The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill (21 page)

“Right,” Connie said. “We were doing a séance. We read about how to do it in a book.”

“You can do it in your house,” Hazel said. “I mean, not that they're real, but that's where people normally do them. In the parlor.”

“We don't have a parlor,” Connie said.

No one did, as far as Hazel knew. No one except Samuel's grandmother.

“Anyway, we didn't want our parents to know what we were up to. Plus the book said to try to get close to the spirit world, and that was as close as we could think of.”

“It's not their spirits in the ground. It's just their bodies.”

“Well, that's what we were doing there. And I'm sorry if we made a mess, but we had planned on picking it up. It's just that you and Samuel surprised us. So, that's it. That's what happened.”

“That's not it.”

Connie chewed on the edge of her thumb. “You mean you're still going to tell your parents?”

“No, I mean I want to know what you were doing a séance about. Who were you trying to contact?”

Connie put her sunglasses back down over her eyes. “You have to swear not to tell.”

“Of course.”

“Pinkie swear.” Connie held out her pinkie, and Hazel hooked hers into it. She and Becky used to pinkie swear about things—never wearing makeup except in dramatic productions, always being best friends—and it was strange to feel someone else's pinkie hooked into hers.

Connie grimaced, but then confessed, her words running together in a rushed stream. “Okay, so, Maryann wanted to find out if Timmy likes her.”

Hazel unhooked her pinkie. “You did all that to find out if a boy likes Maryann?”

“Well, we thought it would be a fun thing to do, and we had other questions, too. I had a question that we didn't get to because you and Samuel came barging in on us.”

“Why didn't you just ask Timmy?”

Connie widened her eyes. “You can't just ask a boy that.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” Connie began, then started chewing on the edge of her thumb again. “Well, that's just not how you do it. Because then he would know that she liked him. And she doesn't want him to know that she likes him unless he likes her back.”

Hazel closed her notebook without ever having written anything down. “That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And I've heard a lot of stupid things.”

Connie pursed her lips. “Think of it this way. It's not like you'd just go and ask Samuel if he liked you, would you?”

And then she let herself out and, looking both ways, scurried out of the library.

A moment later, Hazel left the booth. She went downstairs to the children's room, where Miss Lerner was finishing up a story time. She wished she were still little enough for story time. The way Miss Lerner's voice rose and fell with the story was soothing, like a hot water bottle under your covers in the winter.

Out the window, which was at street level, Hazel could see Connie's penny loafers waddling away. She wondered what Connie's question had been. Was she wondering about a boy, too?

Story time finished and the kids all spread out around the library looking for books to take home. Hazel walked over to Miss Lerner and listened as she described
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
to a little boy who looked suspicious that a book could be as exciting as a real steam shovel.

Once Miss Lerner had convinced the boy to take the book home—and come back with a full report on any inaccuracies—she turned to Hazel. “You're looking a little glum, Hazel.”

“I suppose I feel a little glum,” she replied.

“The whole town is these days,” Miss Lerner said. “Even the kids. I read
Goodnight Moon
, and half the kids couldn't be bothered to find the mouse.”

“What do you think it's all about?”

Miss Lerner raised her eyebrows. “It's about the factory, Hazel. What else? No one trusts each other anymore.”

“Someone threw a brick through the Lis' window.”

Miss Lerner nodded. “I saw it. Some of us collected money for them to get it fixed.”

“Mr. Li wanted to leave it. So people would know, I guess.”

Miss Lerner stacked up the books from her story time, and carried them to her desk. Hazel trotted along behind.

Hazel looked at her shoe. “I'm sorry about what I said about Mr. Bowen.”

Miss Lerner gave her a soft smile. “I know you didn't believe it. But that's the problem with all this: a whisper becomes a rumor becomes a fact.”

“That's why we need to figure out who the real spies are. We need to smoke 'em out, and fast.”

Miss Lerner put the books down and looked at Hazel with eyes as sad as the puppies in the Richmonds' pet shop. “What if there aren't any spies?”

“Of course there are spies. Why else would there be an investigation?”

Miss Lerner sighed. “When you're a little bit older, Hazel, maybe you'll understand.”

Hazel frowned. “That's what adults say when they don't know the answer, either.”

Miss Lerner looked up, surprised, but her expression softened. “You're probably right about that. I don't know why good folks turn against one another. Maybe it's fear that if
they don't accuse someone else, they'll get accused themselves. Maybe it's a way of working out an old vendetta. Or maybe they just get caught up in the moment, and they start to believe things that couldn't possibly be believed. Like Mr. Short heading up some sort of spy ring—”

“Oh, Mr. Short isn't the head of the spy ring!” Hazel exclaimed, but then stopped herself.

“I'm glad to hear that from you, Hazel. Not everyone has such an open mind.”

Of course Hazel couldn't tell Miss Lerner that she did think Mr. Short was involved, she just didn't think he was in charge. She knew for certain that was Mr. Jones. So she said, and considered it a truth, “I like to keep my mind open to all possibilities.”

As Hazel rode her bike home, she chewed on her lip. All that rigmarole to find out that Maryann liked Timmy. Big whoop. She had much bigger things to worry about, like spies and the people of her town doubting one another when she knew the whole story but just couldn't prove it. If she had cared about something as little as boy-girl stuff, which she didn't, she could have just made some observations at school. Now she was going to get in trouble with her parents for not coming directly home after school. Plus she had rotten apple on her shoe. Plus Samuel was mad at her. Again.

Maybe it wasn't worth it being friends with someone so touchy.

