Minerva Clark Gets a Clue

by Karen Karbo

  In the kitchen there was a desk where everyone piled all the papers they didn’t know what to do with, junk mail, and catalogs. No one ever went near the pile, because even breathing on it would send the top papers sliding to the floor, and then you’d be the one who had to clean it up. Behind the pile sat a phone and a Rolodex address file. My aunt Susie’s was probably in there somewhere.

  I carefully leaned my body into the pile of paper and slowly reached over it to grab the Rolodex. As I stood up a few envelopes slid off the top; I hoped it wasn’t the beginning of an avalanche. I’d seen about a million avalanches on the Discovery Channel when I was little.

  I was lucky. No paper avalanche, which meant no explaining why I was snooping around. I thumbed through the Rolodex. Did Aunt Susie have a different last name than Jordan? I couldn’t remember. Suddenly I felt freaked-out nervous. What if Quills or Toc came upstairs? Or Mark Clark or Morgan came downstairs? Or the drummer came back with the burgers? They’d ask me what I was doing. What was I doing?

  There was only one Susie in Mom’s Rolodex. I picked up the phone and dialed the number.

  “The number you have reached is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again.”

  Crap.

  I stood in the middle of the kitchen, chewing on my thumbnail. I was always trying to stop biting my nails and always failing, especially when I started feeling ultrastressed.

  How hard could it be to get ahold of my own cousin?

  I glanced through the kitchen door into the dining room and saw a gray work jacket slung over the back of one of the dining room chairs. I stared at the bulge in one of the pockets. That was Toc’s jacket, and I crossed all the fingers I could that the bulge was Toc’s cell phone. I knew he had to have Jordan’s number in his directory somewhere.

  I ninja crept into the dining room, listening for sounds from the house. Upstairs, the TV. Downstairs, a short drum riff, then laughter. The sun was getting ready to drop behind the west hills and it blasted light through the windows, blinding me. I reached into Toc’s pocket—yes!—and pulled out his phone.

  I pressed the Menu button (which has always troubled me; why is it called Menu when there is no food involved?), found Incoming Calls—no, I didn’t think Jordan would be calling him, would she?—then found Outgoing Calls, pressed through a short list until I came upon the call Toc had made that day I’d answered her phone.

  Reggie told me once that seven digits—the number of numbers in a phone number—is the maximum amount a human can remember without having to write it down. I stared at Jordan’s number, made a song of it in my head, dropped Toc’s phone back in his jacket pocket, then walked through the dining room, into the front hallway, and up the stairs, taking them only one at a time, calmly, like it was a fire drill at school.

  At my desk I wrote the number down quick on the back of an old math assignment.

  Then I IMed Reggie.

  Ferretluver: OMG, you won’t believe the weird stuff going on around here.

  BorntobeBored: Not as weird as here. My mom is teaching me to do laundry.

  Ferretluver: Listen I gotta talk to you.

  BorntobeBored: It’s part of her Philosophy of Independence. I don’t wanna wash a bunch of stinky clothes. Nasty!

  Ferretluver: Did you see in the paper where the cops arrested that homeless guy for Dwight’s murder?????

  BorntobeBored: So it wasn’t your cousin after all?

  Ferretluver: NO. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the guy they arrested, either. I think Toc has something to do with it. The day Jordan got arrested I answered her cell phone by mistake and he told her—I mean me—that she better watch out, because he’s going to get her.

  BorntobeBored: And that relates to Dwight’s murder how?

  Ferretluver: I don’t know. It turns out Toc actually knows Dwight—through his older brother. And he also knew that Dwight was stealing check numbers from customers, then using the numbers to print new checks.

  BorntobeBored: I’ve heard of that scam—you think I’m guilty, too?

  Ferretluver: Maybe. Are ya?

  BorntobeBored: So what do you have on Toc?

  Ferretluver: He’s mad at Jordan for some reason. He knew Dwight. He knew Dwight’s scam. And he thinks nothing of doing scams himself. And he wrote this really creepy song for the band that’s about getting back at someone. It was kind of drama queeny, I thought—the song that is—but whatever.

