Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set

by Paula Berinstein

  And then she remembered something. Before she’d left for the Isle of Skye with the Punitori, Professor Also had told her that The Detective’s Bible was virtually indestructible. Was it possible? Could this be a page from the very same book, the one they hadn’t been able to find?

  Amanda had to get hold of that paper. Unfortunately, if she tried to wade into the middle of the tussle she’d probably be pecked to death. The page was like catnip to the peacocks, or bird-nip, or peacock-nip. How could she get hold of it?

  Perhaps she could scare the peacocks away long enough to grab the paper. She screamed, “Shoo, shoo” as loud as she could. The birds looked up, seemed to give her dirty looks, and went back to their squabbling. Well, at least they had responded a little. And then she remembered the Devil’s interval. It was a musical chord that was so discordant that it almost made people ill. It had certainly worked to drive a dog away from Clive’s acoustic levitator, which would have broken its eardrums if the animal had got too close. It had also been the magic formula for opening the electronic lock at the Moriartys’ sugar factory when Amanda had gone there to save her father. It had to work.

  She took out her phone, turned up the volume, and pressed a special icon she’d set up. The noise was so loud it practically sent her flying. It did send the peacocks flying—literally. It made them so uncomfortable that they stood stock still, screeched louder than ever, and flew off, dropping a few choice presents as they rose into the sky. Fortunately the gifts did not hit the page.

  Amanda put on the gloves she always carried, stepped onto the spot in question, which was quite worn from the kerfuffle, reached out her arm, and grasped the paper. Then she took a deep breath and looked at it carefully.

  The first thing she noticed was that the paper was thick and had a sheen to it. That was definitely in keeping with what she knew about the Bible. It also had old-fashioned-looking writing all over it, but it was complete gibberish. The lettering seemed to have been applied in a shimmery kind of ink, almost like an illuminated manuscript. It was beautiful and completely undecipherable, obviously in code. It had to be a page from the missing Detective’s Bible!

  Amanda was so excited she could barely extract an evidence kit from her bag and place the page inside. Unfortunately, as she was fiddling she managed to step in peacock poop—more than once—and was dismayed to see that it had got all over her shoes. She had to tell Ivy and Simon at once though, so peacock poop notwithstanding, she phoned immediately.

  “Ivy!” she practically yelled into the phone.

  “Amanda, is that you?” said Ivy. “We’re all ready to go to Penrith. Are you coming?”

  “The Bible,” said Amanda, except that it came out as “Puff, pant, the puff bible.”

  “What about it?” said Ivy.

  “Tell her to get a move on,” Amanda could hear Simon say in the background.

  “IVY, I FOUND THE BIBLE!” screamed Amanda.

  “WHAT?” Ivy yelled back.

  “She found the Bible?” Simon said in the background.

  “Well, not the whole Bible. A page.”

  “No!” yelled Ivy. “Simon, did you hear that?”

  “Where is she?” said Simon calmly.

  “Where are you?” asked Ivy.

  “I’m in town,” said Amanda. “Where the peacocks are at Passelthwaite Park.”

  “Hang on!” yelled Simon. Then both he and Ivy went quiet for a moment.

  “That’s wonderful,” said Ivy, “but what about the dig?”

  “Oh, right,” said Simon. Forgetting about the dig was unthinkable. His doing so just showed what a big deal the Bible was.

  “I’ll get back as fast as I can,” said Amanda. “We can come back and look more later.”

  “Hurry!” said Ivy.

  Amanda put the plastic bag away and got back on her skateboard, which had poop all over the wheels. It was a good thing the gunk hadn’t gotten on the page, although the surface almost looked washable. She wondered what it was made of. She didn’t know anything about the chemistry of paper. She’d have to look into that.

  As she prepared to skate back to the school she took a long look at the peacocks, who had come back to earth and gathered a little way off. They were glistening the same color as Lake Windermere, and still seemed agitated. “You birds are beautiful, but you’re so messy,” she said. She could have sworn one of them winked at her, but obviously it was her imagination. She was sure that if they stood against the water they would be invisible. That was an interesting thought. An invisible peacock would be treacherous. If you were looking at the lake, you wouldn’t even see one coming. Perhaps that was what had happened to her.

