“There’s nobody else around,” Max told her.
“Then you can have two croissants,” she answered.
When he and Pia returned to the dining room, she wore one of his mother’s aprons over her dress, and she asked, “Should I begin by rehanging these posters?” and then “Have you decided what you’re going to call what we do?”
Max couldn’t help it. It was just the way he was made: Ask him a question and he answered it. “I thought maybe Finder, and it’s not we, it’s me. I, I mean. It’s what I do.”
Pia opened her mouth, then shut it. She sighed loudly, the way a teacher sighs at a troublesome student, and asked, “What about Finder of Lost Things?” She set to work as she talked, picking up the framed poster of Trouble on the Tracks. “Or just the initials, FLT, which is sort of mysterious. Why do you have all these posters, anyway? Are you some kind of theater fan? How about Tracker? Or do you like Discoverer? I do—Mister Max the Discoverer. Or would the Un-coverer be better? Or how about just The Discoverer?”
Pia asked questions but didn’t seem to care about answers. She went about her self-assigned job, apparently not noticing the one-sidedness of this conversation. “I told you I’d take my mother to Gabrielle’s shop, didn’t I? Although it’s not actually hers, she doesn’t own it. I wonder who does? Because it’s a successful business, even without the pastries.” She checked that a hook was securely set on the wall before hanging a framed poster on it. “And why are these frames so fancy? What’s so special about these posters? It’s just the Starling Theater Company, not the Royal Shakespeare or anything. Anyway, I told you my mother would like Gabrielle’s pastries, didn’t I? Because she did. So do I, a lot. Don’t you?”
Max went from one volume to the next, moving slowly and carefully, checking each thoroughly. It wasn’t particularly interesting work, and he had to admit to himself, but never to Pia, that it was less boring with her voice chattering away like some farmyard flock of hens.
“Can you believe this? My mother tried to hire her. As soon as he got home yesterday, she sent Poppy back into the New Town to ask Gabrielle to come work as our private pastry chef, and do you know what else? He offered her a little house, there’s one for an undergardener or married groom just behind the gatehouse, it’s even smaller than this one, to live in. But do you know what she said to him?”
After this question, Pia waited for a response. Max looked over his shoulder to ask, “What?” but then told her, as soon as he saw what she was doing, “A Soldier’s Sweetheart goes to the right of the kitchen door. Look at the dates. They’re hung chronologically.” He turned quickly away, sorry he had explained anything. The less anybody knew, the better for everybody. Especially, the less this busybody girl knew.
“So I should check the dates on the posters before I rehang them?” she asked. “That makes sense, chronologically in a clockwise direction. Why’s this one so heavy?” she wondered, putting Adorable Arabella back in its place. “It’s a pretty ugly frame, don’t you think? All those bumpy squares and knobs.” She searched for the next poster and went on talking. “Probably you like it, since this is your house and your picture. It’s a good thing I’m so strong. That comes from horseback riding, if you want to know. Do you ride? Because we have a stableful of horses.” Without stopping to take a breath or to look at Max’s face to see if he was listening, she went on. “But do you know what Gabrielle told my father? She said she would never work in a private home again because rich, important families didn’t care much about the truth, or even justice.” Pia turned to look at him and asked, “You’re the detective, what do you think happened to her?”
“I’m not a detective.”
“All right then, what about Explorer? We need a sign, for the fence outside: ‘Mister Max, Explorer … and Partner.’ ” She hung The Caliph’s Doctor in its place, looked at it for a few seconds, and suggested, “ ‘Mister Max, Discoverer … and Partner.’ ”
“I don’t have a partner.”
“What am I, then?” she demanded.
“A pest,” Max muttered, but low so she couldn’t hear, because she was, in fact, being sort of a help right then. “A pestilence,” he added in an equally quiet voice.
