Vanished!

by James Ponti

  “Where in this room was President Roosevelt sitting?” I asked, handing him the picture of FDR.

  He looked at the photo for a moment and then walked to a spot about ten feet away. “Approximately here,” he said.

  I joined him, took the picture, and laid it down on the floor to mark the location.

  “And are these two spots the same?” I asked, showing him two photographs of the room, one before and one after the changes.

  “Yes. That’s the wall between the vestibule and the entrance to the hall,” he said. “May I ask what we’re doing?”

  “Trying to find the Jefferson peace medal,” said the president.

  This stunned the curator. “The room has been gone over countless times since then,” he said to the president. “It’s not still here. It can’t possibly be.”

  The fact that he seemed to be an expert in every detail of the room and the certainty with which he said that the medal couldn’t have been there didn’t help my confidence. Still, I ignored him and walked to the area shown in the two photos. Every eye was following me closely and I said a quick silent prayer that I was not about to screw things up.

  I compared the current wall to the one in the older picture and was relieved to see what I was looking for. So far so good.

  “Mr. President,” I said, bypassing the curator for this request. “I need a Phillips head screwdriver. Preferably one with a magnetic tip that holds the screws in place.”

  “Mr. President!” gasped the curator. “As I said, this room has been . . .”

  The president held up his hand to quiet him and stared at me. He was trying to read my confidence level and could tell that at this point I didn’t have any doubts.

  “Somebody get him a Phillips head screwdriver.”

  “With a magnetic tip,” I added.

  “With a magnetic tip,” he instructed.

  Despite the curator’s reluctance, there was no way he was going to refuse the president. “One moment,” he said with a sigh as he quickly exited the room.

  “Oh,” I added right as he reached the door. “And a flashlight.”

  He stopped and thought about saying something but didn’t. He just left and I stood there with everyone staring at me. This was the most awkward part of all. Maybe the most awkward moment in my entire life. (Which is saying something.)

  Most of the people looked confused. Lucy and her mother seemed concerned. But the president and Malena Sanchez, who was one of the Secret Service agents in the room, had a different expression. They looked . . . excited.

  They believed in me.

  Still, I couldn’t bear to just stand there like that, so I picked up one of the photographs and pretended to study it.

  It felt like it took forever for the curator to return.

  “A flashlight and a Phillips head screwdriver,” he said as he handed them to me. “Magnetic.”

  “Thank you.”

  I turned toward the wall and got down on my knees right in front of a vent. It was white, like the wall, with an ornate design. I started removing one of the screws and the president came over to help.

  He held the cover while I undid the screws and everybody else watched. The potential for embarrassment had reached epic levels. By the time I was on the last screw, both Lucy and her mother had come over to us as well.

  “Careful,” gasped the curator, unable to help himself, as we pulled the cover from the wall. The president smiled and laid it gently on the floor.

  “Lucy, can you hold this here and point it down?” I said, putting the flashlight into the newly formed gap in the wall.

  Once she took it I pressed my face into the gap. It was just deep enough for me to get one eye and most of my nose inside. After looking for about twenty-five seconds I saw the glimmer of a reflection and breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn’t be sure what it was, but at least I’d found something. I tried to grab it but it was just beyond my fingertips. Instead I used the screwdriver to reach for it and let the magnetic tip pick it up.

  “Gotcha,” I said when I heard the plink of metal attaching to metal.

  I carefully pulled my arm from the gap in the wall, making sure not to hit the edges and knock it off. There was a collective gasp when the screwdriver came out and everybody could see that something was stuck to it.

  “Mr. President,” I said, offering it to him.

  He pulled it from the tip and wiped away decades’ worth of dust with his thumb. He broke into a huge grin when he saw Jefferson’s face on the front and flipped it over and read aloud.

  “ ‘Peace and Friendship.’ ”

  The first lady squealed. The curator looked like he was going to pass out. And the Secret Service gave me a round of applause led by Malena Sanchez. I’m sure I was still blushing ten minutes later when we were back upstairs in the Treaty Room and I was explaining how it came together.

  “Look at this picture,” I said, referring to the first one the president had shown me of FDR delivering his address. “There’s the peace medal.”

  I pointed at it and laid it down on the coffee table.

  “Now look at this picture,” I said.

  “The medal’s gone,” said Lucy.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “But if you look closer you’ll see that it isn’t gone. It’s moved. Look right there.”

  I pointed to the base of the NBC microphone on the desk in front of President Roosevelt. It was much bigger than the others and was right next to where the medal had been in the previous photo.

  “Do you see that little line next to the microphone?”

  “Yes,” she said. “What is it?”

  “It’s the peace medal,” I said. “The microphone is magnetic and it was pushed up next to the medal, which stuck to it.”

  Her eyes opened wide and the president took the photo from her and held it up to get a closer look.

  “Amazing,” he said. “I see it and I still don’t believe it.”