Maybe it wasn't worth it having friends at all. Because all they did in the end was leave. They moved to Tucson and never wrote letters. Or they got mad every other day. She
hadn't realized how good she'd had it in those weeks after Becky left and before Samuel arrived. She had just gone about her business, playing her games in the graveyard and reading her books. Now she worried Samuel would tire of her, and she would have a Samuel-shaped hole, and she didn't like it.

She was afraid she was starting to get a town-shaped hole, too. It's true she planned to leave Maple Hill as soon as she could, but she still wanted it to be there, just the way she liked it. With Mr. Wall and the library and her school—all of it quiet and the same. She didn't like people throwing bricks in one another's windows. She didn't even like Otis shoving Timmy. Maybe that's how you know you really love something—how you feel when other folks start to tear it apart.

She didn't want to go home, so she rode her bike in and out of cul-de-sacs. If she was going to get in trouble (again), she might as well enjoy her last moments of freedom. Mrs. Buttersbee was outside tending to her chrysanthemums, which she kept in big pots on her front step. She seemed to be having some trouble. Hazel slowed her bike, hopped off, and walked up the path.

“Why, if it isn't Amelia Earhart!” Mrs. Buttersbee exclaimed.

“Just Hazel today,” she replied. “Do you need some help?”

Mrs. Buttersbee smiled and lowered herself down onto the front step. “I most certainly do. The wind came by and knocked them all over.”

“No problem,” Hazel said. She began straightening the
pots back up. Some of the dirt had fallen out of the pots, and she brushed it from the cement steps into her cupped hand, being careful not to get it onto her school skirt. If she ruined any more of her nice clothes, her mother would have a conniption fit.

“I used to have the most beautiful gardens in the whole neighborhood,” she said. “Hostas and peonies, and you should have seen my holly bush in the winter. People used to offer to buy boughs from me.”

“That's nice, Mrs. Buttersbee,” Hazel said. She didn't know why old people always spent so much time reminiscing about the past. Even when she was old, she'd be looking forward.

“I have blackberry bushes out back. The neighbor boy, Randall, used to come and pick them for me.” She wiped her wrist across her brow. “You could come pick them in the summer if you'd like. You can take as many as you want, and I'll make jam with the rest. I haven't made jam in ages.” Her eyes lit up as she spoke.

“That sounds nice,” Hazel said. She really didn't like picking berries; it was always hot and there were too many bees and prickers. Plus poison ivy always seemed to grow among the blackberry brambles. It was like weeding, with obstacles. But she did enjoy fresh jam. “I would love to do that.” Hazel patted the dirt in around the plants. “I need to be going. I'm grounded, and I'm already late getting home.”

“Grounded? Whatever for?”

“It's a long story,” Hazel said.

“Then we'll have to save it for another day. In the meantime, help an old lady up?” She reached out her arm, and Hazel took it in both hands, and pulled her to her feet.

When Hazel let go, she saw two dirty smudges on Mrs. Buttersbee's sleeve where her hands had been. “Oh, no!” Hazel cried.

Mrs. Buttersbee just smiled, though. “It's no bother. Reminds me of when I was out here doing it myself. You run along now. I don't want you getting into any more trouble on account of me.”

Hazel said good-bye and hopped on her bike. She rode to the hill and pedaled hard, standing up and shifting the bike from side to side. It was a big, steep hill, and a lot of people got off their bikes and just walked up. But Hazel was not a lot of people. By the end of the hill she was barely moving, but she made it to the top. She raised her fist in the air.

This hill was not as high as the one on the other side of town, where Samuel lived, but it still gave a good view. She could see the graveyard and her house, and, behind her, she could see Samuel's house, his peaked turret. She wondered if he was in that room looking out in this direction, trying to make the cars and the people do what he saw in his head.

She coasted along for a bit, in no hurry to get home. She was only going to face certain punishment. Then again, what could they do? It's not like they could ground her for any longer than they already had.

She pulled up alongside her house and tucked her bike
into the garage. She opened the door and peered around. Her parents weren't in the kitchen. She went down the hall and saw the office door was open. With a deep breath, she went to the door to face her fate.

Her dad looked up from a stack of books. “Hello, Hazel,” he said. “How's things?”

Did he not realize what time it was? That she was late? “I was just visiting with Mrs. Buttersbee,” Hazel told him.

“Mrs. Buttersbee!” her father said. “She's a nice lady.”

“I went there after school,” Hazel said. “Instead of coming right home.”

“Is that so?” he asked. He took a pencil from behind his ear and noted something on a piece of paper.

“Where's Mom?” she asked.

“At some meeting,” he said through the pencil, which he now gripped in his teeth. “Concerned Mothers of Maple Hill or something.”

“What are they concerned about?”

“The spies, I suppose. The alleged spies, as your mom says.” He made a check on his piece of paper. “And when Mom's away, the cats can go to Li's! Grab your coat and we'll head out.”

“I'm in my coat.”

Her dad looked up from the book. “So you are. Well, then grab my coat and meet me by the door. I can practically taste the pork dumplings.”

Hazel went and opened the closet door. It smelled like
mothballs and the pipe that her grandfather had smoked back when this was his house. When she was little she'd liked to crouch down on the floor of the closet, close her eyes, and just smell. She tugged her father's coat off the hook, making the hanger swing back and forth.

Her dad caught her there, staring at the swinging hanger and thinking about her mom at a concerned mothers meeting. Her dad grabbed his coat from her and said, “Sometimes I just wonder what goes on in that head of yours.”