  BorntobeBored: I dunno. Something’s missing. Where was he the day Dwight was murdered?

  Ferretluver: I dunno = (I probably should find out, huh? Also, where was he the day the person who was arrested gave the cops Jordan’s name instead of his own? It was Valentine’s Day, Jordan said.

  BorntobeBored: Argh—BRB—gotta go sort the whites.

  Ferretluver: Do you think I should talk to Jordan? Tell her what I know? Oh!!!! Julia said she might be losing the Hightower because of the arrest.

  BorntobeBored: Julia. There’s a reliable source. BRB.

  Next to my room on the third floor is a small study under the slanty part of the roof. There’s nothing in it but a red leather chair, a bookcase full of old books Charlie had in college, and a tiny table with a phone. No one ever used this room except Morgan, when he was in his I’m-going-to-be-a-poet phase. No one ever remembered there was a phone in there. I sat in the red leather chair and thought about what I was going to say.

  I dialed Jordan’s number. The phone rang twice, then went to voice mail.

  “Jordan, hi, it’s me, Minerva Clark. I’ve got something really important to tell you. My friend Julia told me about the Hightower. Did you really lose it, or was that just Julia embellishing? Julia’s sister is Alison, you know, from the Rose Festival Court. Anyway, it’s about Toc, you know from my brother’s band, well, of course you know. Anyway, I have some information about him that you might like to know, so please call me back. Oh, it’s Minerva Clark. I guess I said that. Well, er, bye now.”

  Crap. That could have gone better. Reggie was right. Something was missing here, something big.

  Do I need to say that Jordan didn’t call me back? I tried to tell myself it was because I didn’t leave our home phone number, but the real reason, of course, was that I sounded like a dork. This sleuthing business wasn’t as easy as they made it look on Law & Order. Of course, those were grown-ups who’d gone to crime-solving school, and not seventh graders with active imaginations.

  I stayed in my room with my rebus notebook open on my desk until Mark Clark called me down for dinner. I took the fire pole straight down to the kitchen, something I hadn’t done since fifth grade. The house was quiet. Humongous Bag of Cashews had finished practicing, and Morgan had gone out somewhere. It was me and Mark Clark and my mom’s mac and cheese, baked with black olives and mushrooms.

  I wished my mom was around. She would eye me and ask me what was going on. Moms always know when something is going on. I don’t know how they do that. I would tell her that I’d discovered, all on my own, that Toc was responsible for Jordan’s losing her scholarship, and maybe even murder, and she would tell me not to be a Nosy Parker. I would wonder what a Nosy Parker was, and she’d tell me some long story about when she was a girl growing up in California, and I would be sorry I’d asked.

  Instead, Mark Clark dished up our plates and we went upstairs to the TV room. Since it was Saturday, we were allowed to eat in front of the TV, and I was allowed to drink soda instead of milk or juice, which were my beverage selections during the week.

  Mark Clark popped in Finding Nemo. My brother still thought I watched cartoons. He didn’t know that the last time I spent the night at Hannah’s we’d watched Troy, and saw Brad Pitt’s naked bootie. Hannah’s mom let us watch it because even though it was rated R, we convinced her that we were studying the Trojan War in history.

  “So did you manage to get ahold of Jordan?”

  I looked over at him, staring at the TV, fast-forwarding through all the dumb previews, t
rying to see if he knew more than he was saying. “Nah,” I said.

  “I’m sure you’ll hear from her eventually. From what I hear, this Rose Festival thing is keeping her pretty busy.”

  From what I hear? What had Mark Clark heard? “Yeah,” I said.

  “You okay?” He looked over at me.

  “What’s with her and Toc?” I blurted out, fishing for I didn’t know what.

  Mark Clark laughed. “Nothing, I don’t think. He’d like there to be something. What guy wouldn’t. If Jordan Parrish weren’t my cousin …”

  Was he serious? I couldn’t imagine poor Mark Clark with any girlfriend, much less someone as hot as our cousin Jordan. But I guess when you’re a guy, you have to say stuff like that.

