Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set

by Paula Berinstein

  The last thing Professor Hoxby did was attempt to remove the crystals from the skull. This feat proved to be impossible unless he cut through the skull itself, which he did not want to do. It was important to keep it as intact as possible for later testing so Professor Stegelmeyer ended up taking the entire structure to the lab, where he would analyze the crystals. Professor Pargeter, the toxicology expert, scurried off to do the tox screen, and the autopsy was over without one person having vomited—a remarkable achievement.

  The next thing the school learned was that according to Professor Stegelmeyer’s analysis, the crystals were organic and very unusual. Based on these findings, Professors Stegelmeyer and Pole concluded that the crystals had been created at the time of the earthquake. The last time anyone seemed to have gone near the secret room there had been no sign of them, so they had to be new. But exactly how they had been formed and why the two teachers couldn’t yet say.

  Now Amanda and her friends wondered whether there was any connection between the body and the whatsit, and they decided to do more investigation with that in mind. They still didn’t know what they were looking for but they figured they’d know it when they saw it.

  But before they could start, Amanda received an email from Darius Plover.

  Dear Miss Lester,

  Thank you so much for your quick turnaround. I am delighted that you like the “Sand” clips. I was a bit concerned, but you’ve put my mind at rest.

  I hope you won’t consider it too much of an imposition if I send you more clips. I should have something new for you to look at in a few days.

  Your friend,

  Darius Plover.

  This was not good. If the next clips were bad too, she’d have to lie about them. And the next, and the next.

  She wasn’t a liar, or she never used to be. What did these untruths make her? A friend and supporter, or a villain? Criminals were liars. Amanda was a liar. Nick would have concluded that that made her a criminal in the way he sometimes twisted logic. Would he have been right? What if she ruined Darius Plover’s film? He’d lose money. That would make her as good as a thief, wouldn’t it?

  No way. Lying to help a friend wasn’t a criminal act unless your lie was illegal. This wasn’t. This lie pumped up Darius Plover’s morale and deepened the bond between them. It wasn’t actually a lie. It was a little fib. There was nothing criminal or unethical about that, especially since there was no way he’d make important decisions based on anything she said. He’d have to be crazy to let a twelve-year-old dictate his actions.

  Amanda breathed a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t have to answer him right this minute. And that was a good thing because she had a lot of important investigation to do and her friends were waiting.

  14

  The Magnificent Basements

  Although Amanda and her friends hadn’t searched the first or second floors of the main building, they decided to turn their attention to the basements. These seemed a likely place for secrets. Stretching underneath the school, the gardens, and all the way to the lake, they comprised a vast network of innumerable rooms, niches, cubbies, closets, compartments, and tunnels. In short, they were perfect hiding places.

  The basements had so many entrances it was hard to keep track of them. Amanda and her friends selected the one closest to the dining room and waited there for Simon, who had to come all the way from the boys’ dorm.

  “You can’t go in there,” said David Wiffle. He and Gordon had sidled up to where the girls were congregated.

  “Go away,” said Amanda.

  “You’re not supposed to be down there. It isn’t safe, and it isn’t allowed anyway,” said David.

  “Since when isn’t it allowed?” said Amphora.

  “Since always,” said the little prig. “It’s in the school rules.”

  “Is not,” said Amphora.

  “Is too.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” said Ivy. “It’s not in the rules and you know it. Now go away.”

  Gordon cupped his hand and whispered something in David’s ear. “Bad idea,” said David for all to hear. Gordon whispered again. “You’ll get in trouble. Anyway, you don’t want to go anywhere they’re going.” Gordon cupped his hand again. “You’re nuts,” said Wiffle. More whispering, then, “Fine. Do what you want. I’m not going to be responsible. Sometimes I really don’t understand you, Bramble.”

  While this little conference was going on, Simon arrived and eyed the two boys quizzically. Ivy was trying to hear what Gordon was saying but her expression indicated that she wasn’t getting anything. Simon wiggled his ear but obviously wasn’t adjusting his listening device properly because he seemed more absorbed in it than whatever Gordon was saying. Amphora was craning her neck, and Amanda just heard a bunch of sss sss sss.

  Suddenly Gordon turned to the group and said, “I’m going into the basements with you,” at which point the four friends stared at him with their mouths hanging open.

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” said Simon, who seemed not at all pleased.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” said Amphora in a stage whisper.

  “We can’t stop him,” said Simon with his usual impeccable logic. “It’s a free country.”

  “Nuts,” said Amanda. She certainly didn’t want him.

  “Great,” said Ivy. “The more the merrier.” Amanda wondered if she was actually sending a coded message to David that said, “Ha ha. You can’t boss your friend around anymore. Now what are you going to do?” Of course that could have been Amanda’s imagination.

  Amphora leaned over to Ivy and whispered something. Ivy whispered back, loud enough for Amanda to hear, “Don’t worry. He won’t find out.”

