Chapter 20

“Don’t you hurt my daughter,” my mother shouts as she runs onto the green with a golf club in one hand, her voluminous handbag in the other, and my father chasing after her from behind yelling at her to let the police take care of it.

Everyone is so surprised that for a second they all freeze where they are. Of course, nothing my mother does surprises me, so I take the opportunity to run out onto the green, grab my mother’s purse as I pass her, and keep running. I’m swinging her handbag like a mad woman – it’s so heavy it’s nearly swinging me – and I smash it right into the man and Mrs. Petroff both. They go down together and the police dive into them like vultures on a fresh carcass.
When I repeat that image later, the kids all say “gross” – which doesn’t bother me at all. They are all safe, I’m safe, Mom and Dad are safe. Confused, but safe.

“So Mrs. P’s husband left her with all these bills,” Jesse explains to us all later. “And she kept selling everything she had to keep the house. That was why she didn’t ever let anyone in. Cause they’d see that she didn’t have any furniture left or anything. So she couldn’t be like nice and friendly, or everyone would know and she was afraid that everyone would start giving her stuff and she’d be one of those pity things.”

“An object of pity,” I fill in for him and he nods.

“And you couldn’t tell me that?” I ask.

Solemnly, he tells me that a) he was forbidden to go there, and b) a promise is a promise.

“I still don’t get what took the police so long,” my mother says, though Drew has told her three times that had she and my father not made trailing me into a near impossibility, they’d have been in place a lot sooner.

“Is she going to go to jail?” Dana asks. “I mean, the poor woman was probably eating cat food to survive . . .”

Jesse looks at her like she’s nuts, but then joins in when he thinks that may soften Drew toward his friend.

“And some days I don’t think she got to eat at all,” he says.

Lys chimes in that we should bring her some of Maggie’s food, since dogs are better than cats.

Drew says he doubts she’ll be going to jail. “First off, as soon as Jesse told her he was in trouble, she came forward and told the police how she’d tried to sell her ex-husband’s ivory on Craig’s List and how the two men showed up and forced their way in and tried to rob her.”

“I fixed her chain lock on her door,” Jesse says, explaining the mysterious job with the screwdriver. “So you know they really forced their way in.”

“They pulled a knife on her–” Drew tries to continue, this time being interrupted by my father, who guesses it was the same knife the man had at the golf course.

“And she had the pistol in the safe, so when she opened it to get out the ivory, she pulled it out and shot the man who we found on your doorstep.”

“And he had a partner who just dumped him,” I say, recalling the squealing tires.
“But I still don’t get how Mrs. P. wound up at the golf course,” Jesse says. He’s not the only one.

“After his partner died, this guy showed up at Mrs. P’s place and forced her to give him the rest of the pieces, “ Drew explains to Jesse. “But the final piece, the one that made the collection so valuable, was missing.”

“And this guy heard your friend Mrs. Petroff giving you what turned out to be a chess piece,” my father says, repeating what we all heard at the golf course, to which my mother adds something about loose lips sinking ships.

“But it wasn’t the real dragon,” Jesse says, and Drew nods.

“This guy didn’t know that. He thought Mrs.P had given you the prize piece, and so he called your mom and told her to bring it to the park. Then, knowing she might call the police even though he’d told her not to, he brought Mrs. Petroff as his insurance policy. He figured he could hold her hostage and make his getaway.”

“But Mom was too brave for him,” Jesse says.

“Your mom was lucky,” Drew says, putting his arm around me. “She’d have been a lot smarter to let the police handle this.”

“The police are handling more than they should,” my mother says, smacking Drew’s hand off my shoulder.

“Will they charge the old lady with selling stolen property?” my father asks. “Or contraband?”

“Or killing elephants?” Dana asks.

Lys looks properly horrified at the thought. “Don’t worry Lys,” Jesse says. “No elephants were harmed in the making of this adventure.”

Drew tells my father that Mrs. Petroff didn’t actually sell anything. “Even though she tried. I don’t think, even if she’s charged, that she’ll actually serve any time.”

“She told me to run,” I remind him. “She didn’t ask me to help her or save her.”

Drew nods in acknowledgment.

“Maybe they could use her down at the precinct?” I suggest. “For taking phone calls or some civilian job?”

Drew says he’ll ask around.

My mother reminds us all that she saved the day with her heavy purse. “How many times have I told you, Teddi, there are things you need to carry?” she says. “I don’t know how you manage with your little bag.”

I don’t say that my little bag is heavy enough to send me to Mike’s office for an adjustment every week.

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” my mother says.

“How Mrs. Petroff could be left with no money?” I guess.

“How she and Jesse got to be such good friends?” my father asks.

“How come anyone would want stuff from a dead elephant?” Lys asks.

“Why Jesse didn’t tell Mom he quit soccer?” Dana guesses – in the hopes, I think, of getting him into trouble.

Jesse doesn’t make a guess. He’s still feeling like there must have been something he could have done to keep everyone from knowing Mrs. Petroff’s secret.

Which leaves only Drew. We all look at him.

“Easy,” he says to my mother. “You can’t figure out how he got on the course in a sweatshirt, right?”

And, as usual, he’s right.

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