But she couldn’t help herself. “The details of what, Chester?”
Speaking quickly, bouncing on his toes, Chester explained the whole project to Ms. Finkleman—the song, the video, the website, the fund-raising campaign. As he spoke, Ms. Finkleman smiled more and more, deeply impressed by the enterprising spirit and creativity on display. “And this was your idea, Chester?”
“Oh, you know,” said Chester, shrugging and looking away, embarrassed. “Kind of a group effort.”
Chester left—but any hope Ms. Finkleman might have had that the rest of her day would be relatively normal was dispelled a few minutes later.
“Good morning, people of Mary Todd Lincoln.”
The P.A. crackled to life just as the school day began, when Ms. Finkleman’s first-period sixth graders were still filing in, finding their seats, tossing down their backpacks, and scarfing their last bites of Pop-Tart.
“This is your principal. So listen up.”
As she listened to the hard, cold voice of Principal Van Vreeland over the P.A., Bethesda Fielding gritted her teeth and looked at the ceiling.
“It has been two weeks since our trophy was stolen, and the responsible party has yet to come forward. Apparently a further inducement is required.”
Already, the other kids in Ms. Fischler’s class were glancing over at Bethesda, ready to hold her accountable for whatever new punishment their principal had dreamed up.
“I will be instructing every teacher in this school, in every subject, to begin writing questions. Because two weeks from today, all students will be having a test or a quiz, in every subject, every day, for one whole week.”
Bethesda groaned.
The students around her groaned.
Ms. Fischler, frozen at the front of the room with chalk in hand, also groaned.
“Unless, that is,” the principal continued, “the trophy is returned first.” The groaning grew in volume and intensity. “Now. Some of you will have noticed that this Week of a Thousand Quizzes will be taking place the third week in October, the same week our eighth-grade friends would have been on their outdoor education trip. That week, of course, is wide open at present.”
Bethesda closed her eyes, but she could still feel the stares—a classroom full of angry math students, craning their necks, pivoting their chairs to glare at her, everyone thinking the same thing:
All your fault . . . this is all your fault!
Meanwhile, in the Band and Chorus room, Ms. Finkleman did some quiet, restrained groaning of her own. A week’s worth of quiz questions? For music students? Plus, her fellow teachers would be hounding her to give it another shot, to return to the Main Office to beg Principal Van Vreeland for mercy all over again.
She sighed and tapped her baton for quiet. A nice, normal week . . .
Chester, in his seat in Dr. Capshaw’s room, exhaled and shook his head. Principal Vreeland had it backward. There was no way whoever stole that stupid trophy would come forward now.
This video better work, he thought. Man oh man, it better work.
Chapter 24
Set You Free
Suspect #1: Kevin McKelvey
“Skabimple,” murmured Bethesda as she cracked open the door and peeked into the Band and Chorus room. It was lunchtime that Monday, time for her first official interrogation, and here was her first suspect. Kevin McKelvey, the Piano Kid, sat at the beat-up Steinway in his blue blazer and dress pants, as Bethesda had seen him so many times before. Until last year, Kevin McKelvey played only classical music, as he had his entire piano-playing career, which began when he was two and a half years old. But then came the Choral Corral, and the Rock Show, and now Kevin played everything, from pop-punk to boogie-woogie to bebop.
But what on earth was he playing now?
“Once upon a time . . . there were some kids who had a dream!” Kevin sang in a high, warbling voice, his fingers gently caressing the keys. “A dream sweet and delicious . . . as a bowl of peach ice cream.”
Bethesda couldn’t bring herself to interrupt. Maintaining the soft vamp with one hand, Kevin reached up with the other and flipped a page of the blue spiral notebook balanced on the top of the piano.
“The dream we had was so unique . . . to sleep in bunks, climb some trees, and not shower”—Kevin’s voice jumped into a comical falsetto—“for a weeeeeeeek!”
Bethesda yelped with laughter. Kevin jumped in his seat and turned around.
“Sorry, sorry . . . ,” Bethesda said between giggles. “That is awesome.”
