Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set

by Paula Berinstein

  It didn’t hit her until about an hour later that this meant her course was back on. Thrillkill hadn’t said so, but that was the logical conclusion. When she realized she would be able to teach her storytelling class after all, she pumped the air and ran to tell Ivy the news. Now both girls were lined up to teach. Forgetting the earthquake, the two of them pulsed with energy and started jabbering about tricks for keeping the students on the edges of their seats. Ivy was going to regale them with the story of how she had helped Amanda foil that security keypad by listening to the sounds the keys made, and Amanda was planning to compare and contrast the various villains in the Harry Potter stories to shed light on criminal personalities. This led to their comparing David Wiffle with Draco Malfoy and the discovery of many similarities until Ivy pointed out that David was supposed to be a good guy and Amanda said yes, what had they been thinking.

  The rest of the day unfolded in fits and starts while the kids alternately cowered, grieved, and played bumper brooms. Amanda and her group used their listening devices but didn’t hear anything helpful. Everyone was preoccupied with the quake, Professor Redleaf, and Professor Kindseth, who had been declared to be in critical condition at the local hospital. Quite a few of the kids wanted to visit him but were told they couldn’t do so while he was in intensive care.

  On Monday classes were cancelled as building inspectors crawled all over the school. All day Legatum was on high alert as the engineers found this problem and that problem and debated whether they would be able to contain them. Their presence caused the kids to worry even more about what might happen if the school were declared uninhabitable. Where would they go? What would they do? Would there even be a school? What did all this mean for the missing object, whatever it was? Maybe it been unearthed in the quake—or buried deeper.

  In the end, however, although the damage was extensive, the inspectors miraculously didn’t find anything serious enough to close down the school—other than the chapel. Ugly, creepy, and in need of repair, yes. Some things definitely were that. Condemned, however, no. Despite the casualties, everyone declared themselves lucky. A 5.5 earthquake in a place without special provisions in its building codes could have been much more serious.

  Still and all, the gremlins’ work had now been called into question and the school had to consider earthquake safety in placing items, whether at the gremlins’ direction or no. This restriction, of course, threw Alexei and Noel into a tizzy because where objects went was a critical part of design and now they would be limited to a canvas that was inherently out of balance. The two men were occupied from morning till midnight moving, cleaning, storing, and what have you, but that didn’t stop them grousing one minute and planning how they might adapt the next. Sometimes Amanda wondered how they could talk so much without becoming hoarse and finally wrote herself a reminder to research the topic.

  On Tuesday classes resumed—all except Textual Analysis, that is. With Professor Bill Pickle in jail for having assaulted a commercial rival a few months before, Headmaster Thrillkill had had to look for a replacement, but with all the confusion he hadn’t been able find anyone and had had to cancel the class until further notice. This omission, however, affected only the third-year and later students.

  Despite the kids’ having bumper-broomed pretty well, the school was still thick with dust and debris. Everyone was sneezing and coughing, even Nigel, and Ivy asked Simon if there might be something they could do to protect him. Simon considered acquiring a gas mask, but Ivy said no, Nigel would never wear it. That got Simon thinking about trying to design either a special surgical mask for dogs, or a massive air purifier, or both. In the end, he managed to make a mask out of a muzzle, which Nigel actually tolerated. That led him to think about trying to patent it, at which point he decided to consult Holmes, who himself held a patent—some method for finding smoking guns in digital data—and might be helpful. The device worked beautifully and Ivy was immensely grateful. Amanda, however, upon hearing about Holmes and his la-di-da intellectual property, became annoyed despite her love for Nigel, and barked at Simon when he tried to explain what he’d done.

