The Mystery of the Missing Everything

Chapter 10 A Bang and Then a Crash

A few hours later, after the seventh-period bell and the mad rush that marked the end of the school week, Ms. Finkleman ushered an eighth-grade girl named Reenie Maslow into the Band and Chorus room. She offered Reenie a seat across from her and a clementine orange from the bowl on her desk. Reenie took the seat, carefully placing her backpack on the ground beside her, but politely declined the fruit. Reenie was a short, delicate-featured girl with dark red hair and glasses, and at this moment she was looking just a little bit puzzled. This puzzlement was something Ms. Finkleman could well understand. If Reenie wasn’t the guilty party, then she must be wondering what she was doing in the Band and Chorus room for a one-on-one after-school “talk.” And if she was guilty, she must be wondering why the school music teacher was the one interrogating her about it.

“So, Reenie,” Ms. Finkleman began tentatively. “How has your experience at Mary Todd Lincoln been thus far?”

“Fine, I guess.” Reenie paused, shrugged. “It’s nice here.”

Ms. Finkleman nodded. “Good, good.”

Reenie sat politely, looking more puzzled by the second. Ms. Finkleman sighed and shifted uncomfortably on her chair, thinking of various places she’d rather be: browsing at the record store; at home drinking tea, listening to Chopin’s waltzes.

Okay, Ida, she chastised herself. Let’s get this over with, shall we?

“Reenie, did you steal Pamela Preston’s gymnastics trophy?”

Bethesda was halfway down Hallway B, bicycle helmet already on, Semi-Official Crime-Solving Notebook tucked under one arm, ready to be stowed in her bike basket. She was going to stop at the Wilkersholm Memorial Public Library to research a couple questions, maybe check out some of her favorite mysteries again, to read over the weekend for inspiration. With the whole eighth grade now officially expecting a solution, it was time to kick this investigation into high gear.

“Psssst! Bethesda!”

In the doorway of the art room, a dark figure was beckoning her with one crooked finger.

“Ms. Pinn-Darvish?”

“Step in for a moment, young lady. We need to talk.”

Pale, raven-haired Ms. Pinn-Darvish stepped aside with a dramatic flourish as Bethesda entered her domain. The art room had an odd smell, sweet and chemical, a mixture of acrylic paint, paste, and the ginger-scented candles that Ms. Pinn-Darvish was now unloading from a shoebox. Bethesda perched on one of the tottering stools that lined the art room’s long rectangular tables. Some kids liked to say Ms. Pinn-Darvish was a witch, but Bethesda knew that was silly; she was just witchlike.

“So…,” Bethesda began, intrigued.

“Patience. Patience,” whispered Ms. Pinn-Darvish. “Let me just finish setting up my candles.”

If Ms. Pinn-Darvish was getting candles ready, it meant that Monday they’d be having Slide Day. This was a semi-occasional feature of Ms. Pinn-Darvish’s class that was bizarre and fascinating the first time, and pretty boring every time thereafter. On Slide Day, students didn’t make art, they looked at art, and thought about art. As Ms. Pinn-Darvish liked to say, they communed with art. To facilitate that mystical communion, Ms. Pinn-Darvish would light candles, dim the overhead halogens, and project famous paintings from her computer onto the side wall of the room, while electronic music gurgled from the small black stereo in the corner of the room.

“Bethesda,” Ms. Pinn-Darvish began as she set out the candles in little clusters, one cluster per table. “I understand you’re trying to solve the Mystery of the Purloined Statuette.”

Ooh, thought Bethesda. Purloined Statuette sounds a lot cooler than Missing Trophy.

“This unfortunate incident occurred on Monday, did it not?”

“Yes,” Bethesda confirmed. She took off her bike helmet, stuck it on the table, and opened the Sock-Snow. Was Ms. Pinn-Darvish, of all people, about to provide her with a crucial clue? She breathed deeply, and the ginger scent of the unlit candles filled her nose.

“On Monday evening, I was walking past the school.” Ms. Pinn-Darvish made a final adjustment to the last grouping of candles and settled on a stool across from Bethesda, her hands steepled before her.

“Monday evening? What time?”

Ms. Pinn-Darvish twisted up her mouth and tilted her head back and forth, thinking.

“About five forty-five, I suppose. That’s when I walk Tiberius.”

“Tiberius is your dog?”

“Dog? No. Tiberius is a potbellied pig.”

“You have a pet pig?”

“In a way, young lady, I am his pet, as much as he is mine.”

“Okay… so…”

“Our walk was disturbed by a noise. A loud noise. A bang kind of a noise.”

The glass! Bethesda thought. Ms. Pinn-Darvish heard the breaking glass of the trophy case! Except…

“Wait. More like a crash, right?”

“Well, that’s the odd thing, you see. There was a crash, but it came a second later. The bang came first, and that’s what startled Tiberius. Poor little fellow was quite confused.”

A crowd of thoughts jostled for space in Bethesda’s mind.

She thought: A bang, and then a crash?

She thought: Did anyone else hear that bang?

She thought: How do you know when a potbellied pig is confused?

A little before four o’clock, Janitor Steve yawned a big, long, end-of-the-week yawn and resumed his slow progress down the Front Hall. He was pushing his extrawide bristly broom and his gigantic rolling trash can, gathering up dust balls and crumpled-up late passes and granola-bar wrappers from his beautiful floor. Bending to pick up one tattered sheet of loose-leaf, he saw that it was decorated with a not-half-bad cartoon of Principal Van Vreeland, shouting and waving two stick-figure fists in the air.

“Heh heh,” said Janitor Steve, and then jerked nervously at the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway. But no—it wasn’t the clack of Van Vreeland’s heels, but the squeak of sneakers on linoleum. It was that bubbly kid with the glasses, Bethesda, the mystery solver, hurrying from Hallway B toward the front door, her head bent down, scribbling furiously in a notebook. Janitor Steve had barely resumed his sweeping when another student—a new girl, Irene or something—stormed down Hallway C and swept past him like a fast-moving thundercloud.

And then, just as the door slammed behind her, along came Ms. Finkleman, the music lady, looking exhausted. She nodded politely, like always, and pushed open the front door.

Now that he was reasonably sure the school was empty, Janitor Steve lifted his broom handle and tapped on the air ducts, just as Bethesda had seen him do on Wednesday, when she came to investigate the Achievement Alcove. He tapped, and then listened—tapped again—nothing. Last week the vents had been making strange noises, noises that had kept Janitor Steve on edge: little pops and pings and bangs. Now, though, nothing.

“You got what you wanted, didn’t you?” he said, peering up at the silent ducts. “You got what you wanted and now you’re gone.”

He knew. Janitor Steve knew exactly who had stolen that trophy, and he knew why. But nobody had bothered to ask.