Minerva Clark Gets a Clue

by Karen Karbo

  We both gazed at it like idiots. It was just a stupid eyeglass case. Of course, it wasn’t just any eyeglass case. I could see a mangled spot on one end.

  “What happened to it?”

  “Where?”

  “There.” I pointed to the end, where it looked as if a puppy had gotten ahold of it.

  A puppy.

  Or as I knew, a ferret.

  Pansy Burrows said Jordan came to Under the Covers every day, and every day Dwight passed Jordan a glittery eyeglass case. Dwight was obviously also passing eye-glass cases to Tiffani. But why? What was in the cases?

  “You done admiring?” said Tiffani. One corner of her mouth crept up in a tiny smirk. She couldn’t know I knew, because the truth of it was, I didn’t know I knew. This was harder than any rebus I could ever think up.

  “Yeah, I just got an idea for a new rebus. I’ve been writing a book of rebuses. Just for myself, you know.”

  I teased a napkin from under the edge of her paper plate, fished a pen out of my pocket, and wrote:

  Clam storm

  Tiffani turned the napkin around, chewed for a minute, then said, “The clam before the storm?”

  She gave me a big fakey wink.

  Oops! I scratched out “Clam” and wrote “Calm.”

  It was the calm before the storm, and I was sure it was Tiffani who’d sent me the death threat rebus. I was also sure that Tiffani had framed Jordan and killed Dwight. I just didn’t know how. I hadn’t thought about the part where I’d have to prove it.

  It was close to six o’clock when I got home. The back door was locked, the garage door closed. I was glad it was nearly June, when it could be late and still not look late, when the sun lounged around in the western sky, as if it couldn’t decide whether to set or just hang around for a few more hours. I prayed madly to the angel who watches over seventh-grade Nosy Parkers that no brothers would be home.

  I closed the door quietly and then scooted straight to the kitchen to attack the piles of fake dirty dishes. Just as I reached the sink, I heard Mark Clark pull into the driveway. Thank you thank you thank you.

  I turned on the hot water, squirted a small drop of lemon-fresh Joy into each one of the fake dirty drinking glasses lined up on the counter.

  Behind me, I heard Mark Clark drop his keys on the counter. The warm water felt good on my hands. I was so relieved.

  “What’s new?” he asked.

  “Notta lotta,” I said.

  “Say, I meant to ask, how’d your computer project turn out?” He took a glass out of the cupboard, poured himself about an inch of cranberry juice, then set the glass on the counter.

  “What computer project?”

  He poked me in the side. “The extra credit project I helped you with? Tracking the IP address?”

  “Oh right! It was great. It really helped. With my grade. And everything.”

  He paused behind me but didn’t say anything. He walked out. Then I heard the whirr of his computer booting up in the other room.

  I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath.

  * * *

  Upstairs, I turned on my computer and logged on to MontgomeryHighChat.com. I didn’t even try to see if Reggie was on. Even though he was my best friend, and even though he’d listened as I yattered on and on about the puzzle of who’d stolen Jordan’s identity, something told me he wasn’t the one who could help me put it all together. He didn’t have the interest, for one thing, nor did he have a clue about how the minds of girls worked.

  Ferretluver: If QT_PIE865 is around, could you send me an e-mail at Ferretluver@aol.com? It’s super important.

  Almost before I could even finish typing “important” an IM box popped onto my screen.

  Grlreporter: Hi, Minerva Clark. What’s the haps?

  Ferretluver: Pansy? How did you know it was me?

  Grlreporter: Just guessed. Don’t know anyone else with a ferret. What’s up?

  Ferretluver: When you used to see Jordan at Under the Covers? Was Tiffani ever with her?

  Grlreporter: Hollingsworth? Sometimes. Sometimes Tiffani would show up by herself.

  Ferretluver: And would Dwight give her one of those eyeglass cases?

  Grlreporter: Yup yup. That I saw anyway. Why?

  I typed up a fierce storm of explanation. How I first thought Toc, who had a thing for Jordan, had stolen her identity to punish her for not loving him back. Then how I thought it was her, Pansy, because of the flame. I told her about my tea at the Hightower Scholarship office with Emma Larson, and my Sprite at the food court with Tiffani. I told her about Tiffani having the eyeglass case that my very own ferret had munched on that day at Under the Covers. I thought I’d typed everything I could think of. Then I remembered something.

