“Don’t look at me,” Leigh Ann says from the safety of her tabletop. “I hate rats.”
“We have to find this thing before anybody else comes in here,” says Mr. Eliot.
From stage left enters our beloved principal, Sister Bernadette, probably wondering why Mr. Eliot’s students are screaming.
Unfortunately, I don’t notice her unscripted entrance, and that, of course, is the moment I choose to shout, “It’s okay, I found him!” and run to downstage center—holding Humphrey high so everyone can see him.
More screaming. Much more screaming.
Sister Bernadette raises her hand for silence and clears her throat. “Miss St. Pierre!”
My mouth is as dry as the Sahara and my tongue suddenly feels like a fat slab of bologna as I ever-so-casually slip poor Humphrey into my pocket. “Y-yes, Sister?”
“Don’t you ‘yes, Sister’ me, young lady,” she glowers. “What did you just put in your pocket?”
“Well, it’s a, um, a … rat. But he’s tame! He’s a pet! He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
“A pet. Rat. Miss St. Pierre, let’s talk, shall we? My office!” She spins and starts to walk away.
“No!” says Livvy, stepping forward and standing next to me. “He’s mine. It’s my fault.”
Sister Bernadette stops and turns back to face us, her eyebrows raised.
“What are you doing?” I whisper at Livvy.
“Remember that broken nose?” she asks under her breath. “And all that other mean stuff I did to you? I owe you.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods. “It’s no big deal.”
“Okay,” I say, “but if you get into serious trouble, I’m going to tell her the truth.”
“Miss Klack?” Sister Bernadette says. “You were saying?”
“I said, he’s my rat,” says Livvy.
Sister Bernadette moves closer and closer to her, until her face is mere inches from Livvy’s. “Humph. We’ll see. Meet me in my office.” When Livvy is gone, she turns back to me. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Miss St. Pierre, but I have a feeling that I have not yet reached the bottom of this story.” She scowls at my pocket, where Humphrey is snacking on some sunflower seeds. “You have exactly five minutes to get that into a cage of some kind, or I will take care of it the way we usually deal with rodents around here. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Sister!”
With Margaret and Leigh Ann hot on my tail, I run up to the fourth floor and knock on the door of the biology lab, where Ms. Lonneman is enjoying the last few quiet minutes of her free period.
“Oh, thank God,” I say when she opens the door. “Ms.LonnemanyouhavetohelpmedoyouhaveacageIcanuseforafewhours?”
“Slow down, Sophie. All I got was something about a … cage.”
While trying to catch my breath, I take Humphrey from my pocket and hold him up. “Need a cage … for … the rest of the … day … for him.”
“He’s beautiful,” she says unexpectedly. She holds out her hands. “Let me see. What’s his name?”
“Humphrey,” I say, gently passing him over the desk to her.
“Rattus norvegicus,” she says, holding him right in front of her face. “About a year old, I’d guess. In college, I worked in the labs with hundreds just like him. Where did you get him?”
“That’s, um, kind of a long story,” I say. “I’m sort of taking care of him for a few days. But Sister Bernadette found out, and if I don’t get him in a cage in the next … two minutes …”
“I have just the thing,” says Ms. Lonneman, retrieving a small hamster cage from the storage room and setting it on her desk. “I don’t know if you realize this or not, but your friend Humphrey here is, or was, a lab rat. See, he has these two notches on his ear. Those are for identification.”
“What does that mean?” Leigh Ann asks as she cautiously leans in for a closer look. “They did experiments on him? That’s terrible.”
“It’s not always what you think,” says Ms. Lonneman. “Lots of them are used in psychology classes, to show how they learn, how they behave in certain—” The bell rings, cutting her off.
“Can we leave him here for now?” I ask. “So I can tell Sister B. that he’s, um, safe.”
“Sure, he can keep me company this afternoon,” she says. “Undoubtedly, he’ll be more attentive in class than most of my students.”
At lunch, Margaret and I take turns telling Becca the “Humphrey Goes to Dress Rehearsal” story, which has her falling out of her chair laughing.
