Anderson Brigby Bright looked confused for a moment. “I don’t remember that.” Then he brightened. “But if it really was your idea, that probably explains why it isn’t working. Jane, it’s possible…just possible that I am not excellent at singing.”
“So?” Jane said.
“So? So I’ve always been good at everything I’ve tried. I don’t know how to be bad at something. That’s why I came to you.”
“But, Anderson Brigby Bright, the only thing you’ve ever tried to do is paint photorealistically…”
“That’s not the point. The point is that I can’t fail. I need you to listen to me sing.”
“Do I have to?” Jane protested. But Anderson Brigby Bright had already opened his mouth and started to…well, Jane wouldn’t have called it singing. It was more annoying than that. It was more horrible than the sound the Grimlet twins made when they were making raspberries with their armpits. It was more irritating than the rash Jane got when Melissa accidentally dropped one of Eddie’s experimental homemade itch bombs. Anderson Brigby Bright only sang for a few moments, but it was the longest few moments Jane could ever remember living through.
“Well?” he said. His face was full of hope as he waited for her to give him some good news.
“Um.” Jane tried to be diplomatic about it. “It’s not the best singing I’ve ever heard.”
“But it’s not the worst, either. Right?”
“I didn’t exactly say that.”
“But I’m good at everything I do,” Anderson Brigby Bright said, stomping his foot a little, as if this would change Jane’s mind.
From above them, up in one of the trees, came the sound of snickering. It was Penelope Hope Adelaide Catalina. She was sitting on a branch with a thick book about math in her lap.
“What are you doing up there!” Anderson Brigby Bright demanded angrily. “Did you follow me so you could spy on us?”
“Hardly,” Penelope Hope said as she swung down out of the tree. “I came here to work on my differential equations. It’s the most secluded spot in Remarkable, you know. I thought it would be nice to get away from your caterwauling for a while.”
“It’s not caterwauling!” Anderson Brigby Bright shouted at her. “And I’m getting better. The only thing I need is more practice without all this criticism.”
“Anderson Brigby Bright, sometimes no amount of practice will make up for a genuine lack of talent,” Jane said gently. It was something that she knew better than anyone. But Anderson Brigby Bright didn’t want to listen to her.
“You just feel that way because you’re you,” Anderson Brigby Bright said. “I’m me. Singing isn’t hard. I know I can learn to do this.”
“You might try attempting something easier to impress Lucinda,” Penelope Hope suggested with as straight a face as she could manage.
“Like what?”
“Like locating Ysquibel.” She started laughing again. “You’re probably at least as good at finding people as you are at singing.”
“I could find Ysquibel if I wanted to!” Anderson Brigby Bright shouted. “It would be easy for someone like me. I’m right, aren’t I, Jane. Jane?”
He looked around, but Jane was nowhere to be seen. She’d had the good sense to slip out of the clearing before she had to answer him.
Crisis at the Library
While Penelope Hope and Anderson Brigby Bright continued their argument about whether he had the skill set to find the world’s most famous missing musician (if such an activity was worth his time, which it almost certainly wasn’t), Jane headed off to the library to find a book for her book report.
As you might imagine, Remarkable had one of the finest public libraries in the world. Millicent Margaret VanderTweed, the head reference librarian, had always believed that the library’s collection had one or more books on every worthwhile topic under the sun. But on this day, she found that her faith was being tested.
“How do you spell his name again?” she asked Jane.
“R-O-J-O space H-E-R-R-I-N-G,” Jane answered.
“And he’s a pirate captain, you say?”
“Yes. I’m supposed to do a report on a legendary pirate for school. I chose him because he just moved to town and is very nice.”
Ms. VanderTweed typed his name into the library’s computer again—then tried alternate spellings, like Roho Hairring and Rouxhoux Herhing. The computer still produced no results.
“It’s just so odd…” she muttered to herself as she went into the book stacks to the pirate section. By the time Jane caught up with her, she was atop a long, rolling bookshelf ladder, reading the titles of books on one of the high shelves in the nonfiction section.