  Amanda was horrified. What if Gordon and/or David had heard her? Then they’d know about the whatsit. The possibility that the two boys were wondering what they were doing in the basements in the first place hadn’t occurred to her. Troublemakers and prigs they might be, but Wiffle and Bramble weren’t that stupid. They had to know something was up. But with Darius Plover, Professor Redleaf, Professor Kindseth, dead bodies, mysterious crystals, aftershocks, Holmes, and everything else that had happened in the last few days going on, her brain was overloaded and it didn’t occur to her that they might know more than she thought.

  “Whatever it is, we know now,” said David, which made no sense because they didn’t. They only knew there was something, but not what the something was.

  “Yeah,” said Gordon, who seemed to favor that word above all others. “But I don’t care. I won’t bother you. I want to see the tunnels.”

  “I told you, that’s a really bad idea,” said David. “Thrillkill will send you to detention.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Gordon with moxie Amanda had never seen before. Maybe there was hope for the kid yet. “I’m going.”

  “Suit yourself,” said David. “Just remember, I told you so.” And with a tsk tsk, he turned and strutted back down the hall with his back so rigid he looked like a robot.

  Gordon just stood there and watched him go with no expression whatsoever. Then he turned to Amanda’s group and said, “I’ll catch up with you.” Amanda was stunned. She’d never expected this kind of behavior from Gordon. He had always been such a toady. Maybe the earthquake had released some weird spores that had gone to his head.

  “Don’t do us any favors,” said Amphora, opening the door to the basements.

  When they’d reached the bottom of the stairs the first order of business was to pick a starting place. Since they had no access to blueprints or maps, they were going to have to feel their way. This was one situation in which Ivy’s sister, Fern, might have been helpful, but to everyone’s astonishment the fifth-year student had explored only a small part of the basements and couldn’t describe anything beyond the first few rooms. Amphora wondered if they should make like Hansel and Gretel and leave breadcrumbs so they’d know where they’d been, but Simon pointed out that that wouldn’t guarantee
that they’d seen everything. Ivy did not penalize him for this statement because it wasn’t really arguing. It was a good thing because if she had, he would have argued, and then she would have had to fine him.

  Ivy suggested an empirical approach by which she, and they with their artificially enhanced hearing, would listen at walls to see if they could tell whether corridors or spaces lay beyond, then find their entrances by calculating exactly where such means of access would have to be. This approach seemed, if a bit tedious, sensible. Amanda expanded on the suggestion by proposing that they map the basements as they go, an idea Simon heartily endorsed and volunteered for. He’d found a special open source mapping program that would be perfect for the job. However, despite these useful strategies, there was nothing in their plan that identified a logical starting point.

  Now they were divided. Reasoning that the farthest reaches of the basements would be the most obscure and therefore the most likely places to hide something, Amanda and Amphora wanted to start with them. Ivy and Simon said that just finding those places would waste time and they’d do better to begin with the closest section and work outward. With no one to break the tie, Editta being off who knew where and Gordon not eligible to vote and by himself anyway, they decided to flip a coin. This solution, however, proved to be more difficult than they realized when no one seemed to have one—until Simon came up with a virtual coin.

  With heads signifying the closer rooms and tails the farther, he shook his mobile. The coin flew up in the virtual air, flipped a couple of times, clattered to the virtual ground, and wobbled. Everyone clambered to get a good look. Tails it was, and with their lights in place the kids embarked upon the lengthy process of locating the far portions of the basements.

  They soon learned that each section had its own personality in the same way as the rooms the décor gremlins arranged. The area at the bottom of the stairs acted as a foyer, a place to introduce the reaches beyond to the “traveler.” It comprised a capacious space that looked nothing like a basement. Rather, it resembled one of those lovely rotundas you see on college campuses, with a checkered marble floor, stone archways, massive urns, busts of famous detectives, and a ribbed ceiling. The only way in which it didn’t resemble a rotunda was that the ceiling didn’t soar, as there was no place for it to go. If it had risen much higher, it would have invaded the first floor of the building, and that would have impinged on valuable classroom space.

  Beyond the foyer lay specialized rooms that contained furniture and props grouped in a manner similar to the way movie studios organize their set decorations. Furniture was laid out as an entire room, such as a living room, office, or restaurant. Hand props took their place on shelves with like items, so that you might find an array of light fixtures, vases, or dog food dishes all in one place. Each room was labeled with a general location, and each shelf, cubby, closet, or other division carried its own designation. Presumably the gremlins maintained an index that let them go straight to the desired item rather than having to browse.

  Amanda and Amphora were transfixed. When Amanda came across a set of original Lego blocks, she thought it so rare and important that she had to stop and take a picture. Amphora was finding the draperies and upholstery fabrics tantalizing, and the rest of the kids had to pull her away from one particularly charismatic set of emerald green velvet drapes and a gold-and-green brocade fainting couch. Simon was completely impervious to these attractions until he came across a set of action figures that included a G.I. Joe and a variety of Batmans, or as he kept calling them, Batmen, and then they had to pull him away. Ivy and Nigel were patient with all this messing around, as usual, even though neither of them could enjoy exploring in the same way the others did.