  Ferretluver: Toc told me that Dwight had a scheme going where he stole the checking account numbers of the little old ladies who bought books at Under the Covers. He would steal the numbers, order new checks using a different name—

  Grlreporter: And then buy stuff for the next week or so, until the poor woman got her bank statement.

  Ferretluver: How did you know?

  Grlreporter: It happened to my aunt! Someone printed checks on her account and spent about $25,000.

  Ferretluver: :-O

  Grlreporter: I’m thinking Jordan and Tiffani have something to do with it.

  Ferretluver: Like they’re all in it together???? It’s impossible!

  Grlreporter: But what were they passing back and forth in the glasses case? Did you get a peek inside the one Tiffani has?

  Ferretluver: No =(

  Grlreporter: And there’s also, like, the very real possibility it wasn’t the homeless man who killed Dwight, but someone involved in this.

  Ferretluver: He didn’t! I figured it out. The person who killed Dwight had to have been right-handed, but Clyde Bishop had a withered-up right hand. There’s no way he could have done it.

  Grlreporter: I think it’s time to tell some adult-type person. Know any cops?

  I thought of Detective Peech, with his tree trunk–sized legs and stern gaze. He already thought I was a liar. I couldn’t imagine showing up at the police station with this story. Even if Pansy came with me, we were still just two girls obsessing over a pretty, more-purple-than blue eyeglass case. He’d think we were mad.

  I stood up and paced around my room. Who? Who? Who? Mark Clark probably knew about computer identity theft and stuff, but I didn’t think he’d know about stealing people’s checking account numbers. Plus, I didn’t want to risk him clicking into lecture mode about paying more attention to my schoolwork and less about some imaginary nefarious scheme involving murder.

  I kicked at a pile of dirty clothes. Tomorrow was room cleaning day, and the space under my bed was already stuffed. I got depressed, all of a sudden, thinking how I’d have to do a real cleaning.

  Then, I saw my extra long red Speedo swimsuit with the yellow flowers.

  Grlreporter: You still there?

  Ferretluver: Yep. And I know who can help us.

  - 16 -

  THAT MORNING I CLEANED MY ROOM as if getting into heaven depended on it. I pulled everything out from under my bed—dirty clothes, old assignments, pretty boxes from old Christmas presents I insisted on keeping, dried-up markers and Chap Stick tubes without their caps—then swept. I dusted my bookshelves. Changed my sheets. Cleaned my mirror with Windex. Everything.

  I did every dish in the sink, on the counter, and fetched every dirty glass and plate from Mark Clark’s computer room, the TV room, and even the basement.

  Then I asked if I could go to the water park with Pansy Burrows. I felt a little guilty, because normally I would have asked Reggie, but Reggie was still a little POed that I’d walked off without him the day before. Plus, I didn’t want Reggie around if there was a chance I’d get to hang out with Kevin. This didn’t make much sense to me, since Reggie was my friend and not, like, a boyfriend, but still.

  Quills was the BIC that day. I fo
und him outside with a friend from Kinko’s. They stood in the driveway, their heads bent over the engine of the Electric Matador, talking automotive talk. The friend had an entire arm of green-and-blue tattoos.

  Quills grilled me on my room and the dishes. “Did you pick up the dog poop in the backyard?” he asked.

  “We don’t have a dog,” I said, rolling my eyes. This was an old joke, done for the benefit of the friend.

  Pansy sped up a few minutes later in an old Ford Explorer. Fuzzy pink dice hung from the rearview mirror.

  “Thanks for coming to get me,” I said, sliding into the passenger seat.

  “Do you know how to get there? I don’t think I’ve ever been to the water park before. I’m so totally not a water park kind of person, know what I mean?”

  Pansy wore a black-and-white print bucket hat jammed over her curly red hair and eye glitter on her lids. Some of it had gotten on her freckled cheeks. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  The instant we roared off down the street Pansy lit up a cigarette. I looked back through the rear windshield to see if Quills noticed. He didn’t even look up from the engine. It was alarming to think the BIC would let me hop into a car with someone he’d never met.

