The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill (11 page)

“That's terrible,” her dad said. “Just terrible.”

“We'll fix it,” Mrs. Li said.

“No. We'll leave it!” Mr. Li called to her. “Leave it and let people see.”

“Right this way,” Mrs. Li said, and led them to their usual table.

When they sat down, they didn't pick up the menus that were cased in red leather with gold tassels; they always got the same thing.

“Why would someone smash in the Lis' window? That
doesn't make any sense. Why not the window at the drugstore? Mr. Nitz is always chasing away kids.”

“That's no reason to break a window,” her father told her. Of course it was no reason to break a window; Hazel knew that. But if you were the type of person who wanted to break a window, wouldn't you do it to someone who was mean to you? Not someone who made delicious pork dumplings. “I don't think it was juvenile delinquents.”

“Hazel,” her mom said. “Just let it go.”

“It doesn't make sense, and Mr. Li doesn't think so, either. There has to be another reason.”

“You don't think—” her mom began, but let her thought go unfinished.

Still, her dad seemed to know just what she meant to say. “No. Well, then again, I suppose it is a possibility.”

“What's a possibility?” Hazel demanded. The candle in the tiny glass votive holder flickered.

“It's nothing you need to worry about, honey.”

But Hazel
was
worried. There was a marauding band of vandals raging through her town. Their first stop might be the Lis' window, but maybe the next stop would be the cemetery. Why, they could be there right now turning over headstones and ripping out flowers.

The tinkle of chimes came from the door, letting them know that someone had arrived. It was Mrs. Switzer, the owner of the Switzer Switch and Safe Factory, and right behind her was Samuel. Mrs. Switzer's gaze flitted around the room like a butterfly in a steel plant, looking for a place to land. When Mrs.
Li came over, Mrs. Switzer shifted her eyes to the window, and then back to Mrs. Li: quick, but Hazel picked up on it.

Hazel waved her hand. “Samuel! Hey, Samuel!”

When Samuel saw her he smiled, and Hazel stood up to go say hello, and so did her parents. Her mother reached Mrs. Switzer first, extending her hand. “Mrs. Switzer, I'm not sure if you remember me, I used to babysit—”

“Lydia Tenley,” Mrs. Switzer said, voice as tight as razor wire. “Of course I remember you.”

Hazel thought her mom ought to be embarrassed at the way Mrs. Switzer was talking to her. It was the way Mrs. Sinclair sometimes talked to Otis when he was being particularly bothersome. Hazel's mom just said, “This is my husband, George Kaplansky, and this is my daughter, Hazel.”

Mrs. Switzer gave her a quick once-over, gaze lingering on her scuffed saddle shoes. “Memory's Garden. Thankfully I haven't a need for that place yet.”

“We've got your plot waiting for you when you do. Planted new grass seed just last year,” her dad said.

Hazel's mom elbowed her father hard, but his comment got a sly smile out of Mrs. Switzer.

“Are you eating here, Samuel?” Hazel asked. “You have to have the dumplings and the moo shu pork. You should sit with us. We get a bunch of things to share.”

“We're not staying,” Mrs. Switzer said. “I was called in for a meeting at the factory, last minute, you see.” She looked at Mrs. Li and then away. Hazel had a hunch. It was such a strong hunch that she leaned forward on her tippy toes. Mrs. Switzer
seemed like the kind of woman who wouldn't be afraid to stare down a six-headed fork-tongued demon, but she wouldn't look Mrs. Li in the eye. “Samuel tells me he is fond of Chinese cuisine, so I told him we'd pick up some food and he can bring it to the meeting.”

“Alone?” Hazel asked. That seemed like the saddest way possible to eat Chinese food.

“He's brought some books,” Mrs. Switzer said. “My office at the factory is quite comfortable. There's even a settee should the meeting run late.”

“Why doesn't Samuel stay and eat with us,” her mother said. “We could bring him home after.”

“I'm not sure just how long this meeting will last. With recent events, the board is looking for a strategy.”

Recent events. She had to be talking about the spies at the factory. Hazel got a tingle of the hunch again. She rocked back on her heels. She'd been so interested in her hunch, she'd missed the obvious question right in front of her: What was Samuel doing with Mrs. Switzer?

“We can take him home with us. If the meeting goes on too long, we have a spare room.”

Mrs. Switzer looked at Samuel and the Kaplanskys. Samuel gave a little nod. “If you're sure it's no trouble, I'm sure my grandson would find it enjoyable,” Mrs. Switzer said.

“No trouble at all,” Hazel's father replied.

Mrs. Switzer didn't hesitate. She took down the Kaplanskys' telephone number, thanked Hazel's parents, and was on
her way. Hazel led Samuel right over to their table. She wished the two of them could sit together and she could tell him what she saw with Mr. Jones and the American flag and ask him why he'd never told her that Mrs. Switzer was his grandmother.

“So you're a Chinese food aficionado?” her dad asked as they sat down.

“My mom likes it a lot. She's not much of a cook.”

“My mom's a great cook so long as it comes out of a can.”

Hazel's father laughed but tried to make it look like a cough by covering his mouth with his hand. “Your mother is a fantastic cook,” he said.

From her seat, Hazel could see the boarded-up window, the way the plywood buckled a little bit at the middle.

While they waited for their food, they sat in silence. This wasn't unusual for her family, but it felt awkward with Samuel there. Samuel was the one who broke the silence. “So, who do you like for the World Series?”

Her dad cleared his throat, and then said gently, “The Series already happened this year. The Yankees took it.”

“I'm talking about the next one. 1954.”

Her father smiled. “Are you asking me to predict the future?”

“Baseball is just a numbers game. Entirely predictable if it weren't for the players.”