“You are absolutely certain that Captain Rojo Herring exists? Because if he existed, we’d have a book on him.”
“I’m very sure he exists,” Jane said. “I’ve been to his house. He lives in the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill.”
“I don’t suppose I could interest you in a book about the mansion instead. We have several interesting histories about the ghosts that inhabit it…one of the ghosts is called The Gruel. Apparently it wanders the hallways as a lumpy, oatmeal-like apparition. And don’t even get me started on the Vicious Valkyrie.”
“No, thanks,” Jane said. “Ms. Schnabel would never accept a book report about ghosts.”
Ms. VanderTweed sighed and climbed down from the ladder.
“It’s possible, I suppose, that any book we have on Captain Rojo Herring might have gotten lost in our vast section on Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific. Now there’s a legendary pirate captain.”
“What’s he famous for?” Jane asked.
“He’s not famous for anything. Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific is a woman. I believe her first name is Mirabel.”
“I never heard of her.”
“Well, you should have. She was quite famous in her day. She once captured the entire Portuguese Navy using a piece of old string and a variety of lobster baskets.”
“Really?”
“And a few years back she had a school of trained sharks. No one’s ever been able to train sharks before, but they were apparently so afraid of her that they’d do anything she wanted. She was the scariest thing in the ocean up until the day she disappeared.”
“She disappeared? What happened to her?”
“She collected so much treasure that her pirate ship, The Wild Three O’Clock, sank to the bottom of the Sea of Cortez,” Ms. VanderTweed said as she pulled a thick book off the shelf. “She was then captured and sent to prison in the port town of Ferragudo.”
“Is she still there?”
“Oh, heavens no,” Ms. VanderTweed said. “No prison could hold Mad Captain Penzing. She demanded a trial—but no one could prove that she’d plundered anything because all of the evidence was at the bottom of the ocean. Finally, they were forced to release her to her relatives, who promised to see that she never returned to pirating.”
“Wow.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do your report on her? There are so many excellent biographies about her life.”
Jane thought about it for a moment then shook her head. Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific might be exciting, but Captain Rojo Herring was her friend.
Ms. VanderTweed sighed. “Fine. Why don’t you come back tomorrow? Maybe I’ll have found something on your captain by then.”
*
Meanwhile, back in town, Mrs. Peabody was dealing with problems of her own.
The smelly pirates had returned to her ice cream parlor. And not only had they returned, but they were in no hurry to leave.
“We be waiting on someone,” Flotsam growled at her when she tried to take their order.
“Well, you can’t wait here all day. I’m going to need this table for my other customers.”
Jeb and Ebb snickered to each other. Her other customers had left in a hurry shortly after they’d arrived. Mrs. Peabody glowered at them for a moment before heading to the kitchen
to call Mayor Doe and file another complaint about how pirates were stinking up her restaurant.
As soon as she was gone, however, the mood at the pirates’ table grew more somber.
“Where is ’e,” Flotsam grumbled. He was talking about Detective Burton Sly. Several days earlier, they’d pooled their pieces of eight and hired the detective to help them.
“I’m sure he’ll be ’ere in ’is own time,” Ebb said soothingly.
“We don’t ’ave time, though, do we? Every moment we ’ang around ’ere puts us one moment closer to ’aving to sign our ‘x’ for Mad Captain Penzing the ’orrific.”
“Don’t say that name,” Jeb said weakly.
“I have to say it. How else do I remind ye of wot happens to us if the Mad Captain find us befores we finds Captain Rojo Herring? Ye wants to be on a ship where ye be expected to work fer yer living?”
“No more sunbathing or shuffleboard,” Ebb said sadly. “And no more fizzy drinks.”
“And if ye don’t jump to when the captain barks an order, you’ll be turned into shark bait faster than you can say heave-ho.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Jeb suggested.
