Leo grinned. He’d caught my cue the way my dad and I used to catch the ball when we got a good rhythm going throwing to each other in the front yard—seamless, smooth.
“We know that Lisette’s mother took a list of names with her to the hospital,” Leo said. “She did not know whether she was having a boy or a girl, and she had five names listed for each gender to choose from. I’m sure that the three of you already know which names were on that list.”
“No,” said the red-haired lady, a little smile crossing her face. “We don’t.”
16.
The cemetery came last.
Leo and I walked away from the ladies for a minute to give them a chance to pay their respects.
“We are so going to get caught,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I swear we won’t. I’m very good at reading people. I don’t put the flyers in every program I sell. I only give them to people who look promising.”
“What if someone drops one? Or it falls out in the theater or the courtyard?”
“The janitors sweep up the whole place right after the performances,” Leo said. “It’s not like they’re going to look at every piece of trash. And I keep an eye out. Don’t worry about it.”
“All right.”
“By the way,” Leo said. “That was amazing. Back at the hospital. When you jumped in to help get them to stay.”
“I thought about it last night. I realized they might give us a hard time because we’re kids, so I wanted to have something to say if they did.”
“We make a good team,” Leo told me. “You think ahead. You’re smart.”
I fought down a smile at the compliment. “You’re smart too. You know everything there is to know about Lisette. How did you find out so much?”
“I’ve read every interview she ever gave,” Leo said. “And I read When the Curtain Fell: The Unauthorized Biography of Lisette Chamberlain. Some of the actors say they’ve seen her ghost. She appears in the tunnels, late at night, after the play ends. I’ve got to get in there.”
“Can you take a picture of us?” one of the ladies called.
“Sure,” Leo said.
It surprised me how much I liked giving the tour and learning about Lisette. I’d thought it might be hard, but it wasn’t. She was like a character, someone I was learning about from a book or watching in a show. Long gone, far away.
When we got closer we could see that the ladies’ eyes were red. From crying over someone they didn’t even know, who had been buried decades before. My chest felt tight and I had to bite my lip to keep from saying something.
We walked the ladies all the way back to their car at the old hospital—about a mile, but none of them complained. They kept talking to Leo about Lisette’s performances and had he watched them all and which was his favorite.
“Thank you,” the red-haired lady said. Some of the insurance office workers had started to pull into the parking lot, but we stood under a big pine tree and I didn’t think they could see us. “This was wonderful. I’m sorry we doubted you at first.”
“No problem,” Leo said. “You can make up for it by telling all your friends.”
He had them wrapped around his little finger, even the gray-haired lady. They laughed and all three of the Lisettes on their shirts moved up and down.
“Here’s fifteen dollars for our tickets,” said the gray-haired lady, “and ten as a tip for your expertise.” She handed him a twenty and a five.
We walked down the block to the bank so Leo could get the twenty-dollar bill changed to pay me. “You don’t have to do that right now,” I said. “You can wait until the end of the week and take care of the money all at once.”
“I’d rather get it done right away,” Leo said. The bank was one of the older buildings in town, made of gray stone. It looked old-fashioned, like a bank in a movie, with gold lettering on the window and an iron railing for the stairs. I started toward the front entrance but Leo motioned me to come around to the side. Then he walked right through the drive-through and took out the plastic container that takes money and checks into the bank.
“Cars shouldn’t get to have all the fun,” he said. He put the twenty-dollar bill in the container and put it back in the tube, where it shot through to the teller. She looked up from her spot at the window at Leo and said, “Can I help you?” in a tone that actually said, What do you think you’re doing?
“I’d like to change this twenty into two tens,” he said. “Please.”
I thought for a minute she wouldn’t help us, and she never did smile, but when she sent back the two tens there were also two lollipops inside the container. One red, one butterscotch.
“Which one do you want?” Leo asked me as we walked away.
“I’m too old to get candy at the bank.”
Leo raised his cartoon-devil eyebrows and started opening the red lollipop. He handed me the butterscotch one and I put it in my pocket to give to Miles later.