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"Bethany," Mom called up the stairs. "Are you coming down?"
"I'm busy," I yelled back, blinking the angry tears away.
It was one of the worst Sundays of my life. How on earth was I going to tell people I was almost fourteen and I was to have a tutor? Not just any tutor…oh no! Mom had to go and pick Dr. Dev's mother from next door. I closed my eyes and a picture of Mrs. Naidu sprang into my mind. She was small and old and get this...she wore a sari.
Alexis Evelyn Raquel Rodgers, the Fifth, was going to die laughing when she found out. And I was going to die of embarrassment, because she would never believe someone who looked like Mrs. Naidu could be a tutor. She was going to say she was my baby sitter.
Why couldn't Mom remember we lived in a democracy? I had rights, too.
Hurricane mad was how I felt. Anger whooshed up in me the way those tidal waves did off the coast of North Carolina. I wanted to smash something, but I knew I'd better not. So in my mind I just threw things against the wall and watched them break into tiny little pieces. The lamp, my hand mirror, the French dancer figurine.
Then imagination took me one step further and I began to wonder how I would get all the glass out of my carpet, if I ever really did that. Cleaning that mess would take forever, and as Dad had always said, a destructive anger only got the perp into big trouble.
Just staying up here by myself was a better way of showing Mom she was wrong.
Luckily my bedroom window framed a scene that was better than a picture. In the background, the San Gabriel Mountains wore caps of snow. In the middle of the picture, the city of Green Valley looked like a building block village. Just under my window were the roofs of some of the other houses in the master planned development of Rainbow Meadows. On clear days, birds made patterns of circles in the blue sky as they searched for prey.
Mom and I had moved here exactly two years and two months ago. Forty-five miles from downtown L.A., Green Valley was part of Los Angeles County. We were twenty-five minutes away from Mount Baldy in the north and the Pacific Ocean in the south, forty-five minutes away from all the action. All these distances in time depend on the freeways being clear, of course.
I hadn't known all this until our Gate teacher in sixth grade asked us to write a report on Green Valley. It was good to know stuff like that because when you spouted it to your relatives, especially those from back east, they felt you were learning something after all in California schools. These were the same relatives who had wanted Mom to go back east after Dad died. Mom had told them her roots and mine were planted in California's seismic soil and this was where we were going to stay.
I was glad because, though I like my relatives on birthdays and at Christmas, having too many of them around means having that many more grown-ups bossing you. They had all left the day after Christmas this year and Mom and I had spent the rest of the vacation and started the New Year peacefully together.
I sighed. At least it had been a peaceful start, until an hour ago when she told me about the plans she'd made for me. It was real sneaky of her to keep it for the last day before I went back to school.
There wasn't much time to argue her out of it. Besides she rarely backed down once she made up her mind about something. I had to get it across that she couldn't keep treating me as if I'm three or four.
There was a knock on the door and Mom popped her head around it. "We have to talk."
"Come in," I said, reluctantly.
I went and sat cross-legged on my bed and Mom came in and sat down on the edge of it. Trying to fight the warm feeling that starts at my toes and rushes all the way up to my heart, whenever I look at Mom, I stared at the wall.
Mom has the kindest face in the world. Her brown hair is just like mine, but hers is curly. She ties it back at her neck but little curls frame her face. Her brown eyes are warm and pretty, and there's this dimple that peeps out on one side of her mouth when she smiles, which is what she was doing right now. Mom is thirty-five but she looks much younger. She used to wear a size twelve but it's a ten now. She married my Dad at twenty and had me the following year, after which she went back to school part time to get her law degree. My Dad was sixteen years older than she was, but according to our relatives, it was a case of love at first sight and a match made in Heaven.
Mom still looks young and very pretty. When she introduces me as her daughter, people look at her and then at me wondering if I'm adopted. I reach Mom's shoulder already and I'm built like Fort Knox.
Big, sturdy, and not at all pretty. Which was all the more reason not to do anything to draw attention to myself.
"Are your feelings hurt?" Mom asked gently, when I refused to say anything.
I nodded, not sure I could sound angry enough if I spoke. The anger seemed to be receding too quickly.
"How long before you come down? I thought we'd make some popcorn and watch Lassie."
Did Mom think I was a corrupt politician, like the one we'd seen on the four o'clock news, who could be bribed?
"Why did you have to go and fix up a tutor for me? I can take care of myself after school."
Mom sighed. "You need help with math. Remember your last report? You had a D."
"A national survey says girls don't do as well as boys in science and math," I said.
