by Josh Berk
“Man,” I say, feeling so sad for Toby. “It really is sad. Did he know he was going to do it? If you want to die, how do you still go about your day? Get up. Eat breakfast. Get dressed. Go on the Forensics Squad trip. And then …”
“Is that what you’re confused about, Guy?” she says.
“Well, um, yeah, that. But also—how did the same fingerprints get on Toby’s wallet and my wall? It wasn’t my half brother. Anoop and I shot that theory down today.”
“You did?” she asks. So I tell her all about it. She seems a little bummed that I went to the city without her. I tell her I’ll take her sometime. Shut up.
“Okay, I’ve been thinking about that too,” she says.
“Any theories?”
“Just that we need to expand the suspect list.”
“Well, who the hell else would have been up there? No one else knew about those coins.”
“No one?”
“Well, Anoop knew,” I say. There is another pause. This time I don’t even hear the pen on paper. This time I just hear the breathing. “No way,” I say. “No freaking way.”
“Think about it,” she says. “His prints would be on the wallet. He was the one who found it.”
“I was the one who found it!”
“Well, whatever. He obviously touched it. He took it back to his house.”
“He was wearing rubber gloves.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure …”
“Well anyway, he took the thing home. He could have placed a print on there at any time.”
“He put it in an evidence Baggie. You saw that.”
“Yeah, we all saw that. But no one saw what he did with it when he had it at home.” My heart was beating really fast. Would Anoop really do that? Why?
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I say.
“It makes perfect sense,” she says. “You were fighting with Anoop anyway. He knew about those coins. How much did you say they were worth?”
“A lot.”
“Enough for a new car? You know how people make fun of Anoop’s car all the time. And he’s got his rich new girl to impress …”
“People make fun of the AC Machine? I mean, I know I do, but I didn’t know other people did.”
“Okay, by ‘people’ I meant you.”
“Fair enough. But have you seen that thing? What is he, an algebra teacher? Okay, okay. But he would, what, break in to steal the coins and sell them for a new car? Then help me lift the prints on the attic wall, knowing they would be his own?”
“Well, he had to do it. TK was there with you. Plus, you know what Mr. Zant would say. Prints don’t mean anything unless you have something to compare them to. It wouldn’t mean anything to have his prints.”
“So he’d plant his own prints on the wallet just to make me think that the break-in wasn’t him?”
“Yeah. He knew he could throw you off the trail. If he put the print on the wallet, you’d see that and match it to the window print and you’d really think it was Jacques!”
“Anoop is smart,” I say. “But that’s, like, evil genius smart. I think you lost me halfway through.”
“Thank you,” she says.
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“It kinda was. You kinda said I was an evil genius.”
“I said Anoop was an evil genius.”
“But I figured it out, so that sort of makes me an evil genius too.”
“Fine, everyone around here is an evil genius. What do we do now?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” she says. “Too bad you’re not an evil genius too.”
“I guess we could wait and see if Anoop shows up at school with a shiny new Lexus or something.”
“By then it would be too late. The coins would be sold and it would be impossible to get them back, even though they are stolen property.”
“I can’t believe Anoop would do this to me,” I say. “I literally cannot believe it. It makes no sense. He’s been so into the investigation, besides everything else. Why would he drag me into the city? Just to throw me off his trail?”
“Maybe.”
“But he had to know that Jacques’s fingerprints would prove it wasn’t him.”
“Who knows? Maybe Anoop is crazy. What do we really know about him?”
“I’ve known him my whole life. I know he used to watch Dora the Explorer until he was way too old for it. I know he cried on his ninth birthday because his neighbor Mark Conrad went to Don Rossini’s party instead. I know his ‘if I had to make out with a man’ choice is Derek Jeter. I know everything about him.”
“Except for if he stole your treasure.”
“No,” I begin to say. “There is no way—”
“You know,” she says. “There is a way we could find out.”
“There is?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I was reading a book about forensics projects—”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Get over it, Guy. Yes, I’m a huge nerd. Since we’re going to be friends, it will be just a lot easier if you accept that.”
