The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill (8 page)

Her hand closed around the small box, and she took out
two toothpicks, just in case, and tucked them into the corner of her mouth. Mission accomplished, she climbed down from the chair and lugged it back to the kitchen, trying to make sure it was at just the same angle it had been when she'd retrieved it. It was true that her parents were not detectives like she was, and thus not trained to notice such things as a chair slightly out of place, but they had an uncanny way of knowing when she was on a mission or, in their words, “up to no good,” which she thought was an unfair characterization, as everything she did was for good.

She eased open the door and heard her mother's laughter tinkling like the wind chime above the garden.
It's now or never
, Hazel thought, and scurried by, more mouse-like this time. She took the stairs two at a time, sloshing a bit of the lemon juice onto the green carpet.

At her desk, she placed the cup of lemon juice next to a clean sheet of paper. She took one toothpick from her mouth, and left the other in, hoping she looked as smart as Mr. Wall, who sometimes chewed on a toothpick while sitting outside his garage. She thought it made him seem contemplative and wise, like John Wayne. She dipped the end of the other toothpick in the lemon juice and then held it over the paper. One single drop fell and landed on the paper.

Then, nothing.

She needed to ask for Samuel's help in figuring out who Alice was, and to break up the spy ring, but of course she couldn't just write that down in a letter, even one written in
secret ink. Once Samuel held the letter to a lamp and the message was revealed, well, then anyone could read it—including Mr. Jones—so she didn't want too much information on it. Secrets had to be kept. They would have to develop a code to send each other messages. In the meantime, she would be brief.

The drop of lemon juice spread out, making a translucent dot before disappearing altogether.

Finally, she wrote
We need to meet
. It took her longer than it would to write with a pen, scratching each letter out on the paper, and she imagined this was what scribes had felt like. She left the paper on her desk. In the morning she would fold it into a simple square, write Samuel's name on the outside, and slip it into Samuel's cubby.

Hazel made sure no one was watching when she slipped the folded square into his cubby where it wouldn't be obvious to anyone walking by but would be seen by Samuel when he was putting his things away.

To her surprise, Hazel found a note in her own cubby. It was an office slip, telling her she should report to the main office, with the box next to “Immediately” checked. Normally these slips were for when kids needed to leave early for a dentist appointment or something like that. When “Immediately” was checked, though, it meant something was up.

Mrs. Sinclair was busy talking to Otis Logan about multiplication tables—he was still stuck on the fours and he blamed the polio, but Hazel knew that was just an excuse. So Hazel left without saying anything. Surely it was Mrs. Sinclair herself who had put the slip in Hazel's cubby, and so she would
know that Hazel was at the office. Hazel headed down the hall against the rush of students hurrying to their classrooms before the bell rang to start the day.

Hazel tried to imagine why she was being called to the office. In her highest flying fantasy it was because Senator McCarthy and his investigators had found out about her work and were coming to offer support and give her a medal. She knew that was unlikely, as she still had a long way to go in her investigation.

When she arrived in the office, Mrs. Dunbarton, the secretary, had a phone cradled under her ear and a line of students waiting. When it was Hazel's turn, she handed the office slip to Mrs. Dunbarton, who was still on the phone. She glanced at the slip and shook her head while speaking to the person on the other end of the line. “Got it. Out at one thirty p.m. Yes.” Pause. “Yes.” Another pause. “Mrs. Mitchell, I can't make any guarantees as to whether Lucy will remember to bring her lunch box home today. Take it up with her teacher.”

She sighed as she hung up the phone and then looked at Hazel. “Where'd you get this slip?”

“It was in my cubby.”

Mrs. Dunbarton pressed her index finger onto the slip so hard the tip turned red and white. “There is one person in this school who writes the office slips. That person is me. This is not my handwriting.”

Hazel felt herself flushing, though she hadn't done anything wrong.

“So where'd you get it?”

“I told you, Mrs. Dunbarton. It was in my cubby when I got to school.”

