BINGO!
He didn’t want to skate with Belle. He wanted to skate with Jordan. And if she didn’t do well this weekend, she might go back to skating pairs with him! Maybe he had someone else write the cipher, or he could’ve written with his left hand to hide his handwriting!
Douglas handed me my notebook and put his arm around me as we posed for a picture.
“Thank you,” Shelby said as she approached Douglas. She grabbed his hands in hers. “You have no idea how much Julian admires you. He’s very shy when he meets his heroes. He burst into tears after meeting David Pelletier.”
I nodded like I had any idea who Shelby was talking about.
Shelby kept holding his hands, but Douglas took a step back. She turned his hands over and put them to her chin. “Thank you for being such an inspiration.”
Yeah, she was laying it on pretty thick, but she was getting a good look at his hands, which were as clean as could be.
Shelby dropped his hands and approached Aisha, who was over to the side stretching. Huh. Aisha never seemed to hang out with any of the other skaters. When they took breaks, Douglas, Belle, and Jordan would talk or show each other things on their phones, but Aisha was always by herself.
Ugh, yet another mark in the column against her.
“Aisha, Julian is a huge fan. Would you—”
Sergi came skating over, glaring at Shelby and me. What did this guy have against us? He would have the most motivation of messing with Jordan. If Jordan failed, one of his skaters would have a better chance of winning, he might even get Jordan back, and it would be revenge against his ex.
Maybe it was Sergi!
“Aisha, you do program again now!” he barked.
“Sorry,” Aisha said to us before hitting the rink.
As Belle came off the ice, Shelby approached her. “Belle, Julian is a huge fan. Would you be willing to sign his autograph book?”
Douglas grimaced. I didn’t blame him. I was apparently a huge fan of everybody. Except, at that moment, Shelby.
“Of course,” Belle said with a warm smile. “I’m always happy to take time with my fans.”
Jordan passed by us on the rink as she did this crazy stuff with her feet. Douglas’s eyes were glued to her. He really seemed to focus on Jordan. Although I had to admit, she was pretty impressive . . . when she stayed on her feet.
“Are you also going to have Jordan sign your book?” Belle asked. But before I could even reply, she added, “Because it would be best to keep her on your good side.”
“Belle,” Douglas cautioned. “We don’t have proof.”
Shelby raised her eyebrows. “Proof of what?”
Belle leaned in. “Just don’t leave your skates alone around her. Aisha made the mistake of using the bathroom before her short program at nationals, and then her shoelace broke right before she took to the ice.”
“Shoelaces break,” Douglas reasoned.
“But they were new,” Belle replied with a smirk.
I couldn’t look at Shelby. If what Belle said was true, Aisha now had the biggest motive to throw Jordan off her game.
“Do you want me to sign this to Julian?” Belle asked as she took the notebook from me.
“Belle.” Mrs. Booth came over, a stern look on her face. “After the disastrous run-through of twenty minutes ago, you need to be practicing your axel, not goofing around. Look at Jordan, she’s focused.”
Everybody’s attention went to Jordan as she took a huge leap in the air and then fell down.
“Yes, we all want to be just like Jordan,” Belle replied with a snort.
“Back to work,” Mrs. Booth commanded, which wiped the smile off Belle’s face. Then Mrs. Booth looked at Shelby and me. She pulled at her light blue down vest, which matched with her earmuffs, gloves, and Belle’s current skating outfit. “If I haven’t made myself clear, I am extremely displeased there’s another pairs team practicing here. I don’t trust either of you.”
Well, if I was being honest I didn’t trust her, either. So there.
“Mom,” Belle said in a tiny voice. “They’re fine.”
“They are not!” Mrs. Booth pointed at us. “They’re a distraction.”
Belle tried to speak over her loud mother. “You saw last night that they are at a different level.”
Saw last night? What did that mean? Shelby and I weren’t skating here last night.
I felt Shelby’s elbow lightly jab me in the ribs.
No way. Mrs. Booth actually looked us up online!
Okay, she was definitely on our list of suspects.
“But I couldn’t find any videos of you skating,” Mrs. Booth remarked.
Uh-oh.
Shelby didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, my parents have everything on video. And I mean everything. Would you like me to bring in their collection? It is rather large.” What was Shelby doing? We didn’t have any videos of us! At least that I knew of. “Of course, you’d have to listen to the constant blabbering from my parents during our routines. Unfortunately, they don’t understand the nuances of skating. They can’t differentiate between the jumps, so their commentary is quite pedestrian.”
Mrs. Booth looked horrified that a parent didn’t know every element of a figure skating program. She decided to turn to me. “You’re only in the juvenile division?”
I was pretty sure we weren’t even that high up, but it was what Shelby had written in those fake articles.
“That’s right, Mrs. Booth,” I replied. Then I decided to turn the tables and start asking her some questions. “Did you ever skate?”
Maybe that’s what was going on. She was forcing her daughter to live out her own dreams and was going to take the competition down one by one. It didn’t matter that Jordan didn’t skate in pairs. Mrs. Booth wanted nobody skating with them.
