Mystery on Magnolia Circle

by Kate Klise

  “It wasn’t a long time,” Liam said, “but it was an important time for Joplin. While living here, he worked on some of his best ‘rags,’ including, we think, ‘The Entertainer.’”

  “What makes a song a ‘rag’?” I asked.

  “Good question,” said Liam. “Rag is short for ‘ragged’ playing, but there’s an undeniable structure to it. Think of it as a cross between European classical music and African American folk music. Ragtime is meant to sound loose and free, as if the pianist were just doodling around on the keys.”

  Liam used the foot pedals on a player piano to move a paper roll through the piano. Every hole on the paper roll represented a note on the piano. In some places, the music sounded upbeat and jaunty. Other times it sounded sad, like someone’s heart was breaking.

  “This piece is called ‘Solace,’” Liam said. “Listen to the melancholy undertones. Much of Joplin’s music is bittersweet. A little bit happy and a little bit sad.”

  I thought about Melvin Moss. Bittersweet was exactly the right word to describe him. There was always something a little bit sad about Melvin, even though he put on a happy face.

  “Joplin often included instructions on his musical compositions,” Liam explained. “He wrote things like, ‘Do not play this piece fast.’ He wanted his music to be heard and more importantly, felt.”

  Dad, Teddy, and I were the only people on the tour. We moved from room to room, listening to Liam’s stories and anecdotes about Scott Joplin and his famous piano music.

  “When Joplin lived here,” said Liam, “there was no indoor plumbing.”

  Teddy’s arm shot up in the air, a habit from school. “So how did he—”

  “Chamber pots,” said Liam. “And an outhouse in the backyard.”

  Dad was admiring one of the pianos in the upstairs’ sitting room. “So I’m guessing Joplin played in clubs around St. Louis while he lived here?”

  “That’s right,” said Liam. “He played in bars and bawdy saloons.”

  “Sounds like a fun life,” Dad said wistfully.

  “Maybe,” said Liam. “But when he died in 1917, John Stark, who was Joplin’s music publisher, wrote: ‘Scott Joplin is dead. A homeless itinerant, he left his mark on American music.’”

  “Hold on,” Teddy said. “Scott Joplin was homeless?”

  Liam nodded. “Maybe not homeless in the way we think of it today. He had a place to live, usually a room or two he rented in a boarding house. But he moved around a lot.”

  Wait. That was exactly how Mrs. Seifert had described Melvin Moss. They move around a lot.

  Liam was still talking. “When John Stark called Joplin homeless, he didn’t mean he lived in Victory Mission.”

  I felt goose bumps on my arms.

  “Victory Mission,” I repeated. “What it that, anyway?”

  “Victory Mission is the largest homeless shelter in St. Louis,” Liam said. “You’ll see the line for the soup kitchen when you leave, if you drive down Jefferson.”

  * * *

  After the tour, Dad couldn’t stop talking about how inspired he was to get a piano for our house.

  “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said dreamily as we walked to the car. “Play the piano. Maybe we could find a piano teacher who’d be willing to come to the house and give you, me, and Mom lessons. Teddy, you’d be welcome to take lessons at our house, too, if you’re interested. I’d love to be able to play some old ragtime tunes. Or what about classical music? Think it’s too late for this old dog to learn some new tricks?”

  “No way,” said Teddy. “I bet you could play some cool stuff with just a few lessons.”

  “You think so, Ivy?” Dad asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said distractedly.

  I wasn’t thinking about a piano or lessons. All I could think about was Victory Mission and whether Melvin Moss might be living there. That would explain why he looked so scruffy.

  “Shall we grab some lunch?” Dad asked. “Pizza, anyone?”

  “Pizza sounds great to me,” Teddy said. “Ives?”

  “Yeah, sure, pizza,” I said. “Hey, Dad, on the way to lunch, can you drive down Jefferson? I want to see Victory Mission.”

  Liam was right. The line for the soup kitchen was almost a block long. The white delivery van was still parked across the street. Was Melvin Moss living there?