“Is that so?” Her father chuckled.

“It is. My money is on the Giants.”

“The Giants? They haven't won in decades.”

“Of course, it will depend on any off-season trades.”

Hazel's father grinned and said, “Come this summer, we can put money on it.”

Mr. Li brought their food, each plate covered with a metal dish that he ceremoniously pulled off: dumplings, moo shu pork, General Tso's chicken, and her mother's favorite: lucky tofu. They were serving themselves and starting to eat when Samuel asked, “How long have you been in the cemetery business?”

Hazel's father dropped a spoonful of pork onto one of the wafer-thin moo shu pancakes. “It's a family business for me. My father ran the graveyard, and his before him.”

“What about you, Mrs. Kaplansky?” Samuel asked.

Hazel's mother smoothed her napkin. “Well, now, let's see. I met Mr. Kaplansky when we were in college. Well, I suppose we knew each other our whole lives, both of us from here in Maple Hill, but he was older than me and we never really talked. When I started at Smith, he was finishing up at the University of Massachusetts. He used to drive me back and forth to campus. I suppose it's when we were married. I married George and the business came along with it. That was thirteen years ago.”

Hazel picked up her chopsticks. Bobby had tried to teach her the right way to use them.
Hold the first one like a pencil. Now lift up your index finger. Slide the other one in
. But the chopsticks slid and crossed. She didn't want to have to use a fork like her parents, though. She liked that she used the chopsticks; it was as if she belonged. She imagined someday traveling to China and sitting down at a table and everyone watching her, sure she would drop her food all over her lap, but instead she would just scoop it up and pop it into her mouth.

“I studied horticulture at Smith,” her mother said. “So it turned out to be a good fit.”

“Did you know that in early American society, cemeteries were right in the center of town, and often weren't well maintained? It wasn't until 1831 with the development of Mount Auburn Cemetery that we started to get the large, landscaped graveyards.”

Hazel's parents exchanged a look, and Hazel didn't need a translator to understand this one. “Well,” Hazel's dad said. “I guess that means we're pretty lucky to live now and not in the 1800s. There wouldn't have been a job for us then.”

“Not to mention cholera,” Samuel said. “I suppose once Hazel's grown, she'll inherit the business.”

Hazel's dad had spiked a half dumpling with his fork, and he paused with it nearly to his mouth, the pork filling looking like it was ready to dive right out of its wrapper's doughy embrace. “Well, now,” he said. “Well, I don't suppose we've thought that far ahead. If Hazel wanted to—”

“No,” Hazel said. But what was shocking was that her mother said it at the exact same time. Hazel glanced up. Was her mother saying she didn't want Hazel around? Her mother's eyes, though, were flashing. “Hazel has other plans,” she said.

“I do,” Hazel said. “Lots of plans. And none of them involve sticking around little old Maple Hill.”

Samuel rubbed his chopsticks together. “I think Maple Hill's a nice town.”

Hazel sighed. How could this boy who had lived in seventeen places want to stay in a town as small and far away from
the world as Maple Hill? Then she had a horrible thought: What if all the other places were smaller and more isolated than Maple Hill? What if the whole country, the whole world, was just like Maple Hill, over and over again? No, that couldn't be a possibility. “I might be an archaeologist,” she said. “That's one of my plans. And then I can actually go to Greece and discover new ruins and new places and they might even name a museum after me.”

“I'm not sure that's the aim of archaeology,” her father said.

Hazel shrugged. She tried again with her chopsticks, but only succeeded in dropping her dumpling in the sweet and salty sauce, and it splashed up, leaving little brown dots all over the pink tablecloth. “Hazel.” Her mother sighed.

Then out of nowhere, Mr. Li was there, and he handed Hazel and Samuel each their own set of rubber-banded chopsticks, just like Bobby used to make for her.

Hazel had never had a friend over to her house other than Becky. “So this is where we live,” she told Samuel as they walked together into their living room. The carpet was deep blue, which Hazel had always liked, but now she could see that it hadn't been vacuumed in a long time. “This is our record player.” She opened up a cabinet. “My parents don't let me get a lot of popular records, but my grandparents sometimes buy them for me. I have Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney that
we could listen to. Or we could watch television. I'm allowed to watch one program during the week, and I've already used it up, but I bet my parents would let us watch one anyway. Do you have a favorite band?”

“My mom always liked to listen to Frank Sinatra. She said his voice was smooth as honey, but salty, too.”

“That doesn't make a whole lot of sense,” Hazel told him.

“My mom doesn't always make a whole lot of sense. Anyway, I don't like music so much. Not new stuff anyway.” As he spoke, he dug into his satchel and came out with his book, which he placed on the coffee table. “Since we're here, let's strategize,” he said. “What do we know?”

Hazel looked over her shoulder to make sure her mother had not come back into the room. She wished he would be a little more circumspect.

Samuel read from his notebook. “We know her name was Alice and that she was ten years old. That's a start.”

“But it doesn't matter anymore. We don't need to know who Alice, Ten Years Old is. It's just a front.”

“You asked me to find out about that headstone, which means figuring out who Alice, Ten Years Old was, and that's what I aim to do.”

“Suit yourself,” she said. “Have you ever done a grave with so little information?”

He shook his head.

“Hey, how did you know that stuff about the graveyard? About the one in 1831?”

“Mount Auburn,” he told her. “It's in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We lived there for a tiny bit, and I read about it when I was doing some research.”

“And you remembered it?”

“Sure. It was interesting.”

“Why didn't you tell me your grandmother was Mrs. Switzer?”

He looked up from his notebook and then back at the table. “I thought everyone knew.”

She had to admit that everyone did seem to know who he was. Everyone but her. “That meeting she's at, it's about the Communists, isn't it?”