Читать книгу The Casaday Girls, Book 1: Super Kids - Michael Inc. Markey - Страница 6

CHAPTER 3

INVESTIGATION

“Hey Alexa, find any bodies in the woods today?” It was Shaun Wheatley, one of the bigmouths in her middle school math class. To her embarrassment, the comment broke up half the students in the room, especially the guys. “Heard you were in our neighborhood. You sure scared my mom last night. She’d like to run you and your wacky sister out of the development after all that excitement at the lake.”

“We’re not crazy.” Alexa was about to explain what she and Rachael saw, but thought better of it. The important thing was to get back to the lake in the afternoon for more investigative work with her sister. They simply had to get to the bottom of this. Why debate the issue now?

Rather than create a big to-do over their now-famous evening, she gave Shaun one of her super-stares. It worked. He suddenly stopped taunting her and went about his usual business, sharing ignorant remarks with others. At least he wasn’t directing them to her.

Could twelve-year-old boys make stupid comments on their own, without her influence? She thought. Maybe so.

Rachael fared no better at her elementary school, especially since it all happened just blocks away. “Get into trouble for what you did last night?” Jason Simpson asked as they went to lunch. “Are the cops going to arrest you?”

“For what?”

“Come on. You gave them the cool story about that man in the woods. Last time I did that--”

“We didn’t make it up.”

“Yeah, right. You gave them that awesome story, and it’s not even Halloween yet.”

“Halloween has nothing to do with it.”

“Did they try to lock you up? That would be excellent, seeing you and Lex in cuffs. Get pictures for all us guys if it happens.”

Rachael was about to give the big doofus a shove, but she controlled her anger. “We saw what we saw. What more can I tell you?”

“Ooh, I’ll bet your dad’s mad.”

“We didn’t talk about it, Jason.”

Not yet, anyway, Rachael thought.

“Well, I’ll bet you will. Last time I did something like that, I was grounded for a month.”

“Yeah, but that’s because it’s you. See, my parents understand these things. It is no biggie to them.”

Jason just laughed. “That’s what I thought--at first.” He began to walk away. “Don’t forget pictures when they show up with the handcuffs. You Casadays will be heroes for all my buds.”

After school, the sisters charged through into homework, just to get it out of the way. Then they changed clothes in preparation for that afternoon run. Of course, they also knew it was always good to do the right thing (homework already complete on a Friday) when there was a distinct possibility that they were in big trouble with the parents.

Their mother checked in on Alexa before she began preparing the evening meal. “How is your homework coming?”

Alexa looked up from her history book. “Nearly done, Mom. Was Dad mad about last night?”

“We’ll talk about it at dinner.” She glanced into Rachael’s room. “You two upset the neighbors and we need to fix that. Get that run out of your system and then we’ll discuss it.”

Alexa hoped to talk to Mom about the poor victim in the woods again, but let it slide. After her mother went downstairs, she ducked into Rachael’s room. “You ready?”

“All I need to do is change.”

“Hurry, we need to get out there before I blow up at somebody and say the wrong thing.”

“Please. No meltdowns with Mom, okay?”

They made the jog to the lake playground in record time. Looking around to make certain nobody saw them turn in at the parking lot, Rachael took the lead as Alexa watched behind them with her extraordinary vision.

“Keep moving, Rache. I sense something again.”

“Like last night? What is it with you?”

“There’s no harm in being too careful.”

They retraced their steps to where they thought the man lay. Rachael got down on her knees and examined the scene thoroughly, something Officer Mulligan couldn’t do in the darkness and fog.

“Look, Alexa. You see that? These weeds are all smushed down, like something, or somebody, was lying here. We’re not crazy after all.”

Alexa gave it a super stare. “I sense that it was human.”

Rachael looked again. “The person was bleeding. See those drops of blood? There, and there. Over there, too.” She pointed to a spot on the ground several feet away.

“I believe you but I don’t want to get dirty. My sweats were just washed.”

“Okay, Neat Freak, don’t look. I’m just saying that we didn’t see this last night in the dark.”

“Well, if I had looked more carefully, maybe I would have seen it. Of course, then Officer Mulligan would’ve suspected something about my powers of super vision. We don’t want him to know about our powers.”

Rachael looked to her right. “Then someone dragged him in that direction. You can see the marks in the sandy soil and broken weeds.”

They followed what appeared to be two heel marks between the clusters of pines. The girls discovered droplets of blood about ten or twelve feet apart. Every minute or so, Alexa gave a look, scanning in a total circle to check for danger before they moved on. They followed the tracks through the woods until they reached the hard road.

“What do we do now?” Rachael asked.

“I don’t know. That’s the end of the heel marks. Should we check out the houses on the other side of the road?”

“Maybe they threw the guy in the back of a car, or something. That would end all signs of the mysterious man.”

“Let’s just say that’s what happened. Then we should find more blood along the curb where they loaded him in that car, right?”

A sedan suddenly approached. Both girls raced to the edge of the wooded area again to remain unseen to traffic as the car flew by. Alexa looked up, straining her eyes and ears.

“Do you sense anything now?”

“No, but I haven’t been practicing the hearing thing lately.”

“You should, Alexa. It just might save our lives someday.”

A passing shadow overhead caused Alexa to look up. Above them, two large birds circled, perhaps seventy-five feet in the air.