  * * *

  Later that afternoon Teddy and I were sitting on my front steps when I asked the question that had been ricocheting around in my head all day long: “Do you think Melvin Moss might be homeless?”

  “I guess. It’s possible.”

  “Then why he is riding around in a white delivery van?”

  “I’m not sure he is,” said Teddy. “Remember, I’ve never seen him.”

  But I had. I knew I’d seen Melvin Moss in that van.

  It occurred to me that Teddy might not even remember what Melvin looked like. They were never in the same class together like Melvin and I were.

  “If his family has a van, wouldn’t they rather live in it instead of at a homeless shelter?” I asked. “They could park the van in Forest Park and camp out. It’d be safer than living in a homeless shelter.”

  “What’s so dangerous about homeless shelters?” Teddy said.

  “I’m not sure, but I think they can be scary. People don’t go there unless they’re desperate. Desperate people do desperate things, like steal.”

  I knew this because some of my mom’s patients had been homeless for months, sometimes years. Mom never told me their names, but she told me stories. She said when I was in high school, we could volunteer at a homeless shelter, serving meals or reading to the kids.

  “We have to go back,” I told Teddy.

  “Where?” he said.

  “Victory Mission. We have to find out if Melvin Moss is living there.”

  “And if he is?” Teddy said.

  “I don’t know. Let’s take this investigation one step at a time.”

  Teddy smiled. “Or like Scott Joplin said about his piano compositions: ‘Do not play this piece fast.’”

  Just then Dad burst out the front door.

  “I did it!” he said. “It’s coming!”

  “Huh?” I said. “What’s coming?”

  “Our piano!” Dad sang. “I just ordered it. It’ll be here in a month.”

  What I learned from that:

  Dad really wanted a piano.

  THIRTEEN

  Are You Looking for Me?

  The next morning, Teddy and I met in front of my house.

  “My mom’s home,” he said. “We better not call DriveMeThere until we get a few blocks away.”

  So we requested one when we got to Skinker Boulevard. Our driver’s name was Kevin.

  “Victory Mission?” he asked when we opened the car door.

  “That’s right,” said Teddy. “It’s on Jefferson.”

  It took us less than ten minutes to get there. When we entered the lobby, we saw a woman sitting behind a desk. She was busy and didn’t look up from her paperwork.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Is there someone named Melvin Moss living here?”

  “We’re not authorized to share the names of guests,” she replied automatically, still looking down.

  “But Melvin is a friend of ours,” I explained.

  “We’re worried about him,” Teddy added.

  The woman finally lifted her eyes. She spoke without emotion. “It would be a violation of privacy to disclose the name of any of our guests, past or present.”

  I looked at Teddy. His face registered the same sense of defeat I was feeling. We were almost to the door when we heard him.

  “Are you looking for me?”

  It was a small, soft voice. I turned around. There he was. Melvin Moss!

  He was wearing a baseball cap. He had a tool belt around his waist.

  At first I was too stunned to speak. Finally, I said, “Melvin?”

  And then, because I had
n’t planned what I’d say when, or if, I saw him, I just said the first thing that popped into my head. “We got a hundred on our Trojan War project!”

  Melvin smiled. I was guessing he probably felt guilty for not helping me with the project. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I hadn’t been expecting much help from him. He was never the smartest kid in the class. That’s what I’d thought, anyway.

  Turns out I was wrong. Melvin Moss was smart. He knew more about the Trojan War than I did. He explained it all to Teddy and me as we sat at a picnic bench behind Victory Mission.

  * * *

  Melvin’s father was “out of the picture,” he said. His mother was in a rehab clinic.

  “Drugs,” he said quietly.

  “So you’re here all alone?” Teddy said.

  “If you mean without my parents, yeah,” Melvin said. “But look around. I’m hardly alone.”

  I looked at a cluster of men leaning against the brick building. Most were smoking cigarettes. A little girl, maybe four years old, was riding a too-small tricycle in a raggedy patch of grass in front of them.

