Hannah West: Sleuth in Training (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Linda Johns

  Okay, okay. A couple of dead fish in a lake that’s sixty miles in diameter may not seem like a big deal. Granted, they weren’t even big fish. Just little two-inch fish. I have no idea what kind of fish they were. When I was soaping up in the shower I mulled over whether I should try to scoop up a dead fish and have it analyzed. I nixed that idea when I couldn’t think what to do with a dead fish. Look up “fish analysis” in the yellow pages? Google “What killed this fish?”

  “We don’t even know if there are chemicals in the water,” Lily said, moving a blow dryer around Mango. He may not have liked the bath portion of his treatment, but he was pretty happy about the blow dryer. Or maybe he just liked having two girls spend so much time combing and cooing and cuddling him.

  “Something’s in the water. You saw it, too. The stuff that Marcus’s parents put in this morning looked like laundry detergent,” I said.

  “Maybe it was Tide or Cheer or something,” Lily said. “Wouldn’t that just clean the water? Tidy it up? Cheer the fish?”

  “Oh, come on! Where were you in fourth grade? People can’t put detergents and chemicals in the water. It kills things. Maybe even kills fish. Remember when we had to write about that guy in north Seattle who cleaned his driveway with that solvent? The chemicals from his cleaner ran down his driveway, down the hill, and into Lake Washington. He got a huge fine for polluting the water.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Lily grudgingly agreed.

  “And remember when we were in third grade and our field trip to Hood Canal had to be canceled?”

  “That was a bummer.”

  “It was a bigger bummer for the fish that lived there. It was hypoxia, when there isn’t much oxygen in the water and it makes these dead zones where deep-water fish can’t survive,” I said, impressed with my ability to recall the word “hypoxia.” Apparently I’d suitably impressed Lily, too.

  “I can’t believe you remember that. All I remember is that we went to the Children’s Museum for about the sixtieth time instead of getting to go to the beach,” Lily said.

  “Did you hear something?” I asked. Lily turned off the hair dryer. An impatient knocking came at the door.

  “Who’s there?” I called. It seems kind of stupid to call out like that. It doesn’t really protect you from danger. If an ax murderer is on the other side, he isn’t exactly going to say, “It’s an ax murderer.”

  “Marcus Dartmouth, director, Dockside Blues.”

  Interesting.

  I assumed I’d have my mother’s permission to open the door for Alice’s nephew, who just happened to be a television producer and director. I opened the door but didn’t invite him in. Mom would have my hide if I invited someone into the house when she wasn’t there, even if it was a Hollywood director.

  “We’re going ahead with the shot of you and that dog in the water. I need your parent or legal guardian’s permission for you to be on Dockside Blues,” he said.

  Wait a second. Who did this guy think he was, assuming I’d want to be in a primetime television show?

  Wait just another second. Who did I think I was, waiting even a second to reply? Oops. Wait again. Lily was the actress. She was the one who wanted a role on this show. How could I be on Dockside Blues without my best friend?

  “We’ll need your friend as well, since she’s in the shot where Monica gets out of the water,” Marcus said.

  Whew, I thought to myself. “Her name is Lily Shannon and my name is Hannah West, and we’ll have to talk with our parents to see if we can get their permission. We’ll get back to you.”

  I closed the door.

  Lily and I did a silent happy dance, jumping up and down, and mouthing, We’re going to be on TV! We’re going to be on TV!

  Mango was not so silent.

  CHAPTER 14

  IF I THOUGHT watching a TV show being shot was a big snore, I had no idea that having a teensy tiny part on a cable TV series could possibly be so dull either. Here’s my advice to actors and actresses everywhere: Bring something to read on the set. Two minutes of glory in front of the camera means eight hours of agony, just sitting around waiting for something to happen.

  The worst part was that because my big entrance was done soaking wet, I had to stay soaking wet. I refused to get in the lake water again, so they kept hosing me off. Chet, a guy on the crew, rigged the hose up through a houseboat’s outdoor utility sink so at least the water was lukewarm. Still, I was sick of being wet.