"Fiddlesticks," said Mom. "Since when do you accept stereotypes of male and female behavior?"
Since never. I'd better not push the point I'd just made, or I might find myself in a sewing or a home economics class. Mom had taken all those when she was growing up, because those were the things girls were expected to know back then. Her mother was French and her father English, and they had been pretty strict with her.
"I got an A plus in English and social sciences, and I'm going to try harder in math," I argued. "Really I am. The only reason I got that stupid D last semester was because I lost my homework."
I had told the lie so many times it was beginning to sound like the truth to me. I hadn't done that homework in the first place. Mom had worked late all that week, and I'd read every evening until I'd fallen asleep.
"You can't lose homework you haven't done, And it happened not once, not twice, but thrice," Mom pointed out. She put a finger on the tip of my nose. "I do believe it's growing."
I scooted back on the bed, trying not to laugh at the image of me with a Pinocchio nose. It's not fair Mom has this x-ray vision that can see through every lie I tell.
"Everybody's going to laugh at me," I said bitterly. "They aren't going to believe that Mrs. Naidu's my tutor. They're going to say she's my baby-sitter and make fun of her, too."
Especially Alexis Evelyn Raquel Rodgers, the Fifth. Once Lexi started, everyone else would laugh too, just because she was the leader of the pack.
"They'll stop when they see your grades go up, won't they?" Mom said briskly.
"Why does Mrs. Naidu have to be my tutor? She looks funny in that sari she wears."
"Since when have you started worrying so much about what other kids say?" Now Mom sounded really stern. "Mrs. Naidu has a degree in science and education. She taught in a British school in India for twenty years. And she doesn't look funny in a sari."
"No one has a tutor stay with them for two hours after school every day. I'm the only teenager with a baby-sitter. You don't trust me."
"I don't care what they say and I'm going over this one last time. This has nothing to do with not trusting you. Mrs. Naidu will tutor you for forty five minutes. The rest of the time she's just going to be here. If you want help with the rest of your homework, she'll be glad to give it to you. If you don't, that's fine too."
When Mom got that note in her voice I knew it was time to keep quiet, but I had to give it one last shot. "I don't need supervision. Just because that kid down the road was kidnapped by his Dad, doesn't mean anyone's going to kidnap me. And if you're worried about the break-ins, no one's going to steal anything from us. They don't want a ten year old television set and a temperamental VCR."
"Both of which work fine, but that's beside the point." Mom got to her feet. "I worried about you being home alone all of November, especially when I had to work late."
Two break-ins in Green Valley just before Christmas hadn't helped my case either.
"Why? I have my computer and my books. I don't spend hours on the phone or watch shows I'm not meant to or have anyone over without letting you know." It's the kind of things people at school were always getting into trouble about.
"You're on your own too much."
"I like being on my own."
"But I don't," Mom said. "With your hobbies, I feel you'll lose all your interactive skills."
"I interact in school," I said.
"Not enough. I'm concerned about you, and Mrs. Naidu offered to help. You know what your other choice is…." When I didn't say anything, Mom said, "Well, I'm going down to make myself a big bowl of hot buttered popcorn with lots of pepper and then in exactly ten minutes I'm going to watch Lassie. Come down if you want to."
I hated choices as much as I loved popcorn and Lassie. I lay down on my stomach after Mom left and scrunched my eyes up tight.
The choice was having my mother's friend, Mrs. Chivers pick me up after school and drop me off at Green Valley Tutorials. They held regular after-school classes for three hours. I did not want to go there and study math or anything else for three hours on top of being in school all day. By the time Mom picked me up each evening, there'd be no time for anything except dinner, a bath and bed. I wouldn't be able to get on the computer or read or anything.
I didn't have much choice so I'd better figure out how to break the news to the kids in school, especially Lexi.
I'd told everyone I was going to stay home alone after school, this semester. Now I would have to tell them, my neighbor Dr. Dev's mother, was going to come over and watch me every weekday.
If only we could have a really big earthquake tonight. A 5.0 or higher that would cause enough damage to our house to let me miss school. On the other hand, it would be better if the school got damaged, instead of our house. Then I wouldn't have to go to school tomorrow or explain anything to anyone.
Mrs. Naidu had come here from India in October. Mom had met her quite a few times since then. I'd been introduced to her, when Mom and I had taken Dr. Dev, his wife Dr. Mira, and Mrs. Naidu their Christmas present...a basket filled with packets of assorted nuts, gourmet coffee and chocolates. Mrs. Naidu hadn't said much except `hello' and I had been too shy to say anything else. I'd wondered how she wrapped herself in the sari and if it was easy for her to walk wearing one. We hadn't stayed long at the Naidus' anyway because we'd been on our way to pick up our relatives from the airport.