  In some ways, Melvin seemed completely out of place at Victory Mission. He was a kid like me. He was someone I knew. How could my classmate, my Trojan War partner, live in a homeless shelter?

  In other ways, Melvin Moss seemed to fit right in. His eyes looked tired, like those of the men who were smoking. He smelled like a wet basement. His face was dirty. Little red bumps dotted his forehead. Were those bug bites? Acne?

  “Shouldn’t you be with a foster family or something?” Teddy asked.

  “I was,” Melvin replied. “But I hated it there, so I ran away.”

  Poor Melvin. It must’ve been awful for him. I couldn’t think of anything helpful to say.

  “So, you’re here,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “Did you know I’m pretty handy?” Melvin asked, changing the subject. “I’ve been fixing stuff around here. Just little things. I like to earn my keep.”

  I asked Melvin if he knew anything about the burglary at Ms. Hiremath’s apartment and the similar crime on Washington Avenue.

  Melvin snapped. “Why would I know anything about that?” he said hotly, standing up from the picnic bench.

  “I thought I saw you in a white van in our neighborhood. That’s all.”

  “So what if I was?” He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He wouldn’t look at me.

  Melvin was getting defensive, I could tell. He was like the raccoon I once saw in our backyard, rummaging through the garbage. When I turned on the porch light, the raccoon froze, jazz hands up, and stared at me as if to say: Am I in trouble? Who, me?

  “You’re not in trouble,” I told Melvin. “But there’s a crime wave in St. Louis. There seems to be a pattern to the robberies involving two guys in a white van delivering a sofa. I thought you might know something about them.”

  Melvin took off the baseball cap. His greasy hair fell in front of his eyes. “I know everything about them,” he said.

  “Will you tell us?” I asked.

  “We’re not just being nosy,” Teddy added. “We want to help.”

  Melvin didn’t answer. The silence hovered in the air above us. He was still standing, his eyes focused on something vague and far away. Then he covered his eyes with the heels of his hands. I wondered if he was going to cry.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to,” I said. “But sometimes talking helps.”

  I was shocked to hear myself say something Mom might say, but I knew it was true.

  Melvin folded his legs under the picnic bench and dropped his elbows on the table. He told us about two men who had approached him at Victory Mission.

  “It was right after I got here,” he began, almost in a whisper. “In the middle of May, these two guys said they’d call the authorities and have me sent back to foster care if I didn’t help them pull off a burglary. They wanted me to drive their van while they robbed a bank. They said they could teach a smart kid like me to drive in one day.”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “Don’t worry,” Melvin said. “I didn’t do it. I knew robbing a bank was a terrible idea. We would’ve been caught for sure. Banks have cameras everywhere.”

  “But you did something else?” Teddy asked.

  “Yeah,” said Melvin. “And it was my idea.”

  Melvin told us he’d been thinking about the Trojan War, and how the Greeks had built an enormous hollow wooden horse.

  “Remember?” Melvin said, looking at me.

  “Yes,” I replied, remembering the Trojan horse I’d built out of a shoebox. “But Teddy wasn’t in Mrs. Seifert’s class. They didn’t study the Trojan War. You have to tell him what happened.”

  “Well,” Melvin said, turning to Teddy, “the Greeks built this huge wooden horse. Then they hid their best warriors inside it. They pretended the horse was a gift for the people of Troy. When the Trojans saw the horse, they thought it meant the Greeks were surrendering. So they dragged the heavy horse inside the city gates.”

  “But it was a trick,” I said, picking up the story. “After the people of Troy went to sleep, the Greek soldiers climbed out of the horse. They opened the gates of the city so the rest of the Greek army could enter Troy.”

  “And that was the end of Troy,” Melvin said.

  Teddy looked confused. “What does any of this have to do with the crime wave sweeping St. Louis?”

  “I’ll tell you,” said Melvin. “There was a new sofa here at Victory Mission. I asked the two guys to get me some plywood and a circular saw. I built a secret compartment inside it. It was big enough that I could lie flat in it.”