  “I so totally wouldn’t be surprised if Jordan and Tiffani were part of some ring of thieves. Do you remember about five years ago, when Montgomery’s student body president and his best friend robbed, like, about a dozen stores? They hit International Burrito there on Broadway, and what’s the name of that bakery? And the Plaid Pantry. Guns, ski masks, the whole bit. They got arrested for armed robbery, and since they were eighteen, got tried as adults. Is Jordan eighteen?”

  “I think so.” I tried to remember. This was all starting to seem like a movie. My cousin Jordan a criminal? I realized that before, when I wondered whether she was a teen murderer, I didn’t think it was really possible. I was just being a drama queen. I was just goofing with myself. This was like making up a rebus; it was a puzzle, a riddle. Part of me didn’t believe my perfect cousin and now, my favorite former babysitter, could be involved in anything this illegal or uncool. Stealing money from poor old grannies. Come on! I had a feeling now that the part of me that didn’t want to believe was going to be faced with a truth it couldn’t deny. My armpits felt damp suddenly. I bounced my legs like a maniac.

  I made myself feel better by remembering I was going to talk to Kevin. And it was for a real reason, not a fakey reason, which even boys can see straight through.

  The water park was less crowded than usual, probably because the weather was warm and sunny, a real spring day, and parents were most likely telling their kids to go outside and play. It still smelled like chlorine and hot dogs, though. There was still a long line outside the equipment room, little kids in wet swimsuits waiting to rent inner tubes.

  Kevin wasn’t at the snack counter, and he wasn’t at the main desk where you paid to go in, and he wasn’t giving out inner tubes. Pansy and I bought drinks and sat on a bench across from the main desk.

  “Are you sure the dude’s working today?” asked Pansy. I detected some tone. Only I don’t think it’s tone when it comes from someone who’s four years older.

  “He works on Saturdays,” I said. I didn’t say, Well, that one Saturday I met him. “Maybe he’s at lunch.”

  “Go ask somebody,” said Pansy. She drained her drink, sucked the last drops through her straw, making that noise I was taught was impolite.

  I didn’t like that Pansy was ordering me around, but I let it go. I stood up, wiped my palms on my jeans. Just as I reached the main desk, Kevin appeared, walking out from the men’s locker room at the end of a long blue-and-green tiled hallway to the left of the desk.

  He wore red swim trunks and a white T-shirt with the water park logo. His crunchy swimmer’s hair was sticking out all over, the same way Quills’s does when he has a hissy fit. My heart felt like it hiccupped when I looked into those mountain-lake blue eyes.

  I was pretty sure he’d remember me, if only because he’d witnessed my maximum wedgie. I pushed that embarrassing thought out of my mind, or tried to. As he reached the main desk, I felt my face get hot. He said, “Hey” to the blond lifeguard-looking girl sitting there and chatted for a minute about his schedule.

  “Kevin?” I asked. “I don’t know if you remember me. I was—”

  “Sure,” he said, smiling. (Smiling!) “With the mean girlfriends.” As he leaned past me to pick up a piece of paper off the desk I could smell his soap smell, his cinnamony breath. He was unlike most of the boys I knew, who always had some form of BO, or else they were wearing clothes that needed to be washed, or had just eaten some sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. Kevin was so clean. He didn’t have zits. His nails weren’t bitten or dirty.

  “Anyway, I know this might strike you as totally lame, but I was wondering if I could talk to your mom.”

  He laughed a little, rolled up the schedule, and gave me a swat on the top of my head. “My mom? Why do you want to talk to her?”

  “It’s kind of a long story.” I was tempted to fall back on the old lie and say I had a school assignment, but it didn’t seem right. Too much was at stake, and anyway, Pansy knew the truth.

  We strolled over towards where Pansy sat, legs crossed, madly text messaging someone. She glanced up at us from under the rim of her bucket hat, checked out Kevin but good, then leaped up, knocking her empty soda cup to the floor, causing the top to pop off and the ice to spill out.

  “Ack!” Pansy shrieked. The same shriek as when Jupiter had jumped out of my book bag that day at Under the Covers and scampered along the counter. It occurred to me that Pansy was slightly overcaffeinated. She raced in an overly dramatic crouched-down run to the snack counter and yanked a wad of napkins from the dispenser, came back, and started scooping up the ice.