“It’s getting there, uh, you know. It’s getting there.” Kevin held up the spiral notebook. “Rory wrote the lyrics. My job is just to, er, to make it sing. Make it sound pretty.”
Bethesda exhaled the last of her laughter, stepped inside, and settled down in Ms. Finkleman’s chair. Principal Van Vreeland’s announcement that morning, galling as it was, had only reinforced her determination. She and Tenny were going to work their way through the suspects and find this thief. No doubt about it.
“So, Kevin,” Bethesda said, keeping her voice nice and light. “You still play in here a lot after school, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure. I’d say about, maybe, half the time. When I play rock at home, my father refuses to come out of his room, and my mother makes all these faces.” He demonstrated, screwing up his mouth like he was sucking on a lemon. “So I end up practicing in here a lot. Sometimes Ms. Finkleman is here, grading papers or whatever, and sometimes I’m alone.”
“And you use the key Mr. Ferrars gave you?”
Kevin looked up, alarmed. His fingers hovered uncertainly above the piano. “Um . . . well . . .”
“It’s okay,” she said, reassuringly. “You promised you wouldn’t mention it. Forget I asked.”
Bethesda tipped him a wink, plucked a sharpened #2 pencil from her pocket, and opened the Semi-Official Crime-Solving Notebook in her lap. “Now, then,” she began. “Two Mondays ago, on the afternoon of the twentieth. Were you here after school on that day?”
“What?”
Kevin’s entire body grew completely still. He met her searching gaze with eyes wide, his mouth hanging slightly open. She searched his face for a glimmer of guilt, for a telltale flicker of anxiety in his eyes.
But Kevin didn’t look guilty. He just looked hurt. “You, um . . . you think I stole the trophy?”
Bethesda flushed and reached up to fuss with her glasses.
“Well . . . I mean . . .”
“You do! You think I stole the trophy!”
“I didn’t say that. You’re, um, you’re one of a number of possible suspects, that’s all.”
“A number of possible suspects,” Kevin echoed, his wounded expression now hardening into something more like anger. He snapped shut the wooden housing of the keyboard, leaned back stiffly, and crossed his arms over his chest, the sleeves of his blue blazer bunching up at the elbows.
“It’s just . . . you know,” Bethesda stammered feebly. “Somebody stole it.”
“Undoubtedly,” Kevin said. “But, also, a lot of people didn’t steal it. Why aren’t I on that list?”
The truth was, Bethesda and Tenny had no motive for Kevin, and he definitely didn’t sound guilty. On the other hand, if he was guilty, that’s exactly how he would want to sound! Bethesda rubbed her eyes under her glasses with her index fingers and tried to concentrate. “Let’s take a step back. I just need you to tell me if you saw or heard anything unusual around here after school that day.”
“All right. Hold on.” Shaking his head with annoyance, Kevin hunched over on the bench and dug around in the red-and-black messenger bag, stenciled with the logo of the Sydney Municipal Orchestra, that he lugged around instead of a backpack.
“Where is it?” he asked himself quietly.
Bethesda felt the same rushing sensation in her bloodstream that she had just before Mr. Ferrars told her about the keys. Her foot danced on the crisp mauve rug beneath Ms. Finkleman’s desk. There was a clue in that fan
cy bag of his. She could just feel it.
“Here we go,” Kevin announced, when at last he resurfaced clutching a small, thin black notebook, its white pages filled with Kevin’s careful handwriting. “My practice diary. I, uh, I know it sounds—whatever—but I write down exactly what I work on every day, and for exactly how long.” As Kevin riffled through the little book, Bethesda felt a keen flash of envy, not only for Kevin’s incredible talent, but for his dedication.
“Oh, right,” he said suddenly. “I actually didn’t practice here two Mondays ago.”
Bethesda’s heart sank.
“I was going to,” Kevin continued. “But someone else was using the room.”
“Ms. Finkleman?”
He looked up. “No. A kid. Two kids, actually.”
Bingo. Bethesda rolled herself a few inches closer to Kevin on Ms. Finkleman’s spinny black desk chair. “Two kids were in here? Kevin, who were they?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Geez, Bethesda, take it easy. When I heard someone was in here, I turned around and went home. That’s called minding your own business.”
