Under Cover Read Free

think it was a man. He must have been
somewhere near enough Kennedy Airport to meet Dad there. How could
he do that if he was in prison?
    I perked up when I heard a key in the lock.
We always locked up since the time some lowlife sneaked in and
stole Jasper. Luckily we got him back, but it made us a lot more
careful.
    Grandma came in wearing sweatpants and
sneakers. She had short red hair with some natural curl that I
didn’t inherit. Mine was more a mahogany shade, long and straight.
She had on blue mascara to match her eyes, and she carried a mesh
bag with her bowling shoes in it.
    I said, “Is there something you people never
told me?”
    She straightened up from petting Jasper,
who’d been jumping all over her.
    “What are you talking about?” She set her
bowling shoes on the floor and sat down next to me. The sofa faced
a picture window that looked out on Riverview Boulevard. She kept
one eye on the street in case anything interesting happened, which
it almost never did, and one eye on me.
    I showed her the envelope. “We got a letter
from my dad, but it’s not for us. I want to know what’s going
on.”
    “Who said anything is? What are you talking
about?”
    “Take a look.” I pushed the letter into her
hand.
    She read it. A frown appeared on her forehead
and got deeper as she went along.
    “Huh!” she said, and gave it back to me. “How
can you be sure it’s from him?”
    “Grandma! How many people do we know in
Borneo? That’s his address and his typewriter, I’d recognize it
anywhere. And his signature, except it’s D instead of J. Is he
leading a double life?”
    It sounded crazy and I got embarrassed. But
what other explanation could there be?
    “Double life?” She spoke thoughtfully, as if
considering it.
    Then she tossed the whole thing back at me.
“You’ll have to ask your mom.”
    “Grandma! If you don’t know, why can’t you
say so?”
    She looked at me with those blue eyes. “Fine.
Now I’m saying so.”
    My eyes are brown, but they have the same
ability as hers. We can both look completely innocent even when
we’re not. At least I think I can. I know she can.
    I also knew that was all I would get from
her.
     

 
    Chapter
Two
     
    It was after nine when Mom came home. I
didn’t know if most agents worked that late. She said it was the
only time a lot of people have for looking at houses. I worried
about her touring empty places at night with some stranger who
might be a nutcase. You never know about people. I’d run into a few
nutcases myself. I was glad she had her cell with 911 in the speed
dial.
    She came home frazzled. Before starting on
Hey Buddy, I let her have her nightly screwdriver with crackers and
cheese so she would be in a more receptive mood.
    Then I showed her the letter. She was sitting
in bed with her glasses on, paging through a real estate
catalog.
    My mom was an elegant-looking woman who kept
her figure and wore her reddish hair in a French twist. Even her
glasses made a bold statement, with big round tortoise-shell
frames. She spent a while studying the letter and frowning at
it.
    “I know it’s Dad’s typewriter,” I said by way
of explanation. “And it’s his return address, but I kind of think
he didn’t mean it for us.”
    “I kind of think so, too.” She handed it back
to me.
    “Well?”
    “Well what?”
    “Mom!”
    “Mom, what?”
    “What am I missing?”
    “Missing?”
    She couldn’t fool me with that pretended
ignorance. I waited her out and finally she caved.
    “It seems to me,” she said, as though it were
a big revelation, “he must have written to someone else at the same
time and mixed up the envelopes.”
    “Thanks, Mom. I figured out that much all by
myself, but it doesn’t explain anything.”
    “What did you want explained?” she asked,
still pretending.
    “Like, who is this other person?”
    Mom lounged on her bed under a lacy afghan.
She rested against a pile of pillows and gave me a steady look.
“What makes