How could Mom pick Mrs. Naidu for my tutor? Life just wasn't fair. Why did Tia, the housekeeper we'd had since I was born, have to go take care of her sick mother? That had been in November, and in December she'd called to say she didn't know when she could come back.
Why had my Dad died of a stroke when I was nine? Things just weren't the same without him. Mom worked long hours as Assistant District Attorney in Los Angeles, so we could live in a nice area and I could go to a good school in a safe neighborhood.
We'd moved two years after Dad died, because my Mom had said a change would do us both good. I hadn't said anything, because I'd read in a magazine that a change of surrounding helped with a new start in life, and Mom needed that. Grandma Grace, Grandpa William, Tia and I worried about her.
My anger faded as I thought of my grandparents, Tia, Dad and Mom. Though she'd put on a tough I'm-in-charge act, I'd seen the shadow of worry in Mom's eyes. Since Dad died, all our relatives had told me at some time or other that I had to help Mom now that Dad wasn't there. They said that I was her reason for carrying on so bravely, that she and my Dad had loved each other and me very much and all Mom wanted now, was to give me the life she and Dad had planned for me.
It was all stuff I knew. Remembering it made me feel really guilty. I had to make things easy for her, not act like the abominable child I really was.
Abominable. I said the word aloud. It was a nice word to add to the collection that I'd started two years ago when I'd realized that there were words in danger of becoming extinct from lack of use. Not that `abominable' would as long as Yeti the snowman was sighted every now and then, but I just liked the sound of it.
Mom was a victim of circumstances and I had to make sure I wasn't adding to her stress. When a child becomes part of a parent's stress there's very little room left for love. I'd gotten that from a magazine article in Dr. Dev's waiting room and it made perfect sense to me.
Deep down, I didn't want Mom to stop loving me. But I had to do something about Mrs. Naidu. Maybe a few days of television and music at volumes that drive adults crazy in a hurry, alternated with stubborn silences would make her change her mind about tutoring me. I had a few other tricks up my sleeve, but I had to plan things carefully, so I wouldn't end up getting into trouble. I'd do what Dad had always told me to do. Think things through to the end first.
I'd be grounded if I was outright rude and Mrs. Naidu reported me. Being grounded, in our house included not using the computer. While I could do without phone and television, I hated not having access to my computer.
I'd have to come up with a plan that was clever.
Feeling better, I got off the bed, and headed for the door. I checked my reflection at the end of the hall before I headed downstairs. Lexi did that all the time. It seemed a cool, grown-up thing to do, but I was getting awfully tired of remembering because there was nothing to admire about me.
Plain brown eyes stared back at me. My hair, the same shade of brown as my eyes, hung straight down to my waist. Christmas Eve I had tried to cut a fringe, which had turned into a disaster. Now, on top of all my other problems, I had a piece of hair on top of my forehead that stuck out like Mr. Pope, the music teacher's mustache.
I looked at myself again. If I had to have Mrs. Naidu for a tutor, couldn't I at least have been tiny and cute and had green eyes and red hair like Lexi's?
There was very little justice in this world.
Monday, the doorbell rang two minutes after I let myself into the house. At first I was tempted to pretend not to hear it. I'd just come in. Surely Mrs. Naidu knew the importance of leaving a person alone for a few minutes, to unwind after a hard day.
The doorbell rang again, and I sighed. Be polite, Mom had said this morning, don't let me down.
I went to the door because if there was one thing I didn't want to do in this world it was to let Mom down. Dad had, by dying, but I was never going to.
I opened the front door, "Yes?" I said, as if I didn't know why Mrs. Naidu was there.
"Beth," she smiled at me as if I was the Christmas fairy at the top of the tree we'd just taken down. "It's good to see you again. How are you doing?"
"F...fine thank you." I stared at her. This was the first time I was seeing her so close up. She wasn't old at all. Her face didn't have a single wrinkle and behind her glasses, her black eyes were sharp.
I opened the door wider and stood aside. "Please come in."
"I'm so glad I could come over and visit for a while. I get very lonely and there's only so much gardening my back can handle."
Mom'd had Dr. Dev, Dr. Mira and Mrs. Naidu over for dinner when I'd spent the night at Lexi's at her slumber party, so Mrs. Naidu knew the layout of the house. She headed straight for the family room while I thought about what she'd said.
