by Juliet Bell
“How marvelous,” he said. “Young Ella to the rescue!”
I didn’t see that sarcasm was necessary here.
“You share your grandmother’s lack of faith in the Albuquerque Police Department, I take it?” I nodded. “So do I, I’m afraid.”
Then Abercrombie peered at me closely, as though I were some kind of specimen. His goatee seemed to quiver. He looked a little like a goat, in fact.
“And tell me, Ella,” he bleated, “what is your theory, currently?”
“Theory?”
“Yes. Who do you suppose would take the trouble to break in to your grandmother’s library to steal a rare, valuable edition of a work of astronomy?”
“Well …” I wasn’t expecting this question. I wasn’t in the mood to chitchat with Abercrombie about what I supposed.
“A precocious adolescent from the nearby Juvenile Facility? Who has long wanted to read Kepler’s posthumous masterpiece?”
The thought of those trapped teenagers had crossed my mind, but he was right, it did seem far-fetched.
“Or perhaps a little magpie flew into the Library, drawn by the glitter of the genuine gold leaf on the pages?”
I swear, he winked at me.
“Who would even know enough about this book to steal it?”
I shrugged. He was making me nervous, the way he was watching me. “Well, it seems like …”
I hesitated. He nodded, with that (expletive deleted) smile on his face.
“Ye-e-e-s?” he pressed. “It seems like … ?”
It seemed like Abercrombie Books was more of a pain than ever. It seemed like he was messing with me to throw me off the scent. I needed Lou in there—he might not have been a bloodhound, but he had a better nose than I did.
“It seems like … It probably wasn’t a stranger,” I said finally.
“That’s right!” Abercrombie clapped, like a teacher trying to lead me to the right answer. “But what, Ella,” he went on—and I started, for the first time ever, to wish those high school boys would show up, to spare me more of this conversation—“would someone even plan to do with this book, once they had it?”
This at least seemed obvious. “Sell it.”
“Ah, but you see”—Abercrombie Books was now exceptionally pleased with himself—“a Morris Kepler, a Morris edition of the famous Somnium, or Dream, though one of the most sought-after volumes among bibliophiles, would be”—he looked at me pointedly—“impossible to sell out in the world. Each of the extraordinarily few extant copies is accounted for. Which, paradoxically, makes a stolen volume at once invaluable—and worthless.”
I folded my arms.
“But I fear that whoever ran off with Kepler’s Dream might not be aware of that. Which means they may be in for a terrible shock.” He gave a hearty, fake chuckle, as if that idea was hilarious. “Here, Ella,” he continued in a hushed tone. “Let me show you something I discovered earlier, may I?”
And he ushered us both to the end of the room, where the books were deep in shadow. He was gesturing at something. At first I thought it was those glass shelves I hadn’t looked at for a while, the ones with the medals, the fishing flies and the photos. The silvered man and his wife, when they were younger.
Then I realized Mr. Books was pointing at the fireplace.
“Isn’t that surprising?”
All I saw was ashes. What was so surprising about that? It was a fireplace. I hated him thinking he was so smart, though, so I stared for a minute—and suddenly my brain caught up with me. Ashes. Who had been burning a fire in there?
“Your grandmother doesn’t often visit the Library in the evening, does she?” Abercrombie knew she didn’t. “I wonder who else might have come into the Library and lit a fire.”
He bugged his eyes out dramatically, and I couldn’t tell if he thought I had. I had built a fire only once in my life: the night the book disappeared, when Rosie and I were in Miguel’s cabin trying to get warm. But there was no way Abercrombie could know about that.
“I’ll tell you what I have noticed, Ella,” he continued in a confiding tone, like suddenly I was his best friend. “I’ve noticed that Miguel Aguilar makes most of the fires around this place. Have you noticed that? He’s very skilled at it.”
I glared at him, my arms still folded. I knew what Abercrombie was suggesting—that Rosie’s dad had something to do with taking the Dream—and like Rosie, I knew it was ridiculous. But we were going to have to find a way to prove something different.