Mrs. Dunbarton held the slip up to the light and examined it closely. “This is the real deal, no counterfeit. Someone stole an office slip!” She looked at Hazel through narrowed eyes over the top of her cat-framed glasses.

“It wasn't me. I swear.”

“I'm going to hold on to this. You get back to class.”

Perplexed, Hazel made her way back to her classroom. When she opened the door, the class was in the middle of the Pledge of Allegiance. Hazel walked to her seat, joining in for the last line. After everyone was seated, Mrs. Sinclair said, “Hazel, where's your tardy slip?”

“I don't have one,” she replied.

“You were tardy, so you need a slip.”

“There was an office slip in my cubby, so I went to the office—”

“Hazel, please hurry and get your tardy slip so you won't be late for music.”

Heaving a sigh, Hazel stood up. Connie and Maryann were smiling like cats, and Hazel instantly knew this was their doing. She also knew she had no proof. So she went back to the main office.

“You again?” Mrs. Dunbarton said.

“I need a tardy slip.”

Mrs. Dunbarton pulled out a small pad. She tucked a piece
of cardboard under the carbon copy slip. “Hazel Kaplansky,” she said to herself as she wrote. “Reason?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your reason for being tardy.”

“I was here. With you.”

“Don't blame me for your tardiness,” Mrs. Dunbarton snapped.

Hazel thought about telling her that it was Connie and Maryann who had swiped the office slip, but instead she said, “Is miscommunication a choice?”

“I'll just mark ‘Other.'” She tore off the top white piece of paper and stuck the yellow piece in a stack on her desk. “Let's not have this happen again, okay?”

Hazel agreed and, tardy slip in hand, headed back to the classroom. The class was just walking out of the room in two parallel lines, one for girls and one for boys. Hazel slipped into line next to Samuel. She spoke without looking at him so as not to draw attention. She was worried that he hadn't found the paper. “Did you read my note?” she asked.

“You left that paper in my cubby?”

As if anyone else would leave a note for Samuel. “Yes. Did you read it?”

“It was blank.”

“It's a secret message,” she said.

“But it's blank,” he said again.

She turned to look at him now, incredulous. “It's a secret lemon juice note. You hold it up to a light and the letters come out.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“Everybody knows that.”

“So what did it say?”

She sighed. If she had been him, she would have gone straightaway to the bathroom and held the note over a light there, even if it meant standing up on a toilet to do it. But Samuel was not her, so she would just have to tell him. “We need to get working on gathering intel on the Red situation.” She tried to sound as cool and matter-of-fact as Sergeant Joe Friday on
Dragnet
. She loved that program and almost always used her allotment of one show a week to watch it. It covered every detail of how the police solved cases, even if it could be a little boring at times.

“Intel?”

“Intelligence,” she whispered. “It's time to do some sleuthing.” Nancy Drew was always referred to as a “young sleuth,” and Hazel thought that was a good word.
Hazel Kaplansky, the young sleuth
, she imagined her own adventure being told,
had long harbored a hunch about Mr. Jones, and now she was going to prove his dastardly nature. Other girls might be afraid but not our heroine!

They all sat down in a circle, and Mrs. Ferrigno began the ritual of passing out the instruments. Mrs. Ferrigno stopped near them to hand Anthony the big cymbals and Timmy the smaller ones. Next she delivered the vibraslaps. Hazel was so wrapped up in the mystery that it didn't even faze her when Maryann and Connie got the two glockenspiels. She was barely even paying attention until she heard Mrs. Ferrigno say, “Samuel, you may play the triangle.”

When Hazel looked up, she saw Mrs. Ferrigno with her hand to her lips. “Oh my! Hazel, what shall we have you play?” She went to a small closet and began rustling around. Hazel wondered what she might pull out. A tambourine, perhaps, or one of those sticks with all the bells on it. “Ah, here we go!” Mrs. Ferrigno exclaimed, and she pulled out a second triangle, smaller than the first and with a decided bend in one of its legs. “Go sit next to Samuel. You'll play as a couple, which in music we call a ‘duet.'”

