Blue Vengeance Read Free

selection on top of the counter.
    â€œThis is nice,” he said.
    â€œYou already have a compass.”
    â€œYeah, but this one has a leather case.”
    â€œSo what?”
    â€œI like leather cases.”
    â€œMay I help you boys with something?”
    It was an older gentleman asking, dapper in his manner. Danny wondered if he might be Sydney I. Robinson himself.
    â€œNo thanks, sir. We’re just browsing,” Paul said.
    Danny had heard his mum say a version of those words, except for the
sir
part. He supposed Paul’s mum said them too.
    â€œAre any of these knives rare?” he asked the man.
    If he ever bought a hunting knife he wanted it to be rare.
    â€œNo. Not as such.”
    The man looked over Danny’s head when he spoke and then moved on. Danny turned to watch a large hand come down on Paul’s shoulder.
    â€œI think you’d better put that back, son,” said the man with the hand.
    He was a burly man.
    Paul took the compass out of his pocket and placed it on the counter.
    With a hand on each of their backs, the man guided them to the rear of the store, where aromatic animal pelts hung on racks. He knocked on a closed door, and when no one answered he ushered them into a cramped office. There was a desk with a phone on it, two folding metal chairs, and merchandise. The merchandise took up every square inch where the desk and chairs weren’t. The man asked the boys for their names and phone numbers and then made three calls: one to the police and one to each of their homes.
    Danny thought later that maybe the call to the police was pretend, because no cop ever came. The one to his mum may as well have been pretend, because she didn’t come either.
    The burly man went back into the main part of the store to nab more criminals. Danny and Paul were left with a lady who didn’t say one single word, just sat on a chair and looked at her fingernails from time to time. Paul sat in the remaining chair, and Danny sat on part of a cardboard box that poked out from the boxes piled on top of it. The woman crossed and uncrossed her legs more than once, and when she did that her nylon stockings rubbed against each other and made a sound that Danny liked. He pictured putting his hand there, where the stockings touched.
    Paul’s mum arrived, and the dapper man followed her into the room and introduced himself to her as Mr. Blandings.
    â€œI’m so sorry, Mr. Blandings,” Mrs. Carter said. “I assure you, nothing like this will ever happen again.”
    She clutched Paul’s arm and yanked him out of his chair.
    Danny thought Paul would speak up and say that it was him, not Danny who had stolen, but he didn’t. They were both being painted with the same brush of juvenile delinquency. At that point he still expected a cop to burst in and he thought Mrs. Carter was just there to accompany them to the Vaughan Street jail and post bail. Or not. The Carters weren’t rich, and bail could be in the thousands.
    Paul’s mum was usually very nice-looking. She didn’t look so great right now because she was upset. Her nose was red and she trembled, but Danny hoped that Mr. Blandings saw past those things and got how attractive she was. Maybe he would think that her husband was dead or had run off, and that he had a chance with her.
    â€œI’ll hold you to that, Mrs. Carter,” he said.
    Danny saw the suggestion of a smile.
    She herded the boys out to their family station wagon, and Paul still didn’t say anything about how it was all his fault. She drove to the Blue house on Lyndale Drive and got out to see Danny to the door.
    â€œI wouldn’t trouble your mother with this, Danny,” she said. “But they phoned her too. She already knows.”
    It wasn’t me
, he wanted to shout.
It was that asshole son of yours.
    But ratting out a friend was close to the worst thing you could do. He looked back at the car and saw Paul