  “How did it get from the desk to the vent?” asked the first lady.

  I pulled out another picture that showed a table where all the microphones were placed after the speech.

  “They put the microphones over here when they cleaned everything up.”

  “And once they unplugged the microphone it was no longer magnetic,” said the president, getting it.

  “That’s right,” I replied. “And notice that the NBC one is on the edge of the table, pushed right up against the vent.”

  “So it falls off and plunks into the wall.”

  “The only part I didn’t know was how much the room had changed,” I said. “Once I realized that the vent had a new cover but was in the same place, I figured the odds were good that the medal was in there.”

  The president shook his head in disbelief.

  “Florian, how can I repay you?” he asked.

  “You already have,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “You’ve given me a memory that I’ll treasure forever.” I looked right at him. “Although, if you’d be so kind, I would be honored to finish the job and put it back where it belongs.”

  “My pleasure,” he said.

  I walked over to the antique cabinet and opened it.

  “Number three, right?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  I carefully pulled open the drawer and placed the peace medal back where FDR had taken it from so many years before.

  19.

  As Honestly As I Can

  I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE standard protocol is when riding in a Secret Service SUV, but rather than sit in the back, I climbed into the passenger seat next to Malena Sanchez. I’d already had a butler serve me dinner. I didn’t want a chauffeur to drive me home.

  “Okay if I sit up here?” I asked before clicking myself in.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she said.

  We pulled onto Pennsylvania Avenue and I checked my phone. It was flooded with messages from Margaret and my mother wanting
to know how everything went, what the president was like, and whether I’d discovered anything that would help solve the case. (Well, only Margaret wanted to know the last one.) Since the answers would’ve taken too long to text, I just replied that I was on my way home and would have much to tell.

  Agent Sanchez waited until I was done before she spoke up. “What you did tonight was impressive.”

  “Which part?” I asked. “Finding the Jefferson peace medal . . . or figuring out that you learned French in the marines?”

  She gave a begrudging smile. “Both, I guess.”

  “Thank you.”

  We reached a stoplight and she turned to me.

  “Do you really think you can figure out who Loki is?”

  There was something about the way she asked it that made me think she didn’t know the answer. Although she may have just been trying to misdirect me.

  “I do,” I said.

  “You know what? I believe you.”

  The light turned green and we started moving again.

  “In fact, because I believe you, I’m going to give you a one-time offer,” she continued. “Think of it as a reward for your performance tonight.”

  “What’s the offer?” I asked.

  “I will answer one question, but only one question, as honestly as I can.”

  “What does ‘as honestly as you can’ mean?”

  “It means I’ll answer the question truthfully unless I think it would somehow jeopardize Lucy’s safety,” she said. “Then I’ll just say that I can’t answer it.”

  I considered this for a moment. “If you can’t answer, do I get to ask another one?”

  “Nope,” she told me. “So choose wisely.”

  We were less than five minutes from my house so there wasn’t much time, but I wanted to be careful and pick just the right question. I didn’t think I could just get away with a direct “Who’s Loki?” If she didn’t know, then the question would be wasted. I had to come up with something that would give me information whether she answered it or not.

  “Okay, I’ve got it.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Why did Lucy leave school when the fire alarm was pulled?”

  I asked this for a couple reasons. First of all, it was a big part of why Margaret thought she was guilty. A good explanation might change her mind. But even more important, I thought that if Malena refused to answer, then it would indicate that Lucy was at least somehow involved.

  “That’s your question?”

  “Yep,” I said smugly.

  “Too bad,” she said.

  “Why? Because you can’t answer it?”

  “No. Because a boy as smart as you should’ve been able to figure it out.”

  My smugness began to fade.

  “What happens when a fire alarm goes off?” she asked.

  “Everyone in the building goes outside.”

  “And what do they do when they get out there?”

  “Stand around and wait for the all clear to come back in.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Now what’s my job?”

  “To protect Lucy.”

  When I heard myself say it out loud I realized that the answer was obvious. I shook my head and added, “Which is impossible to do while she’s just standing around waiting outside.”

  “You got it,” she said. “She’d be too vulnerable. Standard operating procedure is to evacuate a protectee from any such situation. No matter where we are, when a fire alarm is pulled, I put Lucy in the car and get out. That’s in the Secret Service handbook, so it’s not going to tell you anything about Loki.”

  She was absolutely right. I should have been able to figure that out without asking. I exhaled a dissatisfied breath at the wasted opportunity.

  “Don’t let it get you down,” she said. “You still impressed me tonight.”

  “What should I have asked?”

  She thought about it for a moment and said, “You should have asked why Lucy and Becca stopped being friends.”

  My eyes opened wide. “Oh, that is good. Why did they stop being friends?”

  “Too late. You already used your question. Besides, you’re home and I think those people are eager to hear about your night.”

  I looked up to the house and saw Margaret, Mom, and Dad all anxiously looking out the front window.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said.

