Possibility #1: He flunked out.
This seemed a bit farfetched. Sure, Tenny wasn’t the greatest student in the world, but could a person really flunk out after only three weeks?
“I should probably jet,” Tenny said suddenly, flicking away the broken twig. “I haven’t even started this book for Capshaw. What is it? Animal Crackers?”
“Farm.”
“Farm Crackers? Really?”
Hmm. Maybe it’s not that farfetched.
Possibility #2: Tenny was so nostalgic for Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School, he had to come back.
As Tenny and Bethesda rose from the picnic bench, Principal Van Vreeland burst from the building, with Jasper scurrying fretfully at her side. “Is that a smile on your face, young lady?” she demanded, jabbing an angry finger toward Bethesda. “No smiling! No happiness! No one is permitted to be happy until my trophy is returned.” As they stormed past on their way to the parking lot, Principal Van Vreeland glared, and Jasper gave Bethesda a furtive, pleading look.
Okay, so Possibility #2 is pretty unlikely, too.
“All right, so, what’s the story?” Tenny asked as he dug his iPod out of his bag. “Where are we with this investigation?”
“Unfortunately,” Bethesda answered, “we’re at the part where I have to interrogate Pamela Preston.”
Chapter 29
Brace Yourself
Suspect #6: Pamela Preston
“I’m at the mall,” said Pamela tartly, when Bethesda called her on Saturday morning at 10:45. “By all means, come on by.”
So Bethesda Fielding, Master Detective, unchained her blue Schwinn and rode to Pilverton Mall. She walked past the movie theater and the video arcade; she walked past the Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips and the Sbarro’s Pizza in the Food Court, smiling in passing at Chef Pilverton with his big wooden rolling pin; she walked past the Build-a-Bear Workshop and the H&M. She found Pamela Preston just where she said she would be: shopping with Natasha at Brace Yourself, a tiny store on the second floor that sold only bracelets.
Bethesda’s theory about Pamela Preston had been simmering in her head for over two weeks now, bubbling away quietly like a pot of her father’s chili. There was nothing left to do but confront her and see what happens. The worse thing she can do is laugh at me, Bethesda thought. Which, as it turned out, was exactly what happened.
“Oh my god, Pam, that is so cute on you!”
“You’re right. It is.”
Pamela was modeling a pink-and-black bracelet, studying her own arm in the mirror while Natasha oohed and aahed appreciatively. Bethesda muttered argle bargle under her breath—she would have preferred to talk to this particular suspect alone. Of course Bethesda had to interrogate Natasha, too, but one thing at a time, right? At least Todd Spolin, who usually traveled with Pamela and Natasha in a little pack, was nowhere to be seen.
“Ah. Detective Fielding,” said Pamela, her voice lightly glazed with sarcasm, as she worked the pink-and-black bracelet over her hand and replaced it with something jangly and silver. “How can I help you?”
Pamela smirked, and Natasha shifted uncomfortably, looking like she wished she were somewhere else.
“Well, okay,” Bethesda began. “Pam, do you remember when we were on the Hustlin’ Pancakes?”
“Of course.”
When they were six and seven, and still close friends, Bethesda and Pamela had both been star defensemen on the soccer team sponsored by a popular local diner. “And do you remember the time I twisted my ankle and they had to call off the whole game because I was so hurt? And do you remember how, afterward, my dad took us all out for root beer floats, to make me feel better?”
“I love root beer,” Natasha said softly, and smiled awkwardly.
“The truth is—” Bethesda continued, but Pamela cut her off.
“Ooh . . . the truth is, the great Bethesda Fielding faked it! Tsk, tsk.” Bethesda winced. Pamela was too smart—she could already see where Bethesda was going. “So, what, you think I stole my own trophy? To get attention?”
“Um . . . that’s not exactly what I’m saying.” In fact, it was. That was exactly what she was saying. “I just mean—”
That’s when Pamela laughed at Bethesda, tilting her head back to let out a long, pretty laugh, like a tinkle of sleigh bells. “You caught me!” she cried out between giggles. “I did it! Oh, have mercy on me!”
“Pamela.”
But she kept right on laughing. Natasha laughed, too, but falteringly, like she didn’t really understand what they were laughing about. Bethesda just stood there, looking around the store as the waves of mocking laughter washed over her. This unpleasant interlude was at last interrupted by the high school junior who worked at the store.
