The Big Smith Snatch Read online

  The Big Smith Snatch

  Jane Louise Curry

  KMWillis Books

  Copyright by Jane Louise Curry 1989, 2014.

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About The Big Smith Snatch

  “Four children are seized by a pair of modern-day Fagins [J.D. and Peachie, bogus foster parents]--in a taut, sinister, but nonviolent page-turner…. As [older sister] Boo searches desperately for them, her brothers and sisters are getting royal treatment in a big, old house with seven other children, while they learn exciting games like "snatch" and "seek." Soon they're playing these games in other people's houses, in the dead of night. Though the young Smiths’ suspicions dawn into certainty, Peachie and J.D. have a tight setup that seems impossible to escape… In the end…readers will exit with a smile. Fine suspense.” –Kirkus Review

  “The plot is delightfully complex… And while at times the outlook may seem overwhelmingly bleak, Curry keeps her readers secure in the knowledge that Boo and others around her, flawed as they may be, will triumph. –Publishers Weekly

  “A smooth, fast-paced adventure…. In fact, much of this tale's delight comes from the large family with its poverty, warmth, and loyalty, as well as children's fascination with sudden emer­gencies and the need for resource­ful­ness. A good, involving story.” –School Library Journal

  Also on Kindle

  by Jane Louise Curry

  A Stolen Life

  Poor Tom’s Ghost

  The Housenapper

  The Ice Ghosts Mystery

  Me, Myself and I

  Moon Window

  Parsley Sage, Rosemary and Time

  The Big Smith Snatch

  Chapter One

  THE SUN WAS SHINING. School had been out for three whole weeks. And for lunch there were cheese sandwiches fancied up with basil leaves from the garden. It should have been a great June afternoon in Los Angeles.

  It wasn’t.

  By two o’clock Boo Smith had stuck up only half of the garage-sale signs. She had a jaggedy splinter in her thumb. The paper for the signs was too flimsy-flappy. And the masking tape didn’t want to stick to the rough wood of the telephone and utility poles. For a moment Boo felt angry enough to spit nails—but she couldn’t work up to a really good grumble, because as soon as “spitting nails” popped into her head, the pic­ture that popped in with it made her giggle: her­self—short, skinny Belinda Rainbow (horrible, sticky-cute names!) Smith—marching along Figueroa Street, tacking up garage sale signs like a two-legged, curly-headed staple gun. Imagining what it would feel like, she could almost taste the sharp metallic tang of the staples. She would have to pucker up her mouth, tuck her tongue into the middle of the pucker, and then . . . Thwat!-thwat!-thwat!-thwat!

  Actually, staples were exactly what she needed. To fasten up a sign with old, half-dried-out mask­ing tape, she had to wrap the tape all the way around a utility pole or lamppost until it over­lapped and stuck to itself. That way one strip at the top of the sign was enough, but even so, tele­phone poles were fat enough to use up too much tape. The roll was almost fin­ished, and there were still three more signs to go.

  The signs themselves were really good. Great, in fact. Sometimes Boo felt embarrassed—like a traitor, but embarrassed—by the wild colors her mother liked, and the nutty designs she painted on every surface within reach—on furniture, cushions and curtains, and even on clothes. But the signs were wonderful. The paper might be too flimsy, but it was yellow and the bright Day-Glo lettering stood out like a shout. The orange of the words MOVING SALE, the vivid green 10 to 4, SATURDAY JUNE 28, and the loud blue 2112 Hobart Street would hit everyone driving down Figueroa Street smack in the eye. From inside their cars they wouldn’t be able to make out the smaller lettering that read Furniture, Art Work, Children’s Clothing, Books, Toys, and Household Goods – Must Go. The cartoon Boo’s mother had drawn of herself and five goggle-eyed children peering over a huge heap of things for sale. But people coming along the sidewalk could enjoy it, and would know that “Must Go” meant there would be good bargains.

