The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

9

In one way, it was a great comfort to be in Gregor Keretsky's office, drinking tea while her dear, dear friend stirred and sipped his coffee. His desk was covered, as always, with papers in messy stacks; on the shelves around the walls were books and bones and small replicas of different kinds of prehistoric mammals. Mr. Kerestsky was tilted back in his leather chair, with his feet up on his desk, the way he usually was. And Caroline, as usual, had found a space on his big lumpy couch by moving aside the piles of books that were always there. It was the coziest place in the whole world, she thought.

But she was frowning and feeling less comfortable than she ordinarily did in that room. Gregor Keretsky hadn't reacted the way she had expected or hoped. The unopened letter to Frederick Fiske lay between them on the corner of his cluttered desk.

"No, Caroline," Mr. Keretsky was saying, for about the third time, "you must not open that letter. It isn't addressed to you. It would be against the law."

"But—"

"No buts. I understand, my little paleontologist. You are frightened of this man."

"He looks like Tyrannosaurus Rex," Caroline pointed out once more.

"I understand even that. Many of these great beasts take on human qualities for me, too. And Tyrannosaurus—ah, the Great Killer. He is the most horrible of all. He could take you and me together, Caroline, and crush us both in his teeth, and his small brain would have no room in it to feel compassion."

"What if he lived right upstairs from you, Mr. Keretsky?" Caroline asked him.

Gregor Keretsky smiled at her. "It is only a man that lives upstairs, my small scientist. Don't forget that. The world of science must never mix daydreams with reality. These beasts that you and I know so well? They are all in the past. They don't live upstairs, not anywhere. It is a man. It is a man named—what did you tell me?" He leaned forward, his chair squeaking, to peer at the name on the envelope.

"Frederick Fiske," Caroline reminded him.

"Yes. Frederick Fiske. A man's name, that is all. Just as the name Gregor Keretsky is the name of a man, an absent-minded man who sees no colors. And the name Caroline Tate, the name of a girl who should maybe be home by now, helping her mama get the dinner ready?" He grinned at her and looked at his watch.

"But Mr. Keretsky, remember the other letter? The one about getting rid of the kids? And remember I didn't open that one. It was already open and thrown away."

"Yes, I remember. But there too, Caroline, the daydreams are getting in the way of the thinking. Would a killer—even a killer who looks like the Greatest of Killers—so casually toss away evidence of such a thing? Remember that a man has a big brain. This letter you showed to me, surely it has some other meaning. Why did you not show it to your mama?"

"She would have laughed. She would have said that the eighty-third reason she loves me is because I make her laugh so often."

"And is it such a bad thing, to laugh? There is not enough laughter around; that is what I think."

Caroline sighed. She didn't feel at all like laughing. "I thought that if I opened just this one, Mr. Keretsky—"

"No. You must not. In this country it is the law, and one of the most important of laws. A man's mail is his own. It is one of the reasons I came to live in America, Caroline. I have lived in other countries where this could happen, that a man could be accused, his mail opened, false evidence used against him..." His voice trailed off, and he gazed through the small office window. "You go home now, Caroline," he said finally, after a long silence. "Come back tomorrow, or maybe Saturday, and I will tell you about the conference in London. I brought you a present, but it is at my apartment because I did not expect to see you today. When you come back, I will tell you about London, and we will eat ice cream together. How would that be?"

Caroline stood and put the letter back into her pocket. "All right," she said. "I'd like to hear about the London conference. And about London. Did you see the Queen's Guards with the red coats?"

"Ah, Caroline." Gregor Keretsky chuckled. "You are teasing me. You know that for me even the coats of the Queen's Guards would be gray. You're the most colorful thing in my life, Caroline, and even then, the color is all here"—he tapped his chest—"in the heart. Never in the eyes. What color are those very practical-looking trousers you are wearing?"

Caroline started to laugh. "Mr. Keretsky," she said, "jeans are always blue."

Walking slowly back home, Caroline took the sealed letter from her pocket and turned it over and over in her hands. Mr. Keretsky was right, she knew. Once, when she was a little girl and still believed in magic things, she had had a crush on Santa Claus; she had imagined him to be kind and wise and full of fun. Now Gregor Keretsky was all those things—and more, because his past had taught him something about sadness, too. So his wisdom was better wisdom than Santa Claus wisdom. She believed in what he said. And she knew she would not scurry sneakily up to the apartment to turn on the tea kettle and steam the letter open.

But when she held it in front of her to read the address once more, the late afternoon spring sunlight glinted off a puddle on the sidewalk. Against the light, through the envelope, she could see writing. Almost without looking, she could clearly see the word "poison."

When she entered her building, Caroline guiltily passed the front hall table without putting the letter there. J.P. was home; she could see his jacket and books on the living room couch and could hear him puttering in his room, behind the closed door.