There was a rustle outside.
Abercrombie raised his eyebrows. “It’s one of the zombies,” he stage whispered. Really, the guy should have been in the theater, not in books.
It was the short one who came inside, and though he had yet to make eye contact with me that summer, for once I was really glad to see his Texty self. Plus, for the first time ever he seemed wide awake and like he had something on his mind.
“Top of the morning to you, Jason!” Abercrombie’s nephew rolled his bleary eyes as he swung his backpack off his shoulder. “What brings you in so early this morning? Shouldn’t you be—”
“That (expletive deleted),” Texty interrupted. He jerked his head backward, like a peacock, at some invisible figure behind him. “That should be his name, Jack (expletive deleted), not Jackson.”
“Jason—please. The child!” Abecrombie chided. Child! That again. What was I, in elementary school still? Besides, I was used to expletives. I guess Abercrombie didn’t know my dad.
For the first time in history, Jason looked at me. He shrugged. “So-rry,” he said, with as much sincerity as a kid who’s been caught eating candy. “Listen, I’ve got to talk to you, Uncle C. Something super-important.”
“Well, carry on, I’m just here taking note of a few catalog items …”
“Yeah, but it shouldn’t be in front of the child.” He imitated his uncle’s drawl, and I had a minute of wanting to sic Lou on Jason, to nip his busy little thumbs.
The two of them traded looks for a moment, goaty uncle to texty teenager, and then decided to go off to take a walk, leaving me there on my own.
I didn’t mind that. It was the first time I had been in the Librerery by myself, and it was a peaceful place. My grandmother’s church of books.
I went over to the shelves that had always interested me the most and found the photographs of my grandfather. A man who had known the stars. The real stars in the sky, but also the stars I used to worship, the way some kids do celebrities: Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins. I stared at his silvered face and wished it could speak to me.
“Ah, Ella. Here you are.” The silvery lady from one of those frames, now older, appeared in the room. I was worried I might get in trouble for being in there alone, without any white gloves on, but my grandmother seemed distracted.
“I am going off for a hair appointment today. I may as well look my best, today of all days,” she said, the last part under her breath. “And after that I had thought of lunching at Chez Albertine, to cheer myself up.” She looked like she needed cheering. “Would you care to come along?”
I guess I must have had a long face, as Mom used to call it. (“Ella, sweetie, don’t give me one of your long faces. It makes you look too much like Lou.”) “Perhaps you don’t care for the idea,” my grandmother said. She tried to sound light, but her eyes were disappointed.
“Well,” I said, fumbling around for an excuse, “I was planning to hang out with—that is, talk with …” I doubted hang out was on the slang menu I was supposed to use.
“Your friend who chews gum?” She meant Rosie, of course. “Would you like to ask her to join us?”
Now, I may have a pretty good imagination—Ms. Nelson always told me I did when we did creative writing—but I couldn’t picture Rosie and me and my grandmother all eating frogs’ legs together. Or snails. Or even just steak and fries.
Luckily, the GM seemed to have the same thought. We looked at each other without saying anything, and I shivered. Ther
e it was: a family tie, after all. I knew what my grandmother was thinking, and she knew what I was thinking, and we didn’t actually have to spell it out for each other in words at all.
“Or perhaps you and she would rather stay together and have lunch here,” the GM said in as close to a nice voice as I’d heard her use with anyone other than Hildy. “I’m sure there must be some sandwich ingredients you could forage for in the pantry.”
I nodded gratefully. “That would be great, Grandmother. Thanks.”
“All right. Come out with me now, so I can lock up. Even if it is an instance of shutting the barn door once the horse has gone.” She gazed back over her shoulder as we left. “I am glad you were looking at the photographs of Edward,” she said. “This is an important day to remember him, Ella. Every day is, of course, but—today in particular.”
“Why?”
“July seventh,” she said, “is the day he died.”
I couldn’t think of the right response to that news, so I just stayed quiet. No wonder she was so sad, though. In a minute, she was climbing slowly into her giant white car, and with a tired wave, she drove away.