  The good bargains were part of the reason, besides running out of tape, that Boo was in a bad mood. Most of the Smith family’s furniture was from the Goodwill store, second—hand pieces Mrs. Smith had painted or re-covered, and no­body would really miss it. But how could they sell the almost-life-size cardboard cutouts of Clara­belle Cow and Goofy that Mr. Smith had found in a dumpster out behind the video store? Or the picture frames all covered with seashells? Or the croquet set? So what if the mallets were beat up and half the hoops made from wire clothes hangers? Boo was a good hand with a mallet, and her father said that Grandma’s back yard in Pitts­burgh, Penn­sylvania, was nice and flat. So if they were going to move back there and have a garden that had green grass in summer and not just tomatoes and onions and carrots and squashes, they would need a croquet set.

  But Boo’s mother had said no. Almost every­thing had to be sold. Elvira—Elvira was the Smiths’ elderly Chevrolet van—had to carry Mrs. Smith and Boo and Boo’s ten-year-old brother, Cisco, eight-year-old Poppy, and Babba and Danny, the littlest Smiths, and all their belongings from Los Angeles across the desert and moun­tains and the Missis­sippi River and Illinois, In­diana, Ohio, and Penn­syl­vania all the way to Pittsburgh. The Smiths had traveled in Elvira be­fore, so they knew there was exactly enough room in the back for three twin-bed mattresses. Every­thing else had to fit into the cartons on top of which the mattresses and bedding would rest.

  That, alas, meant only one Royal Orchards ap­ple carton for each Smith for clothes and other belongings. There would be five additional car­tons for Mr. Smith’s tools and the pottery dishes, patchwork quilts, and hand-painted curtains Mrs. Smith had made and for “miscellan­eous,” and one carton for the Greek myths book and others such as King Arthur and Gulliver’s Travels and the Canter­bury Tales that the family could not bear to sell, however old and worn they were. The last two boxes would be for food, the first-aid kit, and other items that had to be easy to get at on the trip itself.

  It was a sensible plan, Boo knew. And fair. But not really fair. How was she supposed to pack her whole life into an apple carton—even a big one? She was three times as old as Danny, the baby of the family, who was only four. So why should Danny have a whole box to himself, with room for all his clothes and Bubba Bear and his wooden train and every one of his favorite things? Why should he, when Boo was going to have to give up the cardboard model of a movie theatre, rows of seats and all, that she had made so that you could look in the front and see your own cartoons roll past on the screen when you turned a crank at the back? And all the big pieces from her col­lection of rocks? Cisco was lucky. His treasures were tiny: the thirty-odd souvenir pins that dec­orated his cotton-webbing belt and dotted his favorite T-shirt. It wasn’t fair. At all.

  Maybe not. Still, Boo supposed she would get over it. She had before, but the last time had been all the way back in second grade when her only real treasures were a family of tiny wooden dolls and a cigar box full of crayons. Six times over the years the Smiths had packed up Elvira and moved from San Fran­cisco to Eureka. Then St. Helena. San Luis Obispo. Santa Ynez. Santa Barbara. They had lived in all sorts of places: in apart­ments, in Elvira the van, in a trailer, in a motel, and even, once, in a ware­house with five other fami­lies. Finally, four years ago, they had come to Los Angeles. To their first-ever honest-to-goodness house. They hadn’t been able to afford the rent for one before, because they had been paying the doctors back for Poppy. Poppy, who came third, after Cisco, was born all blue because there was some­thing wrong with her heart and, as Mr. Smith put it, getting it fixed cost an arm and three legs. Each month he paid back a part of what the operation cost, and not until he went to work at South­west Motors had there been enough left over for the family to rent a real house instead of a just-for-now sort of place.

  Boo herself remembered only the moves after San Luis Obispo, but three times was plenty. Half of her hated the thought of another change, but for the other half the prospect of a really green grass lawn in Pittsburgh, and shade trees and her first-ever own bedroom, was delicious. It more than made up for her envy of Susie Loo and Dina Tallman and Nancy Bitts, who would be going back to Night­ingale Middle School without her. Boo didn’t know a soul in Pitts­burgh—not even Grandma, really, except from post­cards and letters—but that part of it she didn’t like to think about. Now she concentrated instead on the garage-sale signs and making the tape last.