"It's only me," she called so that he wouldn't think a burglar had entered the apartment. He grunted something in reply.

She took the letter into her room and turned on the lamp beside her bed. Carefully she held the unopened letter in front of the bright bulb. And there it was: a short note, typed, and all of it in one place so that it wasn't folded on top of itself. It was the easiest thing in the world to read. It was also the most horrible. Horrible horrible horrible.

Fred:

When this goes through and you get paid, would you install a phone, please?

Have you figured out how to eliminate the children? I know it's tough, but you have to be brutal—and thorough—and quick. The May 1st deadline is inflexible.

About the poisons: I'll leave that to you. But best not to use cyanide, not after the Tylenol thing. Find something obscure.

Carl

Caroline read it twice. Then she read it a third time, slowly, and copied it onto a page of notebook paper. After she was certain she had copied it word for word, with no mistakes, she took the letter back downstairs and deposited it on the table next to the vase of dried flowers.

Trudging back upstairs, she thought again about her dream. It had been, after all, the Coelophysis, ratty-looking though he was, who had come to her rescue, who had said, "I'll help you."

She knocked on her brother's bedroom door and called, "J.P.? Would you come out?"

"Why should I?" he called back.

"Because," said Caroline in despair, "I need your help."

"I have to think, I have to think, I have to think," muttered J.P. nervously, after Caroline had described her suspicions to him and shown him the first note and the copy of the second. "Shut up and let me think."

"How can I shut up when I'm not even saying anything?" asked Caroline. She went to the kitchen and poured two glasses of orange juice. "Here," she said, handing one to her brother. He was sitting on the living room couch, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands.

"I'm thinking. I'm thinking," J.P. repeated, taking the glass of juice absent-mindedly. The telephone rang. "Shut the phone up, would you? I'm thinking."

"KID CALLS PAL," announced Stacy over the telephone.

"Hi, Stace," said Caroline. She took the phone into the bathroom so that she wouldn't disrupt J.P.'s thinking process.

"Anything going on? You dashed away after school, and I've been calling and calling, but you weren't home until now."

"Stacy," said Caroline in an ominous voice, "things are getting much more complicated. There was another letter to Frederick Fiske from the secret agent. The murder's got to be before May first because there's a deadline. I've asked J.P. to help. I had to."

"SIBS FOIL CRIME," said Stacy. "Sibs means siblings," she explained. "Siblings means brothers and sisters."

"I know that," Caroline said patiently. "And right now my sib is figuring out our next move."

"Caroline, this is going to be a big story. I mean a truly big story."

"I know that, Stacy. But I won't be around to read it, not if I've been poisoned."

"No way. You're going to foil it; you and J.P. You foil, I write. This is my big break, Caroline. Promise me you won't give it to another journalist."

"Stacy, I don't even know another journalist."

"And I'll never divulge my sources, Caroline. If they put me in jail, I won't divulge my sources. That's part of journalistic ethics."

"Stacy," said Caroline, becoming less patient, "you seem to be more interested in your truly big story than you are in your best friend. Don't you realize that I'm the victim here?"

"That's it!" exclaimed Stacy. "That's my lead! I'm going to write it New Journalism style, and maybe I can sell it to New York magazine. Here's the lead, Caroline; listen to this: 'I met Caroline MacKenzie Tate for the first time when she was eight years old. She beat me in the election for third-grade class secretary, and I called her several names. Smartass. Teacher's pet. I didn't know then what I know now, on this gray, anguished April morning: that Caroline MacKenzie Tate was, when all was said and done, a victim.' "

"Stacy Baurichter," said Caroline angrily, "don't you dare use my middle name, not ever. And this is not a gray, anguished April morning. This is a 65-degree sunny April afternoon, and it is almost over, and my mother will be home from work in a few minutes, and I am hanging up this phone if you—"

Stacy interrupted her. "Do you think they'll let me say 'smartass'? Censorship is becoming such a problem for us journalists."

Caroline slammed down the telephone receiver be fore Stacy could do one of her usual headline goodbyes.

Back in the living room, J.P. looked up and stopped muttering. "I've got it," he announced. "I'm going to hot-wire his telephone so that next time he makes a phone call, ZAP!"

"J.P.!" said Caroline. "Would you pay attention, please? I showed you what that letter said. He doesn't even have a telephone. He's going to get one after he gets paid for killing us. Too late then!"

J.P. frowned. "His toilet seat, then. A few craftily placed wires, and ZAP! Hot-cross buns!"

"Shhh," said Caroline suddenly. They heard the jingling of keys. "Mom's home."

The door opened and Joanna Tate appeared, pulling off her earrings with one hand. "Hi!" she said, cheerfully. "Boy, am I bushed. What are you guys up to? It's the first time in ages that I haven't heard you fighting as I came up the stairs."

Caroline laughed nervously. "Maybe we're finally developing some interests in common," she said.