It could be Mrs. Booth!
(So many suspects, so little time.)
Mrs. Booth ignored my question. “But you’re what, six and ten?”
“Nine and eleven,” Shelby corrected her.
“How are you not at the novice level? Belle has been skating since she was two.”
Two? How was that even possible?
“Mom, none of this is going to help me win,” Belle stated.
“Don’t you mean us?” Douglas added. “Now come on, we’ve got to work on our jumps.”
“Douglas is right. We need to focus on winning,” Mrs. Booth replied. “Back to work, Belle!”
Belle skated to the center of the rink with Douglas, hand in hand.
Mrs. Booth began climbing the benches with her video camera. Interesting that she was accusing us of spying, when she could easily record Jordan or Aisha and leak the footage to their competition. Yeah, their main rivals were each other, but still.
“Are all athletes this dramatic?” Shelby asked.
“None that I’ve played with.” Thankfully.
And if the last two days had shown me anything, it was that not only were figure skaters dramatic, they all appeared to be guilty.
“Watson!” Shelby snapped her fingers at me. “Are you paying attention?”
I nodded, but could hardly keep my eyes open. I’d been texting with my dad about meeting up later to do our Brooklyn Bridge walk. But first Shelby and I needed to crack this code.
We were in her bedroom after school with the ciphers spread on the floor. It seemed an impossible task for people fully rested. I’d been up for nearly twelve hours.
And we were going to have to do the same thing all over again tomorrow.
Being a figure skater was no joke.
Sir Arthur, Shelby’s English bulldog, rested his chin on my leg, his eyes closed. I know exactly how you feel, buddy.
Shelby, however, had as much energy as ever. Anybody want to guess why?
She licked her fingers after eating her twelfth candy bar of the day. Yep, TWELFTH.
So much for her parents’ ban. I think she was eating more sugar now, if that was even humanly possible.
Shelby got down to business. “Substitution ciphers have certain rules that have to be followed in order for someone to be able to understand them. Each of these figures represents a letter. During lunch, I broke it down to see any patterns.”
I looked at the drawings and felt hopeless. I had no idea how we were going to do this.
Shelby continued, “E is the most used letter in the English language. In the first cipher there was one character that appeared the most—four times. I tried to crack it using E, but couldn’t. I didn’t have enough data. However, with the most recent cipher and the subsequent reply, there was one character that had been used six times. So let’s assume this character is E,” she said, pointing to the stick figure that, if it was facing us, had its left leg lifted in the air with the right arm raised and the left one pointing down. “I’ll use dashes for the letters we don’t know yet.”
Shelby began writing in her notebook. Maybe we did have a chance to crack this thing after all. This was what she had.
Third cipher:
– – E – – – – – – – E
– EE – – – – – – –
Jordan’s response:
– E – E –
So nothing. We had nothing.
“Okay, we have a break with Jordan’s reply.” Shelby circled -E-E-. “This could be one of three words: sever, lever, or, most likely, never. So now we know which characters are N, R, and V. ”
Shelby began writing so fast, I could hardly keep up.
Third cipher:
– – E – – – – – R – E
NEE – – – – – – –
Jordan’s response:
NEVER
I felt deflated. That was it? We were never going to figure this out. NEVER. Or I guess I should say .
Shelby didn’t seem frustrated. She was practically giddy. “Let’s fill in the other ciphers now that we know E, N, R, and V.”
First cipher:
– – – – RE – – – N – – – – – – – – N – – – – –
Second cipher:
– – – RE – – – – ER
That’s it? This was going to take forever.
“Okay, as you can see the second word in the first cipher is blank-R-E. Let’s presume it’s the word are. In this particular cipher, there is a three-letter word that precedes the word are. So this person is saying blank are. The most common three-letter word is the, but this particular word doesn’t contain an E. After the, the most common three-letter words are: and, for, but, you—”
“YOU ARE!” I practically screamed.
Okay, I was getting into this. Maybe it wasn’t impossible.
“If that’s the case, we now have A, Y, O, and U.” Shelby’s head was down as she kept filling in letters.
First cipher:
YOU ARE –O–N – –O –A – – AN– –A– –
Second cipher:
YOURE A –O–ER
Third cipher:
A–E– – – –OR–E
NEE– –O – – O –
Jordan’s response:
NEVER
“And there is another three-letter word in that first cipher with the first two letters of A-N, so clearly that’s and. So we also have D. Which now means that in the last cipher the third and fourth lines are as follows.”
NEED –O – –O –
This person is telling Jordan that she needed . . . Jordan needed . . . “TO STOP!” It fit.
Shelby began filling in the blanks now that we had three more letters: S, T, and P.
First cipher:
YOU ARE –O–N– TO –A– – AND –A– –
Second cipher:
YOURE A –OSER
Third cipher:
A–E– –S –ORSE
NEED TO STOP
Jordan’s response:
NEVER
“Well,” Shelby said through clenched teeth. “We now know which character is the letter L.”
“We do?”
Shelby wrote down the phrase: You’re a loser.
Oh. Ouch.
If we were right, that was what the second cipher said.
