When did she not have her camera with her? When did anyone not carry a camera these days? Wait a minute. Why did she care? She wasn’t going anywhere with those two.
“Oh, and I’ll be bringing some pictures of your cousin Jeffrey in his uniform,” said Despina. “He looks so handsome.”
Amanda didn’t care if he looked like Brad Pitt. She had no interest in her cousin Jeffrey or his parents. “Right,” she managed to squeeze out.
“I can’t tell you how excited we are to finally see you,” said Despina. “We can’t wait to add your picture to our photo album.”
“Uh, me too,” said Amanda. “Bye.”
She turned to Simon. “You don’t have to say it,” he said. “I get the picture.”
“Well, at least I got rid of her for now,” said Amanda. “I’ll worry about next Saturday when it gets here.”
After a few minutes Simon decided he wanted a sandwich, so they made their way to the concession car and bought two large hoagies. When they got back to their car they could see that someone was sitting in their place—a couple of clowns in full costume.
Amanda turned to Simon and pointed with her chin. “There are a couple of clowns sitting in our seats,” she whispered.
“So there are.” He came up beside the two men and said, “Excuse me, but these are our seats.”
“Not anymore,” said the one with the huge blue nose.
“We just got up to get some food,” said Amanda.
“Well, go somewhere and eat it,” said the other one, who was wearing a spiky orange wig.
“You don’t understand,” said Amanda. “We were already sitting here.” The condensation from her drink was starting to drip.
“Too bad,” said blue nose. He turned away and opened his book: Trinomial Equations.
“Look,” said Simon. “You clowns are going to have to move.”
“And who’s going to make us?” said orange wig. “A couple of geeky-looking kids?”
“I thought clowns were supposed to be nice,” said Amanda. “You’re a discredit to your people.” The drink was making her fingers freeze.
“Ha!” said blue nose. “Listen to those big words. And you got it wrong, kiddie. It’s decredit.”
“Nuh uh,” said Amanda. “Discredit.”
“I don’t care if it’s easy credit,” said orange wig. “Off you go.” He looked out the window. “Whoa, a Gloster Meteor. Only two of those are still active in the UK. See that, Terry? Hey, you’re missing one of the coolest vintage aircraft ever.”
“Now see what you’ve done,” said Terry, the blue nose. “I was in the middle of solving this equation and now I’ve lost my place.”
“Who cares about equations?” said orange wig. “This is real life.”
“Look, clownie,” said Simon. “I don’t care if the Hindenburg is out there. She’s right. These are our seats and clowns are supposed to be nice.”
“Says who?” said Terry.
“Says the rules,” said Amanda. Oh no! She was sounding like David Wiffle. Maybe it would be better to do as the clowns had said and find other seats. She did not like what this struggle was doing to her.
“’Says the rules,’” the orange-wigged clown mocked.
“Forget it,” said Amanda. She pulled Simon by the arm, which was a neat trick considering that she was trying to juggle her sandwich and the wet drink at the same time. Fortunately all her other stuff was in her backpack or she would have had to manage that too.
“I never liked clowns,” said Simon when they were well away from the meanies.
“Me either,” said Amanda. “They’re grotesque.” Two drops of water dripped from her cup and got her jeans on the way down.
“Pop quiz. What makeup was the one with the orange wig wearing?”
“White background, red outline around the mouth, red and blue stripes on the cheeks and forehead, and black around the eyes. Oh, and a fuzzy red nose about the size of my fist.”
“Not bad,” said Simon. “Although you forgot the eyebrows.”
“Oh, right. Red eyebrows. Sorry. Frankly I wasn’t impressed. I could do a better job with only two colors.”
“Which would be?”
“Red and white, of course. I’ll give you a demonstration tomorrow.”
They had traversed quite a distance at this point, but the train was so full that they hadn’t found any empty seats. Simon was dripping sauce and tomatoes from his sandwich and managed to get food all over his clothes, not to mention the floor. Amanda thought it probably wasn’t such a good idea for him to eat while they were walking. Worse, he was sipping from the soda he was carrying in his other hand and was getting Coke all over his face and down his T-shirt. The trail he was leaving would have been helpful for finding their way back had they needed it. She hoped it wouldn’t attract ants. At least her drips were sugar-free.
They walked all the way to the last car before they found two seats, which fortunately happened to be next to each other. As soon as they sat down, however, two young toughs came up and said that those were their seats.
“Sorry. First come, first served,” said Simon. He looked at Amanda as if to say, “If the clowns can do it, we can.” She felt torn. While she didn’t approve of the clowns’ manners, she desperately wanted to get out of the aisle.
“Don’t think so,” said the one with the tattoo on his neck that said “Inquisition.”
“Look, we’re sitting here,” said Simon. “The seats were empty and we took them.” A piece of tomato fell out of his sandwich.
“Well, now they’re not,” said the one with the ZZ Top beard. “Get up.”
“Make me,” said Simon.
“Would ya listen to that?” He turned to his friend and laughed. “I wouldn’t argue with us if I were you, laddie.”
At this point Simon was starting to look nervous. Amanda elbowed him and hoped her sandwich wasn’t dripping as well. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll find other seats.”