  Amanda looked over at The Falls. Nick was nowhere to be seen. She wondered if he was watching her again. What would become of him? Should she turn him in? Of course she should. Then why hadn’t she told anyone he was there, ripe for the picking?

  Perhaps he really was a victim and should be shown mercy. She’d seen the panic in his eyes when he’d thought he was letting his father down. She’d also seen how Blixus idolized Hugh, and how painful it had been for Nick when father and brother had ganged up on him.

  Why did Blixus hate Nick so much? Was it because he wasn’t living up to the Moriarty ideal? It was true that Nick didn’t have Hugh’s technical gifts—who did? But he had played his part well, infiltrating Legatum, betraying Amanda, and undermining the detectives. Of course from her vantage point, all of that was evil, but you’d think that in the context of his own values, Blixus would appreciate Nick’s achievements.

  Then again, perhaps none of that mattered. Even if Nick was a victim, he might be incorrigible. Perhaps life with Blixus and Mavis had tainted him so badly that he’d never be able to tell right from wrong. Or perhaps he had just been born bad. And if that were the case there was no hope for him and she should turn him in. Left at large, he’d continue to commit crimes and betray people and cause general mayhem. She might be able to prevent that.

  Was that true? Who was Nick Moriarty really, and if he was evil, why was Amanda so ambivalent about him?

  Simon had said that Nick was her true love. How ridiculous. A criminal like that. What did that say about her? She should have slapped him for being so cheeky. But what if he was right? What if by some cosmic joke she and Nick were actually meant for each other? If that were the case, how could she let him down at the most important time of his life, even if helping him did reflect poorly on her?

  She was so mixed up she couldn’t deal with any of it. She turned away from The Falls and got ready to leave.

  As she pushed off, there was a huge amount of fluttering and screeching behind her, and within a moment the peacocks were hugging her tail. They fussed and fumed and wouldn’t leave her alone the entire way back to the school. When she opened the front door they almost flew into the foyer and narrowly missed smashing into the glass. They really seemed to want that page. The question was why.

  But there wasn’t time to examine the page because they were late for their rendezvous with Darius Plover. As a result, when they arrived at the dig site on the Penrith farm, Darius and Liam Halpin were already deep in conversation. Liam was explaining how he was going to approach the project, and Darius was advising him to go about his business and pretend that he wasn’t there filming.

  When the kids walked up to the little huddle, Liam looked at Ivy sternly and said in a not mean way, “You’re late.” Ivy apologized and said there was a good reason and she’d explain later, which seemed to mollify her father. There was an obvious respect and affection between the two, which made Amanda feel good after all her ruminations about the Moriarty relationship. At the same time it was obvious that both were worried sick about Fern, even though they didn’t mention her.

  Then two bearded men and a pony-tailed young woman appeared out of nowhere. These turned out to be the government archaeologists, Felix “Dino” Marvelette and Louie Trifle, and Liam’s graduate student, Twinkle Earnshaw. Felix had th
e reddest hair Amanda had ever seen—even redder than Ivy’s. Louie was an old guy with a sparse head of straight gray hair that did nothing for his appearance. Twinkle was a healthy-looking girl with hair bleached yellow by the sun. She must have been a swimmer because it looked like there was some green in it, although that could have been dye rather than chlorine.

  You wouldn’t think serious grownups and what was supposed to be a mature student would start babbling like geese at the sight of a celebrity, but they did. No sooner had the three been introduced than everyone except Liam, Amanda, and Ivy started gushing over Darius, even Simon and Clive. In fact Simon was the worst!

  “You know in “Squashed” when you had that 3D effect in the middle of a 2D picture?” he said. “Did you do that by compositing? Oh, and I hate to say it, but your aliens in “Screech” were inaccurate. On a planet with that much gravity, they should have been much shorter and squatter.”

  Darius gave him a look and turned to the archaeologists. “In this documentary it might look best to use two cameras,” said Felix. “Would you like me to hold one? I am also happy to do over-the-shoulder scenes as many times as you’d like me to.”

