Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man by Wendelin Van Draanen Page A

still out, I just sat down and waited.
    And waited and waited. And when he finally takes the binoculars down and looks at me, he says, “You’re … per … sistent”—the way most people would say, You stink.
    I just smile at him and pop a candlestick on his rusty little table. “This yours?”
    At first he stares at it, then he stares at me. Then he picks it up like it’s made of crystal instead of tin, and he nods as he turns it over and over.
    I tug the other one out of the sack. “Are you
sure
they’re yours?”
    He holds them both and nods a bit faster.
    So I pull out the toaster and say, “How about this?”
    Well a toaster was about the last thing Chauncy expectedme to pull out of my little bag of tricks. He scratches his head. “Where … have … you … 
been?
”
    So I told him everything. Including how it had cost me nearly twenty bucks to get his stuff out of CeCe’s store.
    The minute he hears about the money, what’s he do? He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. And while he’s piecing together twenty bucks, my eyes kind of bug out and I say, “When’d you get your wallet back?”
    He hands me the money, then flips his wallet closed. “Police. Found … near … mall.”
    I think about this a minute. “Was anything missing from it?”
    Chauncy shakes his head no.
    “Was Officer Borsch the one who brought it back?”
    He nods.
    “Did he have anything else to say—like who their suspects are?”
    “No.”
    I kind of mumble, “Figures,” and for a split second I thought I saw a little twinkle in Chauncy’s eye, but it was gone before it was really there.
    We sit a minute, and then I ask, “Have you found anything else missing?
Anything?
”
    There goes his head again, shaking back and forth.
    “Well have you
looked?
”
    He gives me half a shrug and looks the other way.
    Now with all this shaking and shrugging he’s doing, I’m getting pretty frustrated. So I take the toaster and stuff it back into the sack and say, “Okay, you tell me—whywould someone come into your house and steal some stuff he didn’t want?”
    He looks down at his feet and shrugs.
    I say real quietly, “The Skeleton Man was trying to kill you, wasn’t he?”
    For a long time he just sits there, but finally he shrugs.
    “You think it was your brother, don’t you?”
    He jumps to his feet and starts pacing back and forth, shaking his head. “Why … now? Why … the … disguise?” He sits back down, motions to the candlesticks, and says, “Thank … you,” then puts his head in his hands.
    I can tell that he wants to be left alone, so I pick up the sack and go out the way I came. And I’m about halfway home when I decide that home is not where I should be going.
    The police station is.

ELEVEN    
    I didn’t
want
another conversation with Officer Borsch, but I didn’t know what else to do. The toaster had to be connected to the Skeleton Man somehow, but
I
sure didn’t know how.
    And I’m walking along, thinking about killers and toasters and how Chauncy would probably rather die than tell the police that he thinks his brother tried to do him in, when I notice these two men arguing on the other side of the street.
    I know it’s none of my business what these two guys are pointing and yelling about, but I slow way down anyway, and pretty soon I’m practically stopped, listening to them. They’re both about the same age, but one of them looks like he changes oil for a living, and the other—well, I’d bet what’s left of my high-tops that he has a closet full of ties and a cell phone in his car.
    Mr. Cell Phone’s yelling, “Look, park them in your garage, park them in your driveway, put them down the street somewhere, but don’t put them in front of my house! You’re breaking an ordinance and you know it. This is not commercial property. If you want to run a used car lot, rent yourself a spot across town!”
    I look around and, sure enough, there