The Babysitter Murders - By Janet Ruth Young Page 0,70
Pinto, but Dani barely recognizes him. In a tidy blue shirt and pants, he looks a cross between a mall security guard and an evangelist.
“Hey, Malcolm. What are you doing here?” Dani asks, still rubbing her feet.
“Hey, Dani.” Malcolm closes the door behind him. He’s carrying a backpack made of camouflage material. “Are you babysitting now?” Dani asks him. “I thought they hired someone named April.”
“No, I’m not babysitting. I’m not the babysitter. You’re the Babysitter.” He’s looking at her so intently that it confirms what she has sometimes suspected, that he has a crush on her. The prospect is not very appealing.
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“Who let you in?” Dani asks. “Mrs. Draper and I were going to have a talk with my mom.”
“Mrs. Draper drove away. Didn’t you hear the car?”
“Well, why are you here? You’re making me uncomfortable.”
She tugs her sneakers back on, contemplates making some flimsy excuse and going back downstairs. Maybe she’ll wait for Beth in the living room.
“It’s about to get a lot more uncomfortable,” Malcolm says.
He hovers in his usual way, like a string bean on a vine, with his pack over one shoulder and his hands in his back pockets. She wonders if he might be stoned. He smiles with that annoying look he has on the quad, as if he can sort all the girls into this type and that type. She wonders if he’s rocking the usual tobacco fleck between his teeth.
“What are you talking about?” Dani stands up, allowing the irritation to show in her voice.
“This is what I’m talking about.” He takes a piece of paper from his pack. It reads:
protect our kids
“Hold it up,” he says.
“You’re involved with POK?” Dani asks. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Malcolm.”
He digs into his pack for a piece of tape and sticks the paper to her T-shirt.
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T H E B A B Y S I T T E R M U R D E R S
“Hey, keep away from me.” She tears off the sign, but he’s taking her picture with his phone.
“Are you going to sell that to someone?” Dani asks, trying to grab the phone out of his hands. “Is that what you want? All the lowlifes are coming out of the woodwork. Get out of my way.”
“Not this time, Dani,” Malcolm says. He pockets the phone and pulls a pair of handcuffs from his bag. “My dad wasn’t allowed to do the job. But somebody has to.”
He tries to grab her wrists, but Dani’s too fast for him. He laughs, shakes his head like an indulgent parent, and pulls something else from his pack—a black handle with a glinting blade.
Could it be Cynthia’s kitchen knife, the knife? Was that the clatter Dani heard downstairs?
“Look familiar, doesn’t it?” Malcolm says. “Now are you ready to cooperate?”
“Wait, Malcolm,” Dani whispers.
“What?”
“Please make sure Alex won’t hear.”
“He’s gone. He left with Mrs. Draper. I saw them.”
“Are you sure? I’m not so sure. Maybe Mrs. Draper left by herself. Please make sure he isn’t anywhere in the house. You wouldn’t want him to hear. He’s just a little kid, Malcolm.”
Malcolm looks confused. He glances at the bedroom door, and in that moment Dani grabs the junior racket she bought for Alex. Gripping it with her two-fisted backhand, she whacks the edge into the side of Malcolm’s neck, aiming for an artery.
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“Where—” he says, and slumps on the bed.
Dani spreads her feet, improving her stance.
“I’m sorry, Malcolm,” she says, and whacks him again, this time on the back of the head.
Later, when the police arrive, after Dani calls them herself to tell them she hit Malcolm, when Michael Pinto walks into the room and yells “Malky!” and Dani apologizes to him and Malcolm over and over again, Dani will feel grateful that Mrs. Alex wasn’t too neat around the house. Because if she had been in the habit of putting things away, the tennis racket may not have been exactly where Dani left it, and Dani would be in much worse trouble now.
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EPILOGUE
141
Tuesday, June 15
Hawthorne Beacon-Times
Opinion
By Shelley Dietrich
Who Can You Tell Your Secrets To?
A friend once wanted to tell me a secret. The friend was Dani Solomon, and although I didn’t realize it, she was asking me for help. She had a problem with her mind. That was her secret, and that was what she needed to tell me. The problem wasn’t obvious, and no one else knew. She was trusting me with something delicate, a delicate situation.
I was busy and preoccupied. I didn’t see