“It’s not funny, Rebecca,” says Leigh Ann. “I think Sister Bernadette was serious. I hate to think what she would have done to poor Humphrey if we hadn’t found a cage.”
“Listen to you,” I say. “Suddenly he’s poor Humphrey. An hour ago he was just a rat. You hate rats.”
“That was before I found out he was an innocent victim.”
“Aren’t we all?” says Becca earnestly.
Livvy joins us at our table, smiling sheepishly.
“I got a week’s detention, but it doesn’t start until after vacation,” she tells us. “Sister B.’s not even calling my parents. I think she’s given up on trying to get in touch with them.”
Livvy’s parents travel almost constantly for business, and Livvy ends up spending a lot of time with friends and relatives around the city.
“I still can’t believe what you did for Sophie,” says Margaret admiringly. “That was so … brave.”
“Yeah, um, thanks,” I say. “It was pretty nice.”
Okay, maybe I’m not going to put Shakespeare out of business, but it was sincere.
And then something completely unexpected happens: Livvy Klack actually blushes. Of course, it’s nothing like the classic dunked-in-red-paint look I’m known for, but there is definitely a pinkish glow to her cheeks.
“It was no big deal,” she says. “You guys would have done it for me.”
Becca, who says pretty much everything that crosses her mind, regards the faces around the table and announces gloomily, “Well, it’s official. The world is coming to an end. I mean, if Leigh Ann worrying about a rat and these two becoming friends aren’t sure signs, I don’t know what is.” She shakes my hand. “Been nice knowing you, St. Pierre. See you on the other side.”
A star is born
When the school day ends—finally!—we stop by Ms. Lonneman’s room to bail out our incarcerated friend, Humphrey.
She has his jail cell on her desk, and is feeding him baby carrots when we walk into the lab.
“I was hoping you’d forgotten him,” she says. “I’m getting kind of attached.”
Leigh Ann is standing directly behind me, looking over my shoulder. “He is kind of cute,” she admits. “Do you think I could … hold him?”
Ms. Lonneman takes Humphrey from the cage and places him in Leigh Ann’s (trembling) hands.
Leigh Ann cradles him gently, her impossibly perfect face breaking into a huge grin. “I can feel his whiskers when he sniffs me. And his tiny little claws, holding on.”
I nudge Becca with my elbow. “I think you’re right. This is a sure sign of the apocalypse.”
Field Marshal Margaret musters the troops. “Okay, time to go, everyone. We have a … job to do.”
“Oh?” inquires Ms. Lonneman.
“Not a job, really,” says Margaret. “More like an assignment.”
“Thanks for taking care of Humphrey,” I say.
“Anytime,” Ms. Lonneman says with a wink. “And we won’t let Sister Bernadette know what we’re up to.”
Now that Leigh Ann has Humphrey, she won’t let him go. She stashes him in a zippered pocket for the frigid walk to Eighty-First Street. Because we couldn’t risk taking a full bottle of wine to school—a live rat is one thing, but the wine? Way too hard to explain to Sister Bernadette!—Margaret and I dropped it off with Shelley early in the morning.
The setting su
n is well hidden by thick gray clouds when we knock on the door at the house on Eighty-Second Street. Shelley gives the wine bottle to Margaret, who hands it off to Becca, to be hidden away in her backpack.
“Boy, I hope no one else saw that,” says Shelley, smiling. “I’ll end up in jail. Giving booze to a bunch of kids.”
“They’ll wonder what kind of a school you’re going to open, that’s for sure,” says Becca.
“Well, this is it. Wish us luck,” I say.
“Good luck, girls. And thank you for trying, even if you fail.”
“Oh, we won’t fail,” I say. “That word is not in the Red Blazer Girls’ vocabulary.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say stuff like that,” Becca scolds after Shelley closes the door. “You’re just tempting fate to stick it to you. Not to mention that you seem awful sure of yourself for somebody who ought to be sitting in detention right now.”
“Thanks for not mentioning that,” I say.
“Focus, you two,” Margaret orders. “Is everybody ready? Leigh Ann, are you sure you want to hold the rat?”