But they did not need to come up with a new topic of conversation. Right at that moment, Detective Burton Sly slipped into the Colossal Ice Cream Palace and joined them at the table.
“Gentlemen, I apologize for my lateness,” said Detective Burton Sly. He’d spent part of the day disguised as a bush and still had bits of twigs and leaves stuck in his eyebrows.
“Where be our captain?”
“I’m afraid I still don’t know.”
“But we ’ad a bargain. We paid you to find ’im.”
“And I thought I had. I had a lead on a man with two peg legs, a big captain’s hat, a green parrot—everything you described. I was convinced that this case would be closed almost as soon as I’d opened it. But I quickly discovered that this man was not the man you are looking for.”
“How’s that?”
“There was one small discrepancy between him and your missing captain that I was unable to resolve. The man I found was not a pirate. It was obvious to me he’d spent very little of his life at sea.”
“Arghh, that be a disappointment,” said Flotsam, staring at the detective menacingly. “And we don’t ’ave time to deal with disappointment.”
Detective Burton Sly glared back at Flotsam. He didn’t like working with pirates, and he didn’t like having them hanging around Remarkable. The sooner he could find their captain and send them on their way, the better.
“There is, well…I wouldn’t call it a lead, but a certain rumor I’ve heard that might be of interest.”
“Aye? And what be that?”
“My sources tell me that the public school is offering pirate lessons now.”
“But what good be that to us,” Jeb grumbled. “We already knows how to be pirates.”
“Whoever is teaching these children must know an awful lot about pirating. Is it possible that your captain would take a job as a schoolteacher?”
“It’d be possible, I reckon,” Ebb said. “But he wouldn’t be much good at it. He barely knew his mizzenmast from his orlop deck.”
“Or his poop deck from his head,” snickered Flotsam.
“He were good at playing a pirate jig on his fiddle, though,” Jeb reminisced. “He used to serenade us to sleep.”
“I’d be willing to launch an investigation at the school yard,” Detective Burton Sly said. “Do some reconnaissance, take some surveillance photos, perhaps get some police sketches made up. All for my usual fee, of course.”
The three pirates conferred for a moment before turning back to the detective.
“Thank ye, but no. You be fired.” Jeb told him.
“We can track him down for ourselves now. We won’t be wasting any mores of yer time,” said Ebb.
“And you won’t be wasting any more of ours,” added Flotsam. And then the three pirates walked out of the ice cream parlor, laughing their wicked pirate laughs.
Promises
The next morning Jane awoke to the sound of Anderson Brigby Bright singing in the shower. She groaned and put her pillow over her head, but it didn’t matter. There was no way she could block out that horrible off-key wailing. Although it didn’t seem possible, his singing was getting worse every day. Jane could only hope that Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa would appreciate the thought and effort that Anderson Brigby Bright was putting into his song, and not care so much about the horribly mangled music that was produced as a result of that thought and effort.
“Ohwwww I luuuuuvvee yeeeeeeeeew, oh yeeessssssss eye dewwwwwwww!” Anderson Brigby Bright sang. There was no point in trying to get any more sleep. The only thing to do was to get as far away from Anderson Brigby Bright’s voice as possible. Jane got out of bed and got dressed as quickly as she could.
She decided she might as well stop by the library before school to see if Ms. VanderTweed had found anything for her on Captain Rojo Herring. Jane hadn’t been at all certain that the library would be open that early in the morning, so she was pleased to discover that the big front doors were unlocked.
But the reason the doors were unlocked was because Ms. VanderTweed had never closed the library the day before. She’d been there all night doing her best to find out something about Captain Rojo Herring.
Jane found Ms. VanderTweed sitting behind the reference desk. Her hair was frazzled, her sweater set was rumpled, and her librarian glasses were askew. She glared at Jane through them.
“He’s not real,” Ms. VanderTweed snapped at her. “I went through every reference I could find—and it turns out you were wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Captain Rojo Herring is not a real person. He’s fictional—nothing more than a minor character in the opera Prise de Corsaire.” She slapped a thin manila folder down on the reference desk in front of Jane. “See for yourself.”