  Then the movie started, and we were saved from having to discuss it anymore. I sat Indian-style on the Cat Pee Couch and thought about what Mark Clark had said about Jordan being busy with the Rose Festival. It seemed to me that everywhere you looked there was always some princess showing up at some concert or art opening or air show or softball game. I don’t know what they did there, other than stand around in their stupid tiaras looking like the hottest girls in town, but in the months of May and June, they seemed to be everywhere.

  Which gave me an idea.

  I said I needed to go to the bathroom. Morgan’s room was at the end of the hall next to the second-floor bathroom. As boys’ rooms go, it wasn’t too awful. There were some clothes in a heap in the corner, but otherwise he was the neatest one of all of us. He had that famous black-and-white poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue over his water bed, which was perfectly made with a dark green-and-blue plaid comforter.

  I sat down at his computer, which I knew was always online, and quickly Googled Rose Festival Court. After smiling pictures of all the ambassadors in identical red V-neck dresses and strands of pearls, there was a calendar of their activities.

  I was in luck. The very next day, Sunday, at eleven o’clock, at the Civic Auditorium, was the dress rehearsal for the queen’s coronation.

  I scampered back to the TV room, where Mark Clark was looking very sad that Nemo was lost.

  The next morning was sunny, the sky clean and blue. I was relieved; somehow it was easier to sneak around in good weather. I’d tried to get Reggie to come with me, but his parents were taking him to a blues festival or something. Sometimes I felt bad for Reggie. In a way it was better having no parents to speak of than parents breathing down your neck day and night, trying to broaden your horizons.

  As I tied the laces of my purple Chuck Taylors I wondered how, exactly, I was going to get past whatever brothers happened to be around, get downtown to the Civic Auditorium, and back before anyone knew I was missing. I decided the best plan was not to make too big a deal about it. I turned some music on and closed my door.

  It turned out to be so easy I started thinking that maybe I should be more worried about being kidnapped from my third-floor bedroom than I normally was. Quills was gone when I got up—Sunday was his full day at Kinko’s—and after breakfast Morgan went somewhere on his mountain bike, leaving the back door wide open. Mark Clark was on EverQuest. His hair was sticking up all over the place; he hadn’t even combed it. Some big battle was going on or something, because when I stood behind him and said, “I’m going to meet Reggie,” he didn’t say, “Where are you meeting him?” or “Be back in a half hour,” or anything.

  Instead, he yelled at the computer, “I could use some help here!”

  Some lizardy-looking monster was killing him pretty good, I guess.

  “So be back in a bit,” I said.

  “It’s about time!” he yelled again, bouncing up out of his chair, then typing something like a madman.

  This was the advantage of living with all boys. They never listened.

  I was pretty sure I knew how to get to the Civic Auditorium because in sixth grade we’d taken a field trip to see Poe! Poe! Poe!, a totally depressing play about Edgar Allan Poe. It meant walking about a half mile to the MAX station, then taking the light-rail downtown. I half expected Quills to roar up next to me in the Electric Matador and ask me what in the hell I thought I was doing. I’d never taken the light-rail by myself before. My stomach was a little jittery until I got on and found a seat. I noticed that everyone was reading a book except a bum wearing a greasy red parka and a knit cap. I wondered if people thought maybe I was a runaway, since I didn’t have a book.

  I got off the light-rail at somewhere downtownish looking. There were big office buildings that looked old, made of brick with white pillars. The courthouse maybe, or City Hall. I couldn’t really tell. I was starting to sweat in my Vans sweatshirt. Starbucks seemed like a safe place to go into for directions. The barista dude making the lattes said, “A couple blocks that way and a couple blocks that way,” and flung his hand back behind his ear.

  I went down one block and over one block and over one block, asking at every Starbucks along the way until I found it. But by then it was almost one o’clock. The dress rehearsal had started at eleven o’clock. It looked as if it was over by now. There was a long row of glass doors across the front. I jiggled the handle on one door after another. All locked. The box office was shut tight, with a small square of wood placed over the hole where they pass you the tickets. I looked inside, through the lobby, and the doors to the auditorium itself were all closed.