  The new doctor—the one who replaced Mr. Tunnel, who’d turned out to work for the Moriartys—was a Chinese woman who was such a whirlwind of activity that Amanda thought she must have been a choreographer in a previous life. She hadn’t needed to consult her, but Amphora and Ivy had—both had bad coughs—and they’d been highly impressed with her medical skills and bedside manner. However, one thing about the doctor, Mrs. Wing, did annoy her, or rather something that happened involving the doctor rather than Amanda personally. When passing by the school’s hospital, she heard the doctor conversing in Chinese with Holmes, which she found so annoying she wanted to punch his lights out. (Not the doctor’s, of course. Chinese was her native language.) There he was showing off again. How could so many of her contemporaries actually like the guy, especially Simon, who thought he was the bee’s knees?

  However, some positive developments soon became apparent. The main one was that a number of hidden compartments, cupboards, niches, and even tunnels that had previously been cleverly hidden were now exposed. As a result there was much more to explore than before, and Amanda and her friends felt optimistic about their chances of finding the missing item. Unfortunately, noxious substances had also been liberated, including various spores, weird types of soil and dust, odd species of mold, and long-buried pollen. In fact, the air was so polluted that it was a wonder the engineers had declared the school safe to inhabit. Fortunately, ordinary surgical masks helped protect sensitive noses, mouths, and respiratory systems in the humans. As far as animals were concerned, Simon consulted for Professor McTavish as well as Ivy, and managed to make a special cage filter for Angela, the talking parakeet. This caused him to run to Holmes about a possible second patent application, and he came back yakking his head off about how he was going to file it.

  After class Amanda, Simon, Ivy, Amphora, and Nigel spent several hours exploring. They were keen on looking in the basements, which were extensive, and since the earthquake, believed to be even more so. However, they thought it might be best to start at the top of the school and work down, just to be systematic, so up to the top floor they went.

  They decided to spread out. Amanda took the north end, Ivy and Amphora the south end, and Simon the middle. This was not exactly an equitable split but it was good enough to start with.

  They hadn’t searched long when Amphora called out, “You’ve got to see this.” Thinking she might have found the missing thingie, the rest of the team ran to her position, which happened to be deep inside a closet in a disused classroom. When they arrived, they found her standing in front of a tiny compartment that had been hidden behind some shelves containing Christmas decorations. Inside was a metal box, and inside the box was a pile of handwritten letters. Amphora had opened one of them and was reading it with tears in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” said Amanda. This didn’t look good. Why was Amphora crying?

  “What is it?” said Ivy.

  “She’s holding a letter and crying,” said Amanda, taking Ivy’s hand and touching the paper with it. Ivy felt it carefully.

  “I can tell she’s crying,” said Ivy. “I just wasn’t sure why. What’s wrong, Amphora?”

  “It’s so sad,” Amphora wailed.

  “What is?” said Simon, looking skeptical. Amanda just knew what he was thinking. Amphora was creating drama out of nothing. Not that she necessarily disagreed with him.

  “These love letters.” Amphora held them up. They were written with a fountain pen on blue paper. Fortunately her tears hadn’t smeared anything.

  “Ooooh, love letters,” said Ivy. “Whose are they?” She felt the paper again as if that would answer her question.

  “You can’t really feel the ink on the paper, can you?” said Amanda.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Ivy. “Of course not.”

  “You’re not trying some voodoo mumbo jumbo,
are you?” said Simon.

  “Si-monnnnn,” said Ivy. “I’m just touching, the same way you’d look at something. It does, by the way, help me to get a feel for how old the paper is. I’d say it’s been around for a while, but not centuries or anything.”

  “You’re right,” said Simon. “It’s newish but not brand new.”

  “So what does it say?” said Amanda, trying to look over Amphora’s shoulder, a futile exercise due to their considerable difference in height.

  “It’s so passionate,” said Amphora. “A guy named Kenneth is spilling his guts to a woman named Charlotte. He’s so in love with her he’d live inside a tree if it was the only way to be with her, but she’s kind of cold toward him. Well, not cold, but not warm either.”

  “Let me see that,” said Simon, grabbing the letter. “Is there an address or a date or anything?” He scanned the paper.

  “No, nothing,” said Amphora. “Do you recognize the writing?”