Connie turned to Maryann and mouthed the word “duet” and giggled. Hazel felt herself getting pink and uncomfortable as the teasing laughter rippled around the room.

With little fanfare, she took the malformed triangle and sat back down next to Samuel. “I always got the triangle at my last school, too,” he said.

“I always miss the cue,” she confessed.

Mrs. Ferrigno began to teach them a new song: an all-percussion version of “Yankee Doodle,” which sounded, to Hazel's ears, like a closet full of pots tumbling down a set of wooden stairs, but Mrs. Ferrigno clapped and said “Lovely, lovely” as they practiced each section. When the class could play the piece the whole way through, Mrs. Ferrigno turned to Hazel and Samuel. “And the grand finale,” she said, trilling out the
e
.

Hazel and Samuel dinged their triangles at the same time.

“Satisfactory.”

While the class worked through the song, Hazel looked at
Samuel and thought of her mother's advice to be kind to him. Her mother had never gone out of her way to give Hazel social advice of any kind, and Hazel wondered what made Samuel so special. If her parents had known his mother and she was from Maple Hill, maybe they had all been friends.

“Hazel!” Mrs. Ferrigno said, exasperated.

“Sorry,” Hazel replied. “I was caught up in the beauty of the music.”

Mrs. Ferrigno rolled her eyes and said, “From the top.”

She wondered if Samuel's mother was as annoying and particular as he was. Everything had to be logical and reasonable for him, but when you were dealing with mysteries, things weren't always logical. She bet even “just the facts” Joe Friday would admit that.

The class kept playing, and when they got to the final ding of the triangles, Samuel elbowed her in the side and she came in right on time. Mrs. Ferrigno almost smiled. “Will wonders never cease.”

“Does that mean I can get a glockenspiel next time?”

“I think you're more triangle material.”

This got Maryann and Connie laughing, and Mrs. Ferrigno didn't even tell them to stop.

On the way out the door, Connie called, “Hey, Hazel!”

Hazel turned around, and there were Maryann and Connie with their hands up on their foreheads, fingers in the shape of triangles, snickering at her.

On the bike ride over to the library, Hazel planned the investigating she and Samuel would do. They'd start by canvasing the neighborhood to see if anyone remembered a girl named Alice. Then they could come up with a list of persons of interest. They'd have to interview each of them, and for that they'd need a cover story. Maybe they could say they were interviewing people for a school project about Maple Hill's past.

Right next to the library was the big white Catholic church that Hazel's mother had attended as a child; she'd stopped once she grew up and got married. The door of the church opened and Father Paul came out. Waving, he called, “Hey-o, Hazel.” He knew her even though they didn't go to church because the priest knew everyone.

And everything, she realized. And the whole history of the town.

Hazel leaned her bike against the tree and trotted up a few steps. “Hello, Father Paul,” she said. “How are you on this glorious day?” She had noticed that religious people often used the word “glorious.”

“I am well, my dear, and how are you?”

“Very well,” she replied. “Actually, I'm working on a project, and I thought maybe you could help.”

“A school project?”

She didn't think it was a good idea to lie to a priest. “More like a personal project. I'm researching some of the graves in the old paupers' graveyard. With Samuel Butler. He's interested in that sort of thing.”

Father Paul made a tut-tutting noise, but then he said, “It's good of you to befriend that boy.”

What was it about Samuel that made people think he was so fragile? He was odd, that was for certain, but he seemed more or less sturdy. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Oh, Hazel, it's a very long story.”

Hazel looked at him and waited. She had plenty of time.

“What's this project you're working on?”

“Well, it's a bit hard to explain. I'm just wondering if you might know of anyone buried up there who maybe didn't belong here.”

“Everyone is welcome here.”

Hazel sighed. “I don't just mean the church. I mean the whole town.” She didn't think she could come right out and ask about Alice. She didn't want to give too much away.

“Well, sure, there have been people who have drifted through, if you know what I mean.”

She sure did, but for once her line of questioning wasn't about Mr. Jones. She wanted to know more about Alice. “Any girls, maybe? About my age. Maybe some who were lost under mysterious circumstances?”