The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill (27 page)

“Such as your name.”

“You mentioned that. Though I suppose it's only fair to tell you that it's actually Paul Jankowski.”

Hazel's eyebrows shot up. That sure sounded like a Russian name.

“It's Polish,” he said, as if he'd read her mind. “Like Kaplansky, correct?”

Hazel nodded.

“My parents changed it when we came over. Wanted to blend in.”

“So you're not actually an American?”

“Naturalized,” he said. “Go on. What else have you got on me?”

“Well, it was suspicious that you were receiving property from Mr. Short and storing it in our garden shed, but I found out it was safes and Mr. Short told me why you had them.”

“So you were the imp who broke my lock.”

“A good detective does what she has to do.”

“As far as I can tell, you had nothing but circumstantial evidence. Nothing that would hold up in a court of law.”

“I didn't need it to hold up in a court of law. I just needed to have enough evidence to call in the FBI.” Hazel frowned. “For example, I saw you steal an American flag from Soldier's Field.”

“It was tattered. I replaced it. You can go check if you want.”

“My other piece of evidence is that you've been rather suspect in your behavior around Alice's grave. You even put that doll, the whatchamacallit, the Russian nesting doll, on her grave.”

“Well, there you might have a slight something, but the truth is, that was hers. I stole it years ago, just to be a pest, and figured it was about time I gave it back.” His shoulders drooped, and he said, “All right. That's enough of this game. Just leave us be.”

Hazel dug her toe into the dirt. “I need your help,” she said.

“My help? You thought I was a Russian spy, and you nearly lost me my job, and you're coming to me for my help?”

“I read the story in the paper. I found out what really happened. I'm sorry about your sister. My parents say I'm not supposed to talk to you anymore. Not to bother you.”

“So what's this?”

“I'm saying I wouldn't ask if I didn't need it. It's for a friend.”

“Ah,” he said, his face still not giving anything away.

The story spilled out of Hazel. She told Mr. Jones what Miss Lerner had told her about Samuel's parents, how he had lost his father and his mother. She told Mr. Jones that Samuel had never believed that Mr. Jones was a spy, and that he felt bad about what they'd done. So did she. Then she told him about her idea.

He let it all settle for a moment. The story had taken a long time to tell, and the sky was turning golden orange. Hazel shivered in the evening air.

“Okay,” Mr. Jones said. “I'll help you.”

Samuel had taught her his way of research, but Hazel still preferred hers: interviews and stakeouts. She took her Mysteries Notebook and rode her bike around town asking questions. She noted everything in the book, and she kept a list of all her witnesses. She started at the library. She'd heard Miss Lerner's story, but now she talked to Miss Angus. She pulled open the wooden doors and walked straight to the reference desk. “Miss Angus, I have a question,” she announced.

Miss Angus pushed aside a stack of books she had been examining. “Reference services for children are provided in the lower level, as you are well aware, Hazel Kaplansky.”

Hazel stood her ground. “I already spoke to Miss Lerner. I need a second opinion.”

“I don't trade in opinions. I trade in facts.”

“Then I need more facts to complete the picture.” She
tugged on the straps of her knapsack and explained what she wanted to know.

Miss Angus tucked her pencil into her bun. “Let's sit a spell.” They sat at a table with a green reading lamp that made her notebook paper look almost yellow.

Miss Angus looked at her expectantly.

“So, Miss Angus, I just want to know what you remember.”

“I suppose the best thing is to tell the story from beginning to end.” Hazel had to write quickly to keep up with Miss Angus's quick pace.

“Thanks, Miss Angus,” Hazel said as she closed her notebook.

“It's Mrs. Angus, Hazel.”

Hazel had never known there was a Mr. Angus, and she immediately wondered who he was, where he was, and what he was like. She imagined him as tall and as slim as Mrs. Angus, and the two of them walking around the house raising single eyebrows and shushing each other. Before she could ask about him, though, Mrs. Angus added, “You ought to go see Mr. Wall. He'd be a terrific primary source for this project.” So Hazel got on her bike and rode to his garage.

“Hello there, Hazel,” he said.

She hopped off her bike while it was still rolling. “Hi, Mr. Wall.”

“Don't tell me your tire is flat again.”

“No, sir, you fixed it up right,” she said, shaking her head. “Actually, there's something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I always love a conversation with you, Hazel.” He brought
out another lawn chair, and they sat side by side. He got her a soda out of the icebox, but she hardly had time to drink it from writing down all that he was saying. The sun was way up in the sky and she had to squint against the brightness of the white paper of her notebook. She'd filled two pages with Mrs. Angus, and now she was going to fill three or four more. She'd been right all along that interviews were the way to go.

“That everything?” she asked when he stopped talking. She took two big swigs of the soda.

“It's never everything, Hazel, but that's a good start. You should go see Mrs. Buttersbee.”

With a giant gulp, she finished the bottle. “Thanks for the soda.”

“Anytime.”

She rode past the houses in her town, houses she had seen hundreds of times, every day for her whole life, and had never thought of all the stories that were contained inside of them. Each one had several people, each person had countless memories. All the memories laced together to make the story.

She turned down the cul-de-sac where Mrs. Buttersbee lived, then left her bike leaning against the porch.

When Mrs. Buttersbee answered, she looked confused. “It's not Halloween again, is it?”

Hazel shook her head. “I came to ask you about the past. Do you have time?”

“Time and the past are all I have these days,” Mrs. Buttersbee said, laughing to herself.

She led Hazel into her house and told her to sit on an
overstuffed couch with a pink-and-green floral pattern. “Let me get you a drink,” she said. “Some tea?”

