Shouldn't You Be in School?, Page 4

  Kellar looked around the diner and nodded. “What about you, typist?”

  “I’m a journalist, not a typist,” Moxie said firmly, handing him one of her cards. “My father counts on me, too.”

  “Doesn’t anyone in this town go to school?”

  “Lots of kids go to school in this town,” Jake said.

  “I hope so,” Kellar said, running a hand through the spike in his hair. “Where would we be without a top-drawer education? Where would all the children be?” He turned to me and met my eyes. My eyes met him back, but I still felt there was something I wasn’t seeing clearly. “And you, Snicket?” he said. “You’re in a special program, if I’m not mistaken. That’s why you were hired to investigate.”

  “You’re not mistaken,” I said.

  “How’s your investigation going?”

  “I’m stopping for lunch.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “The food’s delicious. You know what it needs, though? Lime. Lime from an Italian tree. My mother speaks Italian and loves limes, so maybe that’s what gave me the idea. Of course, there aren’t any Italian lime trees, not in this town. None at all. Still, some people waste their afternoons chasing after an Italian lime. There’s a word for that. Can you think of the word, Snicket?”

  I knew how I looked when I looked at Kellar. I’ve seen how people look at me when they have no idea what I’m talking about. “Many words come to mind,” I told him finally. “Confused. Perplexed. Puzzled.”

  “Those aren’t Italian words,” he said, and wiped his mouth and looked around at all of us. Then he slid off the stool and left the place. We all looked after him.

  “Odd kid,” Moxie said, opening her typewriter. “Do you know him, Snicket?”

  “His name is Kellar Haines,” I said. “All I know about him is that he’s a fast typist.”

  Moxie raised her eyebrows so high they almost disappeared into her hat. “Faster than I am?”

  “I wonder what he was doing here,” I said, instead of disappointing her.

  “He came in about an hour ago,” Jake said. “I made him a Reuben with extra Russian dressing, and he talked my ear off asking about you. He’d looked for you at the library and at the Lost Arms, so he could deliver a message.”

  “But he didn’t deliver a message,” I said. “You saw him walk right out the door.”

  We all looked at the door. It had a small square window toward the top, made from that kind of glass that you can’t quite see through. You couldn’t see the street or anything that was happening, just a few vague shapes. My whole day had been like that.

  “Look,” Moxie said. “He left my business card behind.”

  “I guess he thinks he doesn’t need it,” Jake said.

  “Or,” I said, “he doesn’t want it to be found in his possession.”

  Moxie gave me a curious look and typed a few lines while Jake put the toasted bread in a pile on a plate and served up lunch.

  “Here,” he said, “eat up and tell me what you think.”

  It was soup, ice cold, a shock and a delight on such a hot day. The taste was sweet and crunchy and smooth and satisfying. Then I took a bite of the bread and something in the jam made me feel sparks on my tongue. It was a lunch of adventure. I felt my mouth grinning around the spoon.

  “What do you think, Snicket?” Jake asked. “Does that cut the mustard?”

  What he meant was, “Is this a successful soup?” and I told him it certainly was. “I don’t taste mustard,” I said, “but I do taste tomato and spring onion.”

  “And lime,” Moxie said.

  “But not from an Italian tree,” Jake said with a smile.

  I tasted again. “Maybe a little black pepper?”

  “You’re not getting the secret ingredient.”

  “Give us a hint,” Moxie said.

  Jake thought for a second. “Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.”

  “That’s water,” I said.

  Moxie tasted again and smiled. “Watermelon.”

  Jake nodded. “Tomato-watermelon gazpacho. It’s what they serve in Spain when it gets too hot. And the stuff on the bread is a habanero pepper jam I made myself.”

  “I wish all mysteries were that easy,” I said.

  “And this delicious,” Moxie said.

  Jake told us thank you and we kept eating. The food made me feel better. Good food always does. For a few minutes I stopped worrying about Hangfire and schoolchildren and arson and the Department of Education. I wasn’t even worrying about Ellington Feint. I was just enjoying lunch, and my only worry was who was going to get the last piece of toast.

