The Vandemark Mummy

by Cynthia Voigt

  “For your career,” Phineas said.

  “I’m a scholar. I could do first-class work in the right circumstances.”

  “You’re a shithead,” Althea announced. Nobody blinked at her language. “And a liar. And not even a real scholar.” She sounded calm now, sure, like herself again. “A real scholar would never have destroyed the text. Or damaged the mummy.”

  “Who has proved that I did?” Ken asked. He turned to Mr. Fletcher. “You’re my lawyer, do something.”

  Mr. Fletcher shook his head. “I told you, I am here at your request but my first loyalty is to the family. I’m the Vandemark lawyer. I warned you, young man, that if you were guilty, you didn’t have to answer any questions. You told me you weren’t afraid of questions. I warned you that if you were guilty, you’d be wise to confess. I expect that whatever criminal lawyer you find will give you the same advice.”

  “Well,” Ken said. He studied his clenched-together hands. “Thanks a lot, Sam. You’ve scotched my career and I hope you’re pleased. In case you care, you’ve also scotched my marriage. If she didn’t like a nonentity for a husband, imagine how she’ll feel about a jailbird. It’s enough to make you laugh, isn’t it?”

  Phineas didn’t feel a bit like laughing. He almost liked it better when Ken was lying. All he wanted now was for it to be over. And that, as if someone were reading Phineas’s mind, was just what happened next. It happened rather quickly, just like on television shows, with the warning, and the policeman coming in to take Ken out of the room, into another part of the station. The only difference was, Detective Arsenault never said, “Book him.”

  It wasn’t ten minutes later that they stood outside, in clear sunny air, watching Mr. Fletcher walk away. O’Meara was still with them.

  “That wasn’t fun,” Mr. Hall said. “Does anyone else feel like a treat?”

  “I should get to work,” O’Meara said, but she didn’t move away.

  “Do we drive or walk?” Mr. Hall asked. He was trying to lighten the mood, Phineas could tell.

  “Drive,” Phineas said, trying to help.

  “Walk,” Althea said.

  “Can we get ice cream?” Phineas asked.

  “I want pastries,” Althea said.

  “O’Meara?” Mr. Hall asked. She shrugged; she didn’t care which. “Then let’s take the car and go down to the shore, and have ourselves a lobster dinner. We have to be back in time to call your mother, but—how about it, O’Meara, do you like lobster?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You can stay up all night writing your story. You’re young, staying up all night won’t slow you down. I haven’t had a chance yet to thank you for coming to keep Phineas company last night,” he said. “Or,” he added, grinning, “for talking with my wife.”

  “About that,” O’Meara said. “I already told you. I can explain.”

  CHAPTER 21

  All Saturday morning the phone rang, because various members of the college community wanted to talk to Mr. Hall, for various reasons. Mrs. Batchelor, for example, wanted him to tell Phineas that she didn’t blame him for breaking into the library and stealing her keys—she thought he was resourceful. Phineas wasn’t sure he believed any of it, but he was relieved that that was what she said. President Blight wanted all three of them to come to a dinner, the next night. Other people just wanted to find out from an insider’s view what had gone on, what Ken had really done. They wanted to know more than what was in the newspaper.

  VANDEMARK PROFESSOR CHARGED IN KIDNAPPING, that was one of the headlines, PROF’S DAUGHTER DISCOVERS TREASURE, that was another, with a photograph of Althea beneath it. MUMMY’S CURSE GOES TO COLLEGE: That one Phineas would have bet money O’Meara had written herself.

  Anybody who could think up any excuse to do so, called. Between calls, the three Halls exchanged information and opinions, trying to remember just what they were thinking and doing when one thing or another had happened. By afternoon, the calls had subsided and the Halls were talked out, but they couldn’t seem to settle down.

  Phineas knew what it was. It was the Letdown. He always felt it after a big game or a tennis match, win or lose, and he’d learned to anticipate the curiously flat feeling, the feeling that something should be going on and wasn’t. But his father and sister didn’t have any experience of it, so it was Phineas who suggested that they go to the movies Saturday night.