She was lonely, too? I'd been lonely since Dad died, but I'd never told Mom. I just didn't like talking about my Dad.
"It isn't easy," she said, as she sat down on the couch, "to have a son and daughter-in-law who are both doctors and busy all the time. Mira and Dev both love me but there's nothing for me to do here except garden, go for a five mile walk each morning, cook meals they are too tired or busy to eat and watch TV. It's not like India. I'm not complaining about them, though. I visited them thrice before I made the decision to move here permanently. I don't expect them to change their lifestyle for me and we do things together at the weekends. I just have too much time on my hands here." She sighed again.
"Why did you come?" I asked. Maybe with the right encouragement she would go back.
"When Dev's father died, I had no choice. We had always said that the surviving parent would come live with him."
"Is life in India very different?" I thought of the picture in my textbook of a woman having to draw water from a well for cooking and drinking and carry it home on her head. Surely Mrs. Naidu should be glad that she didn't have to do that any more.
"Very different. I have so many friends to visit, a car and a driver to take me wherever I want to go. I did some social work, too, there."
"Where did you live?"
"A place called Hosur in south India."
"Did you have a big house?"
It seemed the politest way of finding out more
"Not too big, not too small. Dev's father had it built after he retired from the army. It has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a drawing cum dining room, a prayer room, a pantry, a kitchen and two verandahs."
Verandahs. I liked the sound of the word. I'd look it up in the computer thesaurus later. For now I just nodded so Mrs. Naidu wouldn't guess I didn't know what a verandah was.
"Who else lived with you?"
"We had three servants who stayed on the premises. The cook, the kitchen boy, and the maid. The gardener and the washerwoman came once a week."
With so many servants, life must have been easy.
There was so much more I wanted to know but it wasn't polite to keep asking questions. Besides, I didn't want to get too friendly.
"Would you like me to call you Beth or Bethany?"
"Beth, please." Only Mom, and my Dad when he'd been alive, called me Bethany.
"Tell me something about yourself, Beth."
"I'm almost fourteen," I said, "and I'm in the eighth grade. This is my last year in Junior High."
I blew air up towards my fringe to show how really grown up I was.
"What are your hobbies?" Mrs. Naidu asked, when I didn't say anything more.
"I like doing stuff on my computer and reading. I'm a word collector."
Usually people asked me what that was, but Mrs. Naidu just nodded. "Mira mentioned you love reading."
"I do. Dr. Dev and Dr. Mira told me I could read the new magazines in their waiting room whenever I want to."
Rainbow Meadows had a shopping center called the Village, five minutes from our house. There was a professional building next to it where Dr. Dev and Dr. Mira had their office, along with a lawyer, a dentist, and a CPA. Sometimes Mom would let me bike down there, and read. She was right when she said I read like a locust.
"I'm never bored as long as I have something to read," said Mrs. Naidu.
I stared at her. That's exactly how I felt.
"I don't like math," I blurted out, all of a sudden.
"I didn't when I was your age," said Mrs. Naidu. "Do you have any homework today I might help you with?"
At least she wasn't going to lecture me about how easy math would be if I'd just concentrate or if I'd take time to figure out the problems first instead of just doing them.
"I just have some reading for social science I can do later," I said. "Mr. Baker, the math teacher, gave us some work to do in class. I finished mine really quickly."
I didn't mention that I had guessed at the answers to the problems, not sure when to multiply or when to divide. Math was like a foggy San Francisco morning to me.
"I see."
There was nothing more to talk about, so I turned on the television set and channel surfed, turning the volume up and down the way that drives Mom crazy. I stretched out on my stomach on the carpet, hands under my chin. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs. Naidu open the large bag she had brought with her and take out a crochet hook with an unfinished doily attached to it. She looped the thread around her fingers and began poking the needle in and out. The only reason I knew anything about crocheting was because my Gran did it, too.
I looked at the channel I had stopped at. Two teenagers were acting as if they were Siamese twins joined at the mouth and they would both die if anyone tried to separate them. I stayed tuned in though I'm really not interested in stuff like that. It was a show Mom didn't want me watching and I wanted to see what Mrs. Naidu would do when I gave her a hard time.
An article in a wildlife magazine, in Dr. Dev's office, calls what I was doing testing the parameters. When two animals meet in the wild, they circle each other finding out exactly how far it is safe to go. I guess all kids are like animals in some ways, because we know how to test our boundaries really well.
