Free The Man in the Woods by Rosemary Wells

sweater.
    “You the young fellow who owns that cracked-up old motorbike I see hiding in the shed down there?” asked the Indian.
    “How did you know about that?” said Pinky.
    “I know everything and I see everything in these woods,” was the chuckling answer. “If I spot that locket of yours, miss, I’ll drop it in one of the saddlebags on the bike.” He struggled to his feet and, slipping an index finger through the handle of his water jug, turned to walk away. “Don’t you tell no cops you’ve been talking to me,” he said. “Don’t want them up here finding me, putting me in a rest home to die.”
    “I promise,” said Helen.
    The Indian smiled and limped slowly into the brush, blending with it, as quietly as a cat.
    Neither Pinky nor Helen spoke until they had reached Pinky’s hidden bike and had ridden it almost to the edge of Prospect Avenue. Pinky stopped the bike. “Good-bye,” he said. “I have to get home. Saturday nights I have to take the desk of the motel. We get over twenty people and my mother has to run back and forth to the rooms to cover complaints—kids’ cribs, extra pillows—you name it. We’re not exactly a Holiday Inn. See you tomorrow. Remember, we gotta hit the books for the history test Monday.”
    “About one?” asked Helen. “After church?” She got off the motorbike and snapped shut the flaps of a saddlebag that had been rubbing uncomfortably against her leg. The snap reminded her of something. It was bronze, with the insignia of the old German Army, an eagle. She fretted over it a moment. It was something like ... like what? Like the eagle on the necklace that Stubby had been twirling around and Mr. Casey had snatched away from him, accusing him ... “Pinky,” said Helen.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Tuesday afternoon I saw Stubby for just a minute or two in Mr. Casey’s office. Mr. Casey was yelling at him for stealing a necklace from a Perry and Crowe truck. I heard Mr. Casey say loud and clear that Stubby had a summer job loading trucks for Perry and Crowe.”
    Pinky picked a long shaft of barley grass and sucked on it between his two front teeth.
    “Well, I knew Stubby a little from back in St. Theresa’s. He wasn’t stupid. If he had a job loading UPS trucks, he’d know what he was loading in the trucks, wouldn’t he? If he was trying to support his drug habit by stealing jewelry or money, he’d have tried to rob the store instead. He certainly wouldn’t waste his time throwing rocks at UPS vans carrying knickknacks. What’s he going to do? Cause an accident, run out on the highway, and make off with a pair of Lenox teacups? And sell ’em for dope on a street corner? He had to know what went into the trucks. He worked there.”
    Pinky chewed the grass stem to bits and threw it away.
    “Pinky, I heard him, and it wasn’t Stubby. I saw him, and it wasn’t Stubby. Stubby walks like an ape. Whoever this was walks gracefully. And now the police are saying Stubby was out there trying to loot jewelry trucks. That’s ridiculous. I don’t believe it. Do you?”
    Pinky sucked a new piece of grass. Very slowly, his eyes never leaving Helen’s, he shook his head.
    “Pinky,” said Helen. “No matter what the cops say, I’ve seen another part of this crime, haven’t I?”

Chapter 5
    A FTER CHURCH AUNT STELLA , who had been working on it for most of the morning, still could not come up with a good reason for Helen not to help Pinky with his history homework. “Doing homework is something you do with a friend, not a boy,” she insisted.
    “But Pinky is a friend,” Helen insisted also.
    Aunt Stella agreed at last to allow this to happen if it was to be “just this once.” “According to Martha Malone,” she said, “he’s a good boy. He helps his mother out at that motel she owns.” Aunt Stella pronounced the word motel as if she meant gambling den. “Martha also says he’s been held back a year in school.”
    “Only one year,” said Helen.