  Lily and I had called our parents the second we got the big TV news. All responsible adults had agreed that we could participate, and they’d talked to Celeste, the P.A., to verify that they’d sign all the necessary paperwork at the end of the day when they came to Portage Bay.

  Lily’s dad, Dan, returned from his hundred-mile bike ride and started to fill out her permission forms.

  “I really should have Lily’s agent look this over first,” he said, handing a stack of papers over to Celeste. Lily and I both groaned at Dan’s lame attempt to be funny.

  We were each getting a hundred dollars a day. Sounds pretty good, until we found out that tomorrow was going to be our last day. Oh well. That’s still two hundred dollars of easy money. That is, if you think it’s easy to sit around and be bored and then be wet. Mango was getting the same fee. I volunteered to accept his payment, since I think of myself as his professional handler as well as his walker and his poop picker-upper. But Mom had Celeste take down all of Jake’s information for payment.

  “You’re going to get some mighty nice raw bones there, boy,” I said to Mango, giving him a belly rub.

  Evenings on the houseboat were wonderful. Everything smelled fresh and clean. It was quiet, especially compared to the way it was during the day with a TV crew on this dock. And with a dog barking. And with an actress screaming.

  I looked over the edge of the dock into the water. It didn’t look dirty or contaminated. It didn’t smell toxic.

  “Let’s take out the double kayak,” Mom said. She was home after a long shift at Wired Café. She’d taken Mango out for a short jog and was now showered and changed into shorts and a T-shirt.

  “I don’t know if we should be in the water,” I said.

  Mom has always said that a big imagination was one of the best things you could have. Would I sound crazy if I told her that I kept seeing people dressed in black scurrying around with buckets and bottles? I don’t know if I’d believe myself if I heard that one. But she’s my mom, so she kind of has to put up with me. I decided to tell her everything I’d seen in the past few days.

  “I’m not sure what Alice has to do with any of this, but remember how we saw her at the island nation of Tui Tui with those glass jars?” I asked.

  Mom nodded.

  “Well I’ve seen her a few more times. At first I thought she was putting something into the water, but now I think she’s getting samples.”

  “What do you think she does with those samples?” Mom asked.

  “I don’t know. But I’m thinking we should get some samples of our own,” I said.

  “And what do you plan to do with those water samples? Test them in our basement science laboratory?” Mom asked. Geesh. She sounded like an echo of Lily, making fun of me.

  “Look over there,” I said, pointing across the bay toward the University of Washington. “I bet there’s some research lab there that would help us. All we’d need to do is collect the samples.”

  “Okay. But now you’ve got me freaked out about what might be in the water. I hope Alice was overreacting. We should be okay in a kayak. But just in case, let’s be extra careful when we gather the water samples,” Mom said. She grabbed some Nalgene water bottles from REI and tossed them into a backpack. She tossed in some bagels, grapes, cheese, and bottled water as well. “We might as well have a picnic while we’re out there,” she said. “We can hose off the kayak as soon as we get back. Just in case.”

  Just in case there really was something deadly in the water? I was counting on Mom to b
e calm and rational. She was supposed to balance out my overactive imagination. Suddenly the idea of a picnic on a potential cesspool of water didn’t sound too appetizing.

  I tossed my essential supplies into a backpack, too. Camera, film, Sharpie, paper, pencil. Everything an amateur sleuth/photographer needs.

  This time I let Mom paddle shotgun. In other words, she got the front seat. She pulls harder than I do, anyway, so it’s easier to let her be in the lead and do the steering. Otherwise she’s a total backseat paddler, telling me to stroke more on the starboard or port side, which doesn’t really help get us anywhere any faster because I have to stop and think: starboard means right, port means left. Being in the rear seat makes it easier for me to slack off and take photos, too.