Mrs. Naidu didn't say a thing. After ten minutes I turned the television off, trying to ignore the feeling of defeat bubbling up inside. It was no fun doing something if a grown-up didn't tell you not to. I sat up, turned to her, and crossed my legs.
"What did you do in India when you retired from teaching?"
"Dev's father and I would go to the Club. He would play Bridge, and my friends and I would talk."
"About what?"
How could you just talk and talk every day? That must have been so boring. I'd watched part of a show set in India once with Mom and fallen asleep waiting for something to happen. Surely Mrs. Naidu wasn't going to tell me sitting around drinking tea and playing cards was more fun than living in America?
"We solved problems for people."
"What kind of problems?"
"There was the time the Maharajah of Mysore's cousin lost his ruby ring and then there was the time Mrs. Kumar's jewelry was stolen. We discovered who was making things disappear at the Club one time, and when Mrs. Patel's cousin died and the police said it was an accident, we found out it was murder."
I stared at Mrs. Naidu. Her white sari. The hair tied up in a bun with one hairpin sticking out. She barely topped me by four inches…and she crocheted, for crying out loud. She couldn't have been a sleuth.
"You solved mysteries?" I asked.
She nodded. "Solving mysteries isn't in the action. It's in the ability to think things through. Mr. Kumar was a retired Inspector of Police, Mrs. Kumar had raised seven children, Mrs. Patel had been a nurse, and I'd taught school for twenty years. Between us we had a great deal of experience."
"Were there four of you?"
"Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Kumar, Mrs. Patel and myself."
Myself sounded a strange word to use, but Mom said Mrs. Naidu had learned the Queen's English in India, not Americanese.
"Where are your friends now?
"Mrs. Patel had a heart attack and is no longer with us and Mr. and Mrs. Kumar had to move to New Delhi to live with their son after Mrs. Kumar had a stroke."
She looked sad. The words popped out before I could stop them, "My Dad had a stroke and died four years ago."
"That must have been very hard on you and your mother. She told me he was a judge."
I didn't want to talk about him, so I said, "I like reading mysteries."
"So do I. I used to read Enid Blyton's mysteries in India. She was such a good British author. When I came here, I found my daughter-in-law's book collection and started reading all the Nancy Drew books."
"Oh!" I only said `oh' when I was at a loss for words, which Mom said happened about once a year. I loved Nancy Drew.
"I can bring Dev's Enid Blyton books over if you're interested. We still have the entire collection."
"Thanks." She'd really lend me Dr. Dev's books? I could lend almost anything but not my books because once a person I'd thought was a friend hadn't returned a book she'd borrowed.
I got to my feet. I really hadn't been a good hostess. "Would you like something to eat or drink? We have cookies and a bunch of sodas, or you could make some tea."
"Thank you Beth, but I just had a cup of tea before I came over. I can't have any cookies because I'm still trying to lose some weight I put on over Christmas."
I stared. She sounded just like anybody else. Normal.
I got a couple of chocolate chip cookies, and poured out a glass of milk. It was four-thirty. I couldn't believe Mrs. Naidu and I had talked for so long. I hadn't been the least bit bored. I wanted to know more, but it wasn't nice to keep asking questions.
"Do you mind if I watch the news now?" I said politely.
"Not at all."
I turned to the channel that gave us all the local news. It was as bad as usual. There was a fire in an apartment that killed two people, a woman was missing in Santa Barbara, a new library had opened and ....
"That's us," I said, turning the volume up, as the camera showed a bunch of houses and the reporter mentioned Rainbow Meadows.
"In the city of Green Valley, a shocking robbery," the news anchor said. "Rainbow Meadows is a master development in the city, complete with it's own schools, shopping center and whatever else one would need to make for the perfect southern California lifestyle. Today in a daring, daytime burglary, robbers broke into a house, tied up the owner but left her unharmed. All her possessions were stolen."
That wasn't good. Mom would say `I-told-you-it -isn't-safe-for-you-to-be-alone'. I'd probably have Mrs. Naidu coming over until I was eighteen.
"That's Mrs. Stevens."
I turned to her. Mrs. Naidu looked as if someone had just plugged her into a light socket. Her black eyes were snapping with excitement.
"You know her?" The homeowner had barely been on the screen for a few seconds. I hadn't gotten a good look at her.
Mrs. Naidu nodded, not taking her eyes off the screen. I kept quiet for a minute, which is all it took for the newscaster to switch to something different.
"I met Mrs. Stevens at the Friends of the Library meeting that Mira took me to in December. She knows Mira and she offered to give me a ride to future meetings if I want to go. That's very strange though."
