The Mystery of the Missing Everything

^{Chapter 6} “Police and Thieves”

That Thursday afternoon, at precisely 4:47 p.m., an unremarkable woman with mousy, shoulder-length brown hair, clad in a simple brown dress, brown sweater, and sensible brown shoes, examined the dusty sleeve of an old LP record and shook her head patiently.

“No, young man. I’m looking for the first Clash album. The one with ‘Police and Thieves’ on it.”

“Oh. All right. Hold on a sec, lady.” The record store clerk gave the woman a tight-lipped, irritated smile and strolled lazily to the back of the store.

Ida Finkleman flipped through the racks while she waited, pulling out a Jawbox album and running her finger down the track listings, trying to remember if this was the one she had already. The drive to this record store was quite long, and the clerks were preposterously rude, especially considering that Ida was frequently the only customer. But it couldn’t be helped. Once upon a time, all Ms. Finkleman listened to was classical music—Tchaikovsky and Haydn, Brahms and Bach, and especially her beloved Mozart. But that was before last semester. Before the Choral Corral and the Careless Errors; before Bethesda Fielding used a project in Mr. Melville’s class to dig up her punk rock past and broadcast it to the world.

In the aftermath of these extraordinary events, Ms. Finkleman had, to all outward appearances, returned to her former role in the Mary Todd Lincoln landscape: the boring and unremarkable Band and Chorus teacher, walking briskly through the halls with her head down and her violin case clutched to her chest. Except Ida had not come away unchanged, not really. What she had gained—besides a keen determination to avoid student projects of all kinds—was a newfound passion for rock and roll.

“Say,” Ida asked the returning clerk, gesturing to the in-store stereo system. “This is the Flaming Lips, right?”

The clerk grunted in the affirmative and handed her the Clash album she’d asked for.

Ms. Finkleman rarely had a chance to drive all the way over here and indulge her new obsession; she was not terribly pleased, therefore, to feel the insistent vibration of her cellular phone. She was even less pleased to discover on the other end a nervous female voice she didn’t recognize.

“Hello, is that Ida? It’s Tracy.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Tracy Fischler? From the math department? I’m here with some of the other teachers. Ida, we, uh…”

“Yes?” She ran her finger over the record, checking for nicks and scratches. “What?”

“We need your help.”