  But for all the fun of the stash, as soon as they’d set out Amanda realized she’d made a mistake and should have voted with Simon and Ivy. There were so many twists and turns, and so many false starts and dead ends, that they made little progress for the amount of time they were spending. It seemed that Amphora was realizing the same thing, for she started to grumble that they weren’t getting anywhere. But shortly after the two misguided girls had repented, the group reached a fork in the road, and what a fork it was, for there before them were about a dozen tunnel entrances in a semicircle, ready to receive them. Beyond the entrances they could see rough rock walls.

  “Oh great,” said Amphora. “Now what?”

  “What is it?” said Ivy.

  “There are all these tunnels we could go into and they all look alike,” said Amphora.

  “That’s an illusion,” said Simon. “There have to be differences. We just need to pick the most interesting one.” It occurred to Amanda that Editta would have decided the question by counting and then picking the luckiest number. That would have been her definition of “most interesting.”

  “Oh, right,” said Amphora. “How silly of me not to know that.”

  “Fifty p!” yelled Ivy. “Stop scrabbling. There are things we can do. Give me your money, Amphora. Right now.”

  Amphora dug in her pocket and slapped a fifty p coin into Ivy’s palm. She and Simon had both started to carry them, even though they continuously protested that Ivy’s methods, and occasionally her judgments, were unfair.

  Nigel looked up at Ivy and whined, as if he wanted to be allowed to choose the opening. “No, Nigel,” she said. “I really don’t think you’ll be able to tell this time.” The dog stopped whining and stared at her. Despite the fact that she couldn’t see his begging, she knew he was doing it and said, “Don’t give me that face. We’re going to have to figure this one out for ourselves.”

  Poor Nigel looked so crushed that Amanda knelt down and gave him a big hug. He responded by licking her nose. As she pulled away she caught Simon smiling. She wasn’t sure whether he was laughing at Nigel’s impudence, Amphora’s frustration, or something else. Since he rarely smiled, this was a big deal. Amanda suspected it had something to do with skateboards.

  “I have an idea,” said smiling Simon. “Regardless of which tunnels we choose, we’ll do better on skateboards than on our feet. It’s more efficient.”

  “Oh right,” said Amanda, giving him a look that was harsher than called for. Maybe Amphora’s rancor had rubbed off on her, although Simon could be oblivious to people’s feelings. “How is Ivy going to skateboard?”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Ivy, a remark that itself caught Amanda off guard.

  “What do you mean?” said Amanda.

  “I’ve skateboarded.” Could Ivy actually be looking smug? No, it wasn’t possible. But she did seem pleased with herself.

  “You’ve skateboarded?” Amanda peered at Ivy to see if she was joking. She didn’t seem to be.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “How have you skateboarded?” said Amanda.

  “Nigel pulls me,” Ivy said. She rubbed the dog’s ears. Amanda noticed that he seemed to have assumed Ivy’s expression. If she hadn’t been feeling so skeptical she would have found the similarity funny.

  “And you didn’t fall over?”

  “Nope. He’s a genius. You know that.” Ivy leaned over and planted a big kiss on Nigel’s head. He gazed up at her lovingly and let his long pink tongue dangle out of his mouth. He was a smart dog, and extremely well trained. Perhaps he really could pull Ivy along without killing her.

  “If you say so,” said Amanda. “But we don’t know what kinds of surfaces these tunnel floors have. They could be bumpy. Because of the earthquake they might be completely uneven.”

  “Let me just try it,” said Simon. “How about a diagnostic ride?”

  “I’ll go along with that,” said Amphora, astonishing Amanda until it occurred to her that perhaps her roommate’s motive was to see Simon fall on his face. It was a good thing Ivy wasn’t fining the two of them for what they were thinking.

  “Okay,” said Simon. “Let me just run back to the skateboard graveyard and grab something.”

  Amanda had her doubts about whether Simo
n’s idea would work, but she wasn’t about to argue. Ivy might fine her as well, and anyway, Simon was pretty good at assessing risk. He probably knew what he was doing.

  Because they really had left breadcrumbs, or rather gingersnap crumbs, behind them, Simon was able to get to the skateboard closet on the third floor and back to the clearing inside of ten minutes. When he rejoined the girls and Nigel, he was carrying the monkey board, which looked a bit worse for wear but seemed to be intact.

  “Here I go,” he said, stepping on the board and shoving off into the tunnel entrance closest to him.

  Clomp, clomp, whoops went his skateboard. Then came a loud thump thud and the noise stopped. “Oops,” he said, his voice echoing.

  Amanda ran to see what had happened. There he was a little way down the rocky tunnel standing on the board, nose to the wall. He looked unhurt, but obviously something hadn’t worked as expected. “Let me try that again,” he said.

  Turning the skateboard parallel with the tunnel, he shoved off again. This time Amanda could hear swoosh swoosh swoosh, and then bluck bluck crash. She ran down the tunnel, noting how uneven the floor was, until she came upon Simon, who again had run into the wall. Fortunately he was still unhurt.

  “It seems that the surface is kind of bumpy,” he said.

  “Ya think?” said Amanda, noting a collection of ruts, potholes, and stumpy bits.

  “I think that might qualify as a fifty p fine,” he said.