The soda was still sloshing in her stomach, so she said, “No, thank you.” But Mrs. Buttersbee toddled out all the same, and came back with a glass full of cider. “Left over from Halloween,” she explained.

Hazel took it and said thank you. Then she put the glass on a coaster on the wicker coffee table. She opened up her notebook. Before she could ask a question, though, Mrs. Buttersbee pulled out a thick scrapbook and began paging through it. “I keep track of everything. All the comings and goings.”

“That's real nice,” Hazel said. “But actually there's a specific part of the past that I wanted to ask you about.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Buttersbee said, still flipping through the book. Hazel saw page after page of yellowed newspaper articles and white bordered photographs.

“Mr. Wall said—”

“Little Charlie Wall?”

“I guess so.”

Mrs. Buttersbee smiled. “Little devil, that one.”

“He told me—”

“There,” Mrs. Buttersbee said. She put her finger down on a newspaper clipping that showed a picture of a young woman in a graduation gown. The headline read: “Local Scholar Off to Smith. Full Scholarship.” Hazel looked at the picture, forehead furrowed, then read the name under the picture: “Lydia Tenley.”

Hazel's eyes grew wide. “That's my mom?”

The girl—her mother—held her diploma tightly in her hand. She had a grin that stretched so far across her face it seemed to touch her ears. She'd been top in her graduating class and was off to Smith College in Massachusetts. She wanted to study science, biology, probably, and maybe become a doctor. That's what she told the reporter, anyway.

“This can't be right,” Hazel said. “If she was going to be a doctor, how'd she end up back here?”

“What's wrong with here?” Mrs. Buttersbee asked.

Hazel shook her head. It would take her days, weeks, to explain why she was going to get out of Maple Hill as soon as she could and see the world. It seemed like her mom could have done that, but instead came back to work in the graveyard. And she seemed happy. It didn't make any sense. “Can I take this?” Hazel asked. “I'll bring it back.”

“Oh, keep it,” Mrs. Buttersbee said, patting her hand. “I'm sure you'll value it more than I do.”

“There's someone else I want you to tell me about.”

Mrs. Buttersbee smiled when Hazel said the name. She flipped through the book to show a picture of a young man in uniform. He had a serious expression and yet there was some twinkling in his eyes and a slight upturn of his smile that made Hazel think he was a happy man. “What do you want to know?” Mrs. Buttersbee asked.

When Hazel got home, she found her mother in the office with a pencil tucked behind her ear and a pile of bills in front of her as she tapped information into the adding machine. Hazel stood in the doorway for a moment before her mother said, “What is it, Hazel?”

“Mrs. Buttersbee gave me this newspaper article.” Hazel extended the yellowing paper to her mother. It wavered a moment in the space between them.

Hazel's mom looked at the picture for a full minute, maybe more. It was like her emotions were a movie playing across her face, one right after the other.

“I never knew you were so smart,” Hazel said.

Hazel's mom lifted her gaze and looked right at Hazel, and Hazel thought,
This is it, I'm really going to get it this time
. But instead her mom just started laughing. “Oh, Hazel,” she said once she finally had control of herself. “Where do you think you get it from?”

Hazel took a few steps so she was standing right next to her mother's desk. “I don't understand it. You had all these dreams, and you wound up back here.”

Her mom looked down. “I fell in love with your father. He had this job. It was steady and secure. It made sense for us to start a family.”

“You didn't become a doctor because of me?”

“It was nothing like that. By that time, I didn't even want to be a doctor, not a medical one. I wanted to be a professor of horticulture.”

“I still don't understand.”

“It's complicated, Hazel.”

“Why do grown-ups always say that?”

“Sometimes in life you have to make choices. I wanted marriage and a family and a career. And I got all of that. In spades. It might not be my dream career, but it's something.”

Hazel pursed her lips. She still didn't understand why her mother had made the choice she had. “Well, I think I'm going to choose differently.”

“I know you will, Hazel,” her mom said. “The world is open to you; you just have to take it. It wasn't always like that. Anyway, why were you at Mrs. Buttersbee's? You're still grounded, you know.”

Hazel was tired of lies and subterfuge, so she told her mother her plan. At the end, her mom said, “Hazel, this may be the first of your big schemes that isn't hare-brained. I'm proud of you.”

“Does that mean I'm not grounded anymore?”

“Temporary reprieve through Thursday. Now go tell your father it's going to be another night at Li's.”

“Sure! Of course!” Hazel started for the door. She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “It's not too late, Mom. You can go back to school and get that doctorate degree.”

Her mother smiled, looked down at the mess in front of her, and said, “What? And leave all this behind?” She laughed.

Sometimes her mother's jokes made no sense at all.

Thursday after school, Hazel rushed home. She had a lot of work to do. After she got into her dungarees, she went outside and found Mr. Jones, who was just finishing putting a small headstone into the ground on the edge of Soldier's Field. He patted the dirt down hard around it. “It's perfect,” Hazel told him.

“Told Mr. Winthrop down at the monument yard that you'd come by and help him sort granite stones.”

“Sure, of course,” Hazel said. She crouched down and began weeding the area while Mr. Jones loosed a chrysanthemum plant from its pot and placed it in the ground. They had decided upon chrysanthemums because Hazel thought they were strong and steady.

As they worked, Hazel kept stealing glances at him.

“If you have something to ask me, go ahead and do so,” he finally said.

And so, the first question that popped into her mind she let fall out of her mouth. “Why did you have an ax that day?”