Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set

by Paula Berinstein

  A couple of the teachers claimed that they could remember some of the information in the Bible and had written down what they could, but the bulk of the content had been lost. No wonder they were going crazy. If they couldn’t find it they had several choices: attempt to recreate the information, start over from scratch, or do without.

  The immediate result of the book’s loss was that if someone like Moriarty had the information, they’d be on level playing ground with the detectives. If no one did and the teachers did recreate the information, they’d have a leg up again. Some of the teachers argued that they had to try to do that just in case. Others figured that it was too late. This defeatist attitude so angered the Punitori that they almost came to blows with the Realists right there in the main hall. In fact at one point, elderly Professor Sidebotham beaned middle-aged Professor Also over the head with her tablet, sending the history of detectives teacher to the nurse, who fortunately knew nothing about the book and couldn’t take sides.

  One thing no one was mentioning was that if the Moriartys had the Bible, the fact that it was in a very difficult code might render it useless to them. They all knew better. The criminals had access to some of the world’s best cryptographers and they’d crack the code one way or another. Whether they could decipher what legions of detectives had been unable to do was another question.

  At last one of the teachers raised the idea of taking protective measures. This was Professor Ducey, whose practice of logic wasn’t limited to the classroom. He claimed that whether or not the Moriartys had the book, the detectives should act as if they did and do so at once. But what measures would that protection consist of?

  Amanda and her friends thought about this question long and hard. Without knowing what was in the book it was difficult to know how to defend Legatum, but they resolved to try.

  “We have to find Blixus,” said Ivy.

  “Maybe Scapulus can hack him again and we can find out from here,” said Simon. “He did get into their network.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Ivy.

  She texted Holmes, but when he came to the common room and heard what they were trying to do he shook his head. “It won’t work.”

  “Why not?” said Amphora, who was still flirting with him but in a less conspicuous way.

  “They’ve disconnected everything,” he said. “After we destroyed the virus formula the whole network disappeared.”

  “You didn’t do that?” said Ivy.

  “No,” said Holmes. “It wasn’t anything I did. They obviously figured out we’d got in there. I’m sure they’ve recreated the network, but I have no way of finding it.”

  “Then it’s going to have to be in person,” said Ivy.

  “What’s going to have to be in person?” said Holmes.

  “We need to find Blixus,” said Simon. “We need to get that Bible back.”

  “You think he has it and it’s intact?” said Holmes.

  “Dunno,” said Simon, “but we have to find out. The school is going to fall apart if we don’t.”

  “I’ll go,” said Holmes.

  “We’re all going,” said Simon. “Right?”

  “Right,” they all said, although Amanda didn’t relish the thought of going anywhere with Holmes now.

  “But where do we look?” said Amanda.

  “Where indeed?” said Simon. “Any ideas?”

  Complete silence.

  “I guess we have some research to do,” said Ivy.

  36

  Goodbye to the Crystals

  Before they tackled the problem of locating Blixus, Amanda and Simon turned their attention to the remaining nineteen crystals. They called Clive in as a consultant.

  “We should put them underground,” said Simon. “They need to be in their natural habitat.”

  “And it has to be a special type of soil,” said Clive.

  Amanda and Simon stared at him. “What do you mean?” said Amanda.

  “They need to be in contact with a blacksniff parasite,” said Clive.

  “A what?” said Amanda.

  “It’s a class of parasites that lives in the soil around here. It seems to like the crystals.”

  “A parasite on crystals?” said Amanda.

  “They are alive,” said Simon. “That makes sense. What are they for?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” said Clive. “They do something to the crystals that make them thrive. I saw them with my special app when you were streaming that video to me from the factory. I’m not sure if they clean the surface of the crystals or nourish them somehow. But they can’t live underground without them.”

  “I thought they ate light,” said Amanda.

  “They do,” said Clive. “This might be another nutrient they need. I’d have to experiment to know for sure, but they’ve been through enough. I don’t want to poke and prod them anymore.”

  “That explains a lot,” said Simon.

  “What do you mean?” said Clive.

  “I’ll bet the soil where Mr. Wiffle’s body was found is full of those things. That’s why they did so well there. At the factory too.”

  “You’re right,” said Clive. “This area has loads. There weren’t that many on the London crystals though.”

  “Are you telling me that if Blixus had made more crystals and there had been no parasites, they would have died?” said Amanda.

  “Yes,” said Clive. “And get this: I sampled some of the dirt at the quarry, and it was all wrong. The ones he was making would never have lasted.”

  “But he didn’t care about their health,” said Amanda.

  “No,” said Simon. “Make ‘em and milk ‘em. That was all that mattered to him.”

  “But we have access to the right kind of soil around here, right?” said Amanda. Clive nodded. “Where would be the best place?”

  “There’s a little niche in the tunnels that would be good,” said Simon. “A part under the lake. Don’t you think that would work?”

  “I do,” said Clive. “The environment is perfect. Legatum is sitting on top of a unique ecosystem.”