“We’re going to be friends? When? Was there a memo or an email that went out or something? I don’t remember agreeing to—”
“Shut up, Guy. We’re totally friends. And the book had a project for building a lie detector.”
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s actually not all that hard to build. I talked to TK about it. He said he has all the parts you’d need.”
“What is TK’s deal, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Talk about evil genius. He’s nice, though.”
“Okay, so TK builds this lie detector. I can’t imagine how we get Anoop to take it.”
“Well, obviously we don’t just come out and say ‘Hey, Anoop, we want to see if you stole thirty thousand dollars’ worth of treasure from Guy’s house, so come over and let us strap you to this lie detector TK made with some crap from his garage.’ ”
“Okay, what then?”
“You leave that up to me, Guy Langman,” she says. “I shall use my feminine wiles.”
“Feminine wiles? When did you get those?”
“Shut up, Guy Langman. I’ll talk to you later.” She hangs up sort of quickly. Dad always called this the Irish good-bye. I’m not sure why. But instead of just lingering all awkward at the end of a conversation or something, I guess the Irish just run out of there. Is Maureen Fields Irish? And, okay, I have some bigger questions simmering here. Is there any possible way that Anoop stole the coins? And if poor Toby really jumped to his death and it wasn’t Anoop who stole the coins, then who was it? And hey, Maureen Fields is fun to talk to and she apparently has feminine wiles. That being the case, I guess anything’s possible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sure enough, the next meeting of the unofficial Forensics Squad, held at Langman Manor, features TK and his homemade lie detector. We’re assembled in the great room again. Raquel and TK. Me and Maureen. And sure enough, Anoop is here, looking clueless. Maureen’s feminine wiles surely did the trick.
“Thanks for coming, everyone,” Maureen says. Wily. “As I told you all, there is some very important news about the case.” Mutter, mutter, mutter. “Toby Weingarten did not kill himself. Toby Weingarten was murdered.” Gasp, gasp, gasp. I’m just confused. Didn’t she just call me and tell me it was suicide? Feminine wiles sure are wily.
“I don’t get it,” Anoop says. “How can you know that?”
“Let’s just say I have some inside information,” she says. “I think it was someone on his team from North Berry Ridge who did it.”
“Stupid North Berry Ridge jerks,” I say reflexively.
“Yeah,” TK says. “Exactly. And I know how we’re going to catch them. I’m going to get Zant to set up a rematch so we can see who is the rightful owner of Sherlock’s Glass. The challenge will be to create a working lie detector, which, as luck would have it, I’ve already done.” TK takes ou
t his lie detector. It’s a wooden box about the size of a shoe box, dotted with lights and full of wires sticking out in all directions. He shrugs. “It just takes a few transistors, a capacitor, some LEDs, about five regular resistors, and a variable resistor.”
“Oh yeah?” I say. I’ve figured out that this whole thing is a ruse. There is no rematch. Maureen just said that Toby was murdered to set this up. This is just an excuse to make Anoop wear the lie detector. Oh yeah, I get it. Total masculine wiles.
“It will have to be adjusted for each person who uses it,” TK says. “And if we want to catch the North Berry Ridge jerk who killed Toby, we need to make sure it works correctly. That’s where you guys come in. I’m hoping you can help me out.”
TK is about to ask Anoop to be the first volunteer when Raquel volunteers. “I like this!” she says. Um, okay. Her wiles are all out of whack. “Do me first,” she says. Everyone snickers a little. TK and Maureen share a look. This wasn’t part of the plan. But Maureen smiles and plays along.
“Go ahead,” she says. “Yeah, totally. Go for it.” TK applies the sensors to her hand and tweaks some settings. Maureen asks some questions. “Okay, would you ever go out with Guy?”
“Um, no,” she says.
“True statement,” TK says.
Why did she have to ask that?
“Um, does anyone else want to try this?” TK asks. “Anoop?”
“Oh, no,” Anoop says. “You aren’t getting me hooked up to that thing. No offense, TK, but until you actually get the PhD, I’m not wearing some device you built out of crap in your garage. I don’t need to get electrocuted for this.”