  “It’s okay. The carpet’s waterproof,” said Kevin.

  She peeked up at him, and I knew at once that Pansy thought Kevin was pretty dang hot. I’d hoped that she would do most of the talking, so I could spend most of the time sneaking peeks at Kevin, but curious Pansy, nosy Pansy, chatty Pansy had left the building, and in her place was a self-conscious girl who probably thought her legs were too short or her knees were too fat or her hair was too frizzy or you name it.

  I could see it was going to be up to me. I sighed.

  “Here’s the thing,” I began. “You told me your mom worked in the fraud division at the U.S. Bank or something, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “My friend and I—”

  “Pansy Burrows,” said Pansy, dabbing at her wet fingers with the wet napkins, then sticking out her hand. She flashed her dimples. “You don’t go to Montgomery, do you?” She knew he didn’t go to Montgomery. I’d told her on the way over that I didn’t know anything about him, really, other than that his mom would be able to help us.

  Kevin looked down, played a little drum solo on his leg with the rolled-up schedule. “Uh, no. St. Thomas More.”

  “Isn’t that a middle school?” asked Pansy.

  A fizzy feeling of pure bubbly joy spun up through my insides. Kevin wasn’t in high school at all! We played St. Thomas More in basketball. It was a dorky K–8 Catholic school, just like Holy Family.

  “We killed your girls in basketball this year,” I said.

  “Not the eighth graders,” he said. “Our eighth-grade girls were undefeated.”

  “You’re in eighth grade?” snorted Pansy. “Isn’t that like, child abuse, making you have a job?”

  “It’s part of the lifeguard training program,” said Kevin.

  “Passing out inner tubes?” said Pansy, as if it was the lamest thing she’d ever heard.

  Kevin shrugged.

  We’d totally lost the thread of why we’d come all this way. The conversation felt like an eager dog at the end of one of those clothesline leashes. It had gotten away from us and was now twisted around a tree, sniffing somewhere under a shrub. And I wasn’t particularly interested in ge
tting the dog back. Kevin was in eighth grade! Practically my age!

  Then he turned his head and looked towards the door. Did I mention his straight, perfect nose? “Well, here she is to pick me up. You can ask her yourself.”

  Ask who what? Oh! Right. Kevin’s mom. The lady he introduced to us as Mrs. Snowden. Kevin Snowden. Minerva Clark-Snowden. That made me sound like a British explorer. Or a tissue. Wasn’t Clark-Snowden a toilet paper manufacturer? Get a grip, Minerva Clark. Get a grip.

  Mrs. Snowden wasn’t a young mom, but she was a cool mom. At Holy Family there were a lot of young moms, a lot of moms who’d had their first babies when they were, like, eighteen. Mrs. Snowden had some wrinkles, but she also had muscles in her arms. Her blondish hair was sort of crispy, too, just like her son’s. She was probably a swimmer when she wasn’t a high-powered executive ridding the world of bank fraud.

  She bought herself a latte at the cart beside the snack bar and heard our story. She dabbed at the foam with the little red stirrer stick, but I could tell she was listening. I could tell she didn’t think we were just stupid girls with overactive imaginations. I did most of the talking while Pansy kept patting her hair, which was getting frizzier by the moment.

  We sat at a round table as far from the wave pool as possible, the better to hear each other. Kevin disappeared for a bit, then came back and sat down between me and Pansy.

  “All right,” said Mrs. Snowden, “let me make sure I have this straight. Someone was arrested last Valentine’s Day and gave the police your cousin’s name. You were trying to find out who this person was and stumbled upon the fact that a friend of your cousin—Dwight, is it?—was stealing the checking account numbers from the patrons of the bookstore where he works …”

  “Right,” I said. I hadn’t told her that Dwight had been murdered yet. It sounded too extreme. I didn’t want her to doubt us. I didn’t want her to stop nodding her head and stirring her latte. I didn’t want her to lose that thoughtful wrinkle between her dark eyebrows.

  “And how does your cousin figure into this?” asked Mrs. Snowden.

  “For the past couple of months I’ve seen Jordan—Minerva’s cousin—at the bookstore every afternoon,” said Pansy.