  He hadn’t expected the recognition Althea got, the way strangers stared at her as they stood in line to see Batman. Althea didn’t mind it a bit. The movie was just what he had expected, a distraction. Phineas thought it was funny, and he thought the special effects were terrific. Seriously terrific. Especially the car. The other two didn’t like the movie one bit. His father kept carrying on about the malice of the Joker—painting over great art, or gassing a crowd of people under a shower of money. “Worse than anarchy, somehow,” he said. “It’s like, malice in a vacuum.”

  “It’s only a movie, Dad,” Phineas reassured his father. “It’s a joke.” But his father didn’t see any humor in it, and Althea was practically frothing at the mouth. “She’s supposed to be a news photographer, who has reported on war, and all she does is scream. Because she’s in the woman’s role.”

  “It’s only a movie,” Phineas argued, but they weren’t listening to him. He guessed that if he wanted to see it again, and he did, he was going to have to find someone else to go with. He wondered if Casey would be interested.

  At least his plan had succeeded. They weren’t even thinking about the mummy, or Ken, or Sappho.

  By Sunday they were all settled down again. Phineas and his father were in the kitchen after a late breakfast. A slow rain drizzled down outside the windows. Mr. Hall was clipping newspaper articles to send to his wife. Piled up on the table he had the Portland paper and two Boston papers, as well as scissors and a stapler. Phineas had rescued the comics and the sports section, but he had to lie on the floor to read, because his father had the whole table filled. Althea came in to run water into the kettle.

  Phineas looked up at her, in her bathrobe, with her hair frizzing out and onto her shoulders. “What are you doing upstairs?” he asked.

  “Working.”

  She took down a mug, spooned honey into it, and added a tea bag. “You know, Dad, if we’re going out for dinner tonight, you have papers that have to be corrected, and the week’s lessons to plan. This afternoon.”

  Mr. Hall looked up, scissors in his hand. “I’m almost through with this. Your mother will enjoy these. I think she’s a little jealous.”

  “Of course she is,” Phineas said. “She’s missing all the fun and excitement.”

  “She also feels guilty for not being here,” his father pointed out.

  Phineas knew that. He didn’t need to be told.

  “You know, I don’t think she had any idea how much work her job was going to be,” Althea said. “She told me she works twelve to fourteen hours a day, and six or seven days a week. I don’t think she expected that.”

  “She likes to be busy,” Phineas said. When they both turned to give him a Look, he added, “It’s a good thing we’re not living with her. We’d just be trouble. She’d really feel guilty then, if she was neglecting us and we were right there.”

  “Your mother’s too intelligent not to have understood that the kind of fundamental changes women want to make won’t be easy,” Mr. Hall said.

  “That’s no reason not to make them,” Althea said.

  “I never said it was,” he answered.

  The water boiled and Althea poured it into her mug. They weren’t talking about Ken at all, and Phineas was glad of that. He didn’t want to think about Ken, and what Ken had done, and what was going to happen to him. They’d have to testify at a trial, unless Ken pleaded guilty, but until then they seemed to have agreed to forget about him. They would get through a trial if they had to, together. They didn’t need to say that to one another.

  The phone rang, blatt blatt, b
ut Althea was on her way back upstairs so she answered it. “It’s for you, Fin,” she called. “Casey.”

  Phineas went to the phone. “You made the Times,” Casey said. “Did you see it?”

  “We made the Times, Althea,” Phineas called up to her feet.

  She turned around and sat on the stairs.

  “Do you want to come down for the day, or the night?” Casey asked.

  “I can’t. We have to have dinner with the president.”

  Casey hesitated to ask. “Bush?”

  Phineas laughed out loud. “No, President Blight. Isn’t your father going to be there? I thought it was like a celebration dinner, and your father would have to apologize to mine.”

  “He is going up for the dinner. But I don’t think my father knows how to apologize.”

  “My dad’s been practicing his modest smile,” Phineas said.

  “How about Tuesday, then,” Casey asked. “I have sailing all day tomorrow, but Tuesday—”

  “I’ll ask,” Phineas said.