“You do need electrolysis for this,” I say, pointing to my forehead. Everyone looks at me weird. “Electrolysis. It’s, like, hair removal—come on, people,” I say. “For the unibrow? Never mind.”
Anoop gives me an angry look. And okay, dumb joke, but bigger point: He won’t do it! What is he trying to hide? Are his own Anoopian wiles telling him that something is up?
“It’s totally safe,” TK says. “I assure you.”
“Yeah,” Raquel says in a flirty voice. “It does not hurt at all.” She shows him the spot on her fingers where the pads had touched. “Why not try it on, Noopie?”
Okay, Noopie? How can he refuse? He’s probably setting himself up to be convicted of stealing his best friend’s treasure, but he doesn’t even care, because Raquel is calling him Noopie. After a few minutes of fiddling with the diodes or whatever, TK announces that we can begin the interrogation of the Bengal Tiger.
Maureen, clearly enjoying the power this has given her, begins asking Anoop some questions. At first they are the basic ones, just to get obvious yes-or-no answers from Anoop to help TK determine the accuracy of the device. “Are you Indian? Is Guy your boyfriend? What is pi to the first eight digits after the decimal?” (That’d be yes, no, and 3.14159265, if you’re playing along at home.)
Then she asks him what he probably thinks is another easy, pointless question. Wily.
“Did you steal Guy’s dad’s treasure?”
“Um, no,” he says.
“Is that correct?” she asks TK.
“Unless my device is mistaken, that is a true statement,” he says.
“Your stupid device is mistaken!” I yell.
“Um, what?” Anoop says. He laughs. I’m not laughing, though.
“Did we seriously think TK could build a working lie detector? No offense, TK, but that’s ridiculous. It’s clear that Anoop took the treasure! It’s clear that he wanted a fancy car to impress Raquel or someone, and since we were fighting, you broke into my house and stole the treasure!” I can’t believe I’m saying the word “treasure” so many times. My life has gotten seriously weird.
“I can’t believe you are accusing me of this,” Anoop says.
“That doesn’t sound like a denial,” Maureen says.
“Did you put him up to this?” Anoop asks.
“I’m just saying.”
“Sure,” Anoop says. “Everyone is always just saying things. After everything we’ve been through, I cannot believe this. What else are you saying? That I killed that kid?”
“No,” I say. “No way. No one is saying that. We’re just saying that maybe you felt like you really needed some money, and since we were fighting … Listen, Toby’s death was not murder. I’m just saying you can give the coins back and we can all retire from our careers in crime-solving.”
“There is just one problem with that theory,” Anoop says. “I didn’t steal the stupid coins! Guy, we’ve been friends our whole lives. You think I would break into your house? Fine—put me back on the lie detector. Better yet, take my prints. They’re right here.” He shoves his hand in my face. I flinch. Is he going to hit me? “Better yet, check this.” He reaches into his notebook and pulls out the card from the first day of Forensics Squad.
He takes out the magnifying glass from the kit. The card clearly says AC on the back. And on the front … a loop-and-ridge pattern clearly different from the other one. Anoop’s print is nothing like the one we’ve been searching for. It doesn’t match Anoop’s, it doesn’t match Jacques Langman’s, it doesn’t match anyone’s. It doesn’t make any sense. How could the same fingerprint end up on the wallet of Toby Weingarten and the window of Guy Langman? There’s no link. None whatsoever. Unless …
“Anoop,” I say. “I’m so sorry.” I really am so sorry. What was I thinking? Stupid Maureen Fields was messing with my head. I keep babbling. “I’m so, so sorry,” I say. “Sorry we doubted you. I’m also sorry I told Maureen your ‘if I had to make out with a man’ choice is Derek Jeter. And now I’ve told the entire room. Jeter is sort of handsome, I’ll give you that.”
“Guy,” Anoop says, his face darkening and his fists curling up. Maybe he really is going to hit me? “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I like Jeter too,” Raquel says. “But Anoop is cuter.” Ewwww. But hey, actually that was nice of you, Raquel. Divert Anoop with some praise. Save me from getting punched.