“No,” he said. “We’re not getting up.”
“Look, bozo,” said the guy with the tattoo, “we got up for one second. That’s not moving. That’s a break.”
“Well, we did the same thing in that other car, and two clowns came and took our seats,” said Simon.
“Yeah, well you clowns took ours. Get up.” He bumped Simon’s drink and it crashed to the floor. Now there would definitely be ants.
“Look what you did,” Simon said.
“Tough,” said the Inquisition guy. “Get out of our seats.”
He pulled back his arm, made a fist, and punched Simon square in the nose. Simon fell to the floor and his food scattered. Amanda got up, put her sandwich on the seat, and turned him over. His nose was bleeding. When she looked up, the two toughs had thrown her sandwich on the floor and taken the seats.
“What’s going on here?” The voice was the porter’s. “Are you hurt, sir?” he said to Simon.
“I’b gud,” said Simon, who was speaking in a muffled sort of way now.
“No you aren’t,” said Amanda. “That guy punched you.”
“Leeb it,” said Simon. “I’b fide.”
“Officer, those two guys harassed us and punched my friend,” said Amanda. She didn’t care if she sounded like David Wiffle. There were times when complaining was legitimate and this was one of them.
“That true?” said the porter to the toughs.
“I just touched him,” said the guy with the tattoo. “He must be a hemophiliac.”
“You decked him,” said Amanda. “That was totally uncalled for.”
“All right,” said the porter after helping Simon up. “You two come with me. I’m sorry, sir,” he said to Simon. “Here is a form to fill out if you’d like to make a complaint. And please accept this gauze and antiseptic. Miss, you can find ice at the end of the car.”
Simon reclaimed his seat and sat there with his nose up in the air until the bleeding stopped. Unfortunately his face started to turn purple even th
ough he held the ice to it for quite a while. Amanda urged him to fill out the form and make the complaint but he didn’t want to.
“Peeble pudge each udder all da time, add eddyway, we hab do keeb a low profile,” he said.
“Yes, we do have to keep a low profile,” she said. “We’re breaking school rules, which we do all the time of course, but we don’t want to call attention to Legatum. I don’t agree that it’s okay to punch people, though.”
“Nebber bide” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Nebber bind,” he said loudly.
“Oh, right. Never mind. Okay.” She sat back in her seat. “Do you want some of my sandwich or drink?”
“Dat’s okay,” he said. “I’ll go ged my owd. But you deed to sabe by seat.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll save your seat. No problem. And if those guys come back I’ll just call the porter. But I don’t think they’ll try again.”
When Simon had left to get another snack, Amanda went through her backpack. Her skateboard was there, of course, and a couple of crystals. She had also packed pepper spray, which she’d brought back from her holiday in London as a general precaution. The thought of running into Blixus Moriarty scared her silly. He’d been rough with her when she’d penetrated his territory before, and now that he’d spent time in prison he would be even more dangerous. She had also packed the usual evidence kit, gingersnaps, her phone charger, and the phone itself, which she pulled out.
Finishing her sandwich and drink at the same time, she brought up her film editing program and got to work on the training film. Thrillkill would not be pleased if she and Holmes took any more time with it, and the train ride seemed like a good time to make progress. They had worked up what she thought was a great story about following an audit trail, and she was working on the part where they found the prize at the end of the path.
The example showed how to track down hackers using IP addresses. She had turned it into a story about an explorer—sort of a cross between Marco Polo and David Livingstone with a touch of Lewis and Clark thrown in—who, after following a circuitous route, had found a treasure. In this case the treasure was a smoking gun that proved a crime had been committed, and she showed the explorer opening a chest in which it was hidden. As much as she and Holmes had argued over the direction of the film, in the end he had come around and they were both pleased with the result. She was just about to knit together the scene in which the explorer, one Leaf Mothmore, opened the chest, when Simon returned and said, “How can you edit on that thing?” His voice was beginning to clear up.
“I’m using a program with a cool user interface,” she said. “It’s pretty easy. You just drag and drop stuff.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but it’s so tiny.”
“Not that tiny. You can squodge it so the image gets bigger.”
“You people with good vision,” he said.
Amanda felt a pang of sympathy and decided a change of subject was in order. “Say, do you have any idea what’s bothering Editta? She hasn’t been the same since term break.”
“Yeah” he said, slurping another Coke. “She’s even weirder than usual.”
“That isn’t nice,” said Amanda.
“She’s wacko,” said Simon. He bit into his hamburger. Another piece of tomato fell out. “Nuts.”
“To you she’s wacko,” said Amanda. “Maybe to her you’re wacko. Those tomatoes just don’t like you, Simon.”
“I don’t care what she thinks,” he said. “Anyway, I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Probably some dumb superstition thing. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“I don’t think that’s it. She was late coming to school this term. You’re not suggesting she thought the date of the first day of class was unlucky?”
“She was?” He unwrapped the burger a little more. Some sauce oozed out and down his finger. “Nuts and lentils.”
“What, you didn’t notice? Where is your head all the time?”
