by Karen Karbo
Angus Paine laughed with what I thought was too much relief, but I couldn’t be sure. “Dude, I thought I told you, this grocery has been in our family for—”
“Yeah, I know, forever.”
“—for generations. I’m going to take it over as soon as I graduate from college. My dad wants me to go to a four-year college. I could try to go the community college route, but …”
Blah blah blah blah blah. I stopped listening, which a sleuth should never do, I know, but it was so late.
“Did Paisley have a contract with your parents?” I interrupted him.
“You mean, did she have motivation to torch the place?”
Yes, that was exactly what I’d meant. People committed crimes for love or money. It was a well-known fact, at least on Law & Order. “Maybe she was so desperate to expand her business, she got into a situation where she was going to have to pay your parents more than she had.”
“I never would have figured that out,” said Angus. “It could be her. I bet it was. That makes total sense.”
“But there’s no hard evidence.”
“I’ll call Robotective tomorrow, let him find the evidence. That’s his job, not our job, right?”
“If you want to get technical, none of this is our job,” I said.
He laughed. “And hey, when am I going to get my wheels back?”
I remembered his Go-Ped, now stowed in our garage. A bad thing happened next. I felt excited. I felt glad to have an excuse to lay eyes on Angus Paine, he of the red hair, outrageous freckles, chipped front tooth, and geeky black trench coat. How could this be when I didn’t even like him, and I already had a boyfriend?
In the morning I learned a secret about my brother Morgan. Even though he is a Buddhist who never raises his voice and has genuine conversations with Weird Rolando about composting, hybrid cars, and something called string theory, he was using my dog Ned as a babe magnet.
The day after I brought Ned home, Morgan started taking him for a walk every morning. Morgan had never been a big pet person, even though he was a vegetarian. You’d think that if he loved animals enough to give up hamburgers and chicken wings, he’d have taken more interest in the parade of animals who’d been through our house: Jupiter, of course, and all the rats, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, fighting beta fish, and George and Gracie, our two ginormous brown poodles Mrs. Dagnitz took with her when she left, but he said one thing had nothing to do with the other. Morgan was a philosophy major in college and made mysterious statements like this all the time.
Then he fell in love with Ned and his foxy face and big ginger-colored splotches. He said that the way Ned smiled, he looked as if he was always about to burst into a show tune.
Morgan never asked anyone else to come along on his walks with Ned. I thought it was because he was a philosopher and needed his alone time to ponder ideas large and small.
Ha! Little did any of us know.
Earlier that morning when Morgan left Casa Clark with Ned, he ran smack into Mark Clark and me, standing on the sidewalk in front, gazing up at the toilet-paper streamers hanging from the trees, the shrubs, the fence, and the phone lines. We’d been TPed but good.
“Any idea who did this?” asked Mark Clark.
I pulled a strand of paper from where it was wrapped about the phone pole on the parking strip. Not two-ply. One-ply, and so scratchy you could give yourself a nasty rash if you weren’t careful. It was toilet paper from my school.
“Fifth graders!” I said. “They have a vendetta against me.”
“There’s nothing worse than a fifth grader with a vendetta,” said Mark Clark. He reach over and tugged my ponytail. I knew when I was being mocked.
“I’m not kidding.” I told him how the paper was stolen from the supply closet at school, and how I’d already turned them in once for the same offense, and how the ringleader, Daniel Vecchio, was on some kind of medication for being pure evil. Whatever is beyond attention deficit disorder is what he had. He ate with his mouth so far open the food fell right out and back onto his plate. Fifth graders are almost beneath hating, but I hated Daniel Vecchio and he hated me.
Mark Clark laughed. Then, suddenly, there was Morgan and Ned. Despite his heavy coat and the brain-boiling heat, my dog looked as if he could walk a hundred miles on his stumpy white legs. The saying should be changed from “happy as a clam” to “happy as a dog on a walk.”
Morgan set off in the opposite direction as if he hadn’t seen us.
“Hey! Wait up!” I said.