  I should have kept worrying, though, because when I stopped worrying about the case, somebody else solved it. They solved it incorrectly and dimwittedly and disastrously, which is to say they didn’t solve it at all. But solving a mystery is like naming a dog. If enough people call it one thing, that’s the name that tends to stick. I was savoring my last sip of soup when Hungry’s door swung open and the wrong solution to the mystery hurried in. It was S. Theodora Markson and she had a huge grin on her face, which was never good news. Sharon Haines was right behind her with a grin just as wide, and when Theodora waved to me, I saw that both women had matching freshly painted nails. The nails were wrong too. They were bright, bright yellow, brighter than anybody likes.

  “There you are!” Theodora sang out to me, in a voice as bright as the fingernails. I’d never heard her use that voice, and I didn’t like it.

  “Tell him the good news,” Sharon said, in a matching voice.

  “We have good news, Snicket,” Theodora said. “We’ve solved the case.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “This calls for a celebration, if I do say so myself,” Theodora said, grinning wildly at all of us. “The mystery might have been too difficult for a small child, but for an adult it was a snap.” We all had to wait until she managed to finish snapping. You should only snap your fingers if you do it well. It’s the same with surgery, or driving a forklift.

  Sharon adjusted her shiny pin. “Don’t take this personally,” she said, “but if your associate went to a top-drawer school, he might have been smart enough to solve it himself.”

  “I doubt it,” Theodora said. “He’s been my apprentice for quite some time and shown no more promise than a bucket of juice.”

  “Speaking of beverages,” Sharon said, “let’s have one to celebrate. I always treat myself to a limeade when I accomplish something super-duper. The Italians call it limeade.”

  “Well, I call it a lovely idea,” Theodora said, and turned to Jake. “Little boy,” she said grandly, calling him something nobody ever wants to be called, even if they are a little boy, “limeade for my friend, and I’d like a glass of buttermilk.” Then she removed her helmet, and Moxie and Jake blinked at her hair, which resembled yarn after a kitten fight, and then looked elsewhere so they wouldn’t start laughing. Moxie looked down at her typewriter, and Jake got busy pouring drinks. If you’ve never had buttermilk and you’re curious what it tastes like, good for you and don’t be. “Sharon and I had our nails done, just us girls,” my chaperone said, “and we put the whole thing together. Birnbaum’s Sheep Barn provided wool for Harold Limetta’s moths, so when the barn burned down, the moths were starving.”

  “I thought moths only ate wool in the larval stage,” Moxie said.

  “You’re just a larva yourself,” Theodora said, “so stop interrupting me. Whoever wanted to starve the moths didn’t stop there. They lit Mr. Limetta’s house on fire and the moths perished. Don’t you see? The fires are a plot by someone who hates moths.”

  “You think that someone burned down two buildings,” I said, “in order to kill an animal you can get rid of with a flick of the wrist?”

  Theodora and her hair both nodded. “Ingenious, isn’t it?”

  “Ingenious” is a word which means “very, very clever.” It is not the word I was thinking of.

  “The arsonist is a moth-h
ater, all right,” Sharon said, sipping limeade, “and my new best friend Theodora was telling me that she knew just who it was.”

  “We saw him this morning,” Theodora said, “swatting moths as usual.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “Dashiell Qwerty is a fine librarian.”

  “I’m as shocked as you are, Snicket,” Theodora said. “In our line of work we’ve learned to trust, honor, and flatter librarians. But Qwerty is clearly a bad apple in a bowl of cherries.”

  “Dashiell Qwerty wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Moxie said.

  “You’re not listening, girlie,” Sharon said. “He’s hurting moths. The press always gets everything wrong.”

  “How did you know she was a member of the press?” I said.

  “That’s the wrong question,” Theodora said. “Be sensible, Snicket. What do you think we should do next?”