"What?" I said, glancing from Mrs. Naidu's face to the screen. "What's strange?"
"She says she saw a black van pull up in front of her house."
"Yes?"
"So what happened next? Did she watch them come to the door and do nothing? Did she run and hide? Was her front door broken in? What would you do Beth, if you saw a van stop in front of your house and strange men getting out and coming to the door?"
"I'd play the tape of the Rottweilers barking that Mom and I recorded at Uncle Sam's and then I'd pick up the cordless phone, run and hide in the special place Mom and I have picked out, and dial 911."
Mom and I and Tia had made up several action plans like that for emergencies.
"Smart. Very smart. Why didn't Mrs. Stevens do any of these things?"
I hadn't thought of that. Why hadn't she?
Mrs. Naidu began to put her crocheting away.
"Where are you going?" I said. It was barely five.
"Your mother's car just pulled up and I have to go home now. We'll meet again tomorrow."
I stared at Mrs. Naidu She must have very sharp hearing. I hadn't heard a thing. As I went to the door behind her, I saw Mom hadn't opened the garage door, just parked on the street, because she and I were going to the store later. Mrs. Naidu must have very sharp hearing indeed.
Mom gave me a wary what-kind-of-mood are you in look, as she came into the family room.
"How did it go?" she asked.
"Okay, I guess."
It would never do to let Mom know I kind of liked Mrs. Naidu. Besides it was too early to be sure. First impressions were often wrong. Liking her was one thing, but it still didn't help me with explaining why she was here to the kids in school.
Mom chuckled as I passed her to go upstairs and ruffled my hair.
"Told you so," she said softly.
It was one thing to like Mrs. Naidu. Explaining her to Lexi was a very different thing.
I teamed up with Cody the next day at recess, pretending I hadn't heard Lexi call me as we left the classroom. Alexis Evelyn Raquel Rodgers, the Fifth, doesn't believe conversation is a two sided thing. To her it involves the use of three words, `I, Me, and Myself.' If we're ever graded on listening skills, Lexi would get a D minus. She must want to tell me about the new outfit she had on; bell-bottom jeans, tops with spaghetti straps covered by a cardigan and platform heels. Right now I didn't want a lecture on clothes, especially as I was wearing knee length shorts, a long shirt that covered my big behind and sneakers.
Cody Jackson lives four doors away from us and sometimes I go over to swim in his pool. He's not bad, just boring, because all he's interested in is cars. He helps his Dad when he works on cars and insists on telling him what they do even though I've made it very clear I don't want to know. But I can talk to him about anything, something I can't do with Lexi.
"So how's it going with Mrs. Naidu?" Cody asked me
I'd told him about the tutoring part yesterday morning and he'd been very sympathetic. Cody and I are good friends, especially because we aren't into the girlfriend, boyfriend type stuff like some of the other kids.
"Okay, I guess. She doesn't mess with me."
"Does she talk funny?"
Fear pushed it's way into my heart as I saw Lexi walk toward us with Marge Conrad. Cody was afraid of Lexi. If she asked him what we'd been talking about, he might tell her about Mrs. Naidu. I had to make sure the information she got wasn't something she could use against me.
"She speaks the Queen's English," I said in my coldest voice, "and she's really interesting. She lived in this palace in India and had lions and tigers for pets."
I bit my lip but it was too late to hold the lies back. They weren't really bad lies though, just a slight exaggeration. Besides, in moments of tension, they had a habit of slipping out by themselves before I could stop them.
"Really?" Cody looked excited.
I guess the reason I like Cody is he believes everything I tell him.
"Can I come over tomorrow for a while and check her out? My Mom's got to go out for a while and I don't want to watch the brats. If I say I'm going to your place to study, Mom will get my aunt Gemma to baby sit."
Cody had three younger siblings, two sisters and a brother. They were ten, five, and three. He called them the brats, and said he hated being the oldest because it meant having to watch them all the time.
"Can I, Beth? Please? I need help with math, too."
Cody needed help with every subject. He was in the Achilles Core Group; the combination one for students from seventh and eighth grade who were behind in their work.
I hesitated, not very sure if I could trust Mrs. Naidu yet. I hardly knew her. Suppose she let me down by doing or saying something strange in front of Cody? True, he wasn't a gossip like Lexi, but he forgot a lot of stuff he wasn't supposed to blab about.
The bell signaling the end of recess rang, rescued me. "Got to go. I'll call you tonight and let you know."
"Okay."
