Spiders on the Case (4 page)

I
t was well after midnight when Edith, her children, and Buster returned to the display case. The night raid on the Adams collection had been their most successful yet.

“I'm in a webbish mood!” Edith declared. “Yes, it's time for a new web. We need one to store all the silverfish we've hauled back. Anyone want to help?”

“Your mother certainly is energetic!” Buster whispered.

“I know, and just hours ago she was complaining about old age. But she likes to show off our catch to Tom. That's why she picked this display case. Hardly anyone ever comes by it. And since we've been here, Tom has put it on the No Dust list. He sometimes tidies it up, but he's always sure not to wipe out our webs.”

By now, Edith was skibbling around the case. “I think we'll have the main socializing web in this corner. But next to it, I'll weave a storage web for the silverfish. We can just dip in as the mood strikes us.” She paused. “You have to admit that despite how loathsome these pests are, they are rather pretty — they seem to glint in the light. Why … why …” Edith's voice filled with excitement. “It's almost like Christmas!”

“Christmas in July!” came a voice from the floor.

“Fatty!” the Deadlies exclaimed in unison.

“Fatty, darling Fatty! What brings you here?” Edith asked.

“I could not take another second of that infernal flamenco,” said the big cat with a delicate shudder. “The constant thumping! Dancing, they call it! I call it clodhopping. Have you ever heard of a cat with a head ache?”

“No, dear, I haven't,” Edith said.

“Well, I have one! So I thought I'd take a break and come here for a few days. And it seems it is also Christmas? What was that you were saying, Edith?”

“Oh, just a funny little memory of mine.”

“Webtime story! Mom, a webtime story, please!” Julep jumped up and down on all eight legs. “Please! Please! Puleeze!”

“Well, for silk's sake, let me finish this web first!”

“Can we hear the one about the Place Where Time Has Stopped?”

“Oh, Julep, you always ask for that one,” Jo Bell groaned.

“But we all love the story, Jo Bell. You know we do.”

It was true. Despite Jo Bell's groaning, it was their favorite. Jo Bell's only hesitation was that, although the story never wore thin, the dream of finding a wonderful place where spiders could live with no fear of E-Men seemed as far away as ever. The Boston Public Library was the closest the family had ever come to the Place Where Time Has Stopped, where they believed humans and spiders lived together with no fear. The Smoots were the only dark cloud in this splendid library, and Edith still didn't know about them.

Buster had never heard any webtime stories. He was intrigued by the idea of a Place Where Time Has Stopped.

But now Felix was echoing Jo Bell. “A new story, Mom!”

“All right! All right! Just let me finish here,” Edith said.

A few minutes later, the dim golden dusk of the display case was spangled by the silverfish that Edith and her children had woven into the storage web.

“It reminds me of one Christmas in particular,” Edith marveled. “It's like tinsel on a Christmas tree!”

“Which Christmas, Mom?” Julep said. “Come on, tell us.”

“Oh, it was so long ago. I hardly remember all the details. I think I was even younger than you, Julep.”

Julep peered at her mother. It was unimaginable that her mother had ever been that young. Had she ever whined — as everyone was always accusing Julep of doing?

“Well, children, once upon a time so long ago, when I was but a wee thing …”

There was nothing quite like Edith's webtime story voice. Jo Bell could tell that Buster was instantly enchanted. His chelicerae, his spider jaws, dropped wide open. He had read and read and read his entire life, but he had never really heard a story told. Buster had never felt ashamed or sorry for being what he would describe as an “instant orphan.” In fact, Buster had thought that his biggest problem in life was not being venomous. But now he realized he was wrong. He was lonely. And he always had been lonely.

As he perched in a corner of the somewhat messy web, enveloped by the bluish light — for brown recluse silk has a tinge of blue — he felt as if he had finally arrived in a snug harbor. A silken harbor where the threads were stirred by a soft voice.

He knew about
The Nutcracker
. A score by Tchaikovsky was in the music manuscript room, and he had read the story of the ballet that began on Christmas Eve, when a little girl was given the gift of a doll — a nutcracker prince. That night she dreams that the prince enters a fierce battle with a mouse king. But never had the magic of the story seemed more real than now.

“It was in the first theater I ever visited. It was called the Palace, in the great city of Chicago. I can't remember where we had come from, or exactly where we went after the E-Men arrived. It was all such a blur. But I do remember my dear dad and mum and your great-aunt Tessie had decided we should weave our webs in the tippy-top of the Christmas tree. It was an artificial tree, of course, and it rose out of the stage in the first act. When the ballet starts, the scene is set for a lovely party to begin at the Stahlbaum house. It is a grand house, for the Stahlbaums are very rich, and every Christmas Eve, they give a wonderful party. Clara and Fritz are their children.”

“How old are they?” Jo Bell interrupted.