  “Find Harold Limetta and talk to him,” I said.

  “No,” Theodora said.

  “Return to the scene of the crime and see if there’s anything to indicate Qwerty was there,” I said.

  “That’s strike two,” Theodora said. “Two more strikes and you’re out.”

  “We don’t have time to play games,” Sharon said, and pointed one strict finger at me. The polish on her nails was a flashlight in my face. “Your boss has already taken the next step. We’ve called the police, and the librarian will be arrested as soon as the Officers Mitchum can find him.”

  “Have they tried looking in the library?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “He’s not there,” Sharon said. “He’s a fugitive. If you went to school, you’d know that a fugitive is a criminal who is running and hiding.”

  “Qwerty might not be running or hiding,” I said. “He just happens not to be at the library.”

  “And he just happens to hate moths,” Theodora said.

  I looked at the plate of toast with habanero jam that Jake had prepared for us. There was still one piece left, but none of us were hungry anymore. “This isn’t right,” I said.

  “I quite agree,” Theodora said sternly, and downed her buttermilk. “A competent apprentice would have figured this whole thing out without any help. That’s why my gal pal Sharon and I are going to go celebrate the end of this case, and you’re not invited. I’ll see you back at headquarters.”

  Theodora was grinning at Sharon, and Sharon was grinning at her. My chaperone had drunk the buttermilk, but I was the one with the bad taste in my mouth. Theodora slapped her helmet back on her hair, and the two women gave me a bright yellow wave good-bye and they were gone. For a few minutes nobody spoke. Moxie typed furiously until a page was through, and Jake cleared our bowls and stacked them in the sink with a busy pile of dishes that were already there. Like most people, he didn’t do the dishes until somebody nagged him about it. He scooted the last piece of toast into the trash, and Moxie rolled a fresh sheet of paper into her typewriter, and then they both looked at me.

  “What’s going on, Snicket?” Moxie said finally. “What’s this case about?”

  “You heard my chaperone,” I said.

  “That was a lot of malarkey,” Jake said, shaking his head disgustedly. There are other words for “malarkey,” but I don’t like most of them. “I’ve been to that library hundreds of times. Dashiell Qwerty is no arsonist.”

  “Anyone can see that,” Moxie said, and poised her fingers over the typewriter keys. “Why don’t you tell us about the whole thing?”

  “I’m not supposed to discuss the case,” I said.

  Jake put his hands on his hips. “I’m not supposed to give you free food either, Snicket.”

  “But I’m your friend,” I reminded him.

  “Friends tell each other what’s going on,” Moxie said.

  I pointed at the bandage on her arm. “That’s what happened the last time I told my friends what was going on.”

  Moxie looked deep into my eyes. “It’s Hangfire, isn’t it?” she said to me.

  “Hangfire?” Jake said. He clenched his fists.

  “I don’t know if it’s Hangfire,” I said. “I don’t know anything at all.”

  “Hangfire was behind Cleo’s kidnapping,” Jake reminded me. “If you think that ruffian could be up to something, she could be in danger again. Snicket, you’ve got to tell us the skinny.”

  I looked at Jake and then at Moxie. They’re right, I said to myself. You’ve got to tell them the skinny, Snicket. And so I did. “The skinny” is a phrase which just means “the secret information,” but there wasn’t much information at all. I told them about the barn. I told them about Harold Limetta’s house and running into the Mitchums. That was all I told them. It was everything except the small tanks that lay burned in the wreckage. Moxie typed it all up and then turned to me.

  “What does it mean?” she asked. “Who burned down the barn and the house? When will they strike next? Why would anyone do such a thing? Where is Harold Limetta?”

  “Those are all good questions,” I said. “I can’t answer any of them.”

  “I have a question too,” Jake said. “What can we do to help?”

  “Do either of you know anything about the Department of Education?” I said.

  They looked at each other and shook their heads. “We don’t go to school, remember?” Moxie said.

