The Law of Finders Keepers

by Sheila Turnage

  “Was it hers?” she asked.

  “Yes, but that’s all I learned.”

  “I’m so sorry. But it’s a good step, sugar. You’ll find other clues. You have your whole life to find her.”

  “Yes ma’am. And Miss Lana,” I said, finding the reins to my voice, “you can’t be an understudy in our life. You’re a star. In my life, and the Colonel’s too. I got to go,” I added before she could answer, and hung up the phone.

  * * *

  A heartbeat later, I slipped into the girls’ room—a dingy dungeon of stalls—the box beneath my arm. I peeled off my jacket and tossed it over a stall door, dried a spot on the scratched countertop, and put the box down. I unfolded the sweater from the box.

  I closed my eyes and slipped it on over my T-shirt and pendant.

  The sweater still smelled faintly of river and rain. I smoothed it, and looked in the mirror. The shoulders sagged and the sleeves stretched long, but the color was perfect. Indigo—the color of water and skies. I scooched the sleeves to my elbows. It’s like a hug knitted in wool, I thought as the tardy bell rang.

  Did Upstream Mother knit this? Did someone knit it for her?

  I touched the mend. Did she tear it climbing a tree? Fighting a bully? Did she mend it herself? Where did she get the yarn?

  The yarn, I thought. A clue. Where did she get the yarn?

  I glanced into the mirror. Me. Miss Moses LoBeau. Same height as when I woke up. Same eyes, same sturdy fire-hydrant shape, same unruly hair.

  Only me in the sweater. Me times me.

  Even in the bathroom’s life-sucking fluorescent glow, I looked more like myself.

  This sweater was my mother’s, and now it’s mine.

  Some histories are written on paper, or stone. Mine’s written in yarn.

  * * *

  Two blinks later, I pushed open the classroom door, hoping Dale had covered for me. He whipped toward me. “I can’t believe it!” he cried as I strolled in. “It’s a miracle!”

  Thes and Sal applauded. “Thank heavens,” Harm said, his eyes dancing. Miss Retzyl looked at me like a fish not taking a bait.

  “It was close but here I am,” I ad-libbed, sailing toward my seat.

  “Good grief. She’s not even limping,” Attila said, oozing scorn.

  Limping? Why did I ask Dale to cover for me?

  I went into my signature limp.

  “Lame sweater, Mo,” Attila snipped. “It doesn’t fit in the shoulders.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s still a perfect fit,” I said. “This belonged to Upstream Mother.”

  The class gasped. Attila looked like I’d clubbed her with a wet hen.

  I folded into my desk and smiled at Miss Retzyl. “I am here despite the generic but grave peril described by Dale. Because you are my role model, I try to be punctual. Because I am not you, I fail.”

  Miss Retzyl took a deep breath. Her gaze swept from Dale to me, to my sweater. Her eyes went soft. “It’s lovely, Mo,” she said.

  “Excellent look, LoBeau,” Harm said, giving me a wink.

  The moment passed. Miss Retzyl snapped back into teacher form. “Take out a piece of paper,” she said. “We’ll get your math test out of the way.”

  We had a math test?

  I hummed as I searched my messenger bag for paper. What did a math test mean to a kid wrapped in her lost mother’s arms?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dale’s Secret

  “I’m sorry, Dale,” Sal said as we filed out for lunch. “I can’t eat with you today. I’m finishing my appraisal of the things in the Littles’ attic. I need the school’s internet.”

  Dale went bright red as Sal sashayed away.

  “When did Sal learn to sashay?” I asked.

  “Last Tuesday,” Dale said, his eyes following her.

  Harm walked backwards, studying him. “Dale, what’s changed? Sal used to blush. Now she’s cool and you’re . . . definitely not. What happened?”

  Dale blushed deeper. “Nothing. I don’t blush.”

  Denial, I thought, my heart plummeting. The first sign of everything bad.

  We wound through the lunchroom, past the Popular Table, past the Last Person Standing Table, to the Detectives Table. Dale unwrapped his roast beef sandwich and brownies. Harm opened his orange Nabs and tilted his head, letting his hair fall over his eye. A good look. “Hypothesis: Dale blushes over Sal,” he said.

