Read Ivy and Bean Take the Case Online
Authors: Annie Barrows
Ivy and Bean Take the Case
To Victoria Rock, mentor, strategist,
and fellow subversive, with gratitude.
âA. B. + S. B.
Text © 2013 by Annie Barrows.
Illustrations © 2013 by Sophie Blackall.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2847-4
The Library of Congress has catalogued the previous edition as follows: Barrows, Annie.
Ivy + Bean take the case / written by Annie Barrows ; illustrated by Sophie Blackall.
p. cm. â (Ivy + Bean ; bk. 10)
Summary: After watching a movie about a detective on the television, Bean decides to set up shop as a private investigatorâand she and Ivy start looking for mysteries to solve.
ISBN 978-1-4521-0699-1 (alk. paper)
1. Bean (Fictitious character : Barrows)âJuvenile fiction. 2. Ivy (Fictitious character: Barrows)âJuvenile fiction. 3. Private investigatorsâJuvenile fiction. 4. Best friendsâ Juvenile fiction. 5. Humorous stories. [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Private investigatorsâFiction. 3. Best friendsâFiction. 4. FriendshipâFiction. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Blackall, Sophie. ill. II. Title. III. Title: Ivy and Bean take the case. IV. Series: Barrows, Annie. Ivy + Bean ; bk. 10.
PZ7.B27576Iys 2013
813.6âdc23
2012046876
Book design by Sara Gillingham Studio.
Typeset in Blockhead and Candida.
The illustrations in this book were rendered in Chinese ink.
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BLACK AND WHITE AND TOUGH ALL OVER
Bean wasn't allowed to watch television. Or music videos. Bean's mom said she could watch two movies a week, but they had to be movies where everyone was good. There couldn't be any bad words. There couldn't be any mean people. There couldn't be anyone smoking a cigarette or wearing tiny clothes. There were only about ten movies that followed all these rules. Luckily, Bean liked all ten of them. She watched them over and over.
Bean's mom said ten movies were plenty. She said kids Bean's age should be using their imaginations instead of watching TV. She said fresh air was more important than movies.
And then what did she do?
She made Bean watch a movie. It was her favorite movie, she said. Everyone should see it at least once, she said. The movie was called
Seven Falls
, but it wasn't about waterfalls or even the leaf-falling kind of fall, which is what Bean had guessed. It was about a guy named Al Seven. Boy, was he tough! He was so tough he talked without moving his lips, and some of it was bad words.
He was also kind of mean. Everyone in the movie was kind of mean, plus they all smoked cigarettes. They didn't wear tiny clothes, but that was the only rule they didn't break.
“I can't believe you're letting me watch this,” said Bean.
“
Seven Falls
is a classic,” said Bean's mom. “It's one of the greatest movies ever made.”
“Don't be a stooge,” said Al Seven to another movie guy. That was pretty mean, but Bean pretended not to notice, because this was one of the greatest movies ever made. Al Seven was also in black and white, but Bean knew she was supposed to imagine he was in color. “What is it about dames?” asked Al Seven, walking slowly down a rainy street. “They break your heart, I guess,” he answered himself.
That was the end.
Bean's mom let out a big, happy sigh. “Wasn't that amazing? Did you get it?”
Get what? Bean wasn't sure, but she nodded. “I'm going to be just like Al Seven when I grow up.”
Her mother raised one eyebrow. “You'd better not be.”
But then again, why wait, thought Bean. She could start being like Al Seven now. She slumped over and put her feet on the coffee table. “Whaddaya say we watch it again, pal?” she said.
Her mom raised both eyebrows. “What I say is don't call me pal and take your feet off the table.”
That hadn't worked. Bean took her feet off the table. “Dames,” she said sadly. “They break your heart.”
Her mom's eyebrows were almost inside her hair. “Oh dear,” she said.
+ + + + +
It took Bean a long time to go to sleep that night. She couldn't stop thinking about Al Seven and his black-and-white world. It didn't seem like the real world, the world on Pancake Court that Bean lived in. People in Al Seven's world were tough, and they didn't laugh very much. They didn't do normal stuff like go to school and the grocery store. They walked down alleys and wore hats. But the most un-normal thing about Al Seven's world was the mysteries. There were mysteries all over the place.
Bean untwisted her pajamas and thought about that. A mystery was a question you couldn't find the answer to. In Al Seven's world, the mysteries were things like Who took Hester's jewels? or Where was Sammy La Barba on the night of May twelfth? Bean didn't have any jewels and she sure as heck didn't know anyone named Sammy La Barba, but there were plenty of questions that she didn't have answers to. Millions of them. For instance, Who thought of money? Not even grown-ups knew the answer to that
question. But Bean had other questions, too, like What's inside the cement thing in the front yard? What's behind the Tengs' fence and why do they lock it up? and What's the matter with the mailman? When she asked these questions, her parents usually said something like It's none of your business. That meant that there was an answer, but they didn't want her to know it.
Bean smiled toughly at her dark ceiling. They didn't want her to know things. Just like Sammy La Barba didn't want Al Seven to know where he was on the night of May twelfth. But Al Seven had figured it out, because he was a private investigator. Private investigators got to the bottom of mysteries. They solved them. They snuck around. They spied. They asked the hard questions. They sat in their cars and
rubbed their faces until they came up with the answers. Then they walked down alleys in the rain.
That's what Bean was going to do. First thing tomorrow morning. “None of your business!” she muttered. “Ha!”
Al Seven had a cool office with his name on the door. Bean could do that, easy-peasy. She began with the desk. Bean had a good board, and she had two triangle things that were called sawhorses even though they didn't look anything like horses. She put the sawhorses on the front lawn, and then she put the board on top of the sawhorses. Desk! The spinny chair was a little harder. Bean had to yank it up the basement stairs, yank, yank, yank. And just when she got to the top, it fell back down most of the stairs. It was already broken, but it was more broken after it fell down the stairs.