“His name is Humphrey, and yes, I’m sure.” She pats her coat pocket and smiles, satisfied that Humphrey is where he’s supposed to be.
“All right, then. Forward, march.”
After making sure that there are no other customers inside, we file into GW Antiques and Curiosities, where we are met by Lindsay.
She acts as if she’s happy to see us, but I see right through her fake smile: she’s annoyed. “Girls! It’s been so long. You know, I figured with Christmas and everything going on, you just … gave up on … well, you know.”
“Oh no,” says Margaret, wandering around the shop and pretending to be interested in a heavy glass paperweight. “We’ve been quite busy, actually. We got to know Shelley—the woman who worked for Mr. Dedmann, remember? Did you realize that she graduated from our school? Small world, isn’t it?”
“Oh. Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Yeah, and she let us do a lot of looking around over there at the house,” I say. “You won’t believe the things we found—”
“Or what we learned about Mr. Dedmann,” Margaret says. She pauses before sticking the knife in. “Did you know that he was a spy?”
Lindsay does her best to hide her surprise/shock/horror/anger/disbelief, but she’s no Meryl Streep; I swear you can see steam coming out of her ears.
And then Becca sticks in the second knife.
From her backpack, she takes out the bottle of wine. “Check this out,” she says. “From 1949! There’s a whole bunch of these. You know, I thought they’d be spoiled by now, but then Sophie’s dad told us that wine is actually better when it’s old. Who knew?”
“We were kind of hoping you could tell us how much it’s worth,” Margaret says.
Lindsay is dumbfounded, and can’t take her eyes off the bottle. “B-but that’s impossible. He said you needed … C-can I show that to … someone?” she asks.
“Mr. Klinger? Sure, as long as he’s willing to come here. I’m not letting this baby out of my hands,” says Becca.
Lindsay takes out her cell phone and retreats into the back room, where we hear snippets of her sniping at him.
“How should I know if it’s real? Just get over here. Now!” she hisses.
Through the front windows, I watch as Marcus Klinger exits his shop, locks the front door, and scurries, ratlike, across the street—carrying, as we had hoped, Mr. Dedmann’s walking stick. He barges through the door to Winterbottom’s shop, freezing when his eyes land on the bottle in Becca’s hands.
“Where did you get that?” he snarls. “Let me see it.”
Becca holds it out as if she’s going to hand it to him, but then reconsiders and quickly pulls it back, hiding it under her coat.
“How do we know we can trust you?” Margaret asks. “Before we let you see the bottle, we need some collateral. Something like … that.” She points at the walking stick, gripped so tightly by Klinger that the knuckles of his right hand are white.
“Ha! Just as I thought,” he says. “It’s a trick. Well, I’m onto you girls. What did you do, buy an empty bottle at a wine shop?”
Margaret ignores him and removes an envelope from her bag. “Oh, I almost forgot. Something else we found.” She holds it so that Klinger can see the handwriting on the outside. Rebecca, master forger, has copied the handwriting perfectly. It reads:
Last Will and Testament of C. Dedmann
Garrison Applewood, Esq.
Klinger suddenly looks as if somebody has drained all the blood from his body. He tries to speak, but his lips and tongue seem incapable of movement.
I take advantage of his temporary paralysis. “You know, I’m a book person, just like you, Mr. Klinger. There’s nothing like a great read. And, well, let me tell you, this was some interesting reading. Did you know that Mr. Dedmann wrote a new will? Of course, you must have; you two were so close. Strange, though, that he decided to leave everything to Shelley.”
“Well, not so strange,” says Margaret. “She is his great-granddaughter, you know.”
I swear that if I had so much as exhaled in their general direction, it would have knocked Klinger and Lindsay to the ground.
Enter Gordon Winterbottom, stage right.
“What, in the name of St. Francis, is going on here?” he growls, storming out of his office. At the sight of four red-blazered girls, he stops and points a crooked finger directly at me. “Y-you! What are you doing here? You and your … friends are not welcome here. After what you did to me, you’re lucky I’m not calling the police.”
He looks so furious that I seriously start to doubt Margaret’s plan. There is no way he is going to help us.