As I hurried to my next class, I realized thankfully that Lexi and Marge had started talking to a boy and gotten sidetracked. I had to work with Cody some more on what I wanted him to say to the other kids about Mrs. Naidu.
"How are you today, Beth?" Mrs. Naidu asked, as I opened the front door to her. She had arrived exactly fifteen minutes after I'd gotten home from school.
"Fine. How are you Mrs. Naidu?"
"I'm well, thank you."
We went in, and Mrs. Naidu sat down while I poured a glass of milk and got a couple of cookies.
"Want some?" I asked.
Mom said only rude people ate without offering to share their food with others.
"No thank you."
"So, what did you do today?" I asked politely.
She would talk gardening and I could think about whatever I wanted to. Besides I didn't want to get started on my math homework yet.
"I called Mrs. Stevens and told her I wanted to become a member of Friends of the Green Valley Library. I also told her Dev and Mira have ten boxes of books they wanted to donated for the Friends' book sales."
The Friends were a bunch of grown-ups, mostly retired. They helped the library by organizing programs like reading to kids and doing other good stuff. I'd gone to a Halloween Party there with Cody and the brats, and it had been fun.
I stopped in mid-chew. "You did?"
"Yes."
"And....?"
"Well I asked her if she would like to come over so we could discuss the details, and she seemed very glad to accept."
"And....?"
Mrs. Naidu didn't seem aware of my mounting excitement.
"And we had tea in the garden. I served up some of the plum cake my cousin sent from Marks and Spencers in England, and some Indian snacks."
I didn't care if they had eaten dinosaur steaks. Mrs. Naidu had a reason for what she'd done and I had to know what it was.
"Did she talk about the break-in?"
Mrs. Naidu looked at me, a twinkle in her eye. "One thing led to the other and she finally did talk about it."
"What did she say? About the robbery I mean?"
I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and then down the side of my shorts, glad it had been warm enough to wear them today. That's another nice thing about California. While other parts of the country are having snow, some days in January are so warm here I can wear shorts to school. We're allowed to, as long as they aren't the really short, tight kind that Lexi and her sisters wear at the weekends.
"She told me almost the same thing we heard on the news. She said the men came in and broke down her front door, bound and gagged her and then took everything."
"Was she very afraid?"
"Terrified, she said."
"But not too terrified to come over and visit today?"
"Exactly what I thought." Mrs. Naidu's eyes gleamed approval. "People don't get over things like that so quickly. She spoke about it so calmly. I would have understood if she didn't want to speak about it at all or she'd seemed very disturbed about the incident, but she was so calm."
"Why does that worry you?" I asked.
"Mrs. Stevens didn't give me the impression that she's the type to be calm in a crisis. And…"
"And….?"
"Her skin is very fair, yet her face wasn't bruised by the gag. Neither were her wrists."
"So she couldn't have been tied up very tight," I said.
"Just what I was thinking," agreed Mrs. Naidu.
"What's she like?"
"She's very beautiful with golden hair to her waist and large blue eyes, and she dresses beautifully with all the right accessories."
There were Vogue women and Good Housekeeping women. Mrs. Stevens sounded like the former.
"What kind of work does she do?"
"She says she got a realtor's license but the market's been very slow in California lately, so she has a great deal of free time."
"Does she have any family?"
"Her husband died four months ago. They have no children."
She sounded very normal.
"There was something strange...."
"That's what you said yesterday."
"Something in her voice...."
"What?"
"A small amount of self-satisfaction. The purr of a cat that's just gotten all the cream." Mrs. Naidu frowned into the distance.
"So? Maybe she's all excited about being on television and everything. Mom says being on television does strange things to people. They may have lost someone dear to them in an accident, but they'll go have a makeover if they know they're going to be on television."
"Maybe." Mrs. Naidu sounded as if she didn't agree with me but was too polite to say so. "Well, I think Mrs. Stevens is quite capable of taking care of her own affairs. Do you have any homework I can help you with today?"
I nodded reluctantly. I had two pages of math homework to do because I'd been day dreaming in math class. Mr. Baker had not been amused by the stuff I'd handed in yesterday, and he'd said something about calling Mom if I didn't pay more attention in class. He said that she'd asked him to.
I didn't want Mom to come in for a special conference. It wouldn't hurt to ask for help just this once.
Mrs. Naidu and I worked on it for a while and after we were done, she opened her bag and took out a book and a sheet of paper.
"These are for you," she said.
I took the Enid Blyton book from her.
"I found a math puzzle you might want to solve when you have a free minute," Mrs. Naidu said.