“Anoop,” I say, pointing to the cards from the first day of Forensics Squad that spilled out of his notebook. “Pass me the one labeled ‘HD.’ ” He relaxes his fist enough to pick up the card. He still sort of looks like he wants to kill me, but he passes it my way.
“The magnifying glass, please.” He hands it over. “Just as I thought,” I say, checking out the fingerprint of one Hairston Danforth III. “Some very unusual double-loop whorls.”
Anoop retrieves the exemplar from our previous efforts—the print that was on both the wallet of Toby Weingarten and my wall. I hand him Hairston’s card. I don’t have to compare the two. I know that they are a match.
“Holy crap,” Anoop says, which just about sums it up. He holds the magnifying glass up to Hairston’s print. Then back and forth, comparing it to our exemplar. “It’s a perfect match. Hairston Danforth killed Toby Weingarten.”
At this Maureen, TK, and I laugh. “Sorry,” Maureen says. “It’s really not funny. But Toby wasn’t murdered. It was suicide.”
“Hilarious?” Anoop says.
“I know,” TK says. “It really isn’t funny. It’s just that Maureen set this thing up to get you here. Hairston is a thief, but he’s not a murderer.”
“You really thought I stole your freaking coins after everything we’ve been through, Guy Langman?” Anoop says. “I really ought to kick your ass.”
“But I think you have other plans,” I say, looking over at Raquel and winking.
“Hells to the yeah,” he says. “I’m going over to Hairston Danforth’s house and demanding your coins back. And demanding that he tell us how he even knew about them. And how his prints ended up on Toby’s wallet. Because I am a good friend even to those who don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t deserve it, Noopie,” I say, feeling like I really don’t. “But I can answer at least some of that. I never tell anyone about those coins, but I was talking to Hairston one day … I was feeli
ng sad or weird or whatever. I just kept talking. Accidentally blurted it out. I didn’t really believe that he was a klepto.”
“Totally is,” TK says.
“Yeah,” I say. “And he actually mentioned that he had some North Berry Ridge friends. He probably knew Toby. Probably tried to steal his wallet.”
“Yup,” Maureen says. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Is this posse ready to roll?” Anoop says. “I’m ready to kick some ass. We could all go over there with you. Blow this bitch up in a commando-style Forensics Squad smackdown.”
“I could rig up some climbing ropes and we could rappel down the side of his house, then kick in the windows with our feet, SWAT-team style,” TK says.
“That sounds totally awesome,” I say, because it does. “But I’m not entirely sure it’s necessary. I’m just going to go over there. No fisticuffs. We’ll have a talk. We’ll figure things out.” Did I say “fisticuffs”?
“You’re a bigger man than I, Guy Langman,” Anoop says.
“That’s what your mother says,” I say. We laugh. Ah, mother jokes. Life, it seems, is getting normal again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Here’s the plan: I show up at Hairston’s house with a paper bag. He’ll say, “Oh, is that my vintage Playboy in there?” And I’ll say, “No, you will find that this bag does not contain any Playboys.” And he’ll say, “Oh, what does it contain?” And I’ll say, “Look closely and you will find that it contains … my fist!” And then my hand smashes through the empty paper bag and hammers him in the nose. Blood everywhere. Ha-ha, yeah! Take that, Hairston, you thieving multi-use hand tool! That’s what you get for breaking into my house and stealing my treasure!
Okay, wait, I promised no fisticuffs. And I’m not really the fisticuffs type, anyway. I’m just going to go over there and talk to him, man-to-man. I know Dad always wanted me to be the fisticuffs type, but it’s starting to sink in that not everything he said was brilliant. Not every action he did was perfect. As it says in the Bible, “All dudes fuck up sometimes. Get over it.” (Okay, I only ever skimmed the Bible.) But I feel like Dad would be proud that I’m handling this on my own, with dignity and firm honor. I’ll present Hairston with some solid evidence and there’s no way he can deny it. And if he tries, well, I’m not totally ruling out punching him in the balls.