The wind gusted again, setting something twisting in a privet at the edge of the woods. Dale rocketed to it and plucked it up. “Plastic wrap!” he called. “The strip you used to wrap the North Arrow piece. Our riddle’s out there naked,” he said, his voice grim.
Harm hurried over, dressed for school. “We still have the riddle even if we don’t have the plaster. I wrote it in my notebook.”
I looked into the boiling sky. “Good. We got to cast those footprints now, or lose them.”
“I saw plaster of paris by the money jars,” Dale said, and hurried off with Harm.
“What are we missing?” I muttered, walking over the crime scene again. I photographed the muddle of footprints by the door—the weird boots with the tacked-on soles walking in, and walking out. I followed the prints to the dog pen. Mr. Red’s dogs watched me like a ragtag choir, ready to howl. “Smile,” I said, focusing my camera. Click.
What’s that?
A tremble of blue caught my eye—a sliver of royal-blue fabric dangling from a strand of barbed wire. I bagged it as Harm and Dale headed back—Dale carrying Harm’s unopened umbrella, Harm beating a bowl of plaster of paris like pancake batter.
They knelt by the footprints. I held the umbrella over us as the raindrops splatted down.
“Rain. Great. At least things can’t get any worse,” Harm muttered.
Wrong.
* * *
First, Mr. Red’s truck stalled out. Second, Grandmother Miss Lacy, who picked us up, needed gas.
Last but not least, we broke the Cardinal Rule of Note Presentation: Read it before you hand it in. As Miss Retzyl scanned the note Mr. Red had penned for us, her face went a detention shade of red.
We took a step back. I smiled. “Whatever the problem is, I can explain.”
She read the note out: “Dear Priscilla, The kids are late due to a break-in at my place. If your boyfriend Joe Starr had been on the job they would have been on time, so blame him. It’s just middle school anyway. Cordially, Red Baker.”
The classroom went quiet as death. Possibly ours.
“We share your disappointment,” I said as Dale’s stomach rumbled. “Thank you for that reminder, Dale,” I added. “Miss Retzyl, it may cheer you to know Dale and me left the café without our lunches this morning. Starvation is harsh punishment. I only hope it teaches us a lesson.”
“Sit down,” she snapped, and we slipped into our seats.
At lunchtime, Harm opened his pack of orange, four-corner Nabs. “Have one,” he offered, and glanced at Attila. She sat bragging to a pack of seventh graders about the musket balls, shoe buckle, and sword hilt she’d found.
“She found all those artifacts for Gabriel?” Harm muttered. “Incredible.”
Before I could answer, the Colonel marched in with white takeout bags.
Our lunches!
“Colonel!” I shouted. “Over here!” He waved and headed for the lunchroom lady.
I rushed for him as Attila jumped up and grabbed at a seventh-grade boy who’d swiped her dessert. “Give that back,” she said, zigging as I zagged.
We shoulder-slammed hard enough to send my Upstream Mother pendant swinging.
“Watch where you’re going, Slow-Mo,” Attila said, bumping me again. The seventh graders laughed, and I felt my neck go red.
“I was watching, zit-wit,” I said, bumping her back. “And don’t you ever . . . push . . . me . . . again,” I said, giving her a shove. Attila stumbled, clawing for balance. Her fingers hooked my necklace. She snatched it to the floor and her eyes went narrow and mean. She slowly raised her foot—and stomped my pendant.
It crunched like a pecan does—loud and helpless.
Attila smirked and took her foot away.
No, I thought, looking at the broken pendant. Please, no.
The lunchroom disappeared and the days between kindergarten and sixth grade melted away in a red-hot lava of rage. It was me and Attila on the kindergarten playground, alone, enemies to the death, our baby venom flowing.
I lowered my head and charged. The round of my head hit the soft of her belly. She wheezed, crumpled, and skittered backwards into Thes’s lap.
I scooped up my necklace and my treasure fell open in my hand. Harm’s shocked face and Dale’s worried eyes went to blurs.
My knees sagged. I sat down on the floor. Hard.