  As we reached the middle of the lake and stopped paddling, Mom said, “Now there’s a yacht.” We were resting and letting the wake in the water bob us along. It felt like a mini-roller-coaster ride every time a big motorboat went by. I followed her gaze right to the Clean Sweep. “It’s going pretty fast through here, don’t you think?”

  “Mom, look at the name on that boat,” I said. She squinted and took her sunglasses off, but I could tell she couldn’t see it clearly. I handed her my camera with the zoom lens. “Oh, my. Is that Marcus’s parents’ boat? The one you were telling me about?”

  “Yep. But remember, it’s a yacht, not a boat.”

  “Look, they’re slowing down. They must have realized they were speeding.” Mom handed the camera back to me. I focused on Timothy, who was wearing his captain’s hat. Stella was dropping an anchor. They were close to their yacht club, yet they’d put an anchor down instead of taking their boat into the moorage. I was about to put the camera down when I saw Timothy carry a big white bucket to the side where Stella was. She began scooping something out of the bucket and putting it in the water. I snapped a bunch of pictures, even though I had no idea what I was photographing.

  Timothy brought up the anchor, and Stella started the motor. The Clean Sweep puttered into the covered docks at the Emerald City Yacht Club.

  “Can you keep your eye on the exact spot where they just were?” I asked Mom.

  “Got it,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  We paddled to the area where the Clean Sweep had just been.

  “Okay, hand me one of the bottles and I’ll get a sample,” Mom said.

  “Hand you a bottle? What do you mean? You packed the backpack. You have the bottles.”

  “I saw you bring a backpack,” Mom said.

  “Right. I brought my backpack. You had the other one.”

  We were silent for a couple of moments. “So, I guess that means that neither one of us has the jars to get a sample. I guess there’s only one thing to do.” I took out my water bottle.

  “Hannah! Don’t empty your water right here. If there’s anything to be found in a water sample, you might interfere with it,” Mom said.

  “I wasn’t going to,” I said. And then I chugged an entire bottle of water.

  It was kind of tricky to get a water sample without touching the lake water. In fact, I did get my fingers a little wet.

  “Just don’t rub your eyes or touch your face,” Mom said. That, of course, made my eyes itch like crazy and I had a terrible urge to rub my eyes and my nose and every other inch of my face. “Let’s get home as fast as possible.”

  As soon as we got home, I sat in bed with Mango and the laptop. I went to the Department of Fisheries Web site at the University of Washington and started reading about what different researchers were working on. I had no idea that studying fish could be so incredibly complicated. “Hmmm … she sounds promising,” I told Mango. Alpha B. Cowlitz got my attention first because of her name, but her university Web site said she was particularly interested in urban waterways and taking action to preserve healthy water quality. Best yet, she had a link from her Web site to a personal Web site that talked about how she loved to kayak and row. In fact, she rowed crew with a recreational team from the university boathouse, conveniently located just across the bay from our dock.

  Isn’t e-mail great? I get kind of sick of hearing adults complain about how much e-mail they get and how much time it takes. Me? I love it. Especially when I can make myself “look” older through an e-mail message. It gives me extra confidence that I wouldn’t have on the phone. No one can tell that I’m just a seventh grader. The trick, you see, is to restrain yourself from trying to sound too much like an adult, which can end up sounding stuffy if you’re not careful. Anything too formal or distinguished can be a dead giveaway that you’re up to something. Simple and straightforward is what I find works best when you want answers from an adult:

  Dear Ms. Cowlitz,

  I’m a resident on Portage Bay in Lake Washington near your university. I see that you’re interested in urban water issues and I’m wondering if I could enlist your help. I would like to have our water tested. Just a simple test so I won’t worry about my puppy, Mango, going for an occasional swim.

  Perhaps this will tie in with your own research in some way.

  Thank you.

  Sincerely,

  Hannah J. West

  You might notice that I slipped Mango into my query as well. People are suckers for dogs, especially puppies, and I’m sure Mango’s youthful personality makes him appear puppylike. I included his name for extra authenticity.

