Spotted Dog Last Seen (9 page)

“Was she worried about you?” my mom asked.

“I guess,” I said with a shrug.

It seemed easier to give her that answer than to explain how Merrilee and Pascal were desperate to open a mysterious locker assigned to someone entirely unknown to us, having broken a secret code that had been written in a series of public library mystery books.

“That's nice,” my mom said. “Would you like something to eat?”

“Sure,” I said.

At least my appetite was back.

After lunch, I spent the afternoon working on a new t-shirt based on a story I had heard on the radio while I was eating. A politician took four live beavers to China in the hope that he could trade them for a rare panda bear to take home to a zoo. He failed. They gave him a common elk instead. My t-shirt featured four beavers, a not-equal sign and one panda.

I was pleased with the design and planned to wear it to school the next day instead of my regular school uniform. I remembered that Queensview was holding a fundraiser, and students could wear their street clothes for the day if they gave a small donation.

Still, I had an uneasy time falling asleep that night, tossing and turning over what secrets we might discover in Trevor Tower's locker. But when my alarm clock went off in the morning, I was grateful that at least I had not had the nightmare.

Pascal scrambled up the front steps of the school to join me as I entered the building for my first class.

“Merrilee says to meet her at Trevor Tower's locker at 2:25 p.m.”

“But we're in math class at 2:25 p.m.”

“That's right. I'll make an excuse to go to the bathroom. Then a few minutes later, you'll make an excuse, too. We'll rendezvous at the locker.”

“Rendezvous? Good grief! What kind of word is that?”

“Rendezvous. It's a spy word. Get with the program!”

He scooted off down the hall.

The morning went by as usual, but I decided to pay Ms. Albright a visit when lunchtime arrived. She was at her desk.

“Oh, hello, Derek. I'm so glad to see you back at school.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I was not sure how to begin.

“Your t-shirt,” Ms. Albright said. “Is that about the story they told on the radio yesterday?”

I nodded.

“I heard that story, too! I can't imagine why anyone would want to trade a magnificent panda for four ordinary beavers. You've done a marvelous job!”

“Thanks,” I said, aware that if I didn't stop with my one-word answers, I was going to sound like a complete idiot.

“Ms. Albright,” I plowed ahead, “I'm sorry for how I acted the other day and whatnot.”

“Don't you worry about that,” she said with a wave of her hand. “It was quite a shock, I'm sure. How was the funeral service?”

“The church was packed,” I said.

“Mr. Creelman was very special, very rare indeed.”

“Kind of like a panda,” I said, looking down at my t-shirt.

“Exactly,” Ms. Albright replied. “Maybe you had Mr. Creelman in the back of your mind when you made it.”

She had that right. Mr. Creelman was in the back of my mind, trapped in my nightmares along with Dennis.

“I'm sure I did,” I said. “Well, I should get back.”

“Glad you dropped by,” Ms. Albright said.

All too soon, it was math class.

At 2:18 p.m., Pascal put up his hand to leave. He shot me a sly smile as he went out the door. My heart started to pound.

2:19.

2:20.

2:21.

2:21 and thirty seconds.

I held up my shaky hand.

“Yes, Derek?”

“May I be excused?”

“Be quick. We're about to review fractions.”

I fumbled for the door and stood in the hall. It was empty. I took a deep breath, then crept up the stairwell to the second floor. I spotted Pascal at the far end, practically bouncing from one foot to the other in front of Trevor's locker.

“Where's Merrilee?” I whispered.

“Don't know,” Pascal replied. “But we can't wait forever. We've got to get back to math class.”

We stood with uncertainty, startling at every little noise.

And then after what seemed like forever, the door to a classroom far down the hall opened. It was Merrilee. She slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her without a peep.

“Let's do it,” she whispered as soon as she was within earshot.

The three of us stood staring at the locker.

“Who's going to open it?” I asked.

Nobody budged.

“Go for it,” I whispered to no one in particular.

More silence.

“Pascal!” Merrilee whispered.

“Why me?” he asked, spinning to face her.