I looked at the Colonel, across the room. As if he heard my heart scream, he turned to me. “Soldier!” he shouted, and sprinted toward me, shoving empty chairs aside. “Are you okay?” he asked, sliding up beside me. “Are you hurt?”
I held my necklace to him the way I used to hold a broken toy for him to fix. The fine chain rained across my hand and I felt my face crumple. He cupped his hand beneath mine and stared into the locket.
From inside the tear-shaped pendant, a photo stared up at us.
Breathe, I heard Miss Lana whisper in my mind. Breathe.
Dale bumped down on the floor. “A picture?” he asked. “Is it Upstream Mother?”
“It can’t be,” Harm said, kneeling beside me. “That’s a man.”
Chapter Thirteen
A 911 Darkroom Situation
That afternoon, Miss Lana leaned against the counter, studying the photo of the curly-haired man pumping gas. “He’s a handsome somebody,” she said, and I felt as proud as if I’d breathed life into him myself.
“I looked twenty times today to make sure it was real,” I said. “Of course he could be anybody to Upstream Mother. A brother or an uncle or a friend . . .”
“Whoever he is, he’s a heck of a clue,” Harm said as the Colonel cracked a roll of quarters like an egg and clattered the coins into the cash register. “Colonel, you said you checked the pendant for fingerprints. But you couldn’t have looked inside.”
My breath caught. Upstream Mother’s fingerprints.
“Maybe Joe can check. Priscilla says he’ll be back Monday,” Miss Lana said, sliding the pendant to me.
“This photo’s so small,” Harm said, studying it. “If a picture’s worth a thousand words, we’re missing nine hundred of them here. Can you enlarge it, Mo?”
Brilliant! “Let’s ask Grandmother Miss Lacy.”
“We need to fingerprint it first,” he said. He tapped his fingers against the countertop. “Starr’s going to have a lot to deal with when he comes back. The crime scene at our house, plus whatever he’s working on out of town. I say we pull the prints ourselves. That way we can enlarge the photo now, without damaging the fingerprints. And we only have to ask Starr to run the prints—which makes it easier for him to do us a favor. What do you say, Mo? I know how. Gabriel Archer isn’t the only man who does his research.”
Pull the print ourselves?
I searched for words that supported Harm as a fellow detective, yet expressed doubt in a subtle, non-threatening way. I failed. “Are you insane?” I asked. “We never lifted a print before and this is the most important clue of my life.”
Dale helped himself to cake. “If Joe Starr can do it, it can’t be that hard,” he said.
Harm hopped up. “It’s not. But we’ll practice first. We need cocoa powder, clear packing tape, a makeup brush, and white paper.”
“Coming up,” Miss Lana said.
Two blinks later, I pressed my finger against the counter for our practice attempt. Harm dipped Miss Lana’s makeup brush in cocoa powder, twirled it over the prints, and blew the residue away. He pressed tape over my print, peeled it up, and pressed it on the white paper. There I was—fingerprinted in cocoa powder.
“Cool,” Dale whispered. Everyone looked at me, waiting.
The Colonel says a leader shows faith in her team. I slid my pendant to Harm.
He swirled the cocoa-tinged brush inside the locket and blew. “There’s no print on the photo,” he reported, “but I got a
doozy opposite the photo. She may have held it still on this side, and dropped the photo in by its edges.”
He reached for the tape, and I pushed his hand away. “Let me,” I said. “It increases your chance of survival because if you mess this up, I might kill you.” I held my breath and pressed the tape over the cocoa fingerprint. Gently, I peeled it away. Dale slid a sheet of typing paper to me and I stuck tape to paper.
The print’s dark whorl stood out bold and perfect against the stark white paper.
I went dizzy as my heart spun along its swirls. “It’s hers. I can feel her in my bones.”
* * *
“We got a 911 situation,” I told Grandmother Miss Lacy minutes later as she closed the darkroom door behind us. I handed her my open locket. “I want you to meet somebody.”
“Oh my,” she said, sliding her glasses to the tip of her nose. “Who is he?”
“That’s what we want to find out,” Harm said. “Only we need to make it larger.”