I took the sheet of paper she held out, just to be polite. There was no way I was going to spend one minute more of my life on math than was absolutely necessary.
"Thank you for the book."
As I finished the rest of my homework, I wondered what Mrs. Naidu was thinking about, as she worked on the tablecloth she was crocheting.
Was she wishing her husband hadn't died, just like I wished my Dad hadn't? At least Mom and I still had the things from our old house, and I had Dad's stamp and coin collection and other stuff from when he was young. Had Mrs. Naidu left everything behind in India, except her clothes, when she came to live with her son?
Lexi called that night and asked if she could come over the next day because their housekeeper wanted the day off. I hesitated, but I really couldn't refuse. She'd had me over for her slumber party and for another night during Christmas vacation when Mom had taken some of our relatives to a big outlet mall for an entire day. Of course Lexi had told me I was crazy not to want to go shopping with the family and get each of them to buy me something.
"So, can I come?" Lexi repeated impatiently.
Her mother wouldn't let her stay home alone, since she'd come home early from work one day and found Lexi with one of her older sister's boyfriends. They hadn't been doing anything funny, just talking, but her mother'd had a fit anyway.
"Okay," I said. I had to get telling her about Mrs. Naidu over with. The suspense was horrible. I'd eaten three jelly doughnuts for breakfast and two candy bars at lunch. "Cody's coming as well, though, and our neighbor's going to be over."
"Dr. Dev?" Lexi sounded excited.
She'd said once that her mother had told her it was important to know the right people. To Lexi, the only right people were rich people.
"His mother," I said.
"Oh! Why's she coming over?"
"I have to go now," I said quickly. "My Mom's calling."
That wasn't true, but it bought me some more time to work on my story. Maybe I could say Mrs. Naidu was dying from some terrible disease and I had to take care of her until Dr. Dev and Dr. Mira came home each day? I unwrapped my third candy bar for the day. That wouldn't work. Mrs. Naidu did not look sick, and Lexi was sharp.
I called Cody right after that and told him he could come over, too. At least with Cody around, Lexi wouldn't pick on me too much. She'd just concentrate on making fun of Cody.
The next afternoon came around too soon. Lexi had a note from her mother so the bus driver let her off at our stop. Lexi wasn't in a good mood because I'd scored a B in the math test and she'd gotten a C. Lexi hated anyone who did better than her at anything. She'd picked on my shoes and clothes during recess, asking me very pointedly where Mom and I shopped. Then she and Marge Conrad had looked at each other and snickered. It's a good thing I have a strong mind. If my life depended on Lexi's approval, I'd always be miserable.
I wasn't in a very good mood though. Another two hours of Lexi would have me tied up in knots. We could see Mrs. Naidu walking up the drive as we headed for my house. My stomach plummeted.
"Why is she coming over?" Lexi asked.
The bored note in her voice made me say as calmly as I could. "She gets lonely, so she visits me and we talk."
Lexi senses nervousness the way a shark senses blood.
Her green eyes narrowed as she looked at me. "She's your baby-sitter?"
The high and mighty smile on her face made me say very quickly. "She's not. She's going to help me with math."
"Is too." Lexi turned to face me and kept walking backwards chanting, "Beth's got a baby-sitter. Beth's got a baby-sitter."
Rage, black and hot, boiled up in me. The urge to push her over was so strong, my hands were clenched into fists. Any minute now Cody would join in and I wouldn't be able to recover lost ground.
"She's not my baby-sitter," I yelled. "She comes over to talk."
"Oh, really? And what do you talk about?" Lexi sounded exactly like her mother. Snippy and cold. "Gandhi?"
It was like being in a car on a steep downhill road. I had to step on the brakes really quick.
"If you must know, Mrs. Naidu is tutoring me in math. Besides that, we're working on solving a mystery."
"What?" Lexi stopped dead in her tracks and stared at me.
I felt a squiggle of satisfaction squirt up through the red-hot fear.
"Mrs. Naidu lives in a palace in India and she has real tigers and lions and elephants as pets," Cody added.
"Oh really?" Lexi sounded impressed.
"She helped the Maharajah find his ruby ring." Now Cody sounded smug.
"Nah!" Lexi said, unable to believe I would be lucky enough to know someone who'd helped a Maharajah.
"Ask her," Cody challenged as we stood there. "There she is."
I closed my eyes as they rushed towards my house. Drowning in lies wasn't my idea of a good death. I touched the tip of my nose too. By my estimation, it should have grown a foot by now.