“What?” she asked, but chattered on, “So my father—I told you, he’s like me, he looks like me, too. We both have ideas. He likes to have ideas that will make money, and maybe mine will, too, eventually, but— Anyway, my father already wanted his own restaurant, fancier than some of the popular places in the New Town but not as fancy as The Silver Spoon or Zardo’s. Poppa likes to go out for dinner to good restaurants. And guess who would be his pastry chef?”
“You,” said Max, deliberately stupid. He didn’t turn around but he could feel her sharp glance on the back of his neck.
“How did you know?” she asked. “So I guess you’ve lost your partner in the detecting business.”
Then he did turn around to see what she was up to. She was staring at Adorable Arabella. “It would be fun to have a job that let you wear dresses like that,” she said with the teasing smile of the person who is two steps ahead of you in everything. “Those purple panels, that lace … What if I switched the frames and put this poster in the one with ivy painted on it? The Caliph’s Doctor would look better with these squares and knobs. Did you paint those ivy leaves for the frame? Or do you only paint the sky?”
“How do you know I paint?” Max demanded. “How do you know what I paint?”
“Clarissa,” she told him, this time not wasting any words, and Max remembered that he had been painting in the garden when Clarissa and her father had come to hire him. “Then there was a portfolio in the kitchen when I was in there yesterday, so of course I looked at it.” All of these things settled to her satisfaction, Pia returned to her previous subject. “Gabrielle said she’d think about working for my father in a restaurant if he actually opened one and really wanted her to bake for it. Do you think that means she will? Because he will. He likes putting his ideas into action. He’s like me. He wants to open his restaurant somewhere in the old city, maybe on the river or maybe a little out in the countryside. Do you want to come home with me and meet him?”
Meet another person just like Pia? Max wasn’t sure. “Let’s take a break,” he said. “I’m halfway through the books, you’ve hung all the posters back up, it’s a good time for lunch, and I’m hungry. You bring out bread and cheese while I go over to Grammie’s to raid her cookie jar.”
When they were seated across from one another at the small kitchen table, Pia dunked a snickerdoodle into her mug of tea, ate it in one bite, and asked, “If you’re not a detective and not an investigator, what do you think you are?”
Max was glad his mouth was full so he couldn’t answer.
Pia seemed to think he was avoiding the question. “I mean, what would you tell someone you do?” she insisted.
Max thought about what he had done. “I find things.”
“So you’re a finder. Like I said.”
“Sort of. I guess.”
“Sort of find things or sort of a finder?”
“Both.”
She thought about this, then asked, “Why do you keep your ant farm in the kitchen?”
Max had forgotten the ant farm on the kitchen windowsill. He wouldn’t need it until tomorrow, so he had set it aside in the tomorrow corner of his brain.
“And what do you want with an ant farm, anyway? You’re as bad as those people at school, Mister Max, wanting to have something nobody else—” Then she stopped speaking and stared at him. “That’s why, isn’t it? You’re going to give Clarissa an ant farm instead of a dog. Is that it? Because it’s brilliant if it is. Do you think she’ll take it? See, you are a real detective. I told you. You’re a great partner for me.”
“That’s not detecting,” Max pointed out. “That’s …” He thought of what it was, really, that he had done. “It’s figuring out a problem. It’s solving, not detecting.”
“If you say s
o,” she said, to let him know she had her own better idea.
“That’s what I really am,” he realized. “A solver.” But he didn’t care for that name, which among other things sounded too much like salver or even silver. He tried a synonym, silently, inside his head, and liked it so much he said it out loud. “A solutioneer!”
Pia shook her head. “That’s not a word.”
“Why not? Like a mountaineer or a privateer or an engineer.” The more he said it, the more perfect it sounded. “Musketeer, charioteer, solutioneer … That’s my job, it’s what I do, and I don’t care if you don’t like it, and also I don’t plan to have any partner.” With that question settled, Max felt settled, too. When he knew what its name was, he knew what he was doing. “Ever.”
“All right,” she said, taking another snickerdoodle. “All right. You don’t have to be so—” She bit into the cookie, chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and picked up her teacup to take a sip, all without taking her eyes off Max’s face. Then her eyes brightened, as if she had just had a particularly good idea but wasn’t going to tell him about it.
