The Case That Time Forgot (8 page)

“It's in my locker at school,” Xander said. “I didn't want to drag it around in my backpack in the rain. What if it got wet and the ink ran?”

“You
left
it?” Xena was astonished. “What about the school thief?”

“It's locked up! Anyway, who would want the casebook?” Xander suddenly felt uneasy about what he had done, but he didn't want to admit it. “It's not valuable to anybody but us—it's just an old leather notebook. Who would steal it? Besides, I remember everything that was on the pages where Sherlock wrote about the amulet, so we don't need it today.”

This was true; with Xander's photographic memory he'd never forget something he'd read. Still, Xena knew she wouldn't be comfortable until they had their hands on the casebook again.

“You could have wrapped it in plastic or something. How could you leave it?”

“What did you want to investigate?” Xander tried to change the subject.

“I don't know. I thought if I looked at the clues, I might think of something. But I can't do that now because you left it at school. I can't believe you'd do such a thing.”

“Stop worrying, Xena. You always think you know better than me. I didn't do anything wrong. It's in my locker. That's why they got us lockers, remember? To keep our stuff safe from the thief.” Xander didn't convince even himself with that one, and of course Xena wouldn't let him get away with it.

“Oh, sure,” she said in a tone that made him shrivel inside. “Those lockers are one hundred percent safe. They should use them in the bank!”

“The school gets locked up at night!” he shot back.

Their voices had risen, and the sound of their argument brought their father in. “Go to bed,
you two. You're obviously sleep-deprived or you wouldn't be bickering like this. What's gotten into you, anyway?”

They glanced at each other and then looked away. “Nothing,” Xander said sullenly. He could not admit to his father that he had put the precious casebook at risk.
It's perfectly safe
, he told himself as he brushed his teeth and washed his face.

 

They got to school early the next day, both gloomily aware that they had only three days left to find the amulet. Hardly anyone was there yet, and they headed straight for Xander's locker. Xena caught sight of Hannah, Shane, and Jake turning a corner ahead of them. Maybe she and Xander would find the casebook right away, and then she could go join them before class.

Xander opened his locker. He reached down to pick up the books he'd placed on top of the casebook the afternoon before.

Even before his fingers touched the first one, he knew the worst had happened. The pile was too short, and the math book he had left on top was now below his history book.

The casebook was gone!

The only reason Xena didn't say “I told you
so!” was that the look on Xander's face was so horrified she didn't want to make him burst into tears right there, in front of the people who were starting to arrive. “Pull yourself together!” she hissed at him. “Look for clues! Is there anything in your locker that you didn't put there?” She hoped the anger in her voice covered the dismay that she felt. The casebook was one of a kind and was their link to their great-great-great-grandfather. They had just started solving the cases. Would all the rest of them remain unsolved forever?

Xander pulled everything out of his locker, scattering papers, pens, and dirty gym socks all over the floor. He pawed through the pile frantically.

Nothing. Not a single indication of who could have taken the casebook. They stared at the mess in disbelief.

“The thief would have had to be really dumb to leave us his ID,” Xander finally pointed out. “Maybe we should start investigating the school thief. Whoever took the casebook could be the same person who's been stealing all those other things.”

“How do you know it's a him?”

It was a good point. Xander had been
assuming that, since he suspected someone had been listening to him in the
boys'
locker room, but now that they knew the person must have come in from the hallway, it could be anyone.

“Who was already at school when we came in?” Xander asked. “I saw your friends—”

“What difference does that make?” Xena snapped. Why did he automatically assume it was one of
her
friends? Still, she tried to remember. They were so early that hardly anyone was there. “It could have been someone after school yesterday or someone who got here for the before-school program or band rehearsal. Or one of the teachers!”

“Probably not a teacher.” Xander felt so miserable he could hardly speak, but he forced himself to think. “It would be risky. Teachers don't hang out around the lockers. Whoever took all those things must be a kid.”