  “Yes,” said Twinkle, “and I would like to make a recommendation about the lighting. Because it’s generally grayer here in the Midlands than where you live, it might be an idea to use a bit of red or orange light. If you don’t have any with you, I can go down to the shops and buy some. It will only take a few minutes.”

  While all this was going on, Clive, who was normally pretty reserved, was texting madly, presumably telling whoever was on the other end that he was in the presence of the great Darius Plover. The same seemed to be true of the other archaeologist. However, Liam, Ivy, and Amanda remained businesslike except for the great sigh Amanda let out at the sight of the normally unflappable Clive for once acting his age.

  Darius must have been used to this kind of thing because he didn’t seem bothered. He just smiled and nodded. He seemed to be in a much better mood than he had been the previous day. Perhaps he had been jetlagged and had managed to get a good night’s sleep.

  After the hubbub died down, Liam showed Darius some of the preparation the team had completed.

  “The excavations were here,” he said, pointing to an ordinary-looking piece of ground, “and here and here, so we plan to dig in those locations. We suspect these are the places where more of the silver coins were found. There’s been a cave-in down at that end, so we’ll have to stay away from there.” This was the cavern in which the Moriartys had imprisoned Amanda and her friends. Hugh’s purple rainbows had weakened it to the point of collapse. The memory was painful. “But here is what the tunnels look like under the farm.” He produced a schematic and pointed. “That’s where we plan to concentrate our efforts.”

  “Got it,” said Darius. “Can you tell me about the hypotheses you’re testing?”

  “Glad to,” said Liam. “As we all know,” he looked around the group—he was obviously used to teaching— “archaeologists have long thought that if Camelot really existed, it might have been near Cadbury Castle in Somerset or Carlisle, just north of here, although there are many other possibilities. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but the coin has been examined by several experts and deemed genuine, so the question is how did it get here? Was Camelot located here, or did some traveler pass by and drop it? Could this have been an outpost? We are looking for artifacts that may provide clues.”

  “And what might those be?” said Darius.

  “We archaeologists are always looking for pottery, of course, and we will be doing that—searching for items that depict traditional indicators of royalty, such as swords and scepters. However, we will also be looking for bones and signs of ancient burials. We would love to find those, although of course we would have to date them properly. Even if they don’t come from the period in question, they would be worth studying, but we would have to defer that until later. If we can find human remains from the period, we might be able to tell what the people ate, and that could also signify royalty, or not. There’s little chance of finding cloth, but we also might be able to come up with chalices, candleholders, and perhaps even livery. Anything that would belong to a very rich person, and we hope, a ruler. That would be a start, at any rate.”

  “Makes sense,” said Darius.

  “Your film will be quite helpful to us as well,” said Liam. “If you would allow us to review it, we might spot something we’ve missed.”

  “By all means,” said Darius. “That goes without saying.”

  “However, we do ask you to follow our protocols, which include securing the scene and keeping to assigned paths, to make sure nothing is tainted and everything is documented accurately. You too, kids. Ivy has some instructions for you, and I would appreciate it if you’d follow them to the letter.”

  “Sure,” said Simon.

  “‘Course,” said Clive.

  “We will,” said Amanda.

  “Now about this peat bog mummy,” said Darius, and Liam was off and running on his favorite subject.

  After Liam had expounded on the discovery of the mummy and the interesting conclusions they had been able to draw from its attributes, Clive managed to produce his acoustic levitator out of what seemed to be nowhere. How he did that wasn’t clear, but what Amanda could tell was that Darius was fascinated with the device. Seeing the thing, Amanda remembered how guilty she felt about Taffeta having breached the school’s secrets trove. In a way the whole debacle was her fault. If she and Simon hadn’t wanted to get out of the gates so they could go look for orange crystals, no one would have known about the acoustic levitator and Harry Sheriff wouldn’t have stolen it. Without it Taffeta wouldn’t have been able to get in and steal secrets the way she did.