What might that idea be? Max wondered, and then he wondered if she had had any idea at all. Was she an actor, too? he wondered, and then he thought, She might be a pest but she isn’t boring, and that thought made him smile at her across the table with an irritating secretiveness that matched her own. But what she asked next surprised him. “Why do you only paint skies?”
Before he could think of how to answer that, not to mention if he wanted to answer it at all, Grammie came up the back steps and into the kitchen without knocking or calling out, as if this was her own house, where she was living. She was carrying a plate of snickerdoodles, which she set down on the table beside the plate they already had. “That explains that,” Grammie said. “I couldn’t think where all those cookies might have gone. Too bad for you, Max, I was going to refill the jar with chocolate-chip cookies, and now you’ll have to wait. I heard voices,” she explained, sitting down to join them. “I didn’t know who was here, and I thought … I thought if you were someone official it wouldn’t hurt to look like I lived here. I don’t live here,” she said to Pia.
“Why would you?” Pia asked.
“He’s my grandson and …” She fell silent and looked at Max, who was desperately thinking, Don’t say it, please don’t say it. As if she could read his mind, “Is there any tea left in the pot?” Grammie asked.
Max brought her a mug while she announced, “I talked with Officer Torson this morning. About Madame Olenka.” She turned to Pia. “Has he told you about Madame Olenka?”
“Why would he tell me that?” Pia asked.
“Ah,” Grammie said.
“Who is she?” Pia asked Max. “Or is that a secret, too? How many secrets do you have?”
Max ignored these questions and instead asked Grammie one of his own. “What did you find out?”
“I found out where she lives.” Grammie put sugar into her tea and stirred. “In Graffon Landing, that little village right at the head of the lake where summer tourists like to go because of the waterfall. There’s a father and a brother, and both of them also have those long ears. None of them has a regular job—she claims to be able to tell fortunes—and yet they always seem to have money for dinners and drinks. She dresses well and the house she rents is right on the lake. It’s expensive, and how can she afford it? Funny business gets reported to the police, nothing exactly illegal but nothing violent … The local policeman keeps an eye on them when there are tourists around.”
“Tell me what you’re talking about!” Pia demanded. “What’s going on? Does it have something to do with whoever attacked Ari?”
Grammie explained, “Sven Torson is a policeman and an old student of mine from when I was a schoolteacher, so he knows I’m trustworthy. That’s why he’s willing to give me this information, even if it is, properly speaking, police business.” Then she turned back to Max. “That’s as much as he knows.” She nodded at Pia. “How much does she know?”
Pia answered for herself. “I know this has something to do with one of his cases, even though he won’t admit he has cases. I know that he wasn’t surprised about the intruder. I mean, not surprised that there was an intruder—not that he expected it, but he wasn’t … outraged. Or shocked. Neither were you and neither was Ari, although I don’t think any of you know what’s going on. Is that right?”
“Certainly the end part is,” Grammie said.
“I think I might know,” Max said. “You know how my father likes to boast about sitting at his breakfast looking at his fortune?”
In the background he heard Pia’s questioning voice. “Your father? What father? Why would he say that? Is that why you’re checking every book? What are you looking for? What about a mother, don’t you have a mother?”
“If one of those Long-ears heard him …,” Grammie said.
“And took him literally,” Max agreed.
“So the intruder took down the posters to look for a wall safe?” Pia asked, apparently not noticing that she wasn’t being listened to. Or perhaps she didn’t care. “I didn’t see any sign of one, and we have three, so I know what they look like, even disguised. Do you think those pictures could hide something? Bonds? Deeds? Do you think he’ll be back? What’s going on, Mister Max? Why won’t you let me help?”
“You’re checking every volume, I hope,” Grammie said. “Just in case?”
“Why doesn’t anyone answer me?” Pia demanded.