  “Uh uh,” said Simon. “You?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me either,” said Amanda, trying to get a good look.

  “Hey, you don’t suppose Kenneth is Professor Kindseth, do you?” said Ivy.

  “OMG, yes!” said Amphora. “It’s got to be.”

  “Why do you say that?” said Simon, examining the letter back, front, and sideways.

  “What other Kenneth is there here?”

  The kids thought for a moment. Then Simon said, “There’s no other teacher by that name, but how do we know it’s a teacher?”

  “Who’s Charlotte?” said Amphora.

  “No clue,” said Amanda. “There’s no teacher with that name.”

  “What a cool mystery,” said Amphora.

  “Yes,” said Ivy, “but I don’t think these are the missing items. The letters are sad and a bit incriminating, but there’s no way these could be throwing all the teachers into such a tizzy. Unless there’s some sort of blackmail going on. Do you think there might be?” She reached down and petted Nigel’s ears protectively.

  “It seems unlikely,” said Amanda. “I suppose we could document these and go on, though.”

  “Yes, good idea,” said Ivy.

  “I’ll do it,” said Amphora. “It’s such amazing reading.”

  Simon gave her the kind of look a twelve-year-old boy gives a twelve-year-old girl when she gets all mushy, then left the room.

  After that the kids unearthed more hidden compartments than they thought possible. Most of them were empty, though, and after a couple of hours without significant discovery, they thought they’d go down to the dining room for a cup of tea. However, they had barely moved when Amanda called out, “Hey!” When the other kids arrived at her location, a supply closet in a niche in the north hall, she was digging into a deep space stuffed with as many types of candy as you can imagine. Every cubic inch was filled with chocolate creams, red and black licorice sticks, chocolate nut bars, M&Ms, candy corn, chocolate-covered cherries, vanilla fudge, gooey caramels, some kind of marshmallow concoction, dark chocolate bars, mints, Cadbury Roses, chocolate Easter bunnies and Santas, something blue and fruity-smelling, and a whole lot more. The smell was amazing and so hard to resist that Amanda had to fling her arm in front of the stash to keep the others from raiding it.

  “What do you think this is about?” she said, trying to remember each variety in case this was one of Professor Sidebotham’s setups.

  “Who’s fat around here?” said Simon.

  “Si-monnn,” said Amphora and Ivy in unison.

  “Well, if you eat this stuff, that’s what will happen to you. So it’s logical to look for someone who’s overweight. Who’s fat?”

  “No one’s fat—anymore,” said Amanda. The “anymore” referred to the fact that she, Amphora, and a few of the other first-years had been overweight when they’d started at Legatum, but the previous cook’s sugar thefts had reduced the number of calories in the food, and by the end of the term they had all slimmed down.

  “Are you sure?” said Simon.

  “I can’t think of anyone. Can you?” said Amphora.

  The kids took a couple of minutes to skim through the images of the students and teachers in their minds, but no one could come up with a name. Even Professor Mukherjee, the legal issues teacher, who had been roly-poly when spring term had begun, had lost weight, which to everyone’s surprise made him look rather dashing. Legatum’s denizens were all appallingly fit. And so the identity of the owner/manager of the candy stash remained a mystery, at least for the time being.

  After their tea break, during which they discovered that the new cook had reinstituted the revered custom of afternoon tea and scones (and grabbed another peek at him—his name was Rupert Thwack), they returned to the third floor. They may have covered a lot of ground, but there was so much more to go that they decided to give it an hour and quit. During that time they found someone’s costume jewelry collection, snapshots from an old Halloween party (you don’t even want to know), and what Simon referred to as a skateboard graveyard.