  “Are you sure they’ll be safe there?” said Amanda.

  “Yes,” said Simon. “We’ll bury them where no one can see them. And if there’s another earthquake and the alcove collapses, they’ll still be fine. They like that kind of soil.”

  “Can we visit them?” said Amanda.

  “I think that can be arranged.”

  On the way to bury the crystals, Amanda, Simon, and Clive stopped to look at the secrets trove. They were proud of Ivy for figuring out how to get into the compartments, but the job before them was monumental. How were they going to get into all those compartments and read all those coded secrets? They were already spread so thin and there were thousands of secrets to obtain and read. It wouldn’t hurt to look at some of the ones that had been exposed by the quake and its aftershocks though.

  They didn’t know what the odds were of finding it, but within the first few secrets they looked at they saw something about the Cave of Skulls. This was the place where Thrillkill and Wink Wiffle had run into Blixus Moriarty. The kids were dying to find out what had happened there. Whatever it was might have led to David’s father’s death, and if they could follow the story they might even be able to find the perpetrator and figure out what went with the key Amphora had found. They pawed the open compartments nearby but couldn’t find another mention of the incident, at least not one they could decipher. Because so much of the trove seemed to be encrypted they couldn’t tell.

  “If these secrets have nothing to do with the Bible, what do you think they are?” said Simon.

  “I’m guessing they have to do with various cases,” said Amanda. “What else would be so important and take so much room?”

  “DNA,” said Simon.

  “You’re kidding,” said Amanda. “You don’t think the detectives keep people’s DNA codes locked up here, do you?”

  “Not really but you never know,” said Sim
on.

  “What about the national DNA database?” said Clive.

  “The trove could be for people who aren’t in the database.”

  “Why on earth would they have that?” said Amanda.

  “To compare with evidence they find,” said Simon.

  “Seems a weird way to store the information,” said Amanda. “I’m guessing that’s not it.”

  “Some kind of intelligence, maybe?” said Clive.

  “That’s possible,” said Amanda. “But it’s not in a very usable form, is it?”

  “There’s obviously more here than meets the eye,” said Simon.

  “There always is with this place,” said Amanda. “So are we ruling out the possibility that these are lines from Professor Stegelmeyer’s novels?”

  The two burst into laughter. It was the first time they’d done that in days. Clive searched their faces.

  “You don’t want to know,” said Amanda.

  When they’d found the place Simon had selected, the kids buried the crystals and said goodbye. As they placed dirt over them, the crystals blinked their farewells, then glowed apricot. Amanda felt tears sneak into her eyes and rubbed them away.

  “I’m glad we were able to save some of them,” she said. “It’s terrible that there will never be more now that the virus formula is gone.”

  “We’re now custodians of the race,” said Simon. “It’s a big responsibility.”

  “What if something happens to us?” said Amanda.

  “I’ve already taken care of that,” he said. Amanda looked at him quizzically. “I stuck a secret in a compartment. They’ll figure it out eventually.”

  When they returned from their mission they were delighted to see Professor Kindseth walking down the hall, even if he was using crutches. He had been released from the hospital but was still weak. When Simon showed him his work from the 3D printer, he was thrilled. However when they told him about the factions the teachers had split into, he became very agitated. He wouldn’t verify or deny anything they claimed they knew, though, because the dispute was a matter for the teachers. Amanda could not imagine him taking sides and hoped he would remain neutral.

  There was still no news about the mysterious key. The detectives hadn’t found anything in Wink Wiffle’s house or office that it might go with. His wife didn’t know anything about it, and neither did David, who was trying to cooperate as much as possible while staying out of sight. Simon had even suggested to Ivy that maybe if she were to feel it she might get some vibrations off it, then relented and said, no, he was thinking of Editta. The girls told him that wasn’t funny and Ivy almost fined him for being so cruel. Poor Editta. What had become of her? What would become of her?

  As it turned out, Editta had kept all sorts of stuff about Nick in her room. It had been obvious that she’d had a crush on him since that first day of school when he was kind to her, and her obsession had only grown. No one had realized how foolish she could be, though, and her friends were terribly worried. The Moriartys would chew her up and spit her out. It was weird that the teachers hadn’t said anything about mounting a rescue operation. Whether that was because they were preoccupied or simply didn’t know where to look, the friends didn’t know. What they did know was that Editta Sweetgum was Legatum’s responsibility and the teachers had better do something fast. Of course that meant finding the Moriartys—a problem no one had solved.

  They were worried about David Wiffle too. As much as they didn’t like him, he’d been through an awful lot and they felt sorry for him. He’d lost his father, and by destroying the Detective’s Bible he’d thrown the school into chaos. Was destroying the Bible rather than letting Moriarty have it the right thing to do? Maybe the criminal wouldn’t have got hold of it anyway. David could have hid it in the boulders or something. Of course Moriarty still could have threatened him and he might have given it up rather than endure more pain, but there was no guarantee of that. It didn’t matter now, though. It seemed that Moriarty already had it, or what was left of it. Now the big question was whether he could crack the code and read it. What would David do then?