I don’t know why I wanted to join him. Morgan was usually gone for about an hour—fifty-nine minutes too long of a walk for me. But I was irritated at Mark Clark. I did not like being patronized. Now that he was a grown-up, he’d totally forgotten how rotten fifth-grade boys could be. Also, if I hung around too long, Mark Clark would make me clean up the toilet-paper mess.
Morgan and I tramped down the sidewalk. It was so hot he’d been forced to remove his trademark earflap hat. He’d talked about shaving his head, or else growing his hair to his waist like Weird Rolando. (I told him I would have to kill him first.) Morgan agonized over his hair, which was thin like Mrs. Dagnitz’s. He was the only one of us who did not have enough hair for ten people. We walked along, stopping at every yard so Ned could sniff and lift.
“Why do dogs’ tongues always look like bologna?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” he said.
“Do you think it’s, like, evolutionary?”
“Could be,” he said.
“I made that observation before and Mrs. Dagnitz lost it. To her, saying ‘lunch meat’ is the same as eating it.”
“You should give her a break,” said Morgan. “I know you’re angry at her, but it’s not easy being her age.”
“Hey, I’m thirteen, officially the worst age in human existence. She gets no sympathy from me.”
“Well, she should.”
“Where are we going, anyway?” I asked. I knew a stroll when I was on one, and this was not a stroll. It was a march. We were clicking down the sidewalk like we’d just shoplifted something and were trying to flee the scene without drawing attention to ourselves. We were headed toward Fremont, a long street of small shops, coffee places that were Not Starbucks, a place that sold a thing called a wall bed, plus a place that served the best hamburgers in the city.
Also on Fremont was a pet store that sold the special all-natural kitty food we gave to Jupiter. “Can we stop by Green’s for some Jupiter food? He’s almost out.”
“That pet shop?”
“Just past Roasted,” I said. Roasted was one of the Not Starbucks coffee places. As soon as the word left my lips, Morgan perked up, as if I were a mystical healer from Java who had uttered the secret magic word of happiness. We turned onto Fremont a half block before Roasted, just in time to see a waitress clearing plates from one of the tiny tables on the sidewalk. She was short, with swingy blond hair and big arm muscles. She wore baggy khakis cut off just below the knee and a tank top that showed off her biceps.
“He-e-e-e-y,” she called out as we approached, “it’s my favorite boys. You getting the regular today? Let me clear this stuff.”
Morgan turned dark pink and ducked his head. “Hey, Jeannette. Not today. We’re just …”
“… on a real walk?” she called out, laughing. “Neddie thanks you, I’m sure. Hey, Neddie Teddy Bear! I LOVE that dog!” And then she hustled back into the coffee shop with her stack of dirty plates. At the sound of her voice, Ned wagged his stump. Ned knew her.
So Morgan hadn’t been walking Ned at all. Morgan had been coming up to Roasted to have his “regular” served by Jeannette, who loved my dog, Neddie Teddy Bear.
I could have razzed Morgan until he lost his Buddha cool, but I was more interested in thinking about his secret. It wasn’t a big secret—so he had a crush on a waitress with nice arm muscles—but it was a secret, one that Morgan, who was the brother who believed in honesty and karma, had easily kept from all of us.
All the way to Green’s I thought about secrets. I thought about how until my accident, which had led me to solving mysteries, I’d thought I was the only one with secrets—that everyone else in my life said what they meant, and went where they said they were going, and did what they said they were going to do. We walked on in silence. Morgan’s face returned to its normal pinky-beige color.
At Green’s we bought a ten-pound bag of all-natural kitty food. As Morgan paid Mrs. Green, who was about four hundred years old and had an English accent and called us both “Lovey,” I mentioned that the food was for my ferret and she tried to sell us ferret chow, which was twice the price. I told her one of my secrets: that for half the price you can get cat food, and ferrets like it just as well.
Just as we left the shop, Morgan’s cell rang. It was Mrs. Dagnitz, hollering about something. Mrs. Dagnitz always shouted into her cell phone, as if she couldn’t trust the tiny receiver to project her voice. I could hear her from where I was giving Ned some water by the bike rack. Green’s always kept a purple ceramic bowl full of water just outside.