  Dale popped a brownie and looked at us, cheeks bulging.

  “But why?” Harm muttered. An idea crept across his face. “You kissed Sal.”

  Dale went crimson, and shook his head.

  “She kissed you?” I whispered.

  Dale shook his head again. Harm crossed his arms and leaned away, studying Dale. “Ah-ha,” he said. “You’re going to kiss Sal.”

  Dale sagged. “You’re my best friends, so I might as well tell you. I am going to kiss Sal, just as soon as I figure out how. Only right now I’m so scared, I might throw up.”

  My world tilted. Dale? Kissing?

  “Not retching is key,” Harm said, very suave.

  Dale slid his last brownie to Harm’s place. A bribe. “Do you know how?”

  “Well,” Harm said, shooting me a look. “More or less. But . . . not exactly.”

  Dale slid the brownie toward me. “Mo?”

  Me? “How would I know?”

  His face fell. He slid the brownie back to his own place and leaned low to lick the crumbs off the waxed paper.

  “You could ask Lavender,” I said. “He’s legendary.”

  Dale looked up. “Lavender! Why didn’t I think of him? Rhetorical,” he added.

  “We’ll stop by his new garage after school. I want to show him my sweater too,” I said as Harm polished off his Nabs, leaving behind zero orange crumbs.

  How does he do that? My entire life’s set on auto-wrinkle. Harm looks creased even in clothes that have no creases.

  The bell rang and we began the death march back to class.

  Dale is pre-kissing?

  Weird. I thought Harm would be the one to go first.

  That afternoon as we stampeded for the door, Sal handed me a note. “My preliminary thoughts on your attic appraisal.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and stuffed it in my messenger bag.

  Five minutes later, we dropped our bikes outside Lavender’s new fixer-upper garage—aka the old general store—and ran inside. Lavender had swept the pine floors until they shone, and cleared the cobwebs off the floor-to-ceiling shelves behind the old counter. He smiled and heaved an old crate of bolts onto the counter. “Hey Desperados. How’s life?”

  “Hey yourself,” I shot back. “Dale’s pre-kissing.”

  “With Sal?” he asked, looking at Dale.

  Dale beamed. “She doesn’t know yet. I need help. You know how.”

  “Rumor has it, little brother,” Lavender said, heading to a cooler. He plucked out Pepsis, raked the ice down the cans, and handed them around. Lavender is a gentleman.

  “Thanks,” I said, hopping on the counter. “I hate to mention kissing again, but Dale’s need-to-know.”

  Lavender looked at us the way he always does—like he’s glad to see us and not surprised by what we say. “I need to think that over, little brother,” he told Dale. “Doing’s one thing. Teaching is something different.”

  “That’s okay,” Dale said. “I’m in hover mode until Valentine’s Day.”

  “Meantime, I got something to show you,” I said. I hopped down, walked into the middle of a dusty sunbeam, and tossed my jacket, revealing my sweater.

  “Gorgeous,” Lavender said. “Was it hers?”

  “A DNA heirloom,” Dale told him.

  “It absolutely becomes you, Miss LoBeau,” he said.

  The sweater becomes me.
That’s what I’d been feeling, all day long.

  “So far, we got this sweater, a locket with the initial J, the sign I rode into town on, and a photo of Always Man. I’m just not sure how to put it all together,” I told him.

  “You’ll figure it out, Mo,” he said, very easy. “You always do.”

  Lavender worked the tip of a screwdriver around a paint can’s lid and popped it open. “So?” he said. “What do you think of the place?”

  I looked around the former dump. If Tupelo Landing had a historic district, this old store would be its heartbeat. Outside, ancient bubble-headed gas pumps fronted the drive-under shelter. Lavender had popped two tin ads off the outside wall and propped them against the counter—Dr Pepper and Marita Bread, featuring the Lone Ranger.

  “Very Tupelo cool,” I told him. “And those shelves look great.”

  “They will when I get some paint on them.”

