us...”
“Simple. We just say he’s confused about which day it was. You know? We’ll say we did go into Slim’s house yesterday, but not today. Get it?”
“I guess so.”
“But don’t worry. It’ll never come up. It’s not like anybody got murdered in there.”
“That’s true,” I admitted.
But I got a sick feeling again, because the truth was a lot worse than a broken vase and perfume bottle. Sure, it wasn’t murder. If it ever got out what really happened in Slim’s house, however, people would be giving me and Rusty (especially Rusty) funny looks from now till Doomsday.
“Never happened?” Rusty asked.
“Never happened.”
“Great.” He smiled as if vastly relieved. “That’s that.”
“All we’ve gotta do now,” I said, “is find Slim.”
“She’ll turn up.”
“I wonder if we should check with her mom.”
“At Steerman’s?” Rusty asked. “Oh, great idea! And tell her what? ‘Gosh, Mrs. Drake, have you happened to see your daughter lately? She seems to be missing. We’ve already checked at your house, but she isn’t there.’ ”
“We don’t have to tell her that.”
“We go anywhere near her, she’s gonna know it was us in her bedroom.”
I supposed he was right about that.
“Anyway,” he said, “you think they’ll let us into that restaurant without our shirts on?”
“We could pick up a couple of shirts at your house,” I suggested.
“We can’t go to Steerman’s.”
“But we’ve gotta find Slim! I mean, where the hell is she? How can she just disappear? Maybe somebody jumped her or something. You never saw her make it into her house and she isn’t in her house and she didn’t show up at my house and we haven’t spotted her on the streets—so where is she?”
“She might’ve gone to the hospital.”
At this point, we were only two blocks away from the police station. “I think I wanta talk to Dad about it.”
“Your father? Are you nuts?”
“Maybe he knows something.”
“He’s a cop!”
“That’s the point. If somebody grabbed Slim, the quicker we get the police on it, the better.”
“What’ll we tell him about going to Slim’s house?”
“Never happened.”
Leading the way, I turned the comer toward the police station.
Rusty reached out, clapped a hand on my shoulder and stopped me. “Hang on a minute.”
“What for?”
“You’ll get us all in trouble.”
I turned around and faced him. “If that’s what it takes to find Slim....”
He bared his teeth as if in pain, then said, “I know where she is.”
“What?”
“I know where Slim is.”
“That’s what I thought you said. What’re you talking about?”
“I didn’t exactly tell you everything before.”