“How do we know that the school thief also took the casebook?”

“We don't,” Xander had to admit. “But it could be.”

They stood thinking furiously as the hall filled up with more and more students. Then the bell rang and they had to go to class.

The day passed slowly. At lunch Xena picked
at the peanut butter sandwich her mother had made her. It was her favorite, but she just couldn't eat. A tray slid onto the table next to her and she looked up. It was Andrew. “Something wrong?” he asked as he cut up the piece of mystery meat that was generally served as school lunch, and which was the reason that Xena and Xander usually brought their own.

She shrugged. She couldn't admit to Andrew, of all people, that the notebook was missing. It had taken them a long time to make friends, and she knew how easily he lost his temper. This time she couldn't blame him, so all she said was, “Case isn't going well.”

“I don't have any word yet on the hieroglyphs, but I do have something that might help.” He handed her an envelope. Xena recognized the return address: it was from the SPFD.

“Did they already find someone who knows about shoes?”

Andrew nodded, his mouth full. “Read it,” he said around the mystery meat.

Xena quickly scanned it. “They got it!” For a moment she felt her heart lift, but then it fell again. “Oh. The shoes are Atalantas.”

“What's the problem with that?”

“Too many people wear them. I don't know
how we'll narrow it down.” Ever since most of the track medalists in the last Olympics had worn Atalantas, they'd become the most popular brand of sports shoes in the world.

Xena read the rest of the report. Men's shoes, British size 9, equivalent to American 9½. The shoe expert hadn't been able to figure out what the circle in the print could be.

So now they had to look at the soles of people's shoes. But how could they do that? And even if they did find the eavesdropper, that wouldn't prove that it was the same person who had taken the casebook. And it wouldn't get them any closer to the amulet.

She slid the paper back in the envelope and tucked it carefully in her notebook. “Thanks,” she said to Andrew.

“Glad to help. Oh, no—look who's coming.” It was Hannah, closely followed by Shane.

“What's the matter with them?”

“Don't like them. She's a snob, and he's a pain.”

Jake trailed Shane into the cafeteria. “Jake's not so bad,” Xena said.

“He's not vile, like Shane,” Andrew agreed. “But he's moody.”

“What do you mean?” Xena asked.

Andrew shrugged. “I don't know. I guess he's decent enough, just distracted or something.” Andrew shoveled the rest of the grayish meat into his mouth, followed it up with a long gulp of juice, and stood up. “I'll let you know if I hear anything else from the SPFD. See you later.”

 

The rest of the day dragged. Xena and Xander didn't even have the prospect of going back to The Cat and Crown to look forward to, since Xena had to study for a test and their parents wouldn't let Xander travel around the city on his own. Karim would be tied up at a piano recital.

So Xena's mood was no better when she stood next to Xander as he dug around in his locker to get out everything he would need that evening.

“Hurry
up
,” she said again. The corridor was deserted; everyone had either gone home or to homework hall.

“Why don't you just go without me?”

“Oh, sure. Dad would kill me if I left you.” But it was tempting.

At last Xander wrestled his backpack out of the locker. He knew it was crazy, but he couldn't help leaning in and checking just once more for the casebook. Something prickly moved up his
arm. “What in the world—?” He dropped his pack and pulled up his sleeve.

Clinging to his arm, its little claws straight up and its wicked-looking tail curved high in the air, was a pale brown scorpion.

F
or an instant Xena crazily thought that the scorpion must be the amulet, because she could have sworn that time stood still. Then time unstuck and she ripped a poster off the wall and used it to knock the creature off Xander's arm. She leaped forward and upended a trash can over the scorpion, trapping it.

She grabbed Xander, forgetting for the moment about the casebook and the amulet, thinking only of her brother and the danger he'd been in. “Did it sting you?” Xander was trembling but managed to shake his head. She released her bear hug and stepped back, still keeping hold of his shoulders. “Are you sure?”