  “You keeping those old bubble-headed gas pumps?” I asked, studying the antique pumps. “Attila says they’re worth a fortune and you should sell them.”

  “Sell them? They’re history. And they don’t work—a plus, since I don’t want to pump gas,” he said, grinning. “I’ll keep everything old-fashioned except my services. Lana says it’s a nice balance—yin and yang. I’ll do repairs, restorations . . . And, I’ve found a barely used stock car over in Fuquay-Varina. I’ll be racing again before you know it.”

  Lavender never downsizes his dream.

  “You Desperados free? I could use some help.”

  Harm and Dale looked at me, their eyes saying yes. Lavender always helps us. Besides, we could brainstorm a report for the Littles, and try to solve Mary Ormond’s riddle.

  “Your windows are filthy, Lavender Shade Johnson,” I said, grabbing a roll of paper towels. “Give me some Windex, and I’ll do you proud.”

  “You always do me proud, Mo,” he said. “Boys? Feel like slinging paint?”

  “I’ll whitewash creation if you tell me what I need to know about kissing,” Dale said. “Really, all I need is a clue.”

  That’s Dale. Give him a clue and he can do almost anything.

  * * *

  By day’s end, Lavender’s windows sparkled and his floor-to-ceiling shelves gleamed. We’d tried fitting Mary Ormond’s riddle to everything we could think of while we worked.

  Cross over resting—a bridge over the river (Lavender), a ferry (Harm), the church steeple watching over the sleeping town at night (me).

  Loose beside still—water beside land (Lavender), wind beside stone (Harm), a bad trip to a dentist where the wrong tooth gets pulled (Dale).

  “At least we know Gabriel and Kat haven’t solved it either.” I sighed.

  “How?” Lavender asked.

  “We haven’t heard Attila bragging,” I said, and described Gabriel and the stranger in the graveyard. “They struck out—on our riddle.”

  Lavender frowned. “I saw Kat with a strange man early this morning, at the inn. They were arguing. When I headed for them, he bolted.”

  Interesting.

  “We got to go,” I said, pulling one of our Ugly Trim flyers from my messenger bag. “Could I . . .”

  “It would be an honor,” he said. He taped the flyer to a front window, and then taped up a photo of Always Man with a note that said WANTED. He waited for Dale to finish dabbing the paint from his hair, and put a hand on his shoulder. “My top three thoughts about a first kiss, little brother. Ready?”

  “I am,” I said, and Harm slouched, trying to look cool.

  Dale pulled his notepad from his pocket. “Shoot.”

  “First,” Lavender said, “move slow so she has time to say no if she wants to.”

  “Slow?” Dale echoed. He moved his head forward a half inch at a time.

  “Not like a chicken sneaking up on corn,” I told him.

  “Smooth,” Lavender agreed.

  “I thought so,” Dale said, making a note. “Second?”

  “Kiss light as a feather,” Lavender said. “Sweet.”

  I looked over at Dale’s notepad. No chicken to corn. Feather.

  “Third, keep your hands to yourself,” Lavender said.

  Dale nodded. Pockets. “Noses?” he asked. “Noses are in the middle of everything. Which way do they go?”

  Lavender studied Dale the way Miss Lana studies a recipe gone bad. “Let me do some research, and I’ll get back to you.”

  * * *

  We pushed our bikes to the edge of the blacktop and pedaled toward town. “Time to update the Littles,” I said.

  Harm went no-hands. “I’ve been thinking, Mo. Maybe we can give them enough to satisfy them without giving our clues away.”

  “The mayor does babble,” Dale reminded me. Like I’d forgotten.

  “I say we show them Tupelo Mother and keep the attic under lock and key,” I said. “Don’t mention the map or the missing riddle. Or the clothes—until we know if they’re clues. The portrait should make them happy, and keep them off our backs until we find the treasure.”

  “Two stones with one bird,” Dale said. “I like it.”

  * * *

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Desperados,” the mayor said, bustling into his parlor. “Tinks and I were planting a cactus. Thorny issue.” He chuckled. “I’m all ears.”

  Harm propped our draped portrait on the table across from the mayor and Mrs. Little.

