Free Nothing but Trouble by Susan May Warren Page B

out to push away his hair, survey the bump. He jerked away. “Was I having a bad dream?”
    He wiped his snotty nose on the sleeve of his pajamas.
    “Were you trying to wake me up, buddy?”
    Slowly he put down his controller, drew up his legs tight against his chest, and locked his arms around them. He nodded without meeting her eyes.
    PJ sat back on the floor next to him and touched his ankle. “No oatmeal this morning for heroes. How about some Cap’n Crunch?”
    He picked up the controller, gave another swipe across his nose, and nodded.
    “Listen   —let’s race. Get dressed and the first one downstairs wins.”
    His thumbs continued pounding at the buttons. But his eyes caught hers. PJ slid her feet underneath her, poised like a runner. “Ready. Set . . .”
    He sprang to his feet and ran to his clothes, neatly laid out the night before.
    PJ took off for her room.
    Davy beat her downstairs (but only because she stood in her doorway waiting) and she poured him a bowl of cereal. She made coffee, leaning a hip against the counter as she watched him, his hair still wrecked from sleep, a line of milk drizzling down his chin. He occasionally looked up, then, as if caught stealing something, sank his face back into the bowl.
    PJ packed his lunch box with a cheese sandwich and a Rice Krispies Treat and herded him out of the house. He kicked her only once, as she helped him into the car. The sprinklers showered her windshield as she pulled into the loading zone.
    “That’s two tardies, Miss Sugar.”
    “Yeah, but note the missing Superman pants,” PJ said, giving Ms. Nicholson a wink as Davy ran past them to class without a good-bye.
    At least they’d avoided the pre-school sumo wrestling today. Behind Davy’s anger, the stolen looks, the kicks to her shin, she’d recognized something vaguely familiar. Panic, maybe.Or even desperation. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it niggled at her, right alongside her thoughts of Boone, her mother, and of course, poor Ernie Hoffman.
    The sun blasted out of the sky, hot and stinging, as she drove home from Fellows. She made the mistake of angling around the beach, and an old hunger stirred inside. First thing on the agenda for the morning   —a tan. Then maybe she’d have the internal fortification to return to her mother’s and begin the Great Sort. She still didn’t know what to do with the feelings evoked by seeing the pristine, almost mausoleum condition of her room.
    And after her nightmare, she needed to dig her toes into the warm sanity of the coarse Kellogg beach and lie with her eyes closed, letting her brain stop its crazy whirring.
    She’d circled the question all night   —obviously long enough to let it embed her dreams: who would have killed good old Ernie Hoffman? The man didn’t have a mean mitochondria in his body, as evidenced not only by his generosity of spirit at her return but his kindness the night of the fire.
    No, Hoffman wasn’t a person with a black book of enemies.
    PJ flinched as she recalled the conversation with her mother yesterday after Elizabeth had told her the news.
    “Ernie Hoffman, my old history teacher?” PJ had hung on the door, absorbing her mother’s words. “When? How?”
    “Today, apparently. His daughter-in-law found him. And   —” Elizabeth lowered her voice   —“his neck was broken.”
    “Are there any suspects, any clues?”
    “I don’t know, PJ; I’m not a detective.” Her mother shook her head.
    And that’s when things turned south, thanks to PJ’s sudden inability to keep a secret. “I saw him yesterday at the wedding. Did you hear about Jack Wilkes shoving him into the country club pool?”
    Her mother hadn’t blinked, hadn’t moved at the name.
    “Jack Wilkes is Trudi’s husband.”
    “Your . . . friend Trudi, from high school?” She said it like she might be talking about a fatal disease, with the accompanying expression.
    “Yes, Mom, that Trudi.”
    Elizabeth had risen,