  The skateboard stash so excited Simon that he lingered over it for a long time. It comprised a huge closet full of broken skateboards of every vintage imaginable. Some were popular makes and models, and others were obviously custom designs. There was a Chocolate Raven Tershy Treehouse deck (very purple) with Spiral wheels, a dark blue Antihero Classic Eagle, and a lime green Roger Snack Attack. Under those he found an ancient Makaha sidewalk board and a G&S Stacey Peralta Warp Tail. But his favorite was a Zazzle Chronic Monkey, which was painted a bright emerald green and had a picture of a monkey on the deck. He was busting to tell the girls about it, but after Amanda’s unfortunate experience on the train to London the previous term, he decided not say anything. Amanda was still fuming about being peed on and had taken an intense dislike to monkeys and apes of all kinds, even King Kong, whose skyscraper scene she had long admired.

  Simon found this collection even more baffling than the others they’d come across. Why would anyone keep a bunch of broken skateboards? Someone should fix them. They would be incredibly useful around campus. This place was truly nuts.

  After he was able to tear himself away, Simon and the girls continued to scour the third floor but didn’t find anything that might qualify as the missing item, which they had started to call “the whatsit.” There were, however, two more floors plus endless basements to go, not to mention the gym and various outbuildings. The chapel, of course, was still off-limits, although none of them had ever let a little thing like one of Thrillkill’s orders stop them.

  11

  The Crystals

  The following Saturday, Amanda noticed that Amphora was wearing a necklace composed of a beautiful apricot-colored crystal. It was so striking that she decided she wanted one too and asked Amphora where she’d gotten it.

  “If I tell you, you won’t believe it,” said Amphora, fingering the stone. It sparkled like you wouldn’t believe.

  “Of course I will,” said Amanda, staring at it. It looked like winter, spring, summer, and fall all at once. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You have to understand,” said Amphora, “I wasn’t doing anything I wasn’t supposed to.” She seemed awfully nervous. What had she done? Flouted the rules and snuck off to town?

  “I know that. But even if you had, so what?”

  “No reason,” said Amphora. “It’s just that . . . well, okay, I did do something I wasn’t supposed to. I was out by the chapel. Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “Of course I won’t, but why are you worried? You didn’t go in, did you?”

  “No.”

  “So what then? Please take me. I’m dying to see what you found. This doesn’t have anything to do with gluppy things, does it?”

  “Gluppy things” was Amanda’s description of the slime mold she and Nick had found in the garden near the secret room where the previous term’s cook had hidden her virus-treated pink sugar—the same place the cook and the doctor had held Herb Lester. T
he things were gross and Amanda didn’t ever want to have anything to do with them again.

  “No gluppy things. I promise. Ready?”

  “Ready. Let’s go.”

  As they worked their way down to the spot where Amphora had found the crystal, Amanda said, “So, the new cook.”

  “What about him?” said Amphora, reddening.

  “He’s cute,” said Amanda.

  “Oh? I hadn’t noticed.” She quickened her step.

  “Come on, Amphora. Everyone knows you have a huge crush on him.”

  “No I don’t.” She walked even faster.

  “I don’t blame you,” said Amanda. “He’s got a motorcycle and everything.”

  Amphora stopped and looked at Amanda. “I know,” she moaned. “He’s amazing. Did you know that he studied with Jamie Oliver?” Jamie Oliver, the boyish celebrity chef, was the coolest guy ever. Even Amanda had heard of him over in the States. Not that he was a boy anymore, but he’d started in his teens and immediately made a huge splash.

  “No, I didn’t, but it figures. See, that wasn’t so bad.” Amanda smiled and Amphora visibly relaxed.

  “Please don’t say anything to Simon,” said Amphora.

  “I don’t have to. He knows.”

  “Darn it, Amanda. Why did you tell him?”

  Amanda looked Amphora full in the face and said, “Thanks a lot. Why would you think I’d do that? Simon has eyes. We all do. It’s so obvious it’s ridiculous. You need to work on your disguises. That includes not staring at cute guys when you don’t want anyone to know you like them.”

  Amphora sighed. “I can’t believe I’ve been doing that.” She looked miserable.

  “Well you have, so cut it out. I don’t blame you, but if you don’t want people knowing, you’re going to have to be a better actor than that.”