  “Is that treasure?” she asked, hunching forward.

  “Depends on what you treasure,” I said. “A picture’s worth a thousand words, and so now—introducing Tupelo Mother.” Harm whipped the tablecloth away like a magician.

  Somehow, Tupelo Mother looked better in the attic’s faint light.

  Harm cleared his throat. “She looks really yellow in this light, but I think that’s because the paint’s old. A museum could probably restore the tones.”

  “I’m not sure about the nose,” Dale added. “There’s cosmetic surgery in Greenville if you have insurance, but I’m not sure they do art.”

  “She’s gorgeous,” Mrs. Little whispered, clasping her hands to her sunken chest.

  “Sal’s note,” Dale whispered, nudging me. “Was it about the painting?”

  Crud. I’d forgotten it. I rummaged through my messenger bag and scanned Sal’s appraisal as Harm chatted, stalling for time. “Since we found it, it’s half yours and half ours,” he said. “Please enjoy it while we find the treasure. We actually think this is a portrait of—”

  “Nobody!” I shouted.

  Harm looked at me like I’d bit him.

  “It’s an anonymous model, and not a good one,” I said. “A total unknown. Right, Dale?”

  “Yes?” Dale guessed.

  I passed Sal’s note to Harm, who read it and gasped.

  Mrs. Little’s obsidian eyes glittered as she studied the portrait. “Tupelo Mother. We’ll give her a place of honor, over the mantel.” Her gaze whipped to us. “What else have you got?”

  “Homework,” I said, rising. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Wait!” she said, holding out her withered hand. “Let me see that sweater.”

  Crud. I wanted Mrs. Little touching my heirloom sweater like I wanted a plate of liver.

  “She’s a knitting authority,” Harm whispered, shoving me forward. I shrugged out of the sweater, revealing my wrinkled T-shirt and locket. She laid the sweater on her lap and inspected the stitching.

  “Handmade,” she said. “And old. Very old.”

  “Old means a lot, coming from you,” I said, wasting a smile.

  “Irish,” she replied. “Knitted before Hollywood gussied up the style—I’d say 1930, 1940. Some people say this double chain pattern represents a fisherman’s line, and these diamonds mean riches.” She ran her hand along the sweater’s arm. “What’s this?�
��

  “A scar,” I said.

  “Scratchy wool,” she muttered. “Pity. Mended, but not by its maker. Then, that’s all of us. The mending yarn is handspun too, but it runs thick and thin.” She frowned. “The original yarn’s first-class, made by an artist. The mend’s new yarn, bumbled up by a beginner.”

  “A beginner?” I said. “But . . . I mean, who makes sweater strings?”

  I knew it was wrong, but you can’t reel words back in and cast them out right.

  “Sweater strings?” she shrieked. “You mean who spins yarn!” She hooked the sweater on her finger and handed it back, her eyes flashing. “Pearls before swine.”

  Did she just call me a pig? I counted to ten, just in case.

  She reached out, pulled my locket close, and let it thunk back against my gravy stain. “I never cared for the letter J. Have that mosquito person look up hand-spinners on her contraption. There aren’t that many of us and the mend is fairly new. Get cracking.”

  “Skeeter? On the internet?” I said, backing toward the door.

  “Get out,” she said, turning to smile at the portrait.

  Outside, we grabbed our bikes. “Mo,” Dale whispered, “why didn’t you tell Mrs. Little that could be a portrait of Mary Ormond? She’d like that. Mary used to live in her house.”

  “Because,” I muttered, mounting up. “I don’t want the Littles to sell it.”

  “Sell it? Who would buy that?”

  I looked around. Jake and Jimmy Exum were digging holes along an Azalea Woman’s driveway. Other than that, the street was quiet. “According to Sal’s note, if it’s an eighteenth-century painting of someone nobody knows, it’s worth thousands of dollars.”

  Dale whistled. “That’s half of thousands to us.”

  “But if it’s a portrait of Mary Ormond—the fourteenth wife of the most famous pirate ever—that painting’s history, Dale. It’s worth a fortune.”