Leaving me to find my friend who chewed gum.
The person who materialized out of the dust, like someone in a sci-fi movie, wasn’t Rosie, though. It was Tweedledum (unless it was Tweedledee). Jackson, the tall, thin one, who was an (expletive), according to Abercrombie’s nephew. He was wandering over from the direction of the back tangle, his head full of whatever fills a high-schooler’s head.
He reached instinctively for a few sunflower seeds in his pocket and popped them into his mouth. “Hey,” he mumbled through the shells, which was maybe the first word he had ever spoken to me directly.
“Hey,” I replied. “What’s up?”
Then I realized that this was one of my suspects and I really ought to interrogate him, as a good detective would.
This was how it went:
Me: So, um, how’s it going, working for my grandmother?
(Trying to put the suspect at ease, as if it is easy to put a meanager at ease.)
Him: It’s OK.
(No immediate sign of guilt, just a general spaciness.)
Me: She’s pretty upset about that Kepler book being taken.
Him: I know, yeah.
Me: It was a pretty cool book. All about life on the moon.
Him: Uh-huh. (Slight shiftiness here, like the look Lou has when there’s a plate of salami on the kitchen counter and you’ re pretty sure the stack has lost a few slices.)
Me: It’s not like whoever took it is going to be able to sell it.
Him: I know, I know. Mr. Abercrombie already explained all that to us.
Me: Oh. (So much for the investigator’s effort to act knowledgeable.)
Him: Which is why I think Jason should have just chilled about the whole thing. Chill out, dude! (For some reason, this random exclamation made the suspect laugh.) He should have figured that out.
Me: There he is now. He’s not looking too chilled.
(Spotting Suspect No. 2 coming up the path, looking pretty grumpy.)
Him: No kidding.
This interview didn’t seem to be getting us very far. I guess I couldn’t cross the middle-school/teenager divide after all. Tweedledee (or was it Tweedledum?)—Jason, in the distance—didn’t seem eager to be part of our party, and I wasn’t about to push my luck with him right now. I figured I had just better find Rosie. I gave the suspect a parting compliment, though, in case it softened him up.
Me: I like your T-shirt. (It was the one that said POLARIS: FIND YOUR TRUE NORTH.)
Him: Thanks. (For a second as though noticing me as an actual human being.) Everyone has to find theirs, you know.
Me (with no idea what this meant, but not wanting to seem like an idiot): Yeah. Definitely!
Him: Later.
Me: OK.
And I wandered off to the back tangle to look for Rosie, leaving the tall boy to gaze at the trees and chew his sunflower seeds, sharing the shells with the grateful peacocks.
It wasn’t the best morning’s work I’ve ever done. Let’s just say I’ve had spelling tests that went better. I wasn’t ready, as Encyclopedia Brown would have been by then, to close my eyes for two minutes and come up with the story of who took the Morris Kepler, and where the book was now, and why. There were plenty of mysteries: the ashes in the fireplace, the Abercrombie Books angle, the unknown argument between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. My brain hurt trying to figure it all out.
I had gone rootling around in the bushes back behind my bedroom, trying to figure out where Rosie had gotten to, when I heard a voice calling me from somewhere above.
“Helloooooo, Ella!”
“Rosie?”
“Hellooooooooo.”
It really seemed like her voice was coming from above my head. What was she, an angel all of a sudden?
“Where are you?” I craned my head back to gaze up into the cottonwood trees. All I could see were the long, bright green tail feathers of some of the birds.
Suddenly I saw a face. A laughing face. Near the edge of the roof.
“Up here!”
She gave a little wave.
“How did you get up there?”
“Shhhhh! I’ll show you.” And she stood up and walked along the edge of the flat adobe surface. She gestured for me to follow her, so I did, along the ground, until she led me around to a place in the back where one of the smaller trees, not a cottonwood but some smaller, thicker-limbed tree, grew up close to the side of the house. “You just climb up there,” she said, pointing. “And then onto the roof from that branch.”