“Excuse me? Aren’t you that girl who got her trophy stolen?”
Pamela nodded, immediately dropping the laughter and putting back on the tearful, vulnerable expression she’d been wearing for three weeks.
“Oh, wow. I’m so sorry. That bracelet is totally on the house.”
“Aw, thank you so much.”
Pamela winked brazenly at Bethesda, took Natasha by the arm, and swept out of the store in a cloud of lilac perfume, her new bracelet glittering on her arm. Bethesda sighed, toying idly with the racks of bracelets. Did Pamela really think her theory was as stupid as she acted? Or did she want Bethesda to feel foolish, because she really did steal her own trophy?
“Hey. You.” The high school girl crossed her arms and scowled. “You gonna buy something or what?”
Chapter 30
World Premiere
“Napkin? Napkin? Has everyone got a napkin?”
Melvin Schwartz, Shelly and Suzie’s dad, bustled around the room, trying desperately to keep things as tidy as possible. It was Monday night, and they were all there, the whole original “Save Taproot Valley” crew plus Shelly, all crowded into Mr. Schwartz’s home office while Suzie futzed with the big desktop computer. They stood in a loose semicircle, five feet back from the desk, because Mr. Schwartz allowed absolutely, positively no snacking near the computer, and there were, naturally, a ton of snacks on hand for the world premiere of “Save Taproot Valley.” Not only had Mrs. Schwartz baked snickerdoodles, but Chester, ever mindful of Cousin Ilene’s advice, had brought three boxes of Entenmann’s apple pies and a dozen Capri Suns.
So the kids stood around talking about the video, about camp, about the five-day nightmare of test-taking they faced in a week—if their video didn’t do its job. They munched their snacks at the Mr. Schwartz–enforced distance, while Suzie, her face pursed with concentration behind the neon-pink frames of her glasses, made the final tweaks on their masterpiece.
“This is going to be so cool, Chester,” said Marisol quietly.
“We’ll see,” he said, nervous, wiping bits of apple pie off his chin.
Chester just wished Victor Glebe was there to share the moment. But after walking out on the first meeting at the picnic benches, Victor had never returned. He hadn’t taken part in the songwriting sessions, nor the days of rehearsal on Saturday and Sunday, not even the video shoot itself.
“All right,” said Suzie at last, pushing back from the desk. “Are we ready?”
The video started with a close-up of Pamela. She sang Kevin and Rory’s heartfelt opening couplet, about the dream “as sweet and delicious as peach ice cream,” and then the second one, about “the cruel and wicked principal / who stole our dreams away, who tore them to pieces and burned them up / like a great big pile of hay.”
“Still not crazy about ‘great big pile of hay,’” muttered Kevin, and Rory shrugged. Meanwhile, on the screen, the shot widened to reveal a long line of kids, arrayed behind Pamela, singing “ooh” and “aah” and fluttering their fingers like flames. Behind them was the giant woodsy mural, strung between two trees; behind the mural was the lush green field of Tamarkin Reservoir.
“Awesome,” said Shelly.
“So awesome!” Braxton whooped. Su
zie shushed them both.
Then the music really kicked in. First, driving drums (which Chester had contributed himself), then a fierce guitar part, complete with a shot of Todd, standing on a desk in the middle of the field, pretending to play what Tenny had recorded. Then there was a second close-up of Pamela, pouting and contemplating a tree. Then the song jumped into the second section, more driving and rhythmic, with lots of different kids taking turns, singing about what they’d be missing at Taproot Valley:
“Trust falls!”
“Bird calls!”
“Hot dog roastin’!”
“Marshmallow toastin’!”
Ezra popped into the shot upside down, descending from the top of the frame (he was in fact hanging by his knees from a tree branch) to sing Rory’s favorite lyric: “And fire ants, crawling in our pants!”
“That is so funny, Rory,” said Pamela, laughing. This was a significant compliment for a part of the video in which she didn’t appear. Rory said, “Thanks,” grinned, and ran a hand through his perfect hair.