  The next-to-last sign used up all but an inch or two, but it turned out not to matter. Mr. Monahan at Southwest Motors took the last one and put it up in his display-room window with his own tape. Boo’s father had been one of his service mechanics until the news from Pittsburgh of Grand­ma’s broken hip and the chance of a job back there changed everything.

  “You folks had any w
ord from your dad yet?” Mr. Monahan asked. Mr. Monahan was big and had a bushy mustache and always looked like a walrus whose shirt buttons were going to pop.

  Boo nodded, edging toward the doorway in case he decided to hug her goodbye. Mr. Monahan might look like a walrus, but he moved more like a big, friendly bear, and he had the kind of hug that could squash a person. She had been squashed once, on her last birthday, and once was enough.

  “He phoned,” Boo said. But that had been the day after he arrived in Pittsburgh, to say the plane hadn’t crashed or anything. Nearly three weeks ago.

  “What about the new job? That working out okay?” Mr. Monahan took out his handkerchief to polish a faint finger­print from the hood of the shiny new convertible by the window.

  “I guess so. And we’re leaving next Tuesday.” If, Boo thought. If the postal money order for four hundred dollars out of her father’s first paycheck came in time. Without it they wouldn’t have enough for all the gasoline Elvira would guzzle.

  “Well, I wish your mama luck. Too bad it’s not April instead of June,” Mr. Monahan said. “I bet you it’ll be a long, hot trip. Tell you what. You tell your mama to stop by here on Tuesday and fill up the van’s tank at our gas pump out back. You tell her it’ll be my going-away present.”

  Boo headed for home by way of the Food 4 Less super­market. Hurrying along Figueroa Street, she fell into a day­dream about what it would be like to live in the rambling Spanish-style house with the jungly garden far up at the top of Hobart Street. The last of her grumpy mood slipped away. Boo didn’t know who lived in the house on the hill, and had no idea what the garden looked like, since she wasn’t tall enough to see over the wall, but that only made day­dreaming easier. She could imagine a wide, sunny lawn beyond the tangle of trees, and herself setting out hoops for a game of croquet. She would be wearing new white shorts and a floaty, silky pink shirt like the one on the front of a sewing-pattern magazine she had seen at Mrs. Maldonado’s next door. She was getting ready for a party. Yes—a going-away party. That was it.

  Boo’s stride slowed to a dawdle, and the stops and starts of cars at the traffic lights seemed a thousand miles away.

  By the time Boo reached the supermarket, her going-away party was already a great success. The striped chocolate-and-vanilla-and-strawberry ice cream in fancy shapes and the fancy party favors were even nicer than the ones at Nancy Bitts’s birthday party. Taking a cart, Boo sailed dreamily past the salad dressings, pickles, and chili sauce. Cutting a sharp corner around the end of the row, she narrowly missed an old lady peering at applesauce labels. The old lady gasped and dropped the can she held.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” Red-faced, Boo scrambled after the can of applesauce as it rolled off down the aisle.

  Afterward, at a sedate walk, she headed for the cookies and crackers. Her mother’s scribbled list was short: two boxes of saltines, two half-gallons of milk, a giant can of fruit punch, and four boxes of the cheap, “plain-wrap” macaroni-and-cheese dinners. Now, Boo thought, if she were her day­dream self, she would probably be shopping for steak­burger and tiny baby peas and straw­berry cheese­cake. But the make-believe had stopped being fun. She was the boring old everyday Boo again.

  The walk home wasn’t really four miles. It only felt like it. Her kid brother Cisco said it was three quarters of a mile, but things like milk and fruit punch grew heavier by the yard, so that by the halfway point it always felt like four miles. Five, sometimes.

  From its bottom end, Hobart Street angled uphill, going straight and easy for a while, but I hen turning to climb more steeply toward the hilltop. Beyond the turn the houses grew larger, with more trees and shrubbery the farther uphill they sat. The Smith house, half of a shabby old-fashioned duplex, stood three houses below the turn. The seven Smiths lived in the downhill half, Mr. and Mrs. Maldonado (whose children were all grown up and gone) in the uphill half. Even from the bottom of the street it was easy to make out which half of which house was the Smiths’ because of the long red-and-yellow-and-purple wind flag that floated out from the TV aerial. No one could miss Elvira, either. She sat in the drive­way, a battered old mid­night-blue van with faded silver stars and red and gold planets painted here and there all over her.