“Oh, I would say just about your age and Felix's age — middle grade and elementary school.” This was an influence from the time Edith had spent at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona. It had left a lasting impression, and she often thought of her children in terms of grade levels. Felix was a solid sixth grader, Jo Bell a seventh grader, and Julep a kindergartner. Or possibly a first grader.

“Isn't there anybody my age?” Julep whined.

“You mean pre-K?” Felix snorted.

“Children, stop that. No interruptions, please. All eyes on me!”

Buster was shaking with frustration at the interruptions.

“As I was saying, there is a party, and the children's godfather arrives.” Edith gave a quick glance up toward Fatty, her own children's godspider, who had settled on the top of the display case. “He brings presents for Clara and Fritz. To Clara he gives a doll — a nutcracker prince. Fritz is jealous and a fight breaks out between the children, breaking the doll. But that's only the beginning of the story. For after the guests leave and the clock strikes midnight, strange things begin to happen. Clara starts to shrink, and the Christmas tree begins to grow and grow and grow. Oh, it was a wonderful feeling for all of us as the tree rose up, up, and up, as if on threads of silk. I can just see my mother and Aunt Tessie, their twelve eyes sparkling. It was as if we were at the very heart of a miracle. We could look out from our web and see the audience gasping in wonder. Children wiggling in their seats suddenly grew still, their eyes round with disbelief!”

“Too bad little human kids have just two eyes,” Julep moaned softly. “There's so much to see!”

By this time, twenty-six spider eyes were round with disbelief. Edith's silken voice wove through the night as the silverfish glimmered in the gossamer lattice of threads. Edith was not only a spinner of webs, but a spinner of enchantment.

J
o Bell nestled in the taffeta petals of a rose pinned to the brim of the elderly lady's hat in the Bates reading room of the Boston Public Library. Buster had never bothered to find out the lady's name. He simply called her The Hat. The lady was reading a book entitled
Elements of Crime Detection
by Ellis Frumkin. And Jo Bell was reading alongside her.

But
, thought Jo Bell,
we don't have to deduce anything to know who committed the crime. It was Agnes Smoot!
She had learned a lot about fingerprints, witness protection, and dragnets set up to catch criminals. But none of it helped.

Jo Bell made a decision. She crawled out of the taffeta rose, then cast a dragline to lower her self down. The Hat seemed to sense something out of the corner of her eye and raised a hand with liver-colored age spots to flick Jo Bell away.

Don't do it, lady!

It was a narrow escape. Jo Bell's spinnerets went into high gear and she squeezed out a half foot more of line to The Hat's shoulder. Next she skibbled down a sleeve, hopped from there to the desk, and cast another dragline to swing her self under the long tables of the reading room.

Buster had camped out on the collar of a man who had fallen asleep reading old issues of the
Boston Globe
.

“What's up, Jo Bell — want to read this? The most fascinating art crime ever was right here in Boston. The thieves tied up two security guards with duct tape and made off with three hundred million dollars' worth of art. The crime was never solved.”

“That's just the problem, Buster,” Jo Bell said.

“What do you mean?”

“Our crime is solved! We know who did it. It's Agnes Smoot and her husband!”

“I still don't understand what you're saying.”

For someone as smart as Buster, he could be a bit dense at times, Jo Bell thought.

“Look, we've spent all morning reading about crime detection. But we've already detected the crime. What we have to figure out is how to catch the thieves!”

“It would be so much easier with venom,” Buster said mournfully.

“Buster, you are venom obsessed!” Jo Bell shouted. “Get over it. Venom is out of the question.” She immediately felt terrible. She shouldn't have yelled at him. Buster was so sweet, and even kind of cute in his own way. She didn't want to hurt his feelings. But he did have a venom fixation. In a softer voice she continued, “We need to read about catching a thief — entrapment.”

“Entrapment! Of course you're right, Jo Bell! The real problem is that Tom doesn't know what's happening and there's no way we can tell him. I mean, he doesn't speak spider and we don't speak human. It's really amazing that your friend Fat Cat can understand us.”

“He has since birth,” Jo Bell replied.

“Since he was born? Astounding.”

“Oh, no — not Fatty's birth. Ours. When Mom arrived at the philharmonic hall, she was on the brink of spinning an egg sac. She couldn't find a safe place to put it, but Fatty seemed so friendly that she used signs to ask him if she could stick it in his ear. And ‘Voilà!' as Fatty would say. The rest is history.”

“So the first time Fatty heard spider talk was from the three of you?”

“Yep — squabbling, arguing for the best space in his ear when we hatched out. His ear is very nice. So soft and furry. And he heard Mom sing us lullabies. He was speaking spider in no time.”

“You don't say!”

“Yes. Communication with Fatty is easy. But with Tom it's another story.”

“And that is our problem.”

“Tom never goes to the fashion portfolios, so how will he ever discover what's missing?”

“And he doesn't go to the map collection, either. Now, if it were something to do with, say, Egypt, he'd be on those two crooks like — pardon the expression — like a spider on a glue bug.”