“You see them? They’re not geese.”

Rachael looked up, too. “Definitely not geese. Even from down here, you can see they’re too big. I think they might be vultures.”

“Ooh, what would vultures want out here?”

“Dead things. Vultures are scavengers,” Rachael smirked. “So don’t stand in one place for too long. You might be their next meal!”

Alexa shivered. “It’s almost like they’re watching us.”

The birds disappeared after a few minutes of circling the lake, and the girls continued their investigation.

Then Alexa’s nose twitched. Looking both ways for traffic first, she crossed the street. Rachael scampered behind her.

“Just as I thought. More spots of blood.” Alexa continued to the yard of the house directly in front of them. “Guess they didn’t take the injured man away in a car.”

They looked at each other.

“Should we keep looking around?” Rachael asked.

“No. Not today, anyway. We’re in enough trouble already, after last night.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

“The trail leads to this house, though. I can smell it.”

Rachael yanked on Alexa”s elbow. “We better get away from here before someone sees us.”

They worked their way back through the wooded lakeside. Rachael collected some of the blood samples as best she could in a zip-lock bag. She carefully scooped up a sample of sandy earth and vegetation with it.

“What are you going to do with that?” Alexa asked.

“Don’t know. Something to show Mom, mainly to prove to her that what we saw last night was real.

If their mother still believed the story at all, Rachael thought.

“The way it looks to me, somebody took the man away while we were at home. They didn’t want anyone to discover him,” said Rachael.

“Right.”

“Gee, you don’t tell me I’m right very often.”

Alexa ignored the remark. “Looking at it another way, maybe they didn’t want the police to find him. Just us.”

“Yeah. Why would they do it?”

“You mean, besides making us look totally stupid? I don’t know. I’m just saying--”

A car door slammed. “Hear that? It was from the direction of the house over there,” Alexa whispered.

“Come on, let’s go peek.”

“No, Rache--”

Rachael paid no attention to Alexa and ran back the same way they had come. She crossed the street again, hiding near some evergreens on the property. Two youthful guys appeared, crawling out of an SUV in the driveway of the house on the hillside. They were well dressed in khakis, white shirts and ties.

“Stay down. We can’t let them see us,” Alexa said, following behind her.

“Alexa, how are we going to find out what happened if we don’t do anything?” As she spoke, Rachael reached down and grabbed a broken branch about three feet long.

Alexa grabbed at the branch. “What do you plan to do with that?”

“It’s just in case. Why do you think I trained myself to fight?”

“You’re delusional. Can’t you see? There’s two of them.”

“Only two? Yeah, I guess that gives me an unfair advantage.”

“Oh Rache--”

As Alexa and Rachael watched, the two figures entered the house.

“They don’t seem to be full adults, but older that us,” Alexa said.

“Maybe high school age?”

“Too well dressed to be coming home from our high school. Maybe they work, or go to college.”

“Or a private school. Let’s get closer.”

“No way. I know all I want to know for one day. Let’s go home.”

They made the jog back home as if it was just another routine run in their neighborhood. After a few closing stretches at their front door, the girls charged for the kitchen, to cool down with energy drinks.

“So what should we do now?” Alexa asked as she flopped down on a nearby chair.

Rachael wiped perspiration off her face and palms with a towel. Then with a dry hand, she slid the plastic sample bag from her pocket and carefully placed it on the counter before her. “Doesn’t show much, but you can still see the dried blood in there--like anybody cares besides you and me.” She stared at the evidence a moment. “I’ve been thinking about it. We need to get a closer look at that house.”

Alexa shook her head. “I don’t like the sound of that, the closer look thing. What did you have in mind?”

“Have you been practicing your invisibility skills lately?”

“Invisibility? What do you think that I could possibly do with a skill like that, even if I possessed such a power?”

“Oh, come on, Alexa. Don’t give me that innocent look. I know you tried sneaking into my room by making yourself invisible.”

“Huh?”

“I saw you do it just last week. You did it to mess with my stuff and make me crazy.”

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew. You didn’t do it very well or I wouldn’t have caught you.”

“I fooled Peanut the other day.”

“Peanut is a dog. The family dog. The point is, an invisible person could walk right up to that house and peek in. Nobody inside would have a clue.”

“You just said I’m no good at it.”

“If a door was unlocked, an invisible person could walk right in, look all around for clues, and--”

“Oh, no I won’t! No way am I gonna snoop around in a strange house. What happens if somebody’s in there?”

“So what if they are? Alexa, it’s our only chance to find out what happened last night.”

Alexa thought about it. “Tell you what. I’ll sneak around the place and look in some windows. There’s no way I am going to set foot inside that house, though. If you want that, do it yourself. That’s asking for big trouble, Rache.”

“Okay, I’ll accept a peek in the windows.”

Peanut scampered around the side of the house and scratched at the door until Alexa opened it. She had a message specifically for her.

“Strange car. Two humans inside--male. They drove slowly and stared.”

“Black SUV?”

Their faithful beagle whimpered a ‘yes’ answer.

“Thanks, puppy,” Alexa said.

“What did she say?”

“I think the two boys we saw down at the lake were looking for us.”

Rachael reached down to pet their precious source of information. “See what I mean? We’ve got to get back to that house tomorrow.”