“It’s okay, Gordon,” says Klinger, recovering from the initial shock and trying to play it cool. “They aren’t after you. They’re attempting to pull a fast one on me this time. But it’s not going to work.”
Gordon moves right next to Klinger, just as Margaret had instructed, giving me hope that he hasn’t abandoned us for a twisted revenge plot of his own.
“Whatever you do,” he says to Klinger, “do not trust them. Don’t let them out of your sight for a second. I learned that the hard way. They’re devious, evil little girls. Bad seeds, every one.”
Okay, Mr. W., we get the point. You’re laying it on a little thick. Seriously? Evil?
“What’s this all about?” Gordon asks.
“This,” says Becca, juggling the wine bottle from hand to hand in higher and higher arcs.
“Stop that this instant, you idiot!” Klinger cries. “If that really is a 1949 Château Latour, it’s worth thousands of dollars.”
“What, this bottle?” Becca asks, swinging it over her head and then letting it fly—directly at Marcus Klinger!
It was supposed to be a nice, gentle toss, but Becca has improvised a little, launching the first French wine-satellite into orbit. As it floats high above his head, Marcus Klinger reaches up for it, moving faster than he’s probably moved in years. Lindsay wails. Gordon gasps. And Klinger … catches it, fumbles with it for a second, and then finally latches on to it, mere inches before it hits the hardwood floor.
Meanwhile, Gordon reaches down and picks up the walking stick that Klinger has dropped in his frenzy to save the wine (and his own head), and Leigh Ann, pretending to tie her shoe, suddenly screams, “RAT!” loud enough to rattle the windowpanes. Humphrey scuttles across Lindsay’s feet, instantly transforming her into a sobbing, foot-stomping banshee.
“What?” Gordon cries. “Where is it?”
“I think it went thataway!” screams Leigh Ann. It’s not hard to believe she’s terrified; a few hours ago, she was terrified of rats. Now, though, it’s just darn good acting.
As good as she is, however, there is one performer in this little drama who is even more deserving of the Best Performance Award. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Mr. Gordon Winterbottom: he runs in the direction Leigh Ann pointe
d, swinging the stick back and forth like a maniac. Then we watch in wonder as he drops to the floor, reaching under an old desk and swearing like a sailor.
“I’ll get you, you little—”
With Humphrey safely tucked away in my coat pocket, Gordon, still on his hands and knees, continues the hunt for his nemesis behind an overstuffed chair in the back corner of the shop. More banging and swearing, followed by a few seconds of silence, and then … “Blast! He got away. There’s a hole in the wall by the radiator.”
“Y-you mean, he’s still … out there?” Lindsay asks, shivering.
“Not for long,” says Gordon, climbing to his feet. “I’ll get some traps and poison. I’ll smoke him out if I have to.” He hands the walking stick back to Klinger, who has been cradling the bottle of wine while all that was going on.
“Oh, right. Thanks.” He looks it over carefully, checking the silver handle to make sure it’s really his stick.
“Beautiful walking stick, by the way,” says Gordon. “Hope I didn’t damage it. Looks like an antique.”
Klinger eyes him suspiciously and grasps the handle firmly. “Yes. Yes, it is quite old. Unlike this bottle of wine,” he adds. “Nice try, girls. It’s quite obvious that this bottle has been tampered with; for one thing, there’s no capsule over the cork. A bottle like this one would have a wrapping of lead foil over the top of the cork. What’s inside, grape juice?”
“Kool-Aid, actually,” Margaret admits.
“I told you, Klinger,” says Gordon. “They’re calculating and conniving little miscreants. How they’ve managed to pull the wool over Sister Bernadette’s eyes, I will never know.”
“I think you give them too much credit,” says Klinger. “They’re not nearly as clever as they think they are.”
As he says those words, however, he can’t take his eyes off the envelope in Margaret’s hand.
“I don’t suppose you’d let me take a look at that,” he says.
“You suppose right,” Margaret says. “This is going straight to Mr. Applewood. Carbon paper. Funny stuff, huh?”
Klinger’s eyes narrow, his head tilts to one side, and I read his mind: How does she know about the carbon paper?
The Secret Cellar Page 15