“Um…okay,” Jane said as she took the folder and headed over to one of the library’s study carrels. Ms. VanderTweed looked so exhausted that Jane didn’t have the heart to argue with her about it. Maybe someday she would bring Captain Rojo Herring in so that he could introduce himself to her.
The manila folder had only a few sheets of paper containing what little information Ms. VanderTweed had been able to find. As Jane read through them, she learned that Prise de Corsaire was an opera about the exploits of Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific—and that the character of Captain Rojo Herring was marooned on a desert island in the first act. More interestingly, she learned that Prise de Corsaire was written by none other than Ysquibel.
“Oh, wow,” she said to herself. The name Captain Rojo Herring was so unusual—and she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, Ysquibel had chosen it because he knew Captain Rojo Herring. And if he knew him, then maybe they were even friends. And if they were friends, then maybe, just maybe, Captain Rojo Herring knew where Ysquibel was.
“Oh, wow,” she said to herself again. Maybe she could tell someone, and maybe that someone could use the information to find Ysquibel. “Oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow.”
“What’s that now, Jane?”
Jane nearly jumped out of her seat. Grandpa was sitting in the carrel next to her. She didn’t know when he’d come in or how long he’d been there.
“Grandpa!” she said. “I didn’t see you.”
“Most people don’t,” he agreed. “I just stopped by to return a book I borrowed on the inner workings of bell towers.”
“I thought you didn’t like bell towers.”
“I don’t like them. Jane—what happened to your hands?”
Jane shrugged. Her fingers were covered in Band-Aids. “It’s from rope-tying class. Captain Schnabel is teaching us how to tie seafaring knots.”
“Ah, yes. Your grandmother tells me that Ms. Schnabel is teaching piracy these days.”
“How did she know that?”
“Your grandm
other knows almost everything that goes on in this town. Still, I don’t think even she realized that knot tying was so hazardous.”
“It’s probably not usually. We just don’t have the right kind of rope. The one we’re using is the climbing rope from the gym. Captain Schnabel cut it down with her sword. But it’s old and full of splinters.”
“I’d think a gym rope would be much too thick for good knot tying.”
“It is. She wants us to learn how to tie a shroud knot, and an eye splice, and a chain sennit, but none of us can do it right because the rope won’t bend enough. She said my double overhand knot looks more like an untied shoelace.”
“It sounds like you need some better ropes.”
“Sure,” Jane agreed. “But Captain Schnabel says that pirates have to make do with what’s on hand, because when you’re off at sea, you can’t run to the store every time something’s not to your liking.”
“I see,” Grandpa said thoughtfully. “But what if you just happened to come across some lovely new ropes on your way to school this morning. Would she let you use them?”
“She might. But she’d probably prefer it if I pillaged them from somewhere. She had a lot of fun pillaging the climbing rope from the gymnasium. There was nothing Coach Dunder could do to stop her.”
“And what if I leave some ropes lying around for you to pillage? Do you think you could learn to tie knots without hurting yourself then?”
“You could do that?” Jane looked at her grandpa hopefully. “It would make things so much easier.”
“But you must promise me one thing—you need to keep these ropes a secret. I don’t want Captain Schnabel or anyone else figuring out they came from me.”
“Sure,” Jane agreed, but she wasn’t really paying attention. She was imagining what good knots she’d be able to tie and how pleased Captain Schnabel would be with her.
“Jane,” Grandpa said sharply. “Are you sure you heard me? You must promise not to tell anyone about the ropes unless I say it’s okay. Not anyone. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, Grandpa, I understand,” Jane said. It seemed like an easy enough promise to keep. Jane went back to the reference desk to ask Ms. VanderTweed for a book about pirate knots. When she got back to her carrel, Grandpa was gone. But in his chair were several coils of brand-new, highly pliable rope.
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