  “My pleasure.”

  I went inside and recapped the entire visit for the three of them. They were excited (and maybe even a little jealous). A bonus came in the middle of it all when the White House photographer texted me a picture he took of the president and me with the Jefferson peace medal.

  “That’s going up in my office tomorrow!” exclaimed Mom. “And whenever anyone asks, ‘Isn’t that your son with the president?’ I’ll just act like it’s no big deal and say, ‘Oh yeah, I guess it is.’ ”

  Margaret and I also went over what I’d learned for the case:

  1. I’d made no headway with regard to her membership in the Megatherium Club.

  2. Lucy’s emergency exit during the fire alarm wasn’t at all suspicious.

  3. Lucy had a noticeable reaction whenever I mentioned Yin. I couldn’t be certain that she considered him an enemy, but she definitely was jealous of his status with the orchestra.

  4. The most important relationship seemed to be the one between Lucy and Becca. They’d been good friends and now they were enemies. As Agent Sanchez suggested, the reason why might be the key to everything.

  “I don’t know,” Margaret joked once I’d run through it all. “It seems to me like you may have spent more time using your TOAST skills to impress the president than you did advancing our case.”

  “What’d you get done?” I asked.

  “I almost finished my song,” she said sheepishly.

  “So in other words, I got more done than you.”

  “I don’t know,” she joked. “The song’s pretty good.”

  That night I lay in bed running through the previous twenty-four hours in my head. It really was an amazing experience. I’d touched pieces of history that connected to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. But even more eye-opening, I’d seen the first family in a way I never could’ve imagined.

  In some ways the three of them seemed a lot like my parents and me, even though their life was completely different. I thought about how hard it must be for Lucy to have normal kid experiences. And I wondered what the answer was to the question Malena said I should’ve asked: Why had Lucy and Becca stopped being friends?

  I was still working on that the next morning in French class when the intercom buzzed.

  “Madame Thibault?” called the voice. “Please have Florian Bates report to the headmaster’s office immediately.”

  Normally when someone is suddenly called to the office the class goes, “Ooooh,” as if that person is in big trouble. But this time it was more like “Who?” as though none of them had any idea who Florian Bates was. There was, however, one exception.

  Becca turned and gave me an “I told you so” look. “I warned you,” she said under her breath. “You shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

  I’d been so distracted by my White House adventure that I hadn’t thought much about how badly the previous day had ended at school. Becca had gone to the headmaster and told him I was nibbling around the edges of the Megatherium Club. The last time I saw Dr. Putney, he was trying to get the contents of Margaret’s backpack and she was invoking the National Security Act of 1947.

  It felt like I was being called in for round two of that fight. I ran into Margaret in the hallway outside the library.

  “Any idea what’s going on?” I asked.

  “I imagine it’s the follow-up to yesterday’s conversation,” she answered.

  “That’s what I figured too. Do you have that list of names with you?”

  “Yes,” she said, patting the backpack. “But I
also have a copy on my computer at home.”

  Dr. Putney’s assistant was standing at the door. “He’s waiting for you,” she sneered as she used her fingers to signal us to hurry up.

  It turns out the headmaster wasn’t the only one waiting.

  Putney was sitting at a conference table next to Moncrieff Tate, chairman of the school’s board of trustees. Marcus sat across from them.

  “Have a seat,” Putney instructed us, motioning toward the two chairs next to Marcus. “We were just talking with Agent Rivers about how you’ve wandered off course and we wanted to come together so we could refocus your . . . inquiry.”

  Even though Tate was silent, it seemed like he was in charge. At least on that side of the table. I knew Marcus had our backs.

  “Actually,” Marcus said, “Dr. Putney characterized it that way. But I’m curious. Do you two think you’ve wandered off course?”

  “No,” said Margaret defiantly.

  “Florian?”

  “I don’t think we’re off course at all. We have several strong leads and just need to see how it all comes together.”

  Margaret threw a little gas on the fire by adding, “We might be further along if Dr. Putney had told us about the Megatherium Club right off the bat.”

  “You see, this is what I was talking about,” Putney protested. “Rather than trying to identify Loki, they’re spinning some off-the-wall conspiracy theory about a secret society.”

  “It’s not a theory,” said Margaret. “If you don’t believe me, you can just ask the rest of the Maxillaires or the Question Marks.” The mention of these two groups got a rise out of Moncrieff, which is exactly why she did it. “You know, for a secret society, you’re not so good at keeping secrets.”

  “Young lady,” Tate said, trying to control his anger, “I don’t think you realize whom you’re dealing with.”

  “Actually, I think you’ve got that backward,” said a voice from the doorway.

  We looked up to see the ever-imposing presence of Admiral David Denton Douglas, director of the FBI.

  “I don’t think you know whom you’re dealing with, Moncrieff,” he continued.

  “Nice timing, sir,” Marcus said as the admiral took a seat next to Margaret and gave her a wink.