The Mystery of the Missing Everything

^{Chapter 32} It’s in the Bag

That night, in her unglamorous high-rise condomin-ium apartment, clad in her favorite fuzzy slippers and sipping tea from her favorite mug, Ida Finkleman was having trouble getting her work done. Staring at her from her dining-room table was the score of the West Side Story overture, which her sixth graders would somehow need to master in time for the winter concert. And those quiz questions—there remained a mountain of quiz questions to write.

But instead of doing any of this, Ms. Finkleman booted up her laptop and checked her email. Impatiently she scanned her inbox: an email from her mother about her plans for Thanksgiving; one from her sister Clementine recommending a Tom Waits album, and asking if there was something by Brahms she could recommend in turn.

Nothing from Mr. Ivan Piccolini-Provokovsky of St. Louis, Missouri.

She quickly answered her emails (“still not sure” to her mother, “violin concerto in D” to her sister), stirred a half teaspoonful of sugar into her mug of tea, and picked up her pen to write some quiz questions.

She teased herself for being so disappointed. It had only been a week, after all.

On the other hand, time was running out fast. It was now Wednesday night, and the children were meant to leave for their trip bright and early on Monday morning. Ms. Finkleman turned back to her laptop and typed in the website where she knew she would find the “Save Taproot Valley” video. She watched it and found it to be completely delightful, just as she had the last six times she’d watched it. She sang along with the chorus, clapped for the big dance sections, and chortled merrily when the bear fell down the stairs.

As she was watching, Ms. Finkleman scrolled down to see how the video was doing.

“Two hundred and twelve page views? That’s it?!”

It was beyond Ms. Finkleman’s understanding how Chester’s comic masterpiece could be faring so poorly in the great viewing marketplace of the internet, especially when compared with all the clichéd videos of gurgling babies and kittens behaving in an un-kittenlike manner. “Okay, so the cat can drive a riding lawnmower,” Ms. Finkleman protested to the empty room. “That deserves 450,000 page views?”

The video ended. She really ought to get to work preparing those quizzes. Instead she clicked back over to her email and hit Compose. Surely it couldn’t hurt to follow up.

“Two-hundred and thirteen page views? That’s it?”

Chester was devastated. He clicked Refresh and groaned. After being online for forty-five and a half hours (not that he was counting or anything), “Save Taproot Valley” had been viewed 213 times, and raised a grand total of $316, twenty bucks of which Chester had contributed himself.

“It’s so good, though!” Chester wailed, holding his head between his hands. “It’s so funny!”

Didn’t the universe recognize a brilliant piece of video art when it saw one? If an eighth-grade boy in a bear costume tumbling down a flight of stairs doesn’t deserve overnight-internet-sensation status, what does?

“Chester! Dinner!”

Chester was at his mom’s that week, and normally he liked to listen to her stories about her workday, because his mom was a trauma surgeon, and a lot of her stories were really gross. But today he only pretended to listen, feigning interest in the gory details of a tibia repair while he did math in his head: 316 dollars, divided by 45.5 hours, is right around 7 dollars an hour. Okay, so 7 an hour, times 24 hours in a day…

Oh crud, thought Chester, coughing on a mouthful of beef. Crud!

“Chester? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“Are you sure?” His mom looked a little disappointed, as if she had really been hoping to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

At this rate it would take them about seven hundred hours to raise the money. That was like a month—and they had five days until Monday morning, when the buses were supposed to pull up in the horseshoe driveway and take them to Taproot Valley. After dinner, Chester retreated back to his room and hit Refresh. Two more people had watched the movie, and neither had donated anything. One was his Cousin Ilene, who wrote “Great job!” in the comments section; whoever the other person was, they commented that a chicken costume would have been funnier.

Maybe Victor was right, thought Chester, brushing his teeth for bed. Maybe this was a stupid plan all along.

Bethesda lay in bed, clutching Ted-Wo and trying to sleep, watching dark shadows drift and blend on her ceiling. She’d had a frustrating couple of days, starting with the mysterious attack on her poor defenseless bike. She’d gotten no real information from Natasha. When she called Pirate Sam’s, the manager (whose name was Stanley but who asked to be addressed as “Squid Guts”) had no idea whether the Ficker and Belinsky families had eaten there that Monday, let alone what time. He’d taken down Bethesda’s number and said the waiter for that section, Old Filthy Beard, would call her back. Meanwhile, she’d heard nothing new from Tenny—in fact, she’d barely seen her right-hand man this week at all.

She kicked her legs out from under the blanket, then fluffed and refluffed her pillow. Nine suspects danced in the air above her head, popping up one by one like on the opening credits of a TV show. The clues circled and cycled in her mind: the shattered glass and the drops of blood… the tiny screw on the floor of the Alcove… a batch of copied keys… two mysterious singers and their mysterious song….

What about the suspects she hadn’t talked to yet? Could Mr. Ferrars have done it himself? Maybe he told her about the keys to keep suspicion from falling on himself?

So many questions and still no answers—the trophy was still missing. But Bethesda knew it was more than Pamela’s gymnastics trophy keeping her awake. Sometimes Tenny was around, totally helping, other times he was nowhere to be found, or so distracted and in his head that he might as well be. Then there was Reenie Maslow, and the case of the friendship that ought to be, but wasn’t.

It’s like… it’s like everything is missing. Everything…

…and then Bethesda was strolling through Pilverton Mall, past Pirate Sam’s, past the nail salon and the bracelet store, and out onto the beach. The beach?

There went Ms. Pinn-Darvish, her jet-black hair bundled under a swim cap, walking her potbellied pig on a leash, his trotters splashing in and out of the breakers. Bethesda waved and kept walking, following a little hopping bird, a bluish swallow. She nearly ran into Todd and Natasha, both dressed for scuba diving. Boney Bones was sunbathing, reading a magazine, with Mr. Darlington beside him. Bethesda’s foot traced a ladder of shells, and when she looked up, there was Tenny, his ripped jeans dampened by the spray, his head bobbing up and down to whatever was on his iPod.

“You gotta hear this!” he called, holding out the earbuds to her. “It’s in the bag!”

“Who’s that by?”

“No, no!” he said, laughing, pointing at the backpack slung over her right shoulder. (Why did she have her backpack at the beach?) “It’s in the bag! It’s in the bag.”

Bethesda’s eyes shot open. She sat up in her bed and stared at the clock: 2:45 a.m.

It’s in the bag.

She jumped out of bed, ran to her backpack, and tugged furiously at the zipper. She dumped the contents of the little front pocket on the floor of her room. She sifted through old Post-it notes, assignment sheets, and gum wrappers until she found what she was looking for.

“Of course!” she shouted, then clamped her hand over her mouth and whispered instead. “Of course!”

The dingy, off-white piece of plastic lay on the carpet of her room, and now Bethesda knew it for what it was—a clue. She opened her Sock-Snow notebook and wrote furiously, to be sure she didn’t forget any of this before going back to sleep—though she seriously doubted whether she’d be able to sleep at all.

Finally, she’d cracked a piece of the mystery!