“I'm busy on the lookout,” she whispered. “And Derek's wearing a confusing t-shirt that makes me think he's not up for the challenge.”

“Ms. Albright understood my t-shirt,” I countered.

Still, nobody moved.

“We're running out of time,” Merrilee warned.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Pascal said.

He took a bold step forward and grabbed the lock.

“What's the combination again?”

“Twenty-eight. Thirty-four. Eighteen,” I announced, proving to Merrilee that I was not confused.

“Hey, that's quite good for someone who wears pandas and beavers, something I wouldn't be caught dead in.”

This from a girl who wore a red plastic jacket with bunnies and carrots on it.

“One panda. Four beavers,” I snapped. “There's a difference.”

Merrilee and I were cut short by the sound of a click that echoed down the empty hallway.

Pascal had opened the lock.

Nine

_____

Obituary

PASCAL SLID
the lock off the hasp.

“Here we go,” he whispered hoarsely.

He slowly opened the door, which gave an alarming creak, then took a giant step back to join Merrilee and me. The three of us stared at the contents.

The first thing that struck me was how ordinary everything looked. Nothing jumped out at us or vaporized or smelled rotten. Instead, there was a single slim book on the top shelf. Below the shelf was a heap of envelopes on the floor of the locker. The envelopes were in different colors, assorted sizes and various thicknesses.

Merrilee reached in and grabbed the book from the top shelf. It had a picture on the cover of a dog with spots that was curled up and half hidden under a park bench in a cemetery.

“
The Spotted Dog Last Seen
,” she said, reading the cover, “‘by Murray Easton.'”

The Spotted Dog Last Seen
? I had heard that title before. But where?

She flipped through the pages, pausing whenever she got to chapter headings.

“Who is Murray Easton?” Pascal demanded. “I thought this was Trevor Tower's locker.”

Merrilee flipped to the end of the book and landed on the back page.

“‘About the author,'” she read out loud.

We gathered in.

“‘Murray Easton loves yard sales and is often inspired by odd objects that are no longer wanted. His collection of poems,
Treadmill, Hardly Used
, won the national Writers of Tomorrow Award and received starred reviews in numerous literary journals. He lives with his wife and an excitable dog in a small town called Ferndale. They both have an ear for good dialogue. This is Murray's first novel.'”

“I used to live in Ferndale,” I said in awe.

We looked at each other, thinking over Murray Easton's biography. Merrilee flipped to the front of the book. She paused on the dedication page, then tightened her grip on the cover. I thought it was because she had discovered another secret code penciled in the margin, but I was wrong.

Dead wrong.

“
To the Queensview Mystery Book Club
,” she read out loud.

Then below that, written by hand, were the words
Tell the Club that Buster's doing fine
. It was followed by Murray Easton's signature.

“I didn't know that Queensview has a Mystery Book Club,” I said.

“It doesn't,” Merrilee said. “At least, not anymore. And look at the publication date. This book was printed
after
the time capsule was locked.”

Pascal made the next move. He grabbed a handful of envelopes from the pile below and flipped through them while Merrilee and I peered over his shoulders. The envelopes were all addressed to the same person — Mr. Easton. Each one was written in different handwriting. Pascal turned the first few over.

“They're sealed,” he observed.

He put all but the top one back and went to slip his finger beneath the flap of the envelope he still held so that he could tear it open.

“Stop!” I warned, rescuing the envelope from Pascal. “Envelopes are like coffins. They're sealed for a reason!”

“The plot thickens,” Merrilee said, as if she had just tasted something delicious. “And I can tell you this. Murray Easton is not the one behind the secret codes that led us to this locker.”

“How do you know?” I asked, still trying to piece together where I had heard the title of Murray Easton's book before.

“Penmanship,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“Penmanship?” Pascal repeated.

“That's right,” Merrilee said. “Think back to the codes. How would you describe that writing?”

“Tidy,” I said. “But cramped. And the letter
a
was written with a hood on it.”

“Now look at the handwriting on the dedication page.”

Pascal and I studied the writing. It was loopy and slanted backwards, like left-handers do. Not the same at all. Besides, the letter
a
in the word
that
did not have a hood.