  Suddenly, I felt really far from home, like the way I felt when I was five and Charlie accidentally forgot me at the grocery store. Except now there was no friendly checkout lady to rescue me as I stood crying in the soups and noodles aisle. It also occurred to me that I should have brought Jupiter—I’d never go out to meet Reggie without Jupiter. And what if Reggie called while I was gone? Mark Clark would say, “I thought she was with you!” I could only hope that Mark Clark wasn’t paying any attention when I went out.

  Just as I was going to turn around and retrace my steps to the light-rail, I heard two girls’ voices. I spun around. Jordan emerged from the door at the other end of the building. She was carrying a lavender dress inside a plastic bag like the kind you get at the dry cleaners, and a pair of green beauty-pageant high heels. She was wearing a cool black leather jacket and tapping some numbers into a tiny silver cell phone. She was talking to someone behind her as she walked. Then Tiffani came out.

  Beneath her leather jacket, which looked pretty dang new, Jordan wore a yellow tee with Cookie Monster on it. Tiffani wore the same tee, only hers had a picture of a cowboy on it. Jordan’s shiny light brown hair was stuck up on her head in a messy bun and so was Tiffani’s. Jordan had about three inches of skinny rubber bracelets marching up her bony arm and so did Tiffani. Before, I’d always thought they were just best friends who liked the same things, but now it looked to me as if Tiffani was really a cling-on.

  “I just can’t do it,” said Jordan. “I don’t know how else to tell you, okay?” She stomped ahead of Tiffani, the dress over her arm flapping against her legs. I’d never seen Jordan so angry. Even when she’d gotten arrested by mistake she wasn’t this mad. She also had purple circles under her eyes. I guess being a Rose Festival ambassador is more exhausting than it looks.

  Tiffani trotted along beside her, trying to keep up. “You know, I really thought you were way cooler than this,” she said.

  Jordan opened her mouth, then abruptly closed it when she saw me standing there. “Minerva. What’s up?” She was not glad to see me.

  “Hey,” I said. As usual, I didn’t know how to begin. I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I heard about the Hightower. That’s really sucky. Are they really going to take it away from you?”

  “Who told you?” said Tiffani. She said it like I was just some stupid little kid who didn’t have the right to know anything.

  “My friend Julia’s older sister is on the court,” I said.

  “It looks like it,” Jordan said. “They’re still deciding.” She pulled her brows together, then looked off across the street at the
fountain, a collection of big concrete blocks with waterfalls gushing over each block. She had tears in her eyes but a hard look to her mouth, as if she was determined not to cry. I remembered the weeks during The Sound of Music when she’d brought me a PayDay every day. For some reason, that got me more than anything else, that she always took time to stop and get us candy bars.

  “Jordan,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “What is going on? I mean, I mean … you heard about Dwight, right?” It was one of those times when you launch into a sentence and it’s like going down a too-big hill on your skateboard; you push off and realize you don’t want to be going down this big hill at all, so you hop off before you pick up too much speed. If for some weird reason Jordan didn’t know her friend was dead already, I did not want to be the one to tell her.

  “I heard about it,” she said softly, dabbing at the tears that threatened to spill onto her cheeks with one knuckle. Then she released a huge, tired sigh.

  “It was on the front page of the paper,” said Tiffani. “And they caught the guy anyway.”

  “But he was your friend,” I pressed, ignoring Tiffani. I was not going to say that no, they didn’t have the guy, that it was impossible for Clyde Bishop with his useless, shriveled-up right arm to have murdered Dwight. “Don’t you think it’s bizarre that first you were arrested by mistake and the very next day a friend of yours was murdered? A false arrest and then a murder? Have you ever known anyone who’s been murdered?”

  “He wasn’t a friend,” said Jordan. The tears tipped out of her eyes and flowed down her face, smudging her black mascara. “He was just someone I knew.”

  “Still, Jordan. He was murdered.”

  “I know, I know, I know!” She started crying harder. I could tell she was telling the truth. She reached up to wipe her eyes, realized she still had the lavender dress in the plastic cleaners bag slung over her forearm, tried to shift it to the other arm, but dropped it. She stooped to pick it up, then hung her head and sobbed. A guy walking by in a suit and—what do you call those hats Jewish men wear? a yarmulke—called over, “Is everything all right over there?”