“I’m not finding anything,” Max told Grammie. “I don’t think there’s anything to find, but how can we convince them there’s nothing here? Because I don’t want them coming back. Ari could have been seriously hurt.”
“Where is that boy, anyway?” Grammie asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Max, because he only hoped he knew where Ari would go after attending his classes and quitting his jobs.
“Why do you call him a boy?” asked Pia. “He’s even older than Mister Max.”
Grammie looked at Max then, and then at Pia, a long, long look at each of them. “Has anyone ever told you that you ask a lot of questions without”—she held up her hand to keep Pia from speaking—“listening to the answers?”
“I didn’t notice anyone answering me,” Pia grumbled, but she had to ask, “Do you really think I talk too much?”
Max and Grammie answered together: “Yes!” and Pia grinned.
“I’m Pia Bendiff,” she said, and reached across the table to shake Grammie’s hand. “Pleased to meet you.” She had apparently decided it was a good time to show that she could have good manners.
Now Grammie was silenced. Finally, she asked, “Bendiff’s Beers and Ales? Bendiff’s Cheese and Crackers? Bendiff’s Jams and Jellies?”
Pia nodded. “I told you my father was successful,” she said to Max.
“What’s he going to start up next?” Grammie wondered. “I’m Max’s grandmother the librarian. Mrs. Nives.”
“The trouble is,” Max said to his grandmother, not giving Pia the satisfaction of being the one he actually admitted this to, “that when she talks— All those questions? I can’t help but try to answer them.”
Grammie nodded, understanding. “Which gives you ideas.”
Max nodded.
Pia smiled smugly and for once didn’t say a word.
Max spoke to his grandmother so that praise wouldn’t encourage the girl to talk even more. “She claims that she has ideas, too, but she doesn’t. She just asks questions.”
“I’m right here,” Pia objected. “I’m listening. I don’t agree, but I don’t feel like quarreling about it right now.”
“Good,” Max said.
“Because I don’t have the time. I have a riding lesson. It’s only dressage, but I have to get home and change,” she explained, as if they had asked her about that.
Max had, in fact, had an idea or two, so now he asked Pia a question. “Can you give me your address?”
“We
have a telephone,” she told him.
“Maybe you do, but I don’t,” he told her. She was aggravating but useful to him; he could see that, he could see what Grammie meant. As long as she didn’t know too much, as long as she knew nothing that her constant jabbering would reveal to anyone and everyone, she might be a help, sometimes.
“It’s One Eleven The Lakeview,” she said with a defiant look. But Max didn’t mind if she was rich and lived in a mansion and had a father who could start a brand-new restaurant business just because he wanted to and whose wife could hire a private pastry chef. Max didn’t care if the people he knew were rich or poor; he just wanted them to be interesting.
“You said you’d come to my library,” Grammie reminded Pia. “You could just look.”
“I could,” Pia agreed. “Maybe I will,” and she left them.
So it was his grandmother who helped Max check and replace the books and scripts on the lowest shelves of the bookcase. They found nothing.
As they washed their hands, “Your father,” she began, but didn’t finish because “Actors are different,” Max said quickly.
“And he’s a fine actor,” she allowed. “He’s a fine man, too. It’s just that—his way of being so extravagant, so dramatic—right now it’s making difficulties for you. What are you going to do about these people? Take an ad in the paper? Saying—what? My father wasn’t speaking literally? My father is only an actor? This could be a serious problem for you, Max.”
“Problems have solutions. That’s what I do,” he told her, made cheerful at the memory of the quarrel with Pia. “I’m a solutioneer. What do you think of that for a job?”
Grammie decided, “I like it better than detective. It sounds less dangerous.”
Max leaned down to kiss her on the cheek because he knew she was more worried—about him, about his parents, about everything—than she wanted him to know. He was worried, too, but not at that very moment. At that very moment he was mostly pleased to be Mister Max, with this particular problem to work on. He told Grammie, “I think I have an idea about how to get rid of Madame Olenka and the rest of them. So I need to paint.”
The Book of Lost Things Page 21