  “Althea could come along too if she wanted to, if she’s bored, or lonely, or . . .” Casey’s voice trailed off.

  Phineas looked at his sister, and wondered. He frowned, watching her. You might find Althea seriously attractive, if you liked a face that looked like the person behind it had a lot of her own ideas and would fight about them if you crossed her.

  “I’ll ask,” Phineas said. “I’ll call you right back, is that okay?”

  “Great,” Casey said.

  “Or if you’d rather, you could come up here and meet our famous mummy,” Phineas offered.

  “I’d like that too,” Casey said. “George can do all the driving, so there’s no problem with transportation.”

  “Nice to be rich,” Phineas said, and right away he wished he hadn’t. It was a pretty dumb thing to say to someone you didn’t know at all.

  But Casey was smiling, he could hear it. “I’m not complaining.”

  Phineas hung up laughing. “He wants me to come spend Tuesday,” he reported to his sister. “He wants you to come too, if you’d like.”

  She shook her head.

  “I think maybe he’s got sort of a crush on you.”

  Althea’s cheeks turned pink and she ignored that. “I’m going back to work.”

  “What’s so important?” Phineas asked. “You could meet people.”

  “I’m trying to make a translation of that poem,” she told him. “Detective Arsenault let me xerox a copy of the photographs, and I want to try it on my own, before the scholars do it. I know I can’t make a good one, I don’t know enough about putting the words together, what order they probably go in, or the vocabulary, or the syntax, I know that, but—before I read the rest I want to try my own. I know you think I’m weird, Fin. Don’t bother saying it.”

  “I don’t think you’re weird,” he said. “And I wish you’d stop telling me what I think. It’s pretty annoying, someone doing that.”

  “Sorry.” Althea sounded like she meant it.

  “It’s okay,” Phineas told her. He had a sudden idea and said, before he thought, “I don’t like thinking about Ken either.”

  “I guess,” she answered slowly, “we can’t help it. I guess it’s dangerous not to think about him. Because I don’t think he feels all that differently than I do about this Sappho poem, but I’d never . . . Phineas, if I told you I was thinking I’d like to take a karate class, would you laugh at me?”

  Phineas shook his head no. But he was biting the inside of his cheeks to keep from laughing at the idea of Althea doing karate.

  “I couldn’t fight back at all. I couldn’t defend myself. I was as helpless as the mummy. And the mummy’s dead. I asked you not to laugh,” she said.

  “I’m not,” Phineas said, and it was true.

  “So, will you take it with me?” Althea asked.

  Then Phineas did laugh. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?” He’d seen The Karate Kid lots of times, he knew how to do it. He bent his knees, brought his hands up flat to chest level. “Hi—yah!” he cried as he kicked his left leg out, stiff. “Hiii—yaaaah!” and he stepped down onto his left foot, chopping viciously with his right hand.

  “Jerk,” Althea said. “You saved my life, but you’re still a jerk.”

  BOOKS BY CYNTHIA VOIGT

  Homecoming

  Dicey’s Song

  Winner of the 1983 Newbery Medal

  A Solitary Blue

  1984 Newbery Honor Book

  Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers

  The Callender Papers

  Winner of the 1984 Edgar Allan Poe Award

  Building Blocks

  The Runner

  Jackaroo

  Izzy, Willy-Nilly

  Come a Stranger

  Stories about Rosie

  Sons from Afar

  Tree by Leaf

  Seventeen against the Dealer

  On Fortune’s Wheel

  The Vandemark Mummy

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1991 by Cynthia Voigt

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Design by Kimberly M. Hauck

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Voigt, Cynthia.

  The Vandemark mummy / Cynthia Voigt.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When, as the new Classics professor at Vandemark College, their father is made responsible for a collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts, twelve-year-old Phineas and his older sister Althea try to find out why the collection is the target of thieves, especially when the mummy disappears.

  ISBN 978-0-68931-476-6 (print)

  ISBN 978-1-4391-3258-6 (eBook)

  [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 3. Universities and colleges—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.V869Van 1991

  [Fic]—dc20 91-7311