  I was Googling “Monica Heathcliff” and “Marcus Dartmouth, director” when my Mac Mail dinged, letting me know I had a new message.

  From: Alpha B. Cowlitz

  Dear Ms. West,

  I’m particularly interested in local urban water quality. I’ll be in the lab each day this week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can call or e-mail me there, or stop by.

  She left her lab address and a link to a university map that showed the lab’s location on the campus. I whipped out my bus schedules for the number 25 and number 66. Bummer! I’d completely forgotten that I had a television shoot the next day. Oh, it’s so hard being a TV star. I had an eight o’clock “call” in the morning. Saving Portage Bay would just have to be put on hold while I pursued my selfish dreams of stardom.

  Mango did his tap-dancing routine that meant he had to go relieve himself one last time before turning in for the night.

  “Mom, I’m going to the sidewalk to let Mango pee,” I called up to the sleeping loft.

  “Take a flashlight and come right back,” she said.

  I’m not easily spooked, but the stillness of the air at night and the lapping sound of the water was kind of creepy. I walked quickly to the little patch of grass that Mango liked to use as his personal bathroom. Luckily, he only peed, and I didn’t have to pick anything up. We headed back out the dock when I saw a lantern bobbing out on the water. I could just barely see the outline of a woman in a kayak. I tried to relax my eyes, just like we talk about in art and photography so that I could take in everything a bit easier. See things I hadn’t seen before. Well, I saw something I hadn’t seen before all right. Alice Campbell was out on the water in a kayak. I could tell from her movements that she was scooping water into bottles and then stowing them in her kayak. I dashed inside and grabbed the camera.

  When I came out, I looked through the camera lens and realized it wasn’t Alice after all. It was Estie. Out alone in the dark on the water. I took a photograph.

  Oops.

  Unfortunately, the flash went off. The bright light on a dark night startled me. But not as much as it startled Estie. She screamed as she fell into the water.

  I wanted to run back inside and turn off all the lights and pretend that it wasn’t me. But what if she was as big of a spaz as Monica Heathcliff in the water?

  “Are you okay?” I called out over the water. My voice sounded high and screechy as it interrupted the night.

  “I’ll be fine,” Estie said. She wasn’t actually that far out, I realized. It had seemed farther when I’d first spotted her.

  “Who’s in the water? Does someone nee
d help?” Alice came out of her cottage wearing a fluffy white bathrobe and flip-flops. She looked out at the water. “Oh, dear. Is that you, Estie? Bring the boat back in and come to my house. You can have a nice warm shower, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  Alice turned to me. “Estie asked to borrow my kayak for a little moonlight paddle. I should have asked more about her skills,” she said with a slight chuckle.

  “I think something startled her out there,” I said. Yeah, and that “something” was me and my stupid camera flash.

  “I’m sure everything is fine. Good night, Hannah,” Alice said. I gratefully went inside, happy that Mango and I were both dry for a change.

  But even with Alice’s reassurances, I couldn’t help but wonder what Estie had really been doing out kayaking in the dark.

  CHAPTER 15

  MONDAY MORNING I was up early, had the dog walked, my Cap’n Crunch eaten, and my reading material ready when I went to my high-powered television job.

  I looked out the window and saw Lily walking out onto the dock. I grabbed my camera off the table—just in case I had a chance to take some pictures of the actors—and headed out the door. “Whew! What a long commute,” I announced as I walked out of our houseboat and onto the set.

  “Funny,” Lily said. “Do I look okay? Do you know what we’re going to do today?”

  I held up a book called Lulu Dark Can See Through Walls in response. I had a feeling I knew exactly what I was going to be doing today: sitting around and reading. And, might I add, making one hundred dollars for my efforts.

  “Girls, I’m glad you’re here and ready to go,” Celeste said. She checked something off a list on her clipboard. “We’re going to have to shoot around Monica’s scenes today.”

  “Why?” I asked. I had to keep myself from asking if she was afraid of the fish-killing toxic water.