The library was next on our list. I just knew this was where we were going to hit pay dirt. You can count on librarians to know about books and authors.
But I quickly lost heart once we walked inside. The Wimberly library was a tiny storefront operation. I’ve seen convenience stores with more space. I’ve seen bookmobiles with more books.
“You want to apply for a library card?” asked the lady behind the desk.
“No,” Beamer said. “We just have a question. About a local author.”
She looked surprised. “Local author?”
“Yeah, the children’s author, I. M. Fine. We heard he lives here in Wimberly.”
“I. M. Fine?”
“He writes the Chillers series. Scary stories for kids.”
“Oh, yes. I know the ones. I’m afraid we don’t carry those books. We have a pretty limited budget.”
“Well, actually, we were more interested in finding him,” I said. “Here in Wimberly.”
“Oh, well . . .” She looked truly regretful. “I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”
“Thanks anyway,” Beamer said, and nudged me out the door.
He looked at his watch. “You know what, Franny? I’m starting to get nervous about this. What if my grandpa drives by the pool to check on us and finds out we’re not there?”
“Oh, stop worrying, Beamer,” I said. “He’s in his garage, puttering with his inventions. I bet he hasn’t given us a second thought.”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past him to check.”
“So if he does find out we left—which he won’t—we’ll just say we got bored and went for a walk.”
“Give me a break! We went for a walk? All day?”
“He doesn’t have to know how long we were gone—just why we weren’t there at the exact moment he drove by.”
“Okay, but what if he asks around at the pool? What if the lifeguard says, ‘Yeah, I remember those two. They left twenty minutes after you dropped them off’?”
“Oh, all right,” I said. I thought he was being a little paranoid, but I have to admit that asking an endless string of strangers if they had heard of I. M. Fine was getting a little stale.
So we headed back to Maple and First, stopping in at the occasional store on the way. As a result, we learned that I. M. Fine had failed to make himself known at Reynold’s Hardware, the Tire Shop, Dunkin’ Donuts, Hopwood Dry Cleaners, or the Five ’n’ Dime.
The bus wasn’t due for another half an hour, so we just stood there for a while, staring numbly up the road in the faint hope that it would come early and rescue us.
Suddenly, I had a thought. No matter how bummed out we were at the moment, we would still be coming back the next day. And it would speed things along if we had a plan. This led me to think of the candy company. I kind of liked the idea of trying something different from what we’d done so far. But we didn’t have a clue where the candy company was.
I knew it couldn’t be that hard to find out, though. After all, we were talking about a pretty big company. In fact, it was probably the biggest business in the whole town. I decided to pop into the barbershop and ask.
“Yell if you see the bus coming,” I told Beamer. “I just want to check something out.”
The barber was sitting in one of his two chairs, smoking a cigarette. There was not a customer in sight.
“Hello, little lady,” he said.
I guess, being a barber, he didn’t see a whole lot of females on a day-to-day basis, except maybe the mothers of six-year-olds who came in for a bowl cut. Still—little lady?
“Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I’m trying to find some information on a local company, the Kute Kandy Corporation. Do you know anything about it?”
“Kute Kandy,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “Can you imagine—a big company like that? Calling it Kute Kandy? The name’s bad enough, but he had to spell it with a K?”
“Yeah, it does sound pretty silly,” I said.
“It started out right over there,” he said, pointing across the street to a dress shop. We had already been in there earlier that morning.
“Bermann’s Candies, it was then. Little family business. I’ll bet it employs three hundred people now. Maybe more. And he goes and calls it Kute Kandy!”
“The owner, you mean? Mr. Bermann?”
“Yeah, Jake Bermann. He’s retired now. Moved to Florida.”
“This is off the subject,” I said, “but do you know the writer I. M. Fine? Lives here in Wimberly?”
“Fine?” He thought about it. “I knew an Irving Fine back in the early fifties. Or knew of him is more like it.”
“Really?” I said, gasping. “Do you know where he lives?”
“Oh, sure,” he said with a wicked grin. Even before he’d said it, I knew what was coming. “Yeah, he’s been at the same address for quite some time. About six feet under. Headstone on top.”
This guy was creepy, and I really wanted out of there, but I felt we were circling around something important.
“You said you knew of him. What exactly?”
“Well, little lady . . .” He leaned forward and paused dramatically. “He was a spy. A Russian spy.”
“A spy!” I croaked. I had never heard of a real spy—just the movie kind, like James Bond.
The barber was still grinning. “Yes indeed, that’s what he was.”
“But how could you know a thing like that?” I asked. “He didn’t tell you, did he?”
“Nope. I read it in the paper, same as everybody else. Irving Fine was called down to Washington to testify about it. Gave our American secrets to the Russkies. So what do you think about that?” He raised his eyebrows to show how impressed I should be.
“Gosh,” I said. “Did they put him in jail?”
“Should’ve. Didn’t get a chance, though. Driving back from Washington—ka-blamm! Right into a telephone pole. It was in all the papers.”
Well, this was plainly not our guy, but it might have been I. M. Fine’s father. “Did he have a son, do you know?” I asked. “Like Irving, Jr., maybe?”
“Haven’t got a clue,” he said.
The bell tinkled and a teenage boy with hardly any hair came in and sat in the free chair. I couldn’t imagine why he thought he needed a haircut. Maybe he wanted it all shaved off. The barber stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet.
“Well, thanks,” I said, edging toward the door. “Just one last thing. Do you know where in town, exactly, that candy factory is?”
“Kute Kandy.” He said it again, just to enjoy how stupid it sounded. “Out on Route One. ’Bout two miles up the road.”
“Route One?” I asked.
“Yeah, just head west, little lady—you’ll see it. Over on the left.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said again, then got out of there as fast as I could.
Beamer didn’t look like he had moved one millimeter since I’d been in the barbershop. He was still standing there, leaning against a lamppost, watching the northbound traffic.
“I found out where Kute Kandy is,” I reported.
“Good.” He didn’t sound all that excited.
“But that’s not all. It turns out there was an Irving Fine who lived here in the fifties. He’s been dead for a long time, but Beamer—he was a spy!”
This time, Beamer actually turned and looked in my direction.
“He had to go to Washington for questioning or something. And on the way back, he was killed in a car wreck.”
Beamer hit me with his laser gaze. “That’s gotta be the father,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Fine isn’t all that common a name.”
“Plus, it kind of makes sense. I mean, with a dad like that, you might get kind of twisted. It fits, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.”
And all of a sudden, my tiredness and frustration lifted and I positively couldn’t wait till the next day arrived. We were going to find this guy. I just knew it.