No wonder Jordan was having problems. That was mean. I didn’t want to know what the others said now. Okay, I did, but, man. Rude.
Shelby took a step back from the cipher. “Well, the second word of the third cipher has to be is. With the letters I and L, we now have this.”
First cipher:
YOU ARE –OIN– TO –ALL AND –AIL
Second cipher:
YOURE A LOSER
Third cipher:
A–EL IS –ORSE
NEED TO STOP
Jordan’s response:
NEVER
We were almost there! I kept looking at the second line of the third cipher. Something is . . . a horse?
“Worse,” Shelby filled in, but there weren’t any more of the characters for W.
“What was worse?”
“Axel,” Shelby stated. “The double axel was the only jump Jordan missed last year in competition. It cost her first place at sectionals.”
“Okay, so the third cipher says Axel is worse, need to stop.” We already figured out Jordan’s never reply a while ago. Now we just needed to figure out what the first cipher said. What started this whole thing. The note that got into Jordan’s head. (Not like I could think of something worse than being called a loser.)
First cipher:
YOU ARE –OIN– TO –ALL AND –AIL
“You are . . . ,” I started.
“Simple grammar dictates that the next word will end in I-N-G, and the first and last character are the same. So it says you are going to . . .”
Yeah, but going to what? What did this person tell Jordan that she was going to do that would have her so rattled?
Shelby took out a brand new piece of paper and wrote out the alphabet, crossing off the letters we knew. I couldn’t believe it: we already had over a dozen letters.
Shelby studied the remaining letters. She sucked in a breath. She put her face down as she wrote something. “Watson, what’s the worst thing a figure skater could do during a competition?”
“Forget their routine?” I’d watched a bunch of performances since we got this case and there were so many elements. I still couldn’t tell a Salchow from a Lutz.
“No, something even worse.”
Shelby held up the piece of paper.
YOU ARE GOING TO FALL AND FAIL
“Morning!” Mom greeted me at the breakfast table. She had scrambled eggs in a pan on the stove.
“You’re up!” I’d been leaving before she’d been awake.
“I missed you more than I will miss the sleep,” she said before taking a sip of coffee.
“Thanks,” I said as I helped myself to some eggs and grabbed a banana. “And sorry.”
She arched her eyebrow. “Now what exactly do you have to be sorry about?”
I looked down at my food. “That I haven’t seen you.”
“John.” Mom pulled her chair closer to me. “You have nothing to apologize for. I’m happy your father is here to see you.”
“Really?” Then why did she always have to leave when he was around? Why couldn’t the three of us hang out? But for some reason I didn’t really want to know the answer to those questions so I kept quiet.
“Listen, the issues your father and I have are between him and me. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and that’s because of your father.” She rubbed my cheeks with her thumb. “So, I hear you’re having dinner at the Holmeses’ tonight. I told your father to bring dessert to get on Shelby’s good side.”
“When did you talk to Dad?” I asked.
“We text all the time, John. I helped him plan this visit. We may not be together anymore, but we’ve got a very special boy to take care of. Although I hear his skating skills could use some work.” She winked at me.
“Yeah, this case.�
� I glanced at the clock. I had to be downstairs in two minutes.
“Go, go!” Mom said as she kissed me on the forehead. “Good luck today, Mr. Detective. And try to stay on your feet.”
As we got out of the subway and headed west to Chelsea Piers, Shelby stopped walking. “I have a question for you.”
“You have a question for me?” Usually Shelby just spouted information and told me what to look for. This was a totally welcomed change.
“Yes, didn’t I just say that?” she snapped. “You seem to consider yourself an athlete.”
And the compliments keep coming . . .
“So explain to me how someone can become so unraveled by a few messages. Aren’t athletes supposed to be tough both physically and mentally?”
How could I explain to Shelby that most people didn’t have impenetrable fortresses around their mind like she did? They cared what people thought. At least, I did. And so did everybody else I knew.
“Have you ever had a bully?” I asked.
And that was what this person was, right?
A bully.
Someone who said horrible things to a person to make themselves feel better. Someone who preyed on the vulnerable.
While I’d personally witnessed the snickers Shelby would sometimes get at school, it never seemed to get under her skin.
Shelby shook her head. “Nobody has had the nerve.”
Fair point. Although . . . Shelby’s abrupt behavior and sometimes taunting those not as smart as her (so, you know, everybody) could be considered bullying. It wasn’t something I thought she did on purpose to hurt feelings, but still . . .
“See, I had a bully back in Maryland. When this guy, Donnie, arrived at the post, I did what I always did when a new person moved in: offered to show them around. It was how I wanted to be welcomed to a new post. Like my grandma always reminded me, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Yeah, but Donnie apparently never had that lesson, as he was plain old mean. He called me names like ‘loser’ and ‘short stack’ since I hadn’t had my growth spurt yet.”
“There are many things one cannot be held accountable for, and your height is one of them,” Shelby said with a shake of her head. “No shame in being on the shorter side. It especially helps with maneuvering around tight spaces.”
The Great Shelby Holmes and the Coldest Case Page 7