“What's going on here?” It was Dr. Holloway, the science teacher.

Xena explained about Xander finding a scorpion in his locker.

“I'm going to call your parents,” the teacher
said, his face grim. “Where did it go?” Xena pointed at the upside-down trash can. “Good thinking,” the teacher said approvingly. He slid the poster under the trash can, and then carried the whole thing into the science room.

By the time their mother arrived, Dr. Holloway had deposited the furious-looking scorpion (along with rolled-up papers, tissues, and candy wrappers) into the terrarium. “I'm so sorry, Mrs. Holmes,” he kept saying. “I can't think how it could have happened. I know the scorpion couldn't have escaped on its own.” He showed her the latch, which was securely closed.

Their mother nodded. “I see. No, I agree that it couldn't have escaped without help. Has anything else been interfered with?”

Dr. Holloway swept his eyes around the classroom. “Nothing that I can see right now. Xander assures me he wasn't stung, but if you want to run him by the hospital—”

“No,” Xander said. “Please, Mom.” He pulled his sleeve up and his mother inspected it for what felt like the hundredth time.

“A scorpion sting isn't deadly,” Dr. Holloway went on, “but it's very unpleasant. I understand that in Mexico one name for a scorpion is ‘three bee stings,' because that's what it feels like.”

“There's no need for the hospital,” Mrs. Holmes said. “It was clearly a prank—not a very nice one, but a prank nonetheless.”

The teacher promised to call the principal and launch an investigation the next day, and their mother took them home.

Their father was waiting for them in the kitchen. He gave Xander a hug. “I hear you had a close call. You okay, son?”

“I'm fine.” Xander was becoming uncomfortable at all the attention.

“Didn't you get a harassing phone call the other evening?”

Xena and Xander assured their parents that nothing was wrong, that they'd tell them if there was a problem, that school was fine, all the while backing out of the kitchen and into the living room, leaving their parents talking to each other.

“Okay, this is getting serious.” Xena's voice was grim. “Someone is after the amulet. They stole our casebook, they made threatening calls, they put a scorpion in your backpack—”

“And don't forget, someone's following us around. It's possible that these things aren't being done by the same person, but it would be a really weird coincidence if they weren't. Let's try to narrow it down, okay? I bet whoever was
in the locker room is someone on the soccer team. That way, if he was caught in school late, he would just say he was practicing.”

“Or someone who hangs around the soccer team a lot.” Xena couldn't help thinking of Hannah.

Before Xander could answer, the fax machine whirred and spewed out a piece of paper. She leaped on it. “It's from Andrew!”

“Finally!” Xander joined her at the fax machine and ran his eyes down the page. “It's about the hieroglyphs, from someone named Dr. Bowen. He says the writing is gibberish. What's that? I thought it was Egyptian!”

“‘Gibberish' means ‘nonsense,'” Xena explained. “Great. Another clue that leads nowhere.”

Xander was still reading. “Dr. Bowen says that the Egyptian symbols don't make any words, just letters. Look, he wrote them out here.” He pointed to the row of hieroglyphs with letters underneath them:
f-t-h-r-n-g-l
, then a space, then
s-m-y-t-h
.

“Well,
that's
a big help.” Xena was discouraged. “We have to go back to The Cat and Crown. There
must
be something there. We went five hundred yards along the line and found a pub
that was there in Sherlock and Amin's time and that shows a cat like Bastet as a ruler. It can't be a coincidence.”

“Let's go now,” Xander said, but Xena shook her head.

“It's too late. All that scorpion talk took a lot of time. Let's work ahead on our homework, okay? And then tomorrow we'll ask Mom if we can go out for an hour or so after school. Why don't you call Karim later and see if he can go?”

“I want to look for the casebook,” Xander said stubbornly.

“Whoever took it must have something to do with the amulet, right? So if we solve the amulet problem, we'll also find out who took the casebook.”

“Maybe not. Maybe it was the school thief who stole the casebook.”