She made it sound so easy. It was a good climbing tree, though. It had a nice rough bark that made it easier to hold on. I swung up onto a low branch, and then monkeylike made my way through the branches, over, and on up.
“Hi!” Rosie said to me when I landed.
“Hi!” We high-fived.
I couldn’t believe I’d been at my grandmother’s this long and hadn’t figured out that you could get onto the roof. I would have to include that on the house plan I had started drawing. It was so cool up there: you could see the whole shape of the land and buildings around the House of Mud, the freeways not far off, and the Sandia Mountains in the distance. It was like being able to see ahead into your future—you got a sense of the whole master plan. There were a few peacocks nearby who weren’t thrilled to be sharing the space with us, but they didn’t make a racket about it. No more than usual, anyway.
“This is excellent,” I said.
“Yeah,” said my business partner. “It makes a great place to spy from.” She looked at me. “So—any clues on the Killer Dolphin?”
We had decided it might be a good idea to come up with a code name for the stolen book, and she had come up with Killer Dolphin. Same initials.
“Nada,” I reported. “Just some little spat between the two boys and a weird talk with Jackson. How about you?”
So then Rosie told me what she had heard.
She had staked herself out there, up on the roof, for much of the morning. Nothing much was happening, but she said she wanted to figure out where the thief might have gone when he or she left the Library. It was easier to get a sense of that with the aerial view.
I was impressed. There I had been, trying to get someone to confess, with zero results. Rosie was the one making lofty discoveries while I had been busy at ground level. I guess that was what you’d expect from a soccer player, keeping my feet on the ground.
After a while, she heard something. It sounded like Abercrombie, so she ducked down to be out of his sight line. He was pacing around the back of the property, talking with someone in a low voice. He must have figured they wouldn’t be seen or overheard.
He hadn’t taken into consideration the possibility of someone on the roof.
The problem with the exchange was that although Rosie could hear Abercrombie pretty clearly, the other one was a mumbler.
&nb
sp; “Jason!” I told her. “It was Jason he was talking to. His nephew.” I began to see what was irritating about mumblers: how could you eavesdrop on people if they didn’t enunciate properly?
“Yeah, Jason. I thought so. So Abercrombie begins by saying, ‘Now what did you need to talk to me about?’” Rosie did a pretty good Abercrombie imitation: she had his “I’m so important” tone down just right. She made her face kind of snooty as she spoke his lines. She’d probably end up in Drama Club one day. “And the answer was mumble mumble mumble. ‘Good Lord, Jason, what do you mean? You’re not suggesting—’ Then the boy, Jason, mumbled some more. Abercrombie started huffing. ‘Are you really suggesting that you would—’ More mumbling. ‘Well, I think Jackson was quite right to say that. After all, Mrs. Von Stern has been very generous. And you have no idea—’ Then Jason must have started to get impatient, because his voice finally picked up, and I definitely heard him say, ‘… ripped you off, remember? At least that’s what you told me,’ and then his uncle goes, but in a lower voice, ‘Yes, that’s true, but it was long ago, and besides that was Edward, not Violet. In any case, please leave that worry to me. I have been working on another—’”
Rosie broke off.
“What?” I asked. “What? Working on another what?”
Her eyes got wide with frustration. “I don’t know! Because then I heard some kind of weird creaky sound, like something opening, and then I heard Jason, crystal clear all of a sudden, SWEAR super-loudly—”
“That’s meanagers for you.”
“I know, and Abercrombie says, ‘For heaven’s sake, what is it?’ and then Jason goes into some very quick mumble, then Abercrombie goes, ‘I didn’t think you were serious!’ and at that point …”
At that point, Rosie had decided she had to try to see for herself what was happening, so she tried to inch closer to the edge of the roof to take a look. As she did that, though, a peacock standing not far from her started making one of those loud crying sounds, which startled her, and her foot slipped, sending a small pile of dead leaves and guano—which is bird poop, if you haven’t read enough Tintin lately to know—over the edge of the roof.