Read Online Sammy Keyes and the Kiss Goodbye by Wendelin Van Draanen - Free Book Online Page A

they reached the third-floor landing, the pair looked over the edge. And when Rita began visibly shivering, Hudson wrapped her in his arms and said, “Why are we here?”
    But Rita simply shook her head and dug down for strength. Then she checked the third-floor door (which was locked and latched) and went up to the fourth floor. “This is the spot where she scared that man to death,” she said, referring to a night Sammy had surprised a man with a weak heart and a guilty conscience as he’d tried to slip out of the building unnoticed. “That was quite a night.”
    “You do this like a pro,” Hudson said as they continued up to the fifth floor.
    “I’ve been up and down a few times,” she replied, then looked over her shoulder at him. “Mostly the time Lana let Samantha’s cat escape.”
    At the fifth-floor landing, Hudson looked back down the way they’d come. “The reality of this is much different from the theory,” he remarked. And after a moment of visualizing Sammy using the fire escape, day and night, to school and back, to the market and back, to the mall and back, to his house and back, for
years
, he asked, “How did she do this in the rain?”
    Rita stood beside him and looked over the railing—a terrifying view. “She never complained,” she said, moving away from the edge. “She just did it.”
    “And the door?” Hudson asked, turning around to face it. “How’d it stay unlocked?”
    “Bubblegum,” Rita said, pulling it open and showing him the large, pale pink wad in the jamb. “The door looks and feels locked, but it’s not latched.”
    Hudson studied it a moment. “Shouldn’t we remove the bubblegum, now that you no longer live here?”
    But there was something about the secret back entry that Rita wasn’t ready to let go of. Something about knowing she could come and go as she pleased, without notice or questioning. It was more than a matter of holding on to the past.
    It was the sheer sleuthiness of it.
    Although what, exactly, she was sleuthing, she didn’t know. Clearly, there was nothing to be seen regarding what had happened to Samantha. And why else would she want to be there?
    Still, removing her granddaughter’s bubblegum was like voluntarily closing up a secret passageway. A passageway that suddenly reminded her of things she’d read about in books as a youth. Like a revolving bookcase that led to a labyrinth of secret hallways and spying portals. Or the hidden door behind a heavy velvet curtain! Or the floor panel under the old rug that exposed a staircase going down, down, down …!
    Granted, this was just a steel door into a decrepit building full of old people, but it was as close to a secret passageway as she’d ever come.
    So Rita simply said, “Not yet,” in response to Hudson’s question and led him down the hallway to where her old apartment awaited its new resident. “This is very strange,” she whispered, hesitating at the apartment door.
    They stood there for a full minute, and when he just couldn’t stand it anymore, Hudson asked, “Is there a reason we’re here?”
    Now, not knowing that Sergeant Borsch had done almost the exact same tour hours before, Rita determined that the best course of action was to knock on neighbors’ doors and ask a few questions.
    So that’s what she did. But unlike the encounter Gil Borsch had had with twitching noses and squeaking voices, Rita was assaulted with full views of her former neighbors and a flurry of accusations and cutting remarks.
    “What are
you
doing back here?”
    “Oh, look. It’s the bride.”
    “Get a load of those shoes. She must think she’s a hipster or something.”
    “You never once knocked on my door before, and now you expect me to give you information?”
    “Just ask the police, why don’t you?”
    “Yeah. That pork belly was here earlier.”
    “Or watch the news. It’s all over the news.”
    And then the conversation switched. Instead of the neighbors directing what they