  Fifty yards or so up the sidewalk ahead of her, Boo spotted a familiar thickset figure in a dark, baggy coat and dirty yellow tennis shoes. Even without the rusty old garden wagon loaded with plastic bags full of belongings that the old woman always pulled along behind her, Boo recognized Auntie Moss. Everyone in the neighborhood knew Auntie.

  Mrs. Moss had lived in the Smiths’ house before they came. According to Mrs. Maldonado, the old lady had gone half batty after her husband died. Left without enough money to pay the rent and with nowhere to go, she had taken to sleeping in garages and carports when anybody would let her, and in Sycamore Grove Park when they wouldn’t. Mrs. Maldonado said she wasn’t crazy anymore, but Boo wasn’t sure.

  Boo didn’t like the old woman. Auntie smelled bad, and had sharp, witchy eyes and twisted, knobbly fingers, and sometimes yelled at kids for no reason at all. Even so, Boo was almost glad to see her. Relieved, anyway. No one had seen her for weeks. Everyone had worried vaguely, but nobody had done anything. Mr. Smith’s guess was that Auntie had moved downtown to live at the summer campground for homeless people. Cisco thought maybe she’d gone looking for another neighborhood. Either way, Boo supposed she had left because of the way Ronnie Doty and the Kettleman kids always pestered to see what was in the plastic bags heaped up in her wagon, and sang “Bossy, bossy Flossie Moss! Where’s her marbles? Lost, lost, lost!” in yah-yah voices when she yelled at them to go home and suck green lemons.

  Farther up the street, Vern Simmons, the mail­man, came trundling his little three-wheeled bag carrier along the Pullers’ front walk and onto the sidewalk.

  The mail!

  Boo broke into a run, the grocery bags swing­ing and banging against her legs. Vern had to have a letter from her father today. The time he telephoned to say he’d gotten to Pitts­burgh safely and that Grandma’s broken hip was coming along as well as could be expected, he had told her mother to have the telephone discon­nected right away so they could save the money. So now even if he wanted to, he couldn’t phone to say the money order was on the way. It just was. It had to be, since his first payday was five days ago. And how could a letter take more than five days to come by airplane from Pennsyl­vania?

  “Try’na beat that brother of yours to the mail, Rain­bow?” Auntie Moss cackled after Boo as she passed.

  Boo turned, panting, and trotted backward. “Hi, Mrs. Moss. Where’ve you been? We’ve got lots of your mail.”

  Auntie brightened like a droopy old dog who hears the word Biscuit! When she smiled, there was a gap where her front teeth should have been. With her cackle and gray, frizzy hair and stoop, all she needed was a hooked nose and pointy chin to look like a fairy-tale witch.

  “Real mail?” Auntie asked quickly. “Letters?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I think it’s mostly cat­alogs, that kind of stuff. Where’s your wagon?”

  “In a safe place,” the old woman said craftily. “Where certain nosy brats can’t get at it.”

  “Well...” Boo, still walking backward, tried to think of something else to say, but couldn’t. “I’ll see you up home. I gotta go.” She turned and ran.

  Vern, the mailman, turned in at the Smiths’ front walk before Boo got that far, but she cut across the Winklers’ grass next door and got to the mailbox just as he did. Cisco and eight-year-old Poppy came flying out the front door a mo­ment later.

  “Is it here?” Cisco sounded as breathless as Boo actually was.

  “You kids in some kind of hurry?” Vern sorted slowly through the rubber-banded packets of mail he held. “Here, I guess this batch is yours.”

  “Thanks, V—” Boo’s eye fell on the envelope addressed to All the Rest of the Smiths in a familiar scrawl.

  “It’s here!” She snatched the letter from under the rubber band and, thrusting the rest of the bundle of mail at Cisco, bounded up the porch steps.