Coldwater Revenge, James Ross [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

her hand. “Look, I hate to do this, but Tommy and I need to run.”

“Joe!”

“I’m sorry. It’s a lead on this Billy Pearce business. I need to jump on it.”

“At least eat, babe.”

“Maybe I should stay,” said Tom. He had altered his vacation plans to help Joe’s wife, who had her hands more than full taking care of three kids and a self-medicating mother-in-law with a broken leg. If he said yes to Joe, they could be doing the Holmes/Watson thing all week, and then so much for helping Bonnie.

“I need you, Tommy. The guy who called is the owner of that new bio-research company that moved into Coldwater Park last year. He’s a corporate wheeler dealer, like you. I need someone to translate the bullshit.”

“Joe!” said Bonnie.

“Sorry, sweetie. I need Tommy’s help, that’s all. We’ve got to run.”

She put a hand on his arm. “Eat, then run. Don’t disappoint your mother. She’s been waiting all day to have the two of you together.”

Used to be she couldn’t wait to get rid of us.

The brothers carried their mother outside to the picnic table, while Bonnie and the girls brought out plates of hamburger and sweet corn. It was too late in the year to dine comfortably outside, so they ate hurriedly while the sun sank toward the horizon. When they finished, Tom produced a bag of exotic presents from foreign locales: geisha kimonos for Kate and Meghan, a scrimshaw pocket knife for Luke. The girls put on the kimonos and performed an energetic hip hop while the sun dropped over the trees beyond the lake. Luke toyed with the knife under the watchful eye of his mother.

“Do you know how to play Mumbly peg?” Tom asked.

The boy moved his head from side to side.

“Your dad used to be pretty good at it, until grandma took away his Barlow. Get him to tell you the story sometime.”

“Careful, brother. I’ve got stories, too.”

“But not the right audience.” Tom turned to Luke. “Anything you want to know about your dad, you ask me. He was a wild man before he met your mom.”

Bonnie laughed. “I might like to hear those stories.”

“Tommy!” Mary’s voice was a warning.

“He gets it from Grandma,” said Tom. “Do you take after your mom?”

The boy shook his head.

“adic-I s-adic-ee,” Tom said, in a soft, conspiratorial whisper.

The boy cocked his head.

“I used to do the same thing to Grandma. Drove her n-adic-uts.”

“Tommy!” Mary’s voice rose again. Bonnie’s head swung back and forth between mother and sons. Joe raised his eyes to the sky.

“It’s a secret language,” Tom explained. Only eldest male Morgans are allowed to speak it. I spoke it with my Dad. He spoke it with his. Luke and I are allowed to speak it, too—but no one else.” He put his arm around his nephew. “I thought I saw some rushes down there by the pond. Why don’t you cut a big one and I’ll show you how to carve a whistle they can hear all the way to town.”

The boy nodded vigorously and took off down the hill toward the pond at the bottom of the property. As soon as he was out of earshot, Mary cautioned, “Be careful, Tommy. Don’t embarrass the boy.”

Bonnie spoke quietly. “We took him to Upstate Medical last month. They said the same thing as the doctors here. There’s nothing wrong with his hearing or his vocal cords. He understands everything. He just won’t speak.”

CHAPTER 4

NeuroGene occupied the first floor of a prefabricated metal building on the outskirts of town where the Coldwater drive-in movie theater used to be when Tom and Joe were growing up. Tom felt himself smile as they drove past the oak tree that had been the unofficial line of demarcation between the families who were there to see the movie, and the teenage couples who were there to make out. Joe stared straight ahead. He was in his hunter mode. Nothing extraneous was going to register until the bio research company owner was bagged, or released.

Joe parked the patrol car in front of a steel frame building skinned in faux stone and tinted glass. Holes in the stone showed where the lengthy logo of a previous tenant had been replaced by the single word NeuroGene. Tom expected a blast of over-air conditioned air. But the air inside the glass-fronted reception area felt tepid and stuffy. New Age Muzak filtered through stands of spindly bamboo on either side of a metal reception desk. Joe leaned a hand on the desk, and it slid toward the wall.

“Hey careful!” The girl behind the desk braced it with her forearm, keeping a phone wedged tightly between shoulder and ear.

Joe flashed his badge. “We’re here to see Mr. Willow.”

She sighed into the phone, “Back in a sec,” then pressed numbers on a keypad. “They’re here.” Then she pressed some more buttons and showed the Morgan brothers the back of her head.

Tom noted the absence of visitors’ chairs in the reception area or any magazines, company literature, corporate art or other visual distraction beyond the single word NEUROGENE painted on the wall above the receptionist’s head in a fashion-y script that looked like something you might see on the window of a hair salon.

When the door next to the reception desk finally opened, a lanky, middle-aged man in need of a haircut and sunlight stepped forward to greet them. The outstretched hand and simian show of outsized teeth were perfunctory. “Dave Willow,” he said, “Follow me.”

The NeuroGene owner led them down a hall lined with inspirational posters and empty offices to a tiny unpainted room containing a single metal desk, two unmatched chairs and stacks of files and loose paper that looked less like they were passing through in any commercial sense and more like permanent residents. To Tom’s well-traveled eye, the venue was more academic than entrepreneurial and not too successful at either.

Willow motioned his guests to sit, and then settled into a faux leather chair behind the