  But Clive was still proud of his invention and of course had to demonstrate it by lifting a screwdriver up off the ground without touching it. Even though the object was small, the trick impressed Darius so much that he insisted on trying a variety of other metallic bit and bobs. Unfortunately his enthusiasm caused him not to see a large rock, and after tripping over it, he lost his footing and fell into a hole left by the farmer. The accident intruded on Clive’s moment and caused him and Simon to scowl. Of course the scowling could have been sympathy for Darius, but Amanda knew them well enough to discern that it was more of a personal disappointment.

  When Amanda ran over to where Darius was lying, she could see that he had fallen head first and his face was buried in the dirt. At first he didn’t move, but within a moment he was grunting and holding his ankle. Now she could see that his nose was broken and his face was a deep purple not unlike Hugh’s rainbows. She pulled out her phone, punched 999, and within about three minutes the local EMTs—Fern’s ugly boyfriend, Salty, and his tall partner, whose name was Llewellyn—had arrived, siren blaring.

  Now as far as the kids knew, Salty was a great paramedic, and Amanda was relieved to see him on that count. He had actually saved Ivy’s life when bees had stung her and set off her allergies. On the other hand, she and Simon had uncovered some disturbing facts about his background and they weren’t sure it was such a good idea for Fern to be hanging around with him. Of course at the moment Fern was hanging around with zombies and that was worse. But apparently Salty had spent two months in jail for assaulting a police officer—reason unknown—which meant that he could be violent, even though he seemed like a nice guy. Unfortunately, Amanda had learned the hard way that you can’t accept people at face value. After all, Nick had fooled her. So she was quite worried about what Fern might have got herself into.

  It was possible that Fern knew all about the jail time, of course, even though she had never mentioned it. If that was the case it was possible that the offense was either so minor as to be inconsequential or she was rationalizing it away. In any event, Amanda and Simon didn’t want Ivy to find out, so they had to be extra nice to Salty so as not to betray their true feelings.

  “Salty, what a rel
ief it is to see you,” said Amanda, feeling not at all relieved.

  “Hey, Amanda,” said Salty. “Simon, Ivy.” Salty didn’t know Clive, which was probably the reason he didn’t greet him, and he certainly didn’t know Liam, Darius, and the others, although you would have thought he’d have recognized Darius. “As soon as I get off today I’m going back into the tunnels. I can’t bear the thought of Fern being with those creatures. I’ve been down there five times already and haven’t found a thing. Clever devils, those ghouls.”

  This did not fill Amanda with glee. If Salty really did have ulterior motives, he should not be allowed near Fern.

  “The police are looking every day,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll find her. They have a large network spread all over the area.”

  “Bah,” said Salty. “The police aren’t to be trusted. I’ll find her myself.”

  This hostility toward the police alarmed Amanda. Not that they were invincible. Of course they weren’t. But coming from a man who had assaulted a policeman, this was dangerous sentiment. Who knew what Salty might do when angered? She really, really did not want him going after Fern and the others.

  She eyed Simon, who nodded so slightly that if you weren’t looking for a gesture you wouldn’t have seen it.

  “Salty, my man,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Thanks, Simon,” said Salty, “but I’ve already got my team together.”

  “The more coverage the better,” said Simon.

  “No,” said Salty. “You need to stay and look after Ivy.”

  What did that mean? Was Salty genuinely worried about Ivy or was he trying to get Simon out of the way? If only there were a way to find out more about Salty’s crime. And then Amanda got an idea: Balthazar Onion.

  Mr. Onion was the lawyer Amanda’s cousin Despina had found to help her get into Strangeways Prison to speak to two of Moriarty’s lieutenants. At the time she’d thought they might reveal Blixus’s whereabouts. However not only had they kept mum, but Manny Companion, the albino who’d promised to help her if she brought him a guitar, had been knifed to death right in front of her. She was still freaked out about that. Mr. Onion, who had been sitting right next to her when it happened, had spoken to the warden, Mr. Okapi, and had learned that the prisoner who had stabbed Manny, Panto Snicktack, was working for Blixus—an association that had had nothing to do with his incarceration. It seemed that Blixus’s tentacles still reached everywhere, which was a reason to fear for Nick. Except that she wasn’t going to think about Nick.