“Of course,” she murmured, and placed the locket next to her ancient enlarger—a crank-it-up praying mantis of a machine. “This photo’s so tiny. Let’s lift it out and see if we can make a negative. If we can, we’ll use it to make a larger print.”
“You probably have a special tool for that,” I said.
“My eyebrow tweezers, dear,” she said. “Back in a flash.”
Her hand shook as she tweezed the photo out and placed it on the counter. I pressed close, staring at the mishmash of paper behind the photo. “Newspaper,” I said.
She handed me the tweezers. I lifted the newspaper out and gently opened it. “Looks like part of an ad. An address. 67A South Ma . . .”
Harm frowned. “Every town has a South Main.”
“Not us,” Dale said. “We got First Street and Last Street. That’s it.”
I turned the photo over. There, in bold black ink, one word: ALWAYS. “Always Man,” I said, turning the photo face-front. “Nice to meet you.”
* * *
An hour later, I slipped our negative into the enlarger and cranked it up.
Always Man stood filling a car with gasoline, one hand on the gas nozzle, the other in his pocket. His face was wide and handsome, and his dark hair a little wild. Except for that, he was a detective’s bad dream: average height, average weight. He wore dark pants and a lighter shirt, and a jacket left unbuttoned.
“Look at all those cars parked by the garage door,” Harm said, leaning close.
“Maybe he did repairs too,” Dale said. “Like Lavender.”
“Wonder if we can run the plates,” Harm said, and I cranked the enlarger again. The license plates went fuzzy, except the front plate on the car getting gas—a town plate. A sidewalk sign blocked most of the plate, but the last letters popped. “. . . TON, NC,” I read.
“That could be a lot of places,” Harm said. “Washington, Clayton, Wilmington . . . Check out that sidewalk sign. Ann’s Clothes.”
Grandmother Miss Lacy adjusted her bifocals. “Fasci-nating. An everyday moment, trapped like a butterfly beneath glass.”
Old-person thought. I moved on.
“So we’re looking for a garage next to Ann’s Clothes. On a South Main Street, in Somewhere-ton, NC,” I muttered. “Unless that car stopped in from out of town.”
I studied Always Man’s face. He was smiling, and heading for a wink. “He has attitude. He’s mugging for the camera.”
“No, dear,” Grandmother Miss Lacy said. “He’s flirting.”
“What do you know about flirting?” I asked. “You’re old.”
She laughed. “Maybe, but as I recall, this is flirting. He really liked the person taking this photograph.”
“Yeah. He did,” Harm said, his voice soft.
“And whoever took this photo had a very good eye,” Grandmother Miss Lacy said, touching my hand. “Almost as good as yours.”
* * *
“We got to go,” Dale said a little later. “I forgot to tell you, Mama asked me to take Lavender’s scarf to him. He left it at our house last night.”
A visit with Lavender? Could the day get better?
It could have, but it didn’t. Our trip to Lavender’s fell apart as we pedaled by the Episcopal church. “What’s that?” Harm asked, pointing.
I slammed on brakes. A thin beam of light flickered across the graveyard, wheeled up into the cedars and oaks, and back down.
Who would prowl a graveyard in the dark?
“Probably Jake and Jimmy Exum,” I said, my throat going dry.
Dale shook his head. “They’re dead scared of ghosts.”
The light flickered, and voices rose and fell on the breeze.
“Let’s check it out,” Harm said, leaning his bike against a pine. He crouched and darted to the ivy-draped fence, Dale and me close behind.
I heard a man’s voice, then another. “Did you bring a shovel?” the first man asked.
Dale gasped. “A shovel? In a graveyard?”
“We don’t need a shovel—yet,” a familiar voice responded.
“Gabriel Archer,” I said as we peeked over the fence. The clouds shifted, moonlight tiptoeing along the tombstones as Gabriel hunched over his Ground Penetrating Radar.
Dale shook his head. “Gabriel’s a Dead Peeping Tom.”
“Or a grave robber,” I said as the second man pointed to a cross-shaped headstone. “Surveillance mode,” I whispered.