Morgan clutched at his thin bangs and grimaced at me. “Oh right! Oh! Right! Yes. No. I’m sorry. No. Yes. We’re so sorry! Could we tomorrow? Okay. Right. Right. Sorry. So sorry. Yes. No. No. Hello? Mom?”
Mrs. Dagnitz had hung up on him. On Morgan, the nicest brother, who was always telling us how we should cut her some slack. “We told her we’d go to yoga this morning.”
“Oh,” I said. Ned finished lapping up all the water in the bowl and grinned at me. I let him pull me back down the street, pretending he was going to pull my arm out of the socket.
“That private family yoga session. Some friend of hers set it up,” said Morgan. He was the only one of us who’d ever done yoga besides Mrs. Dagnitz and Weird Rolando. I could just imagine Quills in some goofy upside-down pose, with all his change and guitar picks tumbling out of his pocket, and Mark Clark trying to touch his toes.
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“They waited,” said Morgan, “but left without us.”
“Oh … that’s …” The words “too bad” floated through my head, but I could not possibly say them. I started giggling. Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Ha ha ha! Oh no. And I really wanted to go to family yoga! I wanted to be nice. I wanted to show Morgan that I was as kind and gentle as he was, but I couldn’t do it.
I dropped Ned’s leash I was laughing so hard. He jumped around, as if we were playing. I held my stomach. Ha ha ha hoo! A lady watering her lawn looked up and said, “Wish I could get in on the fun.” Morgan scratched his head and started laughing, too. He didn’t even know why, which made me laugh even harder. I bent over to pick up Ned’s leash.
Mrs. Dagnitz and Weird Rolando and my brothers would be gone for hours. After yoga, they’d stop for muffins and smoothies somewhere, and Mrs. Dagnitz would need to stop by a store and buy something. Yoga always put her in a shopping frame of mind.
Now that there was no reason to hurry home, that’s all I wanted to do. I made a plan in my head. Feed Jupiter and let him play with a plastic bag, then clean up some of the fifth graders’ TP job, just to show I’d made the effort, then find Angus Paine and return his Go-Ped.
As we walked, I asked Morgan what he knew about arson and arsonists, and he said the mind of the arsonist is the most mysterious criminal mind there is, because arsonists are almost never caught, so few people ever get to study their personalities. If they’re not setting a fire for insurance purposes, then usually they’re setting it because they’re angry.
“The strangest thing is that almost all arsonists are of below-average intelligence, except for a very small percentage who are of way-above-average intelligence. But most of the time, they’re just angry kids.”
“Kids?” I asked.
“Guys in their twenties,” he said.
“Or maybe ladies in their forties who like to do yoga?”
Morgan put the kitty-food bag down in the middle of the sidewalk. The bag was pale green and had a huge white cat on it. He rubbed his shoulder. He was my most serious brother. I didn’t think he’d get my joke, but he smiled and shook his head.
“She’s not that bad,” he said.
“She is too,” I said, just to be a brat.
“Yeah, I know,” said Morgan.
I played with Jupiter for the length of six songs on my laptop, then took a shower, washed my hair, put on my jean skirt and pink camouflage Chuck Taylors, and called Angus Paine. We agreed to meet at the grocery at noon.
This gave me plenty of time to whip on over to Paisley’s on 23rd to talk to Paisley. I wanted to ask her about moving her shop, and what she was going to do now that there was nowhere to go. Was she upset? Relieved? I was sure I could tell by the look on her face whether she’d had anything to do with the fire.
Northwest Twenty-third wasn’t far, but anytime you had to cross a bridge in Portland, it seemed far. To get to Northwest from Northeast meant crossing the rust-colored Broadway Bridge—through the grating you could see the green-gray waters of the Willamette far below—and passing through the Pearl District, with its art galleries, fancy furniture stores, beauty salons, and yoga studios. Our dad, Charlie, talks a lot about selling Casa Clark and buying a loft in the Pearl so he doesn’t have to mow the lawn anymore, except he doesn’t mow the lawn—Quills does. I had a moment of one hundred percent pure freak-out when I zipped past a long plate-glass window, glanced inside, and saw a small army of skinny people, the soles of their feet propped against the inside of their knees, palms pressed together prayer-style in the center of their heaving chests. Yoga! Was this where Mrs. Dagnitz liked to go? Was my family in there? I sped past without looking back.
