The Bell Bandit Read Free

Ever since he was out of a crib, this had been his room at Grandma's house. He couldn't imagine sleeping anywhere else.
    "Well, for tonight, why don't you sleep in Grandma's room?"
    "No way," said Evan. There was something just not right about sleeping in his grandmother's bed. It was hers. "I'll sleep on the couch in the living room."
    "Okay. It's probably going to be the warmest room in the house." The living room had a wood-burning stove that heated the whole downstairs. "I'll get the fire going, while you two unpack the car. Is it a plan?"
    That sounded like the mother Evan was used to. He headed back out into the dark yard to start hauling in the suitcases and bags of groceries.
    "This is weird," said Jessie, grabbing the handle of the biggest suitcase in the car.
    "You can't carry that," said Evan. His sister was small for her age and weighed less than fifty pounds, but for some reason she always thought she could lift heavy stuff. "Let me do it. You take that one." He threw his weight into pulling the suitcase out of the trunk. It landed on the ground with a loud
ca-thunk.
"What's weird?" he asked.
    "Everything," said Jessie. "Nothing is the way it's supposed to be."
    "Well, relax. Grandma will be here tomorrow, and Mom said she already hired some guy to fix the wall. Anyway, we're not staying long. Maybe just three days. And it's still Grandma's house. How weird can it be?" But he knew exactly what Jessie meant.
    Evan dragged the suitcase into the house, then walked back out to the car to get the food. Three days of sleeping on the couch. Three days with no room of his own. Three days without his friends.
    Evan couldn't wait to go home.
    As he pulled the last grocery bag out of the back seat, Evan heard a car coming up the long driveway. Night had fallen. Evan felt a moment of panic, the sudden feeling that he should protect the house and his mother and sister from whatever was coming toward them. For a second, he thought about running inside and locking the door, but then he remembered the hole in the kitchen wall. There was no way to keep an intruder out. Headlights rounded the bend and flashed on the house. Evan decided to stand his ground.
    A gray pickup truck rattled to a stop right behind the Treskis' car, and a man stepped out. He was tall and rail thin, with a scraggly, pointy beard. He was wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt under a down vest, jeans, and heavy work boots, and he had a pair of headphones dangling loosely around his neck.
    "Hey," said the man. "Is your mom around?"
    Evan stood there looking at the man, trying to figure him out. Was he dangerous? Who was he?
    The man stopped walking and stood in front of Evan. Then he stuck his hand out. "I'm Pete. I'm the one doing the work on your grandma's house."
    Evan relaxed and shook Pete's hand. Up close, he could see that the guy wasn't that old. He looked about the same age as Adam's brother who was in college.
    "So, is your mom around, or did you drive here by yourself?"
    Evan smiled. "Yeah, right," he said. "She's inside. Mom! Mom!" He ran into the house and found his mother in the living room, closing the little door of the wood stove. A fire burned brightly inside, but the house was still as cold as a skating rink.
    Pete introduced himself to Mrs. Treski and then went down to the basement to turn the electricity on. When he came back up, he walked her through the damage. The sink in the kitchen didn't have running water, and the electricity on the first floor had been knocked out. "I rigged up a couple of bypasses, but you're going to have to get a plumber and an electrician to do the real repair work," said Pete. "It's going to take a few weeks, maybe a month, before the house is really whole again. Are you staying here tonight?"
    Mrs. Treski nodded.
    "It'll be cold," said Pete, "even with the stove." He turned to Evan. "You need to keep that fire going all night. Can you do that?"
    Evan straightened up. He'd been following Pete and his mother through