She ignored the swipe. “You’re sure it was two kids?”
“I heard two voices. A girl and a boy. And they were singing.”
Bethesda’s feet rat-a-tatted on the floor like drumsticks. Her gaze jumped from one end of the Band and Chorus room to the other, as if she could force this mysterious pair to materialize from the room’s darkened corners. Two kids. A boy and a girl. Singing!
“So, what were they singing?”
“Oh, it was sort of a goofy thing. Let’s see . . .” Kevin tilted his head toward the ceiling, summoning back the song, and Bethesda watched his hands. His fingers were thinking, too, arranging themselves in little clusters on the keys, trying and rejecting possibilities, conjuring a melody remembered from a couple weeks ago. “The boy was doing most of the singing, as I recall, with the girl just kind of chiming in.” Kevin tried out a chord, paused, shifted his fingers, tried another. “There we go.”
He began to sing.
“Locked up too long! You been locked up too long! And that’s wrong, so wrong!”
As always, all the hesitancy of Kevin McKelvey’s speaking voice disappeared when he sang, and he belted the silly little lyrics clear and strong. Kevin’s fingers bounced through the simple, three-chord pattern. “Turn to me! Turn to me!” he sang. “And I’ll set you free!”
His voice popped up an octave for the big finish. “Oh you sweet thing . . . I’m gonna set . . . yooooooooou . . . freeeeee!”
Then, just like that, Kevin stopped singing and shrugged. “Then I left.” Bethesda refrained from pointing out to Kevin that, for someone minding his own business, he had heard an awful lot of the song.
“So, detective?” he asked. “Am I free to go?”
After Kevin left, Bethesda took his place at the piano bench. She plunked at random keys, singing lightly to herself, wondering what it all could mean.
“Turn to me . . . and I’ll set you free . . .”
Suspect #2: Guy Ficker
Whoosh!
In one easy, graceful movement, Guy Ficker crouched, sprang, took to the air, pumped his legs, and sent the basketball swooshing noiselessly into the net. He snagged his own rebound, twirled on his heels, and bounced the ball over to Tenny Boyer.
“Ow,” said Tenny, flinching, as it sprang up from the blacktop and stung his palms.
“Shake it off, man,” said Guy. “Your shot.”
Tenny shaded his eyes with one hand and dribbled awkwardly with the other. They were at the Remsen Playground after school, playing a game called Horse, where the goal is for each player to match the shot the other guy just took. If you missed the shot, you got a letter. The first person with all five letters lost. They’d been playing for six minutes. Tenny had HORS, and Guy had nothing.
“Hey, um, Guy. Can I ask you a quick question, dude?”
Guy scowled. “Take your shot, Tenny.”
Maybe this was a bad idea. Tenny had figured it would be smart to do his first suspect interrogation here, in an atmosphere where Guy was most comfortable—on the court, out in the open air. Nearby, a couple elementary school kids were whacking a tennis ball back and forth; toddlers tottered around in the sandbox; an older kid in a baseball cap was sitting on the playground equipment, humming to himself. It was the perfect setting, Tenny thought, to interrogate a sports person like Guy. People are most relaxed when they’re doing something they love, something they’re good at. Tenny had a recent painful memory of his mom coming to talk about something Very Serious and Important, and how agitated and annoying the whole conversation had been—mainly because she insisted he sit with her at the kitchen table. All he wanted the whole time was to be in the basement, with his guitar, so he could strum chords or lightly fingerpick while she was talking.
“C’mon, Tenny. Shoot.”
Tenny jumped and spun around, as Guy had just done so effortlessly, and hurled the ball in the general direction of the net. It flew past the backboard toward the metal fence separating the court from the slides and swings. The older kid in the baseball cap at the top of the slide stopped humming and barked in surprise as the ball rattled against the fence.
Tenny was not a sports person. “That’s E for me,” he said, relieved. “You win.”
“Play again?”
“Uh . . .” Not waiting for an answer, Guy scooped up the ball, dribbled twice, and drove in one easy motion down the court for a smooth, gliding layup. “Your shot, man.”