By the time I reached Northwest Twenty-third, my hair was dry. I stuck it up on top of my head with a black chopstick I’d found in the silverware drawer. Inside Paisley’s, a short lady with dark wavy hair and huge green eyes that looked at you like you were up to something was cleaning the top of the glass case with Windex. She had a tattoo on the inside of her wrist of a butterfly escaping from its cocoon. Quills was the family interpreter of meaningful tattoos, but I would say hers meant that she hoped to be reborn in a new job. “Excuse me, are you Paisley?”
“She has another doctor’s appointment.” The lady squirted the glass, then sighed.
“Oh. Okay.”
She squinted up at me. “Can I get you something?”
I stared down through the glass at a row of oatmeal cookies. For some reason I thought of shingles on a roof. Not just a doctor’s appointment, but another doctor’s appointment? What do people go to the doctor for? I went to the doctor when I had ear infections. I went to the emergency room when I sprained my ankle during a Super Soaker fight in our driveway. But Paisley went to the doctor a lot. It was that word “another”—made it sound as if Paisley was always running off to the doctor, leaving the cranky butterfly-tattoo lady to mind the shop. Maybe Paisley had one of those grown-up diseases we learned about in health, like cancer or hardening of the arteries.
Or maybe she was seeing a psychiatrist-type doctor because she had done something bad. Like set a fire.
“Hello?” said Butterfly Tattoo in a POed tone of voice. “You want something or not?”
I knew I’d spaced out. “No … but thanks,” I said. Just as I turned to go, she hurried around the counter and opened the door. “Here she is,” she said.
Into the shop came a woman in an electric wheelchair. She wore white pants and a sheer lavender-and-pink paisley blouse. She looked only a little older than Mark Clark, who was turning twenty-six in a few days. One curled hand lay in her lap, and the other one operated the joystick on her chair.
Paisley of Paisley’s on 23rd?
She and Butterfly Tattoo talked about business, about a late delivery of flour, and something about one of the mixers. Paisley of Paisley’s on 23rd smelled like lavender. Butterfly Tattoo wanted next Thursday off. I stood there like the goofball I was. I should ha
ve been paying attention—a sleuth messes up when she fails to pay attention—but I couldn’t keep from glimpsing at Paisley’s curled hands. They were narrow and pale and useless-looking.
“Yes?” she was saying to me. She had white, even teeth, the kind I hoped to have after my braces came off.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
“We’re not hiring at the moment, but Michelle here can give you an application if you’d like to fill one out. We keep them on file.”
“I was wondering about your new location,” I said. “About when you were moving.”
“Not for a while now,” she said.
“There was that fire,” I said.
She didn’t looked surprised that I knew, or as if I’d found her out. She didn’t cut her eyes over to the side, or look down in her lap, or change the subject, or get all huffy and ask how I knew about the fire. She looked straight up into my face and said, “Yes, the fire. That kind of calamity is always so sad. Even though it wasn’t Nat and Nat’s home, still, they’ve put their heart and soul into that grocery. It’s practically a Portland landmark.” Paisley had huge gray eyes, like a Portland sky in early spring.
“Were you closing up this shop then?”
“Never!” sputtered Butterfly Tattoo, and then she laughed.
Paisley gave her the same patronizing look our science teacher Mr. Hale gives Reggie when he belches in class.
Paisley said, “I was hoping to open a small kiosk, where I’d have a limited menu, just some cookies and a few pastries. Now, of course, everything is on hold. But we’re hoping to open in the fall.”
“That must have cost you a lot of money,” I said. I didn’t know what I meant by that. It was one of the benefits of being thirteen. You could say something completely random and no one thought anything of it. I’d just tossed this out there to see if perhaps Paisley would get excited and say, “Oh yes! It was going to be so expensive …” Something to show that she was relieved that she wasn’t going to have to spend the money to open the kiosk, whatever that was.
“I imagine normally it would have been, but Natalie was giving me the space for free. One of the benefits of growing up together. Actually, I was friends with Maureen, her youngest sister. Natalie was the oldest. They had one of those huge Catholic families.”