“Okay, time's up,” Merrilee said. “Let's put everything back the way we found it for now.”

We quickly returned the materials, and Pascal slid the lock back on the hasp with a click. He spun the dial, then turned to face us.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Everyone needs to return to class as if nothing has happened,” Merrilee instructed.

“Nothing
has
happened!” I said, feeling let down and frustrated in equal measure.

But Merrilee did not stick around to argue. She strode all the way down the hall, opened the door to her class and silently slipped inside.

“
The Spotted Dog Last Seen
,” I said. “Where have I read that before?”

Pascal shrugged. It was his turn to start down the hallway, his shoes squeaking on the tile floor.

“Give me a couple of minutes before you head back,” he called over his shoulder. “It will be less suspicious if we don't arrive together.”

I stood awkwardly in front of Trevor Tower's locker.

“
The Spotted Dog Last Seen
,” I whispered at it, having been abandoned in the hallway. “Last seen where?”

The answer, of course, was inside that locker. I might as well have been standing in front of Enoch Pettypiece's grave marker at Twillingate Cemetery. I could ask as many questions as I wanted, but I would only get blank silence in return. I would have to dig deeper.

It was then that I did something rash. Maybe it was because of the lack of sleep all those nights and whatnot.

Twenty-eight. Thirty-four. Eighteen.

Click.

I reopened the locker.

I left the sealed envelopes alone, but I figured that books were meant to be read. I grabbed the one on the top shelf, then shut the door and secured the lock with clumsy hands as quietly as I could in my haste.

I had trouble breathing as I scrambled down the stairs to my own locker. I shoved the book deep inside my knapsack, then dashed the door shut. By the time I returned to class, my hands were sweating and my chest was pounding. I refused to make eye contact with Pascal as I slid behind my desk.

That night, Creelman returned to my nightmare, mouthing silent words on my front lawn after the accident and sadly shaking his head.

“I can't hear you!” I gasped as I bolted upright in my bed.

I turned my lamp on. Two books now lay on my night table — Creelman's
Famous Last Words
and Murray Easton's
The Spotted Dog Last Seen
.

I had almost finished reading Creelman's collection of epitaphs, so I picked up that book and started flipping through. Then, on a hunch, I turned to the chapter on epitaphs for pets, which I had already read.

And there it was. Third epitaph down. Epitaph for a beloved fire-station mascot, lost in the line of duty.

The spotted dog last seen

patrolling ladders touching skies

now rests beneath the green

and our tapestry of sighs.

I put the epitaph book aside. I knew I'd seen Murray Easton's title before! Did Creelman know Murray Easton? Had Creelman lent him this very book? I picked up
The Spotted Dog Last Seen
and started to read.

“The school secretary called,” my mom reported to me as soon as I got home that Friday afternoon.

I had been a bit edgy all day, thinking that Merrilee or Pascal might discover I had taken Murray Easton's book without them knowing. But I was certain the call from the secretary had nothing to do with that.

“Apparently, Mr. Creelman made a large donation of books to the public library, and somebody named Loyola Louden called the school to say that they could use your help in cataloguing the books. So, the thought is that you could report to the library next Wednesday to complete your community service before school is let out for the summer. Does that sound okay to you?”

She was still treating me as if I was going to break down at any minute.

“Sure,” I said. “What's for dinner?”

My nightly dreams continued over the weekend, except now I could count on the fact that Creelman would show up at the scene of the accident mouthing his silent words with that woeful look. Then I would wake up and flip through the pages of Murray Easton's book to where I had left off.

The Spotted Dog Last Seen
was good. It was about a language arts teacher who taught a lot of his classes by doing unusual projects. One week, he had his students write poems about the sky on kites that they built. Then they flew the kites in the schoolyard. Another week, he brought in boxes of dated textbooks and had his students make birdhouses out of them to hang from the playground equipment. During another week still, he took a manuscript he had been working on and had his students fold the pages into bats or dragonflies, turning them into mobiles of fluttering words marked up by red ink.