Okay, this was definitely a bad idea. Tenny was starting to feel like he’d been out here forever, pretending to like basketball. He dribbled twice (as Guy had done), drove in toward the basket in one easy motion (as Guy had done), and then heaved the ball as high and hard as he could, way over the fence. It landed with a distant thump, somewhere on the far side of the swing set.
“Oops,” said Tenny.
“Wow,” said Guy. With no rebound to grab, his hands flapped helplessly against his hips.
“Oh, hey,” said Tenny. “So here’s what I wanted to ask you . . .”
They sat with their backs against the fence, and soon Tenny got all the info he was after. He confirmed, first of all, that Guy had been angry (was still pretty angry, in fact) about not being able to use the gym to practice for his archery tournament. “Double V says I can use it every day for a week,” he complained, using a nickname for Principal Van Vreeland popular among the cool kids, “and then I get the boot so Pamela and the gymnastics people can have it. Lame, right?”
“Totally.”
Motive confirmed! Tenny thought. Sweetness.
But, as it turned out, Guy had an alibi, too. “Monday? Five forty-five? Sure, man. I was at the mall. Went with my dad to look at baseball mitts, then to dinner. You can ask Tasharoo about the dinner part.”
“Um . . . Tasharoo?”
“Natasha, man. We’re kind of, like, family friends. My folks have known hers since we were kids. We go to dinner every once in a while at that seafood place, Pirate Sam’s. Family tradition, you know?”
Tenny did know. Pirate Sam’s was a family tradition kind of place. There was a period, years ago, when his own family went every Sunday night for dinner. He always got the Golden Fish Nuggets, which came in a cardboard chest.
“That answer all your questions, Tenners?” said Guy, hauling himself up from the patch of asphalt where they’d settled themselves. Tenny smiled bashfully, surprised at how proud he was that Guy had graced him with a nickname.
He was still smiling when he heard a voice from the playground side, yelling, “Heads up!” The basketball was on its way back, and Tenny just had time to realize that it was Todd Spolin who had thrown it, and that it was Todd who’d been sitting there on the playground equipment, the whole time they were talking—before the ball sailed over the fence in a wide arc and bonked him in the nose.
&
nbsp; “Ooh! Tenners!” said Guy, wincing sympathetically.
“Not a sports person,” Tenny mumbled as spots danced before his eyes.
Chapter 25
The Person in the Upstairs Bathroom
Late that night, in a house across town, in an innocuous upstairs bathroom decorated with olive-green towels and lavender-scented soap, a pair of eyes stared back from a mirror.
It was a typical bathroom mirror with a simple brass frame, hung between a pair of charming seaside watercolors. As for the eyes, they were clouded and dark as they narrowed beneath a troubled brow.
These were the eyes of a person crafting a scheme—a scheme to thwart Bethesda Fielding’s ongoing investi-gation. Unbeknownst to Bethesda, someone had been watching her as she developed her leads, as she teamed up with Tenny, as they made their plans and sought out their suspects. Someone had been hiding behind poles, ducking unnoticed through crowded hallways, paying careful attention to her every move.
Bethesda was clever. A little too clever. She was determined to solve the mystery, and for the person in the upstairs bathroom, that was a problem.
Something had to be done. Bethesda Fielding had to be stopped.
A rap came at the door, and the person in the upstairs bathroom jumped in surprise.
“God! What?”
“You almost done in there? I really gotta pee, sweets.”
Man! Couldn’t a person get five minutes in this house to hatch a nefarious plot?
Chapter 26
We’re Going to Need More Snacks
As soon as school ended on Wednesday, Chester met up with the rest of his team to bike to Tamarkin Reservoir, the big grassy field where they’d be shooting the main scenes of the video. They were all going over as a group: Chester, Rory, Marisol, Kevin, Braxton, Suzie, Todd, and Natasha, the whole team except Pamela, who insisted on walking. “If I’m late, you can shoot some other part first,” she said. “I am not mushing up my hair in a bike helmet before being filmed.”
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