  How had the book come to be in the library in the first place? They now knew that David had found it there and made up a catalog card for it. It seemed that he’d felt that was the proper thing to do for an unlabeled book. Of course if he hadn’t, Amanda and her friends would never have figured out that the Detective’s Bible was the whatsit, so maybe David’s OCD had brought about something positive for once. Maybe he wasn’t so compulsive after all though. He’d misfiled the card. If he hadn’t, they would have figured out what the whatsit was earlier.

  Amanda was still wondering what Simon had meant when he’d said he thought Professor Redleaf had seen the Legatum equivalent of Voldemort. Now that things had settled down a bit she asked him.

  “I wasn’t sure, but I got the idea that she’d seen something shocking,” said Simon. “And scary.”

  “Something to do with Voldemort? That’s what you said.”

  “I didn’t mean that exactly, obviously,” said Simon. “There’s no such thing as wizards.”

  “Of course not,” said Amanda.

  “I couldn’t get too much out of Scapulus, but he did slip a little and I got the impression that what she saw scared her half to death.”

  “Maybe, but how do you get Voldemort out of it?”

  “I really shouldn’t have said that,” said Simon. “It’s misleading.”

  “Okay, fine. Forget Voldemort. What did she see then?” said Amanda.

  “I think she saw evidence of the most dangerous hacker ever to walk the earth, and you know I don’t normally talk that way.”

  With all the chaos around him, Thrillkill had been able to make at least one decision. He’d hired construction workers to come and fix the school. This work would cause some disruption, but everything should have been fixed by the fall term—should there be a fall term, which no one was sure there would be.

  Everyone was so down that the gremlins had taken it upon themselves to lift the school’s morale. They had decorated the place in an absolutely royal fashion, and it was drop-dead gorgeous. They were still bickering over silly stuff, though, but everyone seemed to appreciate that they were trying to put a pretty face on a bad situation and help calm people down. Despite their own tendency to squabble, they hated to see people fighting, plus everyone was rattled about the earthquake damage and there was a lot of anxiety over the missing students, although most people, the gremlins included, did not know about the Bible.

  The décor was beautiful but it looked weird with all the damage. Alexei and Noel had come up with a Downton Abbey theme, and they kept racing around trying to fix flaws. They were having trouble setting priorities, though, and kept arguing over what the most important tasks were. What once would have been horrifying but was no longer so was that that they had hit it off with Amanda’s relatives, who were staying at the school for a couple of days with Thrillkill’s approval. As great as Despina and Hill had been at the quarry, they were still sticking their noses in everywhere and offering unwanted advice to everyone, including the teachers, who felt that they had to be diplomatic because it was the students’ relatives who supported the school.

  Then possibly the strangest thing of all happened: Simon and Amphora won the disguise competition. It turned out that Amphora had a real knack for costuming and makeup, Simon had had some great ideas, and they had actually enjoyed working together. They had produced burn victim makeup based on one of the simulations they’d created in Fires and Explosions, taking into account everything from the temperature of the fire to the amount of time the victim had been exposed to it. This accomplishment won them high marks in both Professor Tumble’s and Professor Pole’s classes and gave the teachers the idea to team-teach some seminars in the fall.

  Amanda and Ivy were stunned. Truth be told, Amanda was a little envious. She was the one who was supposed to know all about costumes and makeup. Still she was happy for A
mphora, who had been having a tough time, and asked Ivy if she thought there was such a thing as a fashion detective. Simon piped up and said Amphora could probably have a great career fighting espionage in the fashion industry. This idea got Amphora so excited that she told her friends she was going to speak to Professor Tumble about it immediately.

  Unfortunately Amphora had also managed to get the new cook fired. She was let off with a warning not to become personally involved with the staff. Simon suspected that she had not been punished more harshly because of her family’s importance, which made him mad because he had been suspended just for cutting a class. Mercifully Ivy declined to fine him for his remark. Later Amphora told Amanda that she hoped she’d see Eustace again. Amanda shrugged. Despite what had happened with Rupert Thwack, the girl hadn’t changed one bit. However, one mystery was solved. The last thing the young cook was heard to say as he was escorted out the door was, “Nuts. I forgot my candy stash.”

  37

  It’s a Wonderful Life

  When Amanda sat down to research where the Moriartys might have gone, she suddenly remembered Darius Plover. She’d been horrible to him, first lying and then ignoring him. She hadn’t even looked at the second set of clips. She’d probably ruined their relationship, but she may as well do it and this time tell him the truth.

  The second batch was as bad as the first one. She was so upset she briefly thought about pretending she couldn’t access them. Still she had said she would tell him the truth, so she opened her mail and wrote the director a note.

  Dear Mr. Plover,

  I’m sorry it took me so long to get to the second set of clips. I have no excuse and I’ll understand if you’re disappointed.