The Traveling Vampire Show(59)
She made a face to show us what she thought of nosy neighbors. “If they don’t like it, they can lump it.”
“You’re only gonna be a minute, right?” Rusty asked. “Why don’t we just wait out here for you?”
“Don’t you want to come in and wash up?” she asked him.
“Nah, I’m fine.”
“You’re a bloody mess,” she said.
“That’s okay.”
“I think we should go in with her,” I said, still worried for no good reason that she might have intruders.
Slim nodded. “Yeah, come on.”
Leering at her, Rusty said, “If we come in, can we go upstairs?” Before she could answer, he added, “We’ve never seen your bedroom.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
Rusty nudged me. “You’d like to see her bedroom, wouldn’t you?”
Scowling, I shook my head.
“How about it?” he asked Slim. “Do we get to see your bedroom?”
“In your dreams.” She whirled around and hurried toward the stairway. As she trotted up, she looked over her shoulder. “In or out, I don’t care. But stay downstairs.”
When she was gone, Rusty grinned at me.
“You jerk,” I whispered. “What’re you trying to pull?”
“Just playing it safe, you know? We don’t wanta be around when she finds the surprise in her mom’s room, do we?”
“I guess not.”
“Outa sight, outa mind.”
“Sure.”
“No matter what, we act dumb.”
“Right.”
I hated the whole idea of being dishonest with Slim, but we’d already deceived her. If we tried to tell the truth now, we’d look like jerks.
Expecting Slim to shout at any moment, I gazed at the top of the stairs. So did Rusty. We stood side by side, watching and listening. Quiet sounds came from the second floor: footsteps, the creaking of a board, soft skids and bumps that might’ve been drawers opening and shutting.
Rusty leaned toward me. “She hasn’t noticed it yet.”
“Guess not.”
“Maybe she won’t.”
Nodding, I whispered, “The smell might’ve dissipated.”
He turned his head and frowned at me.
“Spread out and faded away,” I explained.
“I know that. I’m not stupid.”
“Hey, guys,” Slim called. “You want to come up here a minute?” She sounded a little worried.
We glanced at each other. Rusty looked like a school kid ordered to the principal’s office.
“Oh, man,” he murmured.
I ran to the stairs and raced up them two at a time, Rusty pounding along behind me. At the top of the stairs, I knew I would see Slim down the hallway, standing in front of her mother’s bedroom.
She wasn’t there.
The hallway was empty.
“Slim?”
“Over here.” Her voice had come from the left—the direction of both the bedrooms.
Heart thumping hard and fast, I hurried down the hallway, certain to find Slim inside her mother’s bedroom.
The two doors were on opposite sides of the hallway.
As I neared them, I smelled the sweetness of the spilled perfume. Maybe the scent had dissipated, but it certainly hadn’t vanished.
I turned toward the mother’s door.
“Dwight?”
I spun around. Slim was in her own room. I hurried to her door and got there just before Rusty. We both stopped and gazed in.
Slim was standing beside her bed, a nervous look on her face. She was barefoot. She still wore Lee’s red shorts, but she’d taken off the shirts and put on her own bikini top. The powder-blue one, a favorite of mine. The matching bottoms looked as if they been tossed onto her bed along with the two shirts she’d taken off.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
In a small voice as if she feared being overheard, she said, “Somebody’s been in my room.”
I shriveled inside. Before I could say anything, Rusty asked, “What do you mean?”
She turned sideways, raised a long, tanned arm and pointed a finger at her pillow.
On top of it lay a paperback book, wet and chewed and torn. Though the book looked as if it had been mauled by a vicious dog, its cover was intact enough for me to read the title.
Dracula.
My breath knocked out, I looked at Rusty. He looked at me. Then we both shook our heads.
Slim still had her eyes on the wreckage of Dracula, so I took a fast look at the paperbacks on her headboard. They were lined up neatly, just the same as when I’d seen them earlier. Then, however, Dracula had been among them.