  “Inside the sofa?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Melvin. “The sofa was my Trojan horse. I hid inside it. The guys delivered the sofa to apartment buildings where we knew people would be at work during the day.”

  “How’d you know when they’d be gone?” I said.

  “Most people keep the same work schedule from week to week,” Melvin explained.

  “That’s why you were in our neighborhood,” I said. “Making notes about people’s schedules.”

  “Yeah,” said Melvin, using his finger to draw invisible patterns on the picnic table.

  “So the guys delivered the sofa,” I said, trying to piece together Melvin’s story with what I’d read in the newspaper. “Was it green?”

  “Yeah,” said Melvin. “How’d you know that?”

  “Just keep going,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Melvin. “So the guys put the sofa in the apartment and left. That’s when I crawled out of my secret compartment and looked for valuable things to steal. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, so I went for the easy stuff. Jewelry, money, that kind of thing.”

  Teddy was shaking his head. “How did you know how to build a secret compartment inside a sofa?”

  Melvin grinned. “That was the fun part. I like making things with my hands.”

  I took a deep breath. “Melvin, you have to tell someone.”

  “No way. They’ll send me to another foster home.”

  “What if I told Mrs. Seifert?” I said.

  “You want to tell our teacher? She’ll make me repeat fourth grade.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “Mrs. Seifert was really worried about you. I bet we can find her phone number or email address.”

  “We can definitely find it,” said Teddy.

  Melvin laid his cheek down on the picnic table as if he was too exhausted to hold up his head. “If the two guys find out I told…,” he murmured in a wounded voice, as if already dreading the punishment.

  “The police will protect you from the thieves,” I said. “Mrs. Seifert will know how to handle it. You have a good explanation.”

  He lifted his head off the bench. “Maybe we should tell Mrs. Seifert.” Then his face brightened. “I want to tell her about the Trojan sofa I built. She’ll like that part!”

 
Teddy was tapping away on his phone. “I’m on the school website. There’s a staff directory with all the teachers’ email addresses. Should I email Mrs. Seifert? Will she check her school email during the summer?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s teaching summer school. Email her.”

  “What should I write?” Teddy asked, his nose up against his phone.

  “Ask her to please call me on your phone,” I said. “Say Ivy Crowden and Melvin Moss need to talk to her about their Trojan War project.”

  What I learned from that:

  Maybe we’re all Trojan horses with secrets hidden inside of us, and we have no idea how heavy other people’s secrets are.

  FOURTEEN

  A Week Without Teddy

  Teddy and I knew we couldn’t tell our parents about Melvin Moss—not until we were sure Melvin wouldn’t get in trouble.

  Besides, Teddy was in enough trouble already. When his mom and dad found out Teddy had been billing our DriveMeThere rides to their credit card, Teddy lost cell phone privileges for a week. He probably would’ve been grounded, too, but his family was leaving for their annual Michigan vacation.

  One week without Teddy, right when our investigation was heating up. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

  I couldn’t even call Melvin because the last time I’d talked with Mrs. Seifert, she said Melvin was advised by his lawyer (Mrs. Seifert’s husband) not to talk to anyone until he’d spoken with the police. Melvin was staying with the Seiferts while Mr. Seifert helped Melvin get right with the law.

  The only friend I had left was Winthrop. So the day after Teddy left for Michigan, I shampooed Winthrop with our garden hose, careful to keep my cast dry. Then I dug out my dog brush and gave Winthrop a full-body brushing.

  “C’mon, boy,” I said. “Let’s go to Forest Park. Just the two of us.”

  Winthrop looked at me like he’d been waiting to hear those words his whole life.

  I scooter-walked Winthrop to the dog run in the center of Forest Park, let him off his leash, and parked my scooter. Winthrop’s clean, floppy bangs flew back as he ran, smiling, to play with the other dogs. I knew he’d be covered in dirt within five minutes, but he looked so happy I didn’t care.