While the song modulated and dipped in and out of a minor key (Kevin nodding with satisfaction at his compositional cleverness), there was a quick close-up of Pamela. She sang, “Without our trip, we’re sad as trolls/ lost in the lonesome valley of our souls!” accompanied by a sweeping shot of the sandbox at Remsen Playground, meant to represent the lonesome valley of their souls. Then there was a shot of a huge group of students down on their knees, begging, their cheeks wet with tears—actually seltzer, daubed on each cheek by Chester with a turkey baster. Then came another close-up of Pamela. Then a bear appeared, for some reason, at the top of a flight of stairs, got angry about something off camera, and fell down the steps.
By the time the video approached its conclusion, Chester and his team were all clapping and dancing happily around the den, while Mr. Schwartz chased them around with a DustBuster. Natasha, the choreographer, had outdone herself on the last part: a shot of nearly a hundred people in the basin of Tamarkin Reservoir, pretending to ride horses, leaning this way and then that way, all together and then individually, creating a cool rhythmic pattern with their bodies, even as Rory’s lyric reached its passionate peak:
“Please, please, please save our trip to outdoor ed! Let us stuff a bunch of nature facts into our heads! Let us go where the salmon swim and the bumblebees play! Make a donation and save the day! And we’ll be on our waaaaaaaaaaay!”
The kids in the den sang along with the kids on the screen, holding that big last note even longer than they’d held it in the video, which was for a full ten seconds. When it ended they clapped and hooted like lunatics, hugging and patting each other on the back. Shelly handed out plastic cups and Suzie poured celebratory glasses of sparkling cider. (“Coasters?” said Mr. Schwartz. “Has everyone got a coaster?”) Even Natasha and Todd slapped each other an exuberant five, forgetting momentarily that they weren’t getting along.
“All right, Suzie,” said Chester, when the revelry died down. “Let’s post this puppy.”
In another part of town, in an upstairs bathroom, someone stared deeply into the bathroom mirror, wondering whether to go through with this crazy stunt.
“I could leave this house right now and go do the worst thing I have ever done. Betray all I’ve ever believed in, and all I’ve been taught to believe. Or I can go downstairs, make some hot chocolate, and play Super DonkeyKong on the computer.”
For a long moment, the mind behind the face weighed these options—the brow bent with concentration, the eyes troubled and pensive, the mouth watering at the thought of creamy hot chocolate. Then the face disappeared from the mirror, and a moment later a lone, mysterious figure snuck out the bathroom door, tiptoed silently down the stairs, and crept out the front door.
Chapter 31
The Big-Word Bandit
At the first quack of her Three Ducks Quacking alarm clock, Bethesda Fielding woke up, and she woke up singing.
“Set you free!” she sang as she got dressed. “Set you free!” as she tugged her reddish-tannish hair into barrettes and laced up her Chuck Taylors. “Sweet little thing I’m gonna set you free!”
Yes, the mystery solving was going a bit slower than she had anticipated.
Yes, everyone in school was still mad at her . . . madder than ever, actually, what with the looming Week of a Thousand Quizzes.
And yes, her dad was making chili at 7:45 in the morning, which was kind of gross. But the charity dinner at her mom’s law firm was in a couple nights, and her dad, being her dad, still wasn’t satisfied with his recipe. She obliged him with a quick taste test, told him it was the best batch yet, and went back to singing.
“You been locked up too long! And that’s wrong, so wrong!” Bethesda sang as she hefted her backpack and headed out the front door into the cool mid-October morning. “So turn to me! And I’ll set you free!”
She sang in a high, comical falsetto, just as Kevin had. Whoever wrote the song—whether it was a pair of mysterious strangers in the Band and Chorus room, or Kevin improvising it to fool her—it was one heck of a catchy tune.
The song died on Bethesda’s lips when she saw her bike.
Her beautiful blue Schwinn with the blue and silver piping was just where she had left it yesterday, chained to the mailbox outside the house, the long, plastic-sheathed handlebars angled toward the road, the chrome gleaming in the sun. But the tires had been deflated, and lay hanging from the scuffed rims, sad, deflated, and saggy.
The thief! Bethesda thought, breaking into a run. The thief!
She raced to the road, looked one way and then another, but saw nothing. No stranger booking it down Chesterton Street, no one diving furtively into the bushes. Just a couple of squirrels tussling over a nut on Mrs. Beverly’s neatly manicured lawn, looking very much incapable of tampering with a bicycle.
