Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams Read Free Book Online Page B

whites of the ref’s eyes, as though she hadn’t slept well either. One of those sparks went off in Ingrid’s mind, a spark of inspiration, half memories fusing with probability. But this moment of inspiration was different from all the others because there was no excitement to go along with it.
    She had left her red Pumas at Cracked-Up Katie’s.

six
    An IM from Powerup77 (Stacy): heard u were gr8 today
    Gridster22 (Ingrid): uh thanks
    Powerup77: whassup?
    Gridster22: nada
    Powerup77: nada—that another name for joey?
    Gridster22: huh?
    Powerup77: heard he called u
    NYgrrrl979 (Mia): hi—moi is here—joey strade called the i-girl?
    Gridster22: for godsake
    Powerup77: yup he did
    NYgrrrl979: he’s cute
    Powerup77: joey?
    Gridster22: howja know he called?
    Powerup77: secrets safe w/me.
    NYgrrrl979: hey—you guys hear bout cracked-up k?
    Gridster22: brb
    But Ingrid didn’t come right back. She put up her away message and lay down on her bed. Her head hurt, but that was nothing compared to the thought of those red Pumas left behind at Cracked-Up Katie’s house. Ingrid had gone to a soccer camp at Loomis in August, taking the cleats with her, of course. A fun camp—she’d roomed with Stacy and they’d met girls from all over the Northeast, some of them awesome players. A fun camp, but with strict rules about name tags; name tags on every piece of clothing and even on the shoes, the camp issuing little metal disks with holes in them, for slipping right on the laces. INGRID LEVIN-HILL , 99 MAPLE LANE , ECHO FALLS , CT . After camp Ingrid had kept the tags on—a cool souvenir. She might as well have spray-painted on Cracked-Up Katie’s front door: FOR MORE INFO CONTACT GRIDSTER 22@ AOL.COM .
    She had to think. Who was the best thinker she’d ever come across? Sherlock Holmes, by far, the onlydrawback being he wasn’t real. Ingrid took The Complete Sherlock Holmes off her bedside table and leafed through. When Holmes was doing his deepest thinking, he fell into a sort of trance, played the violin, or snorted cocaine. The violin route was out: Ingrid was hopeless at music, couldn’t carry the simplest tune. As for cocaine, Holmes hadn’t had the benefit of the DARE program to set him straight.
    Ingrid closed her eyes, slowed down her breathing, tried to fall into a trance. After more than enough of that, she got up and started pacing around, more her style anyway. In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes says, “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.” What data did she have? Start with Murad the taxi driver, leading a police cruiser up to the soccer fields. That had to mean the police now knew that on the day of the murder, a girl had gone by taxi to the fields from outside Cracked-Up Katie’s. Did they also know that Kate had called the driver? Possible, but not a fact, not real data. But it was a fact that the police didn’t know the identity of the girl, because if they did they’d have scooped her up already. Therefore they either hadn’t found the red Pumas or had found them but not examined them carefully, hadn’tchecked those identity disks from camp. That left two possibilities. One: The cleats were at the police station, sitting in a drawer until someone—like Joey’s dad—put two and two together. Two: They were still inside Kate’s house, waiting to be discovered.
    Ingrid stopped pacing. The problem with deep thinking was it could lead to unpleasant conclusions. Like this one, for example. If the shoes were still at Kate’s house, Ingrid had to get them back, and soon. How soon? Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today. Who said that? Benjamin Franklin? A Founding Father. Benjamin Franklin would probably be jimmying open a window at this very moment—or would have done it already and been soundly asleep, healthy, wealthy, and wise.
    It wasn’t going to