By the time the weekend was almost over, I had gotten to the part where the teacher wrote about a small dog that his students had started to feed every lunchtime. He asked them about it, about the spotted dog he had last seen by the school's fence. They told him that the dog was a stray, and when it ended up at the animal shelter, the teacher adopted it.

The dog proved to be quite a handful. It would tear around the teacher's house in excitement each day when he returned home. The only way that he could calm the dog down was to read a story out loud. He soon discovered that the dog liked movie scripts the best, curling up with its head on its spotted paws to listen.

I reread Murray Easton's biography at the end. He had an excitable dog who also had a good ear for dialogue. Was Murray Easton writing about himself? Was Murray Easton a teacher? I reread the dedication page.
To the Queensview Mystery Book Club
. Had he been Trevor Tower's teacher at Queensview? Then I reread the handwritten note below.
Tell the Club that Buster's doing fine!
Was Buster the spotted stray dog?

I returned to the story. I must have read the book halfway into the night, even though I knew I had school in the morning. Eventually, I fell asleep, along with the excitable spotted dog.

It was Monday morning. I was climbing the front steps of the school when Pascal rushed them two at a time to join me as I opened the door.

“I was walking past the cemetery on the way here when a truck came by,” he reported. “They were delivering Creelman's grave marker. It's supposed to be installed this morning.”

“So soon?” I said.

Pascal nodded as we made our way to the side of the hallway to continue our conversation in private, while noisy crowds of students shuffled past us on their way to their classes.

“Creelman must have designed his grave marker in advance, just like our homework assignment,” Pascal said. “Want to go check it out at lunch? Pay our respects and all?”

Creelman. He had been visiting me so often in my dreams that I still had a hard time thinking of him as gone.

“Well, do you?” Pascal asked. “We could grab Merrilee and review our case while we're there. He'll be located in the newer section with the granites.”

It was one thing to return to the cemetery and pore over the gravestone of someone I had never met. Take Enoch, for example. His half-blank marker did not haunt me one bit. But it would be another thing to visit Creelman. I know Creelman. Correction. I knew Creelman. And I could still picture his scowl and remember his lessons, every one of them.

Still. Creelman was haunting my dreams. Would visiting his gravesite make his silent words come to life so that I could hear them?

“Okay,” I said with resolve. “But only if it's not raining. Otherwise, I'll meet you in the library with Colonel Mustard and the lead pipe.”

Pascal peered with a puzzled look through the window beside the front door at the perfectly clear blue sky. He didn't get my little joke about the murder mystery board game
Clue
.

Merrilee met us at the iron gate at noon, still sporting her red plastic bunnies-and-carrots jacket.

“Just like old times,” she said when we arrived.

Pascal led us inside. We made our way past all the old slates and sandstones toppling this way and that, past the marbles with their sugared statues and the less-common obelisks with their pretentious heights and headed for the modern granites beyond the first hedgerow in the north section. The birds were singing, but otherwise we had the whole cemetery to ourselves.

“I'm still confused,” Pascal admitted while we walked. “What does Murray Easton have to do with Trevor Tower? What's with all those letters in the locker written to Mr. Easton? And who's been writing secret codes in mystery books at the public library that led us to the locker in the first place? I just don't get any of it.”

“We'll figure things out,” Merrilee said, more marching than walking. “We don't know much about Trevor Tower, but we do know that Murray Easton is a writer and that
The Spotted Dog Last Seen
is his first novel. He hasn't written anything since, at least not yet.”

We stared at her.

“I looked up his name at the public library,” she explained, “to borrow
The Spotted Dog Last Seen
. The library has several copies, but they were all signed out.”

A wave of guilt slowed my pace. She still didn't know about the signed copy on my night table.

“How can we find out more about Trevor Tower?” I asked, trying to distract them.

What I really wanted to do was buy time to finish the book I had swiped from the locker. I was convinced that it was the key to everything.

“We can't ask Loyola any more questions. She'd just get suspicious,” Merrilee warned. “But I know a great place where we can find out more about Trevor.”

“Where?” Pascal and I asked together.