Gabriel muscled the GPR to the cross-shaped stone. On the other side of the cemetery, I could just make out his Jaguar and trailer.
“This is the last resting place that fits the bill,” the stranger said. “If this isn’t it, I flew a long way for not very much.”
Resting place? I looked at the headstone and my heart dove to my sneakers.
“Cross over resting,” I whispered. “A cross over somebody’s resting place.” The men studied the radar’s screen as Gabriel inched the machine along.
“And a river beside land,” Harm whispered back. “Loose beside still.”
“I knew it. Gabriel has our clue. And if we don’t do something fast, he’ll have our treasure too.” I grabbed a small stick, shoved it in my jacket pocket, and rose.
Harm grabbed my arm and pulled me down. “Wait, Mo. We don’t have a plan.”
“Yes we do. Ad-lib,” I whispered, and stood. “Stop, thieves, you’re under arrest!” I charged down the fence to the gate, Harm a half step behind. As we tore through the gate, footsteps pounded toward the car. Gabriel stood alone in the moonlight, his hands in the air.
“Where’s your accomplice?” I demanded.
He sneered, the razor-thin scar on his face made paler by moonlight. “My what?”
“Dale,” Harm shouted. “Tell Starr’s men to look for Gabriel’s assistant. Male, six feet tall, thin with a little pot belly.” Harm’s good with details. Also with ad-libbing.
“Robert that,” Dale said from behind the fence, and I heard him pedal off.
“He means Roger that,” I said, walking behind Gabriel and jabbing my stick into his back. “Confess and I’ll ask Starr to go easy on you.”
“Confess to what? I’m just following up on a clue.”
“A clue you stole—from us.”
“Prove it,” he said, his voice going cold and poison. “And if you’ve been robbed, I’d look at Tinks Williams if I were you. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can spit.”
Please.
“A pathetic diversion,” I told Harm. “I been knowing Tinks all my life.”
We stood still as tombstones until, moments later, a siren warbled in the distance. Harm looked at me, his eyes wide.
Crud. Joe Starr’s out of town. That’s Dale, howling his coyote siren.
The howl grew closer. Grandmother Miss Lacy’s Buick screeched to a halt at the curb—or wher
e the curb would be if Last Street had curbs. Dale sang his siren winding down. He hurtled through the gate, Grandmother Miss Lacy hobbling behind on her cane.
“Really?” Gabriel said, his voice a velvet noose.
“Plundering our cemetery. The very idea.” Grandmother Miss Lacy puffed, grabbing Harm’s shoulder for support. “My mother rests here. My father too. Explain yourself.”
“Miss Thornton, I’m so sorry these children disturbed you. I’m simply following up on a clue . . .”
“Under cover of darkness?” she snapped.
“Because I didn’t want to upset anyone,” Gabriel said promptly. “I checked your laws, Miss Thornton. They don’t forbid bringing a GPR into a churchyard.”
“They will by tomorrow noon,” she fumed, and turned to me. “Have you checked the gravestones for damage?”
The Desperados fanned out. We searched grave by grave, Dale sticking to me like flypaper. Dale’s not good with the dead.
“Nothing damaged,” Harm reported. “Where’s your friend, Archer?”
Gabriel’s voice slid through the night like a snake. “No idea what you mean. Miss Thornton, are you calling an actual officer of the law? I need to get home.”
“Come in here again, and I’ll arrest you myself,” she said.
“Then I wouldn’t dare return,” he said, and sauntered away.
He doesn’t need to come back, I thought. He has our riddle and he took a darned good stab at solving it. He also checked every grave out here—and came up empty.
“We better solve that riddle before Gabriel does,” I said as a small plane coughed across the sky. “If we don’t, we can kiss the Treasure of Tupelo Landing good-bye.”
* * *
Dear Upstream Mother,
We found the photo of Always Man! Lavender says he looks like a guy he’d like to know. Did you take it?
I’m good with a camera too.
On other fronts, Harm’s cooking dinner for Kat soon. He’s asked her twice, but so far she’s busy. One day I will cook for you. I can do pb&j on whole wheat or white, hand-squished or fluffy.
The Law of Finders Keepers Page 10