Us and Uncle Fraud by Lois Lowry Page A

of the robbery at the Leboff's house. Mr. Stratton had made his usual six o'clock check of the mansion;
he had entered through the back door, using the key that hung in its hiding place. He had walked through the house, as he always did, checking the window locks. It was only when he got to the huge dining room that he felt something was wrong.
    Kenny made a drama out of it again, telling it to Marcus and me one more time at the corner of the playground. He had told it so often this morning that he could build it now into a rehearsed tale, pausing for effect with his eyebrow jerking up and down like an undisciplined dancer.
    "My father stood there in the dining room," Kenny said, "and he
knew
something was wrong." Pause. Twitch.
    Kenny's eyes widened and he lowered his voice. "First he noticed that the big table—they call it the sideboard—was bare."
    "It used to have all that silver stuff on it," Marcus said to me. "Remember?"
    Kenny glared at him, irritated at the interruption. "The silver coffee service was gone," he went on. "So my dad started to open the drawers one by one." Pause.
    "He messed up all the fingerprints, I bet," Marcus said, and Kenny glared at him again.
    "And every bit of the silverware was gone. Two dozen knives, and two dozen forks, and two dozen spoons, and—"
    Impatiently I interrupted him. "What did he do then? Did he call the police?"
    "Of
course
he called the police," Kenny said. "For all he knew, the burglars might still have been there, hiding or something. He waited out by the back door—the police told him not to touch anything else—and they were there in seven minutes. My dad timed it."
    We stood there silently, the three of us, under the maple tree at the corner of the playground. Nearby, our classmates were playing dodgeball, a cluster of them shrieking in the center of a circle while the ball thumped back and forth in pursuit. "You cheated, Charlie!" one of the girls shouted angrily, when she was hit on the leg.
    "Poor sport, poor sport, poor sport," Charlie Clancy chanted as the outraged girl left the circle, rubbing her leg.
    "What did the police do?" Marcus asked.
    "They took inventory," Kenny said importantly, as if he knew what 'inventory' meant. "There was probably five thousand dollars worth of stuff taken."
    "How did the burglars get in? Did they break a window or something?"
    Kenny shook his head. "They found the key, where it was hidden. The police told my dad that the key should never have been left like that. But it wasn't my dad's fault. The Leboffs always left the key there. They
told
him to leave the key there." Kenny looked defensive on his father's behalf. "It wasn't my dad's fault," he said again.
    I pictured Kenny's father, bald, skinny Mr. Stratton, sitting miserably in the police station, saying, "It wasn't my fault" again and again.
    "Come around behind the tree," Marcus commanded ; and we moved into the shadow, where the kids playing dodgeball couldn't see or hear us.
    "Did your father know that we knew about the key? Did you tell him that we'd gone into the house?" Marcus asked.
    Kenny's pinched, thin face looked more nervous than ever. He shook his head. "No," he whispered. "My dad doesn't even know that I've gone in there without him."
    "Do you think our fingerprints are on the key?" Marcus asked tensely.
    Kenny shook his head. "They said that my dad would have wrecked any fingerprints, because he was the last one to use the key when he went in to check the house. It wasn't his fault," he added again, absolving his father of yet one more mistake. "How was he supposed to know? The key was hanging right there the way it always did."
    The bell rang, calling us back to class at the end of recess. We stood there for a moment, watching the other kids trudge reluctantly across the playground toward the school steps.
    "They wanted a list from my father," Kenny added in a low voice as we began walking back. "The police wanted a list of everybody who