“For one thing, I was busy watching you make stupid remarks,” he said.
“For heaven’s sake. Can we forget about that? So I think Scapulus is a jerk. Big deal.”
“How could he have been a jerk just by walking into class?” said Simon. He’d got sauce all over his face now.
Point to Simon. She wasn’t going to win this one. Maybe yet another change of subject was in order.
“I want to text Amphora and find out what’s going on with that key,” she said.
“It’s not a house key,” he said.
“How do you know? Can I have a sip?”
“Wrong shape.” He passed her the Coke. It dripped on the sweater she didn’t like.
“Okay. I don’t know anything about keys. I take your word for it. Let me just write this.” She switched to her message screen and dashed off a quick text to Amphora: “Key?” She turned back to Simon. “So what kind of key is it?”
“Dunno.” He took a bite of his sandwich. This time he was holding a napkin underneath it and he caught the tomato bits before they could fall onto his lap.
“Could it be a key for a desk drawer or something?” she said.
“It’s possible,” he said, slurping his drink. “Or maybe a suitcase. Hm, not enough ice.”
“You want more ice? I can get some.” He shook his head. “So not a door?” she said, sticking her hand under his sandwich to catch a piece of lettuce.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I got it.” She pulled her hand back. Now she was stuck with a piece of lettuce. She grabbed a napkin from Simon’s stash and stuck the lettuce in it, then wiped her hand. “It looks kind of small to be for a door. Maybe a cage?” He took another bite. This time nothing dripped out of the sandwich, but he did lick some sauce to keep it from falling.
“Ugh,” she said. “I don’t like to think of animals being in cages.” Should she get up and throw the napkin away or wait till later?
“Could be one of those fighting cages,” he said. “Extreme sports.”
“Are you kidding? That’s just as bad.” She paused and thought for a moment. “Do you think you could tell if he did that from the skeleton? Extreme sports, I mean.” She grabbed a plastic evidence bag from her pack and put the napkin in it, then stashed it under the seat. It would be okay there till the next time she got up.
“Don’t think so,” he said, finishing the drink and looking for a place to put the cup. “Well, maybe. But Professor Hoxby didn’t say anything about that. Maybe it’s from one of those flight cases? Like the kind they use for rock concerts.”
“You think the dead guy was a musician?” she said.
“No way of telling,” he said, sticking the cup under the seat. “If the body weren’t in such bad shape there might be signs that he played this or that instrument, but it’s too far gone.”
“You mean like callouses or certain muscles that are more developed than normal?” she said. “Here, give me that.” She snatched the detritus of the sandwich out of his hand, bagged it, and put it with the other trash.
“Yeah. Like that.” He looked under the seat. “Uh, thanks.”
Bing! A text from Amphora had arrived: “Nothing.”
This was not encouraging. Apparently the key was still a mystery. Amanda texted back: “What about shape?”
Amphora texted back: “Ivy says not house key.”
“Tell her great minds think alike,” said Simon, reading the text.
Amanda gave him a disgusted look. “She knows how smart you are,” she said.
“I’m not bragging,” he said. “I’m letting her know we already thought of that.”
“Oh, okay,” said Amanda, still not convinced of his modesty. She texted, “We know.”
“Hey,” said Simon, looking over her shoulder. “That’s not what I said.”
“It’ll do,” said Amanda. Score one for her. Now they were even.
27
London
Fortunately Amanda and Simon were able to take the tu
be directly from Euston to Bank Station without having to go through the zoo that was King’s Cross. Unfortunately, before they left Euston they split up and went to the toilets and lost each other. Amanda kept calling and texting Simon but got no answer. That was weird. Why wasn’t he responding? Had something happened to him? Maybe those tough guys had followed them and beaten him up.
After what seemed like forever she became so worried that she called Ivy and Amphora to see if they could get hold of him. After about ten minutes they called her back and said that they couldn’t reach him, so she tried Clive, who told her he couldn’t get hold of Simon either. Now she was getting so frantic that she wondered if she should call Holmes, although what he could do from a distance she couldn’t imagine. After another five minutes of pacing she gave in and phoned him.
When he answered, he seemed incredulous. “Amanda?”
“Yes, it’s me,” she said. It’s me? We’re not “it’s me” friends. Why did I say that? “I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a huge problem.”
“Go on then,” he said.
“It seems I’ve lost Simon and he isn’t answering calls or texts.” She looked around frantically. Still no Simon.
“Where are you?” he said. “I can go look for him.”
“Uh, thanks, but that isn’t going to help,” she said.
“Why not? I’m quick. I can cover the whole school really fast.”
“There’s a teensy problem about that,” she said, pacing.
“What, you don’t think I can?” he said. “Why don’t you ever think I can do anything?”
“I think you can do a lot of stuff, Scapulus,” she said. “But I know you can’t do this.”
“Thanks a lot,” he said. “I don’t see why I should help you if you’re going to take that attitude.”
“We’re in London,” she said rather loudly. “Oops.” She’d almost run into a woman with a walker. The woman, who was about a hundred years old, glared at her and edged forward ever so slowly.
“What?” he said. “You can’t be.”
Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set Page 61