Bethesda returned to her sadly damaged bike and unfolded the note she found Scotch-taped to the handlebars.
bethesda! it said.
I MUST ASSERT MOST VOCIFEROUSLY THAT YOU DESIST FROM YOUR INVESTIGATORY EFFORTS WITH ALL DUE HASTE!
“Vociferously?” said Bethesda to the squirrels. “Inves-tigatory?”
Whoever this anonymous bike-vandal was, he or she definitely owned a thesaurus. But the gist of the note was perfectly clear. Somebody out there did not want her to solve this crime. There was no signature. Just the cryptic message, filled with what Ms. Petrides, the seventh-grade English Language Arts teacher, called twenty-five-cent words. And then, on the back in smaller print:
(I’M REALLY SORRY ABOUT YOUR BIKE.)
Bethesda stood for a long moment on her lawn. Then she carefully folded up the note, shoved it in her bag, and marched steadily down Chesterton Street, head held high, sneakers crunching on the asphalt. She was a detective on a case, by god, and she had work to do! Truths to ferret out! She was going to solve this mystery, and no cowardly, bike-mangling, thesaurus-hugging maniac was going to get in her way!
Suspect #7: Natasha Belinsky
Bethesda rounded the corner onto Friedman Street and turned into the horseshoe driveway leading to school. And there was her next suspect, sitting at the picnic benches, all alone, as if for a prearranged meeting. Perfect, thought Bethesda, striding boldly across the horseshoe driveway.
“Natasha?” she said firmly. “We need to chat.”
“Oh.” Natasha yawned and smiled weakly. “Okay.”
Bethesda, in no mood to beat around the bush, rapidly dispensed with the preliminaries. She told Natasha she knew about the key she’d gotten from Assistant Principal Ferrars, and curtly informed her that she was on the list of potential suspects. Natasha just nodded.
“You went to the mall on the afternoon of Monday, September twentieth, to get your nails done, is that correct?”
“What?” Natasha looked down at her hands, then back up at Bethesda. “Oh. Yeah.”
“And then went to dinner with Guy Ficker and his family?”
“Yes. At Pirate Sa
m’s. We had the Arrrgh-Ti-Choke dip.” She pronounced the dish like it was written on the menu, with a deep, throaty pirate’s argh.
“Arrrgh-Ti-Choke,” echoed Bethesda. “Cute.”
“What is?”
“Never mind. What time was dinner?”
“Um . . .”
While Bethesda waited for the answer, she glanced at the open notebook in her lap, where she had the timeline carefully penciled in.
“We met at five thirty, I think,” said Natasha.
Well, that was that. The bang and the crash were at five forty-five, and the mall was at least a twenty-minute bike ride away. Except then Natasha looked up again, bit her lower lip, and shrugged. “You know, it might have been six thirty. Maybe six. It was kind of a while ago, you know?”
Hmm, thought Bethesda, and jotted a quick notation in the margin. C.P.S. Call Pirate Sam’s.
Natasha yawned and gave Bethesda a tired little smile, and Bethesda thought what a relief it was to have someone reacting to her questions without getting all offended and upset. Natasha didn’t look angry at all, in fact, she looked just kind of . . . worn out or something. She was usually the kind of person who spent an hour at the mirror in the morning, putting on lip gloss, trying different earrings, texting friends to find out what they were wearing. Today she was just the slightest bit of a mess: her shirt was rumpled, her skin a little pale, her eyes shadowed with dark circles. The dark red of her nails looked faded and chipped in spots.
“Hey, um, Natasha?” Bethesda asked softly. “Are you doing okay?”
Natasha shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know.”
A leaf drifted down from the oak tree and settled in Natasha’s hair, but she didn’t seem to notice. Bethesda reached over and brushed it away.
“Is this”—Bethesda leaned forward slightly—“about Todd?”
There was a pause before Natasha replied—and it’s a funny thing about that particular pause. If you had asked Bethesda Fielding if she was asking Natasha about Todd as part of her duties as a semi-official private investigator, or just to be a nice person, she would have selected option B. She was friends with Natasha (well, sort of friends), and she was just being a nice person. The girl was obviously a little out of sorts, and it had been pretty clear for the last couple days—couple weeks, now that Bethesda thought about it—that there was something weird going on between her and her old friend Todd.
The Mystery of the Missing Everything Page 11