  “I went to school before I started living with my aunt,” Jake said. “But it was just the usual song and dance of teachers and homework and recess and gum stuck to the underside of the desks.”

  “Maybe there’s something in the archives of The Stain’d Lighthouse,” I said. “Moxie, you found something about the fishing industry. Maybe you can find something about the Department of Education.”

  “Fishing industry?” Jake said. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “Will you tell us, when you are sure?” Jake asked.

  I looked at Moxie’s bandaged arm again, and then at Jake, remembering how desperate he was when his sweetheart was kidnapped. “Are you certain you’ll want to know?” I asked.

  They both nodded.

  “Then I’ll tell you,” I said, and I thanked them and told them I’d see them when I saw them and I went out the door. It was late afternoon but the sun wasn’t taking any time off. I looked up and down the block and tried to think of where I might go. The library, I thought. There’s work to be done, books to be read. But you can’t go there under these circumstances. Think, Snicket. Where else feels like home in this fading, frightened town?

  My feet knew before my head did. In ten minutes I was at the corner of Caravan and Parfait. Black Cat Coffee was always the same, every time I was there. It was still just one room, long and narrow like a train car. There was still an enormous counter where you could sit and think. There was still a player piano in the corner, tinkling music that was sad but not weepy. There were still three buttons—one marked A that opened the hatch in the ceiling and lowered the staircase so you could reach the attic, one marked B that fired up the machine that made fresh bread, and one marked C that controlled the shiny equipment that brewed coffee, dark and strong, that I never drank. But there was no button to make Ellington Feint appear. It was a rare day that I didn’t go to Black Cat Coffee, just on the off chance she might be sitting at the counter. The place was usually empty, but whenever I saw someone at Ellington’s favorite spot, with a cup of coffee steaming next to them, my heart raced to think it was her even as my eyes told me that it was someone else. This day was no different. It was like all the other days during my time in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, where every person had a secret, and beneath all the secrets was a great, slippery mystery, like a creature lurking in the depths of the sea.

  “I’ve never seen you here,” I said to the person at the counter, “particularly during branch hours.”

  Dashiell Qwerty gave me a small smile and finished his cup. “I like the coffee,” he said, his voice even deeper than usual. “I don’t know
when I’ll get the opportunity to have another cup.”

  “Then you know that they’re looking for you,” I said.

  Qwerty nodded. “You don’t spend your life hanging around books without learning a thing or two.”

  “I know you didn’t burn those buildings down,” I said.

  “You know no such thing,” Qwerty said, and turned his empty cup over so it domed over the saucer. “There are people in this town who believe I’m a criminal, and soon there will be many more. There might as well be a picture of me in the dictionary, inked under A for arsonist.”

  “Are you saying that being a criminal is a matter of opinion?” I asked.

  Qwerty smiled, but it was sad around the edges. “No,” he said. “It’s a matter of handcuffs,” and then the police arrived. It was quick. There was a bang of doors, and Harvey and Mimi Mitchum rushed through. It was true. They had handcuffs, and they were around Qwerty’s wrists in seconds. He frowned like I’d seen him frown a thousand times in the library, when he was looking for a piece of information that turned out to be disappointing, even when it was right where he’d known it would be. The Mitchums made him do this and that and told him he ought to be ashamed. They said I ought to be ashamed too, and when I asked what for, they just frowned. They opened the doors to Black Cat Coffee and told Qwerty to get away from the counter and into the patrol car, and then they argued over whose turn it was to say that and whether or not officers of the law should worry over whose turn it is when they’re in the middle of arresting a notorious criminal. Qwerty stood up and met my eyes. His were nervous and moving quickly. I don’t know what mine were.

  “One favor,” he said.

  “Name it,” I told him.

  He pointed to his cup of coffee, and for the first time I noticed a book on the counter, a thick one with library markings on the spine. “I was away from the library on a delivery,” he said.

  “I didn’t know you delivered.”

  